People tell me I'm doing Agile wrong. Am I? with Allison Pollard

As the sun peeks over the horizon and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, I sit with Agile expert Allison Pollard to unravel the tapestry of Agile methodologies. Our conversation kicks off with the comfort of morning routines and the buzz of coffee shops, but soon we're navigating the tumultuous waters of Agile implementation. Allison shares an enlightening encounter with a mentor that reshaped her view on Agile processes, prompting us to dissect the nuances of feedback and its power to transform team dynamics. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of Agile's fluidity and its deeply subjective nature.

Navigating the symbiotic relationship between Agile coaches and Scrum Masters, we dissect the intricacies of coaching agreements and the art of providing feedback that nurtures growth. The emotional resonance of an Agile coach's guidance can propel a Scrum Master to new heights, and we explore the delicate balance required to cultivate an environment conducive to success. Through candid anecdotes and shared experiences, we shed light on the various coaching stances—each a unique tool, adaptable to the context and needs of the team.

In our final exploration, we delve into the 'three C's'—clarity, connection, and curiosity—that serve as the backbone of exceptional leadership and coaching. Allison recounts her journey coaching a Scrum Master transitioning to an Agile coach, emphasizing the significance of fostering these elements in every interaction. We then pivot to the consulting sphere, where we discuss how aligning these principles can spearhead strategic growth and adept change management. For those enchanted by the Agile philosophy or enmeshed in its practice, this episode promises to enrich your perspective and arm you with stories and insights from the front lines.

Connect with Allison!
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonpollard

Sign up for the Helping Improve Class
https://helpingimprove.com/managing-amazing-people-training/

Women in Agile Mentorship Program
https://womeninagile.org/mentorship

Transcript

Mark Metze: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rockin'. The Agile Within starts now. Good morning everybody. I am your host, mark Metz. This is our first episode of the New Year, 2024 already, and we have a great guest today, just top off the New Year. Our guest today is Allison Pollard. Allison resides in the Dallas, texas area. She's a consultant and trainer with Helping Improve and she creates alignment and connection to help people solve business problems together. And Allison also leads the mentorship program at Women in Agile. So, allison, welcome to the show.

Allison Pollard: 1:14

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Mark Metze: 1:17

Yeah, so it is morning right now when we're recording this. So I have to ask Allison, are you a coffee drinker, or what fuel do you use in the morning?

Allison Pollard: 1:27

It's funny I like to go out to coffee shops and have a latte, but I do not really drink coffee at home, so most of the day I'm drinking water.

Mark Metze: 1:38

Gotcha. Okay, you normally meet people, or do you go alone to have your coffee or what's the name.

Allison Pollard: 1:45

Sometimes it's like my favorite place to just meet someone like that casual environment. You've got your delicious coffee. Or again, like I said, I love latte. I get to like connect to someone. But I've also found I like to go there sometimes to have a change of scenery, to get some work done.

Mark Metze: 2:06

I can fully relate to that, absolutely so. I'm not a coffee drinker.

Mark Metze: 2:12

It smells wonderful, the aroma is. My wife loves coffee. She has to have her coffee in the morning, so she usually does. We have a coffee machine that she uses at home, but she does, like you, like to meet others at a coffee shop and have a conversation. I just never require a taste for it, so I do something much, much less healthy. I'm a soda drinker, so diet sodas are usually what I use, but I do try to drink more water. My wife tells me I need to do that, so yeah, maybe that should be my new year resolution.

Allison Pollard: 2:43

Maybe, maybe I just find it helpful, especially working from home and being on video calls throughout the day. Staying hydrated just helps me through all of that. So it's nice to you know. Keep a glass of water in front of me during a break between meetings. I can go to the kitchen, refill it and be ready to go for my next event.

Mark Metze: 3:05

All right, I'm going to imagine little Allison on my shoulder telling me I need to drink more water.

Allison Pollard: 3:11

There you go.

Mark Metze: 3:13

So our topic today, allison. People tell me I'm doing Agile wrong, am I? So I have to. I have to believe that. You've got some stories of people telling you that you're doing Agile wrong. So what can you share with us?

Allison Pollard: 3:29

Yeah, there's. There's one that stands out in particular, I think, because it came from someone that I had so much respect for. It was actually a mentor of mine that I had met through our local Agile community. And so you have to imagine, I've come from project management, I've been learning about Agile, bringing Agile practices into my project management work.

