Time to admit why you stink at being Agile!

I am an introverted person by nature. I like to spend a lot of time thinking, even maybe when I'm in a room full of people. I I'm very , uh , contemplated person. I like to think things through, I internalize things a lot. And one thing that's mainly on my mind is gratitude. That's obvious we're in the holiday season, Christmas Hanukkah, the other holidays during this time of the year.

And with the pandemic, it makes me be even more grateful that I have not gotten COVID no one in my immediate family has gotten COVID and no one has died around my, because of COVID. I've had family members pass recently, but for other things, I actually had an uncle who passed away on Christmas day, last Friday, who I was , uh , very close to. Uh, he lives in Pennsylvania. He lived in Pennsylvania and I was very close to him. And his mother was my biological aunt, my mother's sister.

So to have him pass on Christmas day was a little rough. Um, he had dementia, so he he's in a better place now. So I'm not thankful that he died. I'm thankful that he's not suffering anymore. So along that lines of gratitude, I started thinking, how does this apply to the topic of this podcast, which is being agile. So I believe that gratitude is a huge behavioral factor needed. Now we know the scrum values. We have the agile values. Gratitude is not listed. Neither is selflessness nor humility.

I believe those are very high qualities I've seen in the field. I've seen people with those behavior and without them, and the success rate is drastic, as you can imagine. And I hope if you're listening here and you're asking me, what is gratitude, humility, selflessness . I have anything to do with being agile, with being successful. Well, it has everything to do with it. I'm here to tell you most successful.

People will tell you if you've read anything about anybody and things out there about how to be successful, but that's again, a personal choice. You want to be entrepreneurs. How do you be successful? That's how do I get myself ahead? Right? That's not usually what agile is about. That isn't one that is not what agile is about at all. Agile is not about getting yourself ahead.

So if you're listening to this and you're about, you're getting about getting yourself ahead, just turn this off right now. I'm telling you this podcast is this. This show is getting real. If you're not into gratitude, humility, selflessness, SIA . It's not for you. Agile's not for you. This podcast. Isn't for you. Uh, I can help you get there. If you have an open enough mind to realize that you need to have these qualities, I'll come along with you.

You come along with me, we'll go through this journey. That's great. If you don't think you need it and you can do it and you can do it without that fine, good luck to you. I hope it works out well for see ya. So gratitude being grateful for what you have, right? You can look around and be grateful for everything. Anything you have, right? I don't care if you don't have very much at all, you don't think you have very much at all. You're alive. Let's start with that. You may not be sick.

You don't have COVID right. You don't have COVID people in your family. Maybe don't have COVID. Maybe they did. And they recovered, but maybe they died too. Yeah. And that's not good. That's not good, but you can still find something in it. People around you, other people, your , your parents are still alive. You maybe you have a job. Maybe you don't have a job if you don't have a job. And you're struggling to find something to be grateful for. Just look a little harder.

Like I said , you're alive. You have food to eat for today. Think about today being Agile's all about small slices, right? Don't think about tomorrow. Don't think too far ahead. Think about today. A lot of people out there have to be concerned about themselves. I understand that I'm talking about the bigger picture is that ultimately to be successful in life, you truly have to be grateful, humble, and selfless. That's just a fact.

I've seen it on teams where I have, I've had a manager, director level, my manager, you would think a person like that. I've seen a lot of people like that at that level, VP level, all about them climbing the ladder, right? Toe the corporate line. Say what they have to say, move on up. I don't have time for those people. If you're one of those people, you're not doing anybody, any good. I'm here to tell you that right now you are hurting your environment. You're hurting your people.

You're ultimately hurting yourself. You think you're getting somewhere, but you're not be grateful. Be grateful that you're there. Don't look down on your people. Don't stab people in the back. Don't say one thing and do another. Be humble. You don't know everything. You know, you don't know everything you think you do. If you're listening to this, or if you know somebody who thinks they know everything, challenge them on that.

I guarantee you , Tom , it's all smoke and mirrors, but what's wrong with being humble. What's wrong with, Agile's all about admitting. You don't know at all hiring people smarter than you. And this, this is , uh , this is a very sore, very touchy subject for a lot of people out there. It's human nature. And for self preservation to know that we have it all together, we have it under control, but it's actually a very, it's a lot of strength.

