Self mastery – Awareness.

What is self mastery?  The Agile coaching growth wheel describes it as “Self-mastery practices are the need to invest in yourself through reflection, learning, and taking care of your wellbeing. Self-mastery starts with you having your own emotionally intelligent relationship with yourself and others. You understand how Emotional Intelligence supports Relationship Intelligence, Social Intelligence, and the systems that you interact with.”  how do you start an emotional intelligent relationship with yourself?   Roche Martin describes a key component of that as the self awareness to recognise and understand your own character, moods and emotions and their effect on others.  

As part of the self mastery activities I developed for an Agile coach training programme I started with Awareness of self, using Management 3.0’s Niko calendar and tweaking it for the individual to track their emotions. 

Then as part of the reflection, grouping the thoughts they had during the day as either good (empowering) or bad (disempowering) 

This created the first part of self awareness, being able to recognise your moods and emotions.  

The next step was to understand and regulate the moods and emotions.  

To help with this, we used the following activities. 

• Identify your saboteurs. Link here
• Identify your empowering beliefs and come aware of when you have supported this belief in your actions.  Create a success file. 
• Identify your disempowering beliefs and work through changing the negative to positive and finding evidence that supports the positives and negates the negative. 

By bringing awareness, creating visibility, you can do something about it.  It works with the work in teams and it works with ourselves.  Become aware, pick something small to work on, make some changes, see what happened and start again. 

Agile Coach development pathway

How are you developing your employees?  Are there clear expectations and development pathways? In this era of the great resignation it is more important than ever to be aware of how you are developing and motivating your employees.   Daniel Pink’s work on motivation resulted in a theory that we need intrinsic motivation and to achieve that we need to address 3 factors.  Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.  

Let’s talk about Mastery.  This year I have been working with a company to develop an in house training programme for their internal candidates to become Agile coaches.  

They had previously used one of the big companies and had a lot of material to support a training programme but needed a way of putting it all together into a structure that enabled new coaches to proceed through in a self directed manner with some support networks setup.  It needed to be practical and have lots of ability for them to practice their skills as they learned.

My programme started off being 12 weeks, mainly because they seemed like a good number 3 months, a quarter, it aligned nicely with their OKR cycle enabling teams to easily set goals and allow capacity for the training. 

The success criteria for the programme was:

• It used 90% of existing collateral. 
• Created a development plan on how to progress to the next level. 
• Could be used ongoing by any member of the coaching chapter.

I utilised the agile coaching growth wheel subjects along with Lyssa Adkins Agile coach competency framework to determine the topics.  In addition I reflected on training programmes I had been on and what was covered in each and important to know.  I thought about what I have had to do in my role as an Agile coach and pulled that all together to come up with 12 modules and a self mastery / mindset underlying theme.  As I developed the modules I discovered that there were some that were much wider and required more time than others.  Hence my sizing.   I also discovered early on that I wanted my trainees to go through the first 3 modules first as they were generally people who had no prior agile or coaching experience.  I wanted them to quickly understand what they were getting in to. 

The training is bespoke for this organisation.  It pulls in their existing collateral in terms on online training, powerpoints, self learning, buddy system and trainer led sessions.   I used the training from the back of the room framework and the 4 C’s.  

• C1 – Connections. Connect learners to the topic
• C2 – Concepts. Introduce the knowledge
• C3 – Concrete Practice. 
• C4 – Conclusions – reflection.

This proved a great way to structure the sessions and link to the learning outcomes.  It also provided an engaging self directed process for the learners.   

Each module was on it’s own separate Miro board and linked back to a main board where the learner created their toolkit for Agile coaching and engaged with their manager for development and their buddy for support and applying learning in the real world.  

So far we have 2 new coaches going through the programme.  I have been blown away with their mindset changes and how they are challenging themselves with the activities.  It is providing growth not only in their skills at work but also in their home life.  

Removing the lid, a simple small win.

I have learnt a lot about ADHD since our daughter was diagnosed. I used to think it meant that people couldn’t sit still. Now I realise it is much more than that. My one-liner description is that is is about dopamine management or energy management.. 

My daughters brain works differently. For her to be motivated to do something takes a lot more effort than me. She used to feel lazy because we didn’t understand. 

Now we know better and our communication has improved drastically as she feels safe to mention things that are hard for her. 

We have been learning and experimenting together and our recent win has been the bathroom rubbish bin. 