Allison Pollard: 3:54

I eventually land my first like real Scrum Master gig and I'm so excited, you know, embracing that kind of role and like how can I do it well? And so excited by my experience that I'm periodically meeting up with my mentor and saying here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm trying. And then, you know, here's maybe a thing that I'm stuck on and he would, you know, give me some advice or tell me a story that would give me a new idea. And so I eventually changed jobs, again still in the Agile space, still doing Scrum Master type work, and I'm talking to my mentor at one point and I just casually mentioned how my team was doing their planning and estimating previously at my at my last job and he just looks at me and goes oh, sounds like you're doing it wrong, Sounds like you got some bogus math.

Allison Pollard: 4:49

That's happening. You're doing your planning and estimation. I was forward, I was not expecting this, Like I, I wasn't sharing it as gee, something didn't feel right. I was just sharing it matter of fact, Lee, because actually it had worked really well for my team and I know when we posted this topic up on LinkedIn there was already a comment about.

Allison Pollard: 5:16

You know, agile's not the goal, it's the means. So, like, who can tell you if you're doing it wrong? Well, I'll tell you what. When someone that you respect and think highly of tells you that you're doing it wrong, you have an emotional reaction. You kind of feel small in that moment, like oh, oh, I had no idea. This was something that worked well for my team. It actually helped us get things completed every sprint and I do mean like they were getting to done and we were able to release software every two weeks to our customers and users and it was amazing the flow that we had created. But my mentors pointed out the way I went about it not quite the way that you would want to do it, not the way that I should be then encouraging other teams I worked with to plan and estimate their work. So for me I realized, okay, he was very clear and I didn't feel very connected and I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of curiosity from him in that moment.

Allison Pollard: 6:19

You know, okay, I've done it wrong. I need to kind of go back and figure out, like, how should I have been doing it differently? What do I want to, you know, teach other teams I'm going to be working with? How do I help make sure that we all do it right? You know and this is like capital R, right, it was such a moment of embarrassment I wanted to avoid that for myself and I certainly wanted to help others avoid it, and so I started down the path of, you know, becoming sort of that like mentor, scrum master and, eventually, agile coach, thinking my role is to help other people do it the right way.

Allison Pollard: 6:59

So that's why I think this topic is so interesting that within the agile community, it's so easy for us to observe what others are doing or hear them describe how they're working with their teams, and we come to a judgment. We say you're doing it wrong. And sometimes we actually mean that as like a bid of like relationship, in a way like, oh, I want to help you, I want to help you. We said you're doing it wrong and maybe we do have a conversation about what you might try instead, or or get into, like what is it that you're finding that works well about the thing that you're doing? That I think is wrong. Or like how did you get to that? That approach? But it can really put the person on the receiving end, on the defensive, or even feeling again like embarrassed or like a little bit ashamed, thinking you know, did I, did I learn this incorrectly in a training class? Did I misunderstand it in the book?

Allison Pollard: 8:09

an article that I read, or or like did someone else show me the ropes incorrectly and I shouldn't be trusting them. You know, like how do I move forward from this?

Mark Metze: 8:21

So, alison, was there any acknowledgement or any? I'm taking no from your conversation, but just it sounds like you found something that worked, and what I heard was, if you're doing scrum, you said we were getting to done. That's what scrum is all about is about getting to done. So was there any discussion about what actually worked? And Mike?

Allison Pollard: 8:49

A little bit, a little bit.

Allison Pollard: 8:50

And again it felt. It almost felt like a moment of tell me what you're doing and then I'll walk you through almost academically why that's not the correct way of doing that. And honestly, I will say, like it was. It was useful to have that conversation at the end of the day for me, in that, okay, I could see his point, I could see where the way that we had been handling our estimation was was working for us and why it was working for us. And it might not be the thing to teach to other teams in their situations. But it's so funny because it's also that moment of like.

Allison Pollard: 9:35

Well, like do I go back to my old company and say, hey, I learned something new and I'd like to apologize. I got you, which I never did. But I actually have a friend that I remember he talked about. You know he had a similar situation. He's like oh yep, I've been gone from my previous company for about a year. I check in, you know, with a scrum master and there's some things I need to set straight. Like I've learned since then, there's better ways. And so he actually referred to it as like I'm going on my apology tour, I'm going back, I'm taking stuff and explaining hey, I did the best that I could at the time.