There's a lot of strength on a character to admit that you don't know everything to be humble. So my manager, the director, I was mentioning here actually told me you , you, that I know way more about agile than she does. And she is an open book and she wants to learn. And I said, that attitude right there, humility will get you even further than where you are. Not maybe not, maybe not climb the ladder. She's not necessarily looking to do that. When I say get you places.

I mean, draw people to you, be a better leader, really be a strong leader and really help people. And that's what I'm all about by doing this. I want to help you. I want to help you understand that you can be more than you are. I'm not here to help you climb a corporate ladder. If you're looking to do that go somewhere else, I'm here to help you understand these are behavioral qualities, psychological aspect of being agile.

Are these, these qualities I'm talking about here that you , many of you may have heard begin with an open hand. If you want to get somewhere and begin with an open hand, what does that mean? That means, okay. Your hand is open. You have nothing in your hand, right? Give don't look to take begin with an open hand. What can I give? What can I give to somebody else? How can I help somebody else and not do it for your own? That's that's a tricky thing too .

You can hear me say this, but I don't mean just go through the motions and maybe that's what it takes for you in the beginning until you really get it to it clicks. But some of you out there are trying, you're trying to be scrum master as you're trying to be agile on an agile team or in your life and it's not working. And I'm here to tell you that it's probably because you're just going through the motions. You're doing agile. You're following the processes.

You haven't clicked on the behavior side of it. What I'm talking about here. So I've just experienced this year. Recently, another scrum master who was let go, a couple of them who were led to go from my company because of their attitude and their, and their behavior, their failure to admit they don't know what they're talking about and to learn because once you admit all that goes away, the pressure goes off your chest. You don't need to be fake anymore. You don't need to hide it.

Now you can start learning and you can really go somewhere. That's why I told my manager that you're really going to go places in, in agile with being humble. Like she is selfless. She genuinely truly cares about us and wants to help us. I've seen her do it, not just lip service, but in action . That's when you can really trust somebody. When they actually tell you, they care about you and then they back it up with action. That's how you know that somebody has your back.

If they, if there's been many directors and VPs out there that I've seen give lip service. I've heard from her from a lot of my friends in scrum, in agile, tell me directors, just give them lip service are having trouble with a manager, not getting it. And unfortunately just lip service and the managers promoted. And it's a bad person. And because they're friends and you know, that's, that's not good. So be humble. Be grateful and selflessness this time of year is it ?

It's got me thinking about this more too . We shouldn't be, unfortunately I have to wait until just when bad things happen to us, but it definitely brings it to the forefront. And if that's what it takes to keep us humble, then sometimes bad things have to happen to keep us on the right track. Unfortunately. So selflessness on a scrum team in agile, scrum masters are servant leaders. You don't have to be a scrum master to be a servant leader. You can be on a scrum team to be a leader. You can be

Yeah. Maybe I am. Maybe I don't think I am though, but you're entitled to think that, and you can gladly go about your life and listen to something else. But if you're ready to come back and listen to this, I think I can help you. You have to have an open mind though. You it's tough to crack through some of that. If you've been in a waterfall environment for a long time, I know I've been there. I get it. I understand what you're going through. Sometimes you just need to leave. I did.

There was no humility. There was no selflessness. There was no gratitude. It was all about me, me, me, them, them, them, everyone had is me attitude and closed communication, throwing each other under the bus. I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. And you don't either. You're life is too short to put up with that. Get out of that environment right now and find another job I did. I got out, I couldn't take it anymore. And I wanted to be in an agile environment. And I did.

And I've left jobs many times because of environment. I think most people do environment, or maybe you're not getting the recognition you think you deserve. That's a big one too. I mean, I'm not saying never be concerned about yourself. Of course. I'm just saying, if you truly have, most people are hired at jobs because of their attitude. Now you can fake an interview. I get that. But if you truly have the right attitude, you will do fine in life.

