DPM Radio Ep 3 - How to avoid Coaching Burnout w/ Lyssa Adkins

Lyssa Adkins is one of the leading voices in Agile coaching. A founder of the Agile Coaching Institute, her book “Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition” set the bar for what it means to be an Agile Coach. In this interview Lyssa and I talk about what’s happening with the Agile Institute, coaching middle management and how to deal with coaching burnout. Show Notes: The Super Nervous Interview Begins 2:10 Focused Listening 4:05 Four essential skill sets of coaching 6:00 The difference between “coaching” and being a professional coach 6:30 Big things going on at Agile Coaching Institute 7:45 Coaching Middle Management 8:40 The impact of the cultural change Agile brings 11:40 Is there a limit to how much change we can handle and where are the boundaries 12:30 Background on the burnt out coach14:30 Burn out is on the rise with Agile Coaches 15:00 Finding a path you can be on with heart 15:45 Finding the heart in letting the org become what it wants to become 16:40 Checking your own ambition 18:20 Goal setting and knowing when to walk away 19:00 What to do with the organizations on Life Support 19:15 Hospicing the death of old systems 20:20 Trying to reach people who don’t want to take your hand 21:30 Meeting confusion with curiosity 22:20 Agile coaches are agents of human evolution 24:00 How Agile Coaching Institute helps organizations 24:30 Developing a coaching capability that is in sync with where the organization’s goals 25:45 How to find and develop the coaches in an organization 27:45 How to help a burnt out coach/change agent 31:25 The importance of self-care if you want to be present and help others 32:50 Exposing why people avoid self-care35:00 Ways Lyssa practices self-care 35:30 The job is to “allow” 37:05 You can’t let go because it’s the tension that holds it together 38:18 What happens when you do let go 38:50 Lyssa Reads Poetry 40:25 All of us in the Agile community are part of evolving our capacity for complexity 41:45 We are in the time of organizations being living thing 43:05 How to contact Lyssa 43:25 Lyssa’s advice for the coaches who are feeling burned out 43:55 Lyssa’s Coaching Agile Teams book is 6 years old 44:45 Thanking Lyssa for making me uncomfortable (in a good way) 45:50 Upcoming Events for Lyssa 46:00 Links Mentioned in the Podcast Lyssa in Twitter https://twitter.com/lyssaadkins The Agile Coaching Institute http://www.agilecoachinginstitute.com/coaches/ 2016 Scrum Gathering Agenda http://bit.ly/1Upsg9W Perseverance - Meg Wheatley http://amzn.to/1W4PSmM Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership - Alex Harms https://leanpub.com/littleguide Agile Base Patterns, a Cross-Quadrant Conversation - a conversation between Lyssa Adkins and Dan Greening http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-base-patterns Iawake.com http://www.iawaketechnologies.com The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America - David Whyte http://amzn.to/1NtifV7