Allison Pollard: 10:19

Now here's the thing that I introduced you, or that I was reinforcing with you, and here's what I've learned since then. And so you know, here's another option that you might consider adopting or using that could be better than what we had done, you know, over a year ago, when I was your scrum master.

Mark Metze: 10:41

Apology tour. I like that.

Allison Pollard: 10:42

Apology tour. Yes, Every, maybe every Agilis needs to like have that moment of like. Where, where would you need to stop on your apology tour?

Mark Metze: 10:51

I'm going to steal that unless, unless somebody has it trademarked, I'm going to, I'm going to borrow that. So, Alison, what did you so? What was your big takeaway? What was your big learning from this interaction? Maybe not so much just the what was, what was being taught, but what about the interaction did you learn?

Allison Pollard: 11:11

Yeah, yeah. So so for me at the time I still had this slightly twisted lesson that I was taking out of it. I'm like, oh, okay, so maybe the role of being an Agil coach or an Agil mentor is how do you help correct people, how do you help them get on the right way, you know, using stuff correctly as early as possible and and being really clear in in some of those ideas. So I'll say, when I moved into consulting, you know, I I thought again, this is my job, I'm going to help you all use scrum. Well, right, we're going to, we're going to adhere to the scrum guide and we're going to make sure that we're able to get software delivered to done on a very consistent basis and and be able to get to what I call like better problems. You know, like now closer to our customers, how can we improve quality and some of these other things that that organizations need their teams to do. And I remember talking to my scrum masters initially like one on one, because I realized I had never had an Agil coach like onsite in my company to work with what I had been a scrum master and I I thought, oof gosh. Remember that conversation with my mentor when he told me I was doing it wrong, like I was kind of depleted. Gosh, as a scrum, as a Agil coach, I have to recognize I could deflate scrum masters if I'm in their sprint planning or in their sprint perspective. So let me talk to them early on and get their permission to handle it.

Allison Pollard: 12:58

When I'm in your team's event and I notice something, do you want me to bring it up in the moment with the whole team? Do you want me to try to like pull you aside or like send you a message on the side? Do you want for us to have a debrief afterwards and you know you'll just continue. You know, leading the event, however you're leading it for a coaching that event, however you're coaching it and we'll we'll have sort of that after action review. So giving them a couple of options and by and large many of them said, oh my gosh, for the sake of my team and like I want to learn to like bring it up in the moment, absolutely. It's like, wow, y'all are courageous. That's amazing, I love this.

Allison Pollard: 13:39

But there there were still those instances where I would notice something that was happening and bring it up and offer a suggestion and in that moment the scrum master might not have been able to pick it up and run with it, and so it does create this, this moment of okay. Am I now starting to like step in and I need to help recover things? Is there a way for me to, you know, say okay, so we're going to take a quick break? You know, like team, like go go refill your water, go refill your coffee, come back in a few minutes and I could maybe like work with the scrum master privately to try and get them, you know, reset and able to move forward.

Allison Pollard: 14:30

Or or I don't know what, right, maybe someone else on the team has figured out like what I'm suggesting and like they would be able to step up and help move things forward. But we have to be able to realize, like, what's the impact that we're having on others. Even if you don't use the words, I think you're doing it wrong. You know when, when you are saying, ah, I, I'm noticing, like here's what I just noticed, you know took place, and here's what I'm kind of making up about that and I'm thinking we might try and do XYZ instead, they can have an emotional reaction around it from from others that again, they're thinking I'm doing it correctly, or or gosh that agile coach like they work closely with my manager.

Allison Pollard: 15:18

Like what, like what does this now mean you know for how well I'm doing in my in my job. So being mindful of, of how we're impacting others, how our words are landing, is something that I've been working on myself and certainly with a lot of the leaders, coaches and scrum masters that I work with.

Mark Metze: 15:42

So I like. One of the things that I like that you said is you talked about forming some sort of an agreement, like a coaching agreement, with your scrum masters ahead of time. Because, thinking about my own journey and thinking about working with people, you know I'm not trying to stereotype anybody, but I can think of individuals in the past that were, again, not trying to stereotype people, but you know they were, they had a military background and they were very rigid and they would you know. You need to tell me and stop me immediately.

Mark Metze: 16:15

So I say something that is wrong and they are fully, you know, engaged with you. At that point, right, it's like you can't be, you can't be constructive enough. And then others you have that are very, quite the opposite, right, they get their feelings hurt, they may have some baggage that they brought along with them from other experiences and you have to treat them a little bit differently.

Mark Metze: 16:41

And unless you have those agreements ahead of time, it makes it difficult I'm not going to say it's impossible- but it makes it very difficult to have those proper interactions where you're not having to back step and you know, quite frankly, as a coach you really want to build that relationship with your scrum masters so that they're open with you right A hundred percent. Yep.

Allison Pollard: 17:08

Yeah, yeah, because, again, you're, you're hoping that the scrum master can be open with you, especially to then be open enough to let you see them at work, right To see them in the moment, facilitating the retrospective. Or you know, however, they're guiding the sprint planning. You know whether they're very involved in helping the team, you know, review the product backlog and forecast what's coming into the sprint, or if they're a little bit less active because the product owner is so engaged in it, but they still need to be able to, like, intervene here and there as things might come up. So I think it's, it's kind of intimate in a way to say, okay, this coach is coming in, they're coaching the whole team and they're coaching me as the scrum master. How do I ensure that everyone is okay with their presence and that we again roughly know what to expect so that we're able to work with it in the moment, not be caught on guard?

Mark Metze: 18:17

So it brings up an interesting topic. So you have different stances that you have to take, both as a coach and as a scrum master. So maybe talk a little bit about Allison, about those different stances, like when you need to be coaching versus when you need to be teaching versus when you need to be mentoring specifically yeah, yeah, there's.

Allison Pollard: 18:46

I mean, there's really not, like I'll say, like a right or wrong necessarily. You know, I think each of us, as we, as we get into our own style, ideally we're building up our skills in each of those areas so that you have some capacity to teach, you have some capacity to mentor and you have some capacity to coach. For me, I the definitions I was given originally.

Allison Pollard: 19:17

You know, teaching, you have a lot of content, authority, I think of it as is possibly getting into, like the academic, you know, like these are the things that are written on, you know this is you know formal training, that you're maybe giving them some activities like some games or simulations to get to a learning objective, maybe you're introducing useful models or frameworks to help people see things differently, to be able to act differently, whereas in mentoring you still have sort of this content authority, but it comes from your own experience.

Allison Pollard: 19:58

So, again, what was your journey like, what's your history, what are other parts of your background that you can share with someone in service of their learning? So initially I thought of it as like, oh, these are the stories I sense here from my mentors. You know, like back in the day, you know, when I worked on X by Z projects, you know, here's the thing that my team and I did. And often hearing stories like that, I go, oh, okay, yeah, like y'all did this thing, that sounds really interesting. I wonder, maybe I could try that. But I'll do it in like the slightly different way, you know, with my group, and find, you know, some inspiration from the things that they were sharing, whereas oftentimes coaching it's more around having the process authority. So the person or the team that you're coaching, it's their content, it's their agenda, and you, as the coach, are asking questions, making reflection, like summarizing things back to them, maybe introducing a metaphor for them to explain and kind of explore their current perspective on something.

Allison Pollard: 21:16

But, you're helping them to have a shift right from maybe it's that they're feeling stuck or they're feeling lost to they see a way forward, that they have some new insight, some new action that they can take as a result of the coaching.

Mark Metze: 21:33

That makes sense. That makes sense. So I'm thinking about a story. As you're talking about this, it makes me think about a story of me as a scrum master working with a product owner, and this was a relatively new product owner, new to the role, and I was, honestly, relatively new as a scrum master as well.

Mark Metze: 21:58

And I was all about the serving component and trying to be there to to encourage and to give space.

Mark Metze: 22:08

So what was? We were trying to build a backlog and what the product owner was telling me, without telling me, was I don't know how to do this, I need help. And what I thought I was hearing was I need space, I need you to give me a gentle nudge so that I can take this over and do it myself. But it was quite the opposite of what they were asking. So after, quite honestly, about an hour of going back and forth and just getting nowhere, I finally just had to ask are you really asking, do you want me to help you do this together? You just saw this big sigh of relief yes, if you would please, that would be wonderful. So they were looking for more, more teaching and, quite honestly, mentoring, where they wanted someone to kind of walk through this with them so that they could kind of so they could follow the process, and so I always remember that story, because you always have to listen out for what the person is saying and what they're not saying.

Allison Pollard: 23:19

Yes, yes, yeah, it's. It's funny. My colleague Paul Tevis and I, you know, we're coming up with a diagnostic based on some things that we've you know, in like executive coaching that we've done and working with other leaders and we call it the three C's.

Allison Pollard: 23:40

And so when you're having these like one-on-one conversations especially, how can you about evaluate, were you clear, were you connected and were you curious? So it sounds like for you, in talking with the product owner initially like you're connected, you have, you know, a willingness to spend time together, that that you're interested in how they're, you know, doing their work a bit. You've got some curiosity there as well, especially at the point where you ask do you just want my help? Tell me to get more hands on here? And that it was the clarity that was missing initially of even being able to say like, hey, I respect you as a, as a product owner. I want to ensure that you have space to do it the way that you're comfortable, right, that you have all the time that you need, that I'm not like breathing over your shoulder. You're working on on backlog items and refining them on your own.

Allison Pollard: 24:43

So I I sometimes think to you again these like three C's of you know when I when I've had those moments of someone telling me, or even the times I've told someone else that they're doing it wrong probably really clear in that and lower on the connection, like not not feeling that, like human to human, like empathy, and certainly a bit lower on the curiosity side as well. Right, until we recover that and go wait. So how did you get to to hear, like, what is working about the way that you're doing it, even though I've declared it to be wrong, and like trying to shift, to get back to you the three C's?

Mark Metze: 25:25

So how are being connected and being curious, how are those related?

Allison Pollard: 25:32

They're it's. It's so funny because I do think they're so closely related that it's like bringing in one probably helps to bring in the other.

Mark Metze: 25:41

I've thrown you up a juicy softball for you to knock out of the park Right.

Allison Pollard: 25:48

So I, you know, we we talked to a minute ago about, you know, creating that, that charter. You know that agreement with someone that we're going to be coaching. So there was a a scrum master who had moved into an internal agile coach role that I worked with years ago and thankfully she had worked with other agile coaches, so she had a good sense of what worked for her and what did not work for her very well, but early, you know, first she reached out to me.

Allison Pollard: 26:17

She's like I think you're supposed to be mentoring me and I'm like clarity, hello, all right, I'll see this. And we we started to create that connection. I got really curious of you. Know, I know a little bit about you and some of the teams that you worked with in the past, but tell me more about what you've done and, like you know, as we kind of talk through, like mentoring and teaching and coaching is like tell me, like which one of these do you tend to use? A lot you know which do you use not so much? What are you interested in learning?

Allison Pollard: 26:48

So getting a sense of like you know what she's already comfortable with, where she wants to go, and the thing that that really took me by surprise. She said I've had so many coaches come in and tell me what I'm doing wrong. It's like I feel a little bit like a fraud, like I feel like I'm lost. So like what I really could use right now is for you, as a coach, to observe me and help point out the things that I do well. Like tell me where you see that I'm strong and that I can shine. And I loved it Cause I was like, wow, it's such a clear ask, it's easy for me to go Absolutely. I will make a point of looking for those bright spots and reflecting it back to you and it built up so much connection between us, a very different connection than if you're telling someone here's the opportunity, here's the constructive stuff.

Allison Pollard: 27:48

The corrective feedback. But for me to also appreciate her approach to teams and change was very, very different than mine.

Allison Pollard: 28:00

She was a strong connection person. She leads with empathy. I remember she and I stood back one day. We observed the team's daily scrum. I talked to her afterwards Like yeah, what did you notice? Like I want to get you thinking about what happened and what do you make of it. She brought out a couple of things. I'm like cool, cool, here's what I observed and some things that I think about it. And I'm thinking, cool, that was a really great colleague to colleague share. And I'll kind of let it simmer. I would see if it happens again or if some of these things start to like some of these patterns show up in other places. Maybe it would work itself into a retrospective Like this was barely minor dynamics between the team, stuff I'd picked up on.

Allison Pollard: 28:54

She finishes our conversation, walks straight over to one of the team members and just starts chatting them up. She makes a quick joke. They start laughing Like they're having a grand time and she comes back to me. She's like oh, yeah, I brought it up. Like they totally get it. And like here's what they're going to do differently tomorrow.

Allison Pollard: 29:15

And I went, oh my god, like talk about a superpower. Like you have such strong connections with people that you're able to like, bring things up with them so easily and that they're so receptive to it that changes just start to happen magically. Versus me more on the introverted side, I have to be more intentional in working on that connection and telling people. Sometimes that's what I'm doing and oftentimes my curiosity could be more focused on the work, the processes, the approaches that we're taking, and I have to keep in mind like I need to also spend time learning about again, like some of their career journey or their career goals what are some other things happening that might be affecting their focus at work, for instance? And really using the curiosity to build up some connection and letting the connection that we have also help remind me to bring in the curiosity.

Mark Metze: 30:27

Can you be too connected? Yes, can you be overly connected? That it's detrimental and not helpful 100%, 100%, yeah.

Allison Pollard: 30:41

So like, yeah, we kind of think of that as like now I'm just getting like glued in a way, like I think about a different Scrum Master I had worked with and it was an instance where I actually took on the Scrum Master role initially to help the team actually like, form the team and, you know, get Scrum going. And then was transitioning it to you know this employee there at the company to fill the role and for a while I felt like I had to play like bad cop in a way.

Mark Metze: 31:20

And.

Allison Pollard: 31:20

I was helping her to be like good cop right, like everyone loves her, like she's a friendly one, she smooths things over. You know everyone loves her. I'm the one that's like enforcing, like yeah, no, like it's time for the next thing and we're moving on Like the sprint is over, Like pencil down If you didn't get it done, fine, but you know we're moving into the next part of this. And so for a moment I thought, oh my gosh, like am I setting her up for success to move into the Scrum Master role?

Allison Pollard: 32:01

Like it's just going to be so hard on her. She's been, you know, the liked one. You know she's been able to do the fun aspects. I felt this like overly protective reaction at first to like how am I going to transition the Scrum Master role over to her? Like I don't know if I want to do that, you know, like I don't know that I want her to now have to be the bad guy too, you know, and like, take on some of the conversations and things.

Mark Metze: 32:35

You get me on the edge of my seat, so what happens?

Allison Pollard: 32:37

Right yeah, so we actually we went to a coffee shop.

Mark Metze: 32:43

I see a pattern.

Allison Pollard: 32:45

Yeah, it was funny yeah, it was a coffee shop near her office that there were times of like you know what we need to have like a deeper conversation. It's easier to go offsite where we know we're not going to be interrupted by team members or leaders or anything. But we went offsite and I said you know, I'm having this slight panic. I'm noticing this pattern of you know how I've been showing up and engaging with people and then what you've been able to you know do, and I feel like we're going to need to start bringing in those parts where, like you're the one having the tough conversations or like you're the one that's again kind of reminding the team in. You know, in plain terms, that like this is this part of Scrum right and like this is what's going to happen and here's how we're going to get through it.

Mark Metze: 33:43

How does she react to that?

Allison Pollard: 33:45

She. I think it was like that moment of like OK, like big, big, deep breath. She's like OK, yeah, I hear you. She's like I see what you're talking about. Yes, it's been nice to go from OK I'm not sure how I'm ever going to get my team, you know, delivering regularly and collaborating as a team to now. I see it and I've been able to do the. You know, she was facilitating some of the retrospectives and like creating a lot of energy and a lot of new items like for action from the team with those. But yeah, it was like you're going to need to take on some of the uglier bits of this role too. I need to. We both need really to see that you can handle all these different scenarios, all these different situations that do come up and know that you've got it. You can handle it.

Mark Metze: 34:36

So that's the leader side of being a servant leader. Right, always being the servant right.

Allison Pollard: 34:43

Yes, yes.

Mark Metze: 34:46

So one of the other seas. So with curious, I think most people, including myself, you could probably recognize when someone is being curious. How about too curious?

Allison Pollard: 35:03

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, so there are people I've worked with and like one comes to mind in particular that he would share a new idea, say, you know, here's something that I'm thinking about, or here's something I read about right, not even like it's something I come up with, but like hey, there's this idea that I read about or I picked up in a class, what do you think of it? And like, as you're trying to go, it sounds kind of interesting. I'm not really sure how that would work. Like what makes you say that, like what else? And just be like, why am I suddenly being interrogated? And at some moment I just like, dude, what do you think of it? Like you kind of put me on the spot and asked me so many questions.

Allison Pollard: 36:00

Again, the curiosity has dialed way way up. You know, like what are my emotional reactions, what you know things come to mind, you know, like logically, like what's my reasoning around this? But it would get to the point where I'm like I have no idea where you stand and now I'm just feeling really awkward of am I saying things that are completely opposite of like what you've been thinking, or am I giving you the answers that you're wanting, or are you? Am I supposed to be saying something else? Like when will the inquisition stop? Like is there a secret phrase that I need to utter? And then game over like I win or like what happens here.

Mark Metze: 36:46

Is this being filmed?

Allison Pollard: 36:48

Right, yeah, like it might be in pranked somehow.

Mark Metze: 36:54

So I can remember Allison, someone coming in as a consultant, and I had a really good relationship with this individual, but they were very curious For me. I was perfectly okay because we had built that connection. There's your C, one of your three C's.

Mark Metze: 37:14

We had built that connection. But I heard of an interaction with this person and another individual where they did not have that connection. And boy, the conversation really went sideways, because after a few questions of this person being curious, I heard from the other person and what is your role? Wow, okay, he's being clear, that's for sure. But the connection was definitely, definitely missing there. So and I'm a former developer, so I tend to be curious in nature and I can probe, and so I have to really dial that back to myself. I'm glad you mentioned that about the three C's, because that's a good reminder for myself to make sure I've got that connection before I start being overly curious.

Allison Pollard: 38:13

Yeah, yeah, you coming from the developer background, I think the way that I sometimes approach things like the curiosity might be like oh, this is like a puzzle, right.

Mark Metze: 38:26

Like how do we solve it, how do we better?

Allison Pollard: 38:27

understand the problem, and I know I've had to remember like it's not only about the work and the problem and the issue, but it is also about the person or the people that are involved and how they are able to work through it. Which, again, is why, you know, when I describe my work, it is about creating alignment and connection between people so that they can solve those business problems. It's not, hey, allison comes in and solves your business problems for you or tells you here's how you do it. But the way that I coach and the way that I mentor and work with people, you know, helping them to see where maybe their roles were not clear and instead of someone having to ask what do you do here, you know, we help approach that in a different way and make sure that everyone knows what their part of the problem is and how they can contribute to solving it.

Mark Metze: 39:27

So I'll put you on the spot. We're starting to run low on time, but I'll put you on the spot one last time. You've taken all these questions wonderfully. I'm sure you'll take this one well, but I wonder if you have a story of maybe, as you, as as a coach, where you're a consultant and somebody is asking you to be a consultant and come in to correct a process, but you quickly realize that it's really about what you say you really are bringing is about alignment and connection, more so than we need this process in place so that we won't, you know, introduce bugs into, into the system.

Allison Pollard: 40:15

Right, right right.

Mark Metze: 40:16

Yeah.

Allison Pollard: 40:17

Yeah, like there there is one that kind of comes to mind. And again it was like oh, our IT department has no process, you know, or like what's happening. It's. It is kind of a black box. We have no metrics, we have no information about, like where, where projects are in the process, even though I'd laugh at you when, when that came up.

Allison Pollard: 40:44

Oh my God, well, I, I, I thought it was a, I thought it was amazing. I was like here's a company that values transparency and they all sit on like one floor of an office building and, and you know, very much like the open space kind of model, like I could walk to the COO desk. You know IT is down at the end of the hallway, I'm like, but you don't know anything that they're doing and like what's going on. Like this is fascinating. That was like all right cool. So like, let me let me start working with the IT group get a picture of like how things are happening today. I had already, through sort of interviews early, early on, talked about some ideas from agile, you know, maybe scrum, maybe con bond, and they were receptive to that. And so, as we start making some process changes, I realized, yeah, like there's other things happening, like there's some some role clarity issues, you know like you need to be a tech lead.

Allison Pollard: 41:48

What does it mean for the director to be a director? You know, like where do they fit in, like what's their contribution with this team, or like what can the team count on them for?

Allison Pollard: 42:00

And not to cut you off, but that those start blurring, especially when you talk about a company that grows like from a start up to going up where everybody's kind of doing everything 100% yeah, and this was a company that was planning to grow, and so I remember, you know, even having early conversations of you know what I don't want to teach you all that agile teams are sacred and that you never, ever, ever, ever change them. You know which is some of the advice, or like the training that people receive, right of like hold this team together at all costs, bring more work stuff. I was like, well, that's not going to be, that's not to be realistic for them to grow, and I actually brought in some of the ideas from Heidi health and dynamic redeeming and talked more about when you need to change, like when you need to be growing and you're going to be hiring more people. Here's a couple of different patterns that you could consider in order to do that, and here are some of the things that you're going to want to do to ensure that those new teams get formed well and so like, let's start bringing in some of those practices now as we're teaming, so that you have some familiarity with it