Now part of this show has taken agile outside of your company, into your life. To , again, gratitude, humility, selflessness in your relationships outside of, of work. If you're trying to be agile in your life, you need these. Any of these qualities, you need these attributes. And if you don't know how to get them, there's many. There are many books out there about how to about gratitude and humility and selflessness, where to start. This podcast is going to continue to talk about being agile.

And these three qualities here, gratitude, humility, and selflessness. Like I said, at the start, even though they're not listed in any values that I've seen in scrum or agile manifesto, most of them are about respect and commitment and communication and courage, things like that. But it has courage. It takes courage to, to be humble vulnerability. We don't like to be vulnerable. We don't like to be vulnerable. It makes us feel a week, but it's actually quite the opposite. It's actually quite.

So when you feel, when you start feeling those feelings, it starts feeling weird. You're on the right track. Go with it. Just be with it, just be in that moment. Be humble. Try to, when you're talking to someone in , in somewhere in your life, just let someone, let someone go. First. I started doing that when I was in college. I don't know it was weird. I just, just walking into a store. I decided to open the door for the guy behind me and I did it. And he said, thank you.

Sometimes they don't say thank you. And that's okay. You're not looking for that. Thank you. That's the other, you have to fight that. You're not looking for a thank you are not looking for anything. You're just looking to do something for somebody else and don't expect anything in return. If you've never heard that before, that's a , that's a good thing. Let somebody , uh, come in front of you and traffic, let someone in front of you that needs over and don't expect anything in return.

If you do. That's it just look at it as a, as a icing on top of the cake, as you will, these are little things you can do during the day in your life to practice selflessness. These are examples. If you want to know how to become selfless, humility, humble. If you do something well, you do, you do something well, you play in a sports team and you hit the winning shot in basketball. Great. You know, don't jump up and down and say, Oh, me and pound your chest. You're like some athletes do.

Don't don't mimic that. It's good to be excited, but don't say it's you that's, that's how you can be humble. If you get awards for doing great things in life, don't stand up wherever. If you're doing acceptance and say it was all about you. Cause you know, it's not, you know, everybody, if you're, if you're successful somewhere in life, there's been lots of people in your life to help you get there. No matter what it is and gratitude grateful for where you are.

As I mentioned in beginning, this is, it might this time in the world with the pandemic. It might take a while. Some thinking for some people to, to really be grateful about something. I met someone a couple of weeks ago, right before the holidays came around, I met him online. Let's see he had lost his job. He didn't have any money. He was about ready to get evicted from his apartment. And he was going through a divorce with his wife. So, and I, but he had a great attitude.

And the people that were interacting with him said that he, they, they known him for a bit and they really thought he still had a great attitude. Now, maybe that's genetic the way he's wired, but you can also, you can choose your attitude. You can choose to say, you know what, I'm going through a time in my life. I'm going to get through it. And he was frustrated because he'd applied to a lot of jobs and they were turning him down and they wanted some certifications.

Okay. Maybe he didn't have the money to go out and get a certification. But I've noticed that too, a lot of companies are hung up on certifications, but that's the way it is. So I really felt for this man, and I don't know of any jobs that I could have helped him with. Otherwise I would, other people were reaching out to him. But my point is, is that all these bad things happened to him. And he was still trying to find the good. He said, he, he met another woman maybe .

And , and uh, maybe his soulmate . So there's the silver lining that he was trying. He was still applying for jobs. There were still jobs out there. He was still looking so, and talking to people, he hadn't given up. It's within, you. Can't give up. So, so that's, what's on my mind for today's episode. This is , uh , again, we're at the end of 2020 it's December, it's December 29th.

As a matter of fact, today, I've been off work for the last couple of weeks, taking the last two weeks of the year off and trying to enjoy some time with my family. I hope many of you are too. I hope a lot of you will think about what we talked about today and email me and Greg Miller at the agile, within.com website, the agile within.com. Twitter at the Angela within Facebook, the entre within you can get ahold of me there.

Email me suggestions , uh , comments on the shows we're available and all the, all the major podcasts out there. Leave some comments there. Let me know what you think, what you want to hear coming up. And as always, this is Greg, where we help you to be more agile.

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