Before the bin used to have a lid on it and the rubbish never ended up inside. then we went away and the place we stayed at had a bin with no lid and throughout our stay the rubbish ended up in the bin. 

That one extra step to lift the lid was one step too much. It involved using dopamine she didn’t have to spare. 

So when we got home I removed the lid on her bin. Success all round. I’m happy the rubbish is in the bin. She gets the domamine hit from success, having a clean space and my praise. 

We are now looking for other ways we can simplify those annoying extra steps that make life a little bit too complicated for her to succeed. Best of all she is excited to get onboard as she finds it making her life easier and she feel better understood. 

Our goal is to organise and reset her room so that it takes no longer than 3mins to tidy up from start to finish. 

If you would like me to come and see how we can help organise and simplify things for you – get in contact here. 

Book review – hacking work

I listened to this book on audible. However I found it a bit boring.

My key takeaway. It’s about identifying what is bugging you and finding a simple workaround.

It’s a good idea which to me was common sense.

Job application tips.

Here is my checklist of tips when applying and going for an interview for a new job.

• When writing your cover letter. Use key words and phrases from the job advert.
• Your cv should include. Contact details. Skills summary. Work history with achievements and education and personal development.
• Create a list of relevant work examples and achievements for the interview.

When asked to an interview , ask the following questions for context.

• What type of interview
• How many people, their names and roles.
• Is there any role play or activities that you can prepare for.

Take the competencies from the job description and create a 2x STAR statement.

Competencies and 2 STAR examples for each competencies.

Get stories of your success the projects you have worked on, situations where you demonstrated the skills.

Look up market rates for the role.

Google some competency based questions.

In the interview if there is silence. Ask have I answered the question. Do you need another example.

Book Review Indistractable by Nir Eyar.

IF you don’t plan your time someone else will plan it for you. Or fill it in for you.

Becoming indistractable means becoming conscious and getting out of our own way. We have to take responsibility for our behaviours. Be as honest with ourselves as we are with others.

Prioritise what is important over just urgent. Distraction begins from within, it is when you are trying to escape from an uncomfortable feeling. Become aware of what it is that you are escaping from. Has it just become a habit to distract yourself instead of being a little bored in the moment. e.g checking your phone at the traffic lights.

The indistractable process involves the following 4 steps.

• master internal triggers (become aware of your habits)
• make time for traction. (think timeblocking for you, your relationships and your work. prioritise your values)
• hacking back external triggers (deal with your feelings)
• prevent distractions with pacts (10min rule , setting intentions and making effort pacts)

this is an easy book to listen to and has some great immediate tips to put in play. I especially liked the way at the end of each chapter Nir summarized the chapter with a remember this and main points. He also has a great website with lots of tools and tips.

Doing what matters most to you.

Some tips for rewriting your stories and being intentional about doing what is most important for you.

Detox your dreams.

• Separate your dreams fro your fantasies
• Release yourself from should / could / have to.
• Align dreams to values and understand their why
• Throw out dreams no longer relevant or the right fit for your life
• Choose 3 dreams to focus on (think OKRs)

Discover your no.

• Learn how to honour your values and priories things that matter to you or that mean you. (E.g Security, integrity, connectedness, order, wisdom)
• Meet people on your terms – volunteer time / action that words for you.
• Get clear on your boundaries (time, energy, attention and money ). – you don’t have to say yes just because you don’t have a reason to say no.
• Know what you like doing and commit to it.

Choose your mood

• Decide to be happy, confident, calm, loving, relaxed, patient and consistent.
• Protect those feelings – be positive.
• You decide what situations mean – choose your mood
• Be great full – heartmath, and grateful thoughts.
• Decide how to handle challenges differently.

Ignore the voice.

• Other peoples opinions are just their opinions, not facts
• Be your own biggest fan
• build up your group of cheerleaders.
• Create your self esteem mantra

Confront the enemy

• Acknowledge fear – understand what’s important to you – take a deep breath and take action.
• Use affirmations.
• Your fears shouldn’t get in the way of your life – look for the lessons within them.

Say goodbye to “but”

• Understand what level this excuse is working for me.
• Identify what is really holding you back
• Then reframe beliefs and make smart commitments
• let your values guide you. Take small steps – start with 10% better
• Focus on the results you will achieve.

See into the future

• Set clear intentions and review regularly.

What habits can i build on each day to practice these. How can I incorporate this into my daily life.

I can’t remember what book, article or course I got this information from, I wish I could to give the proper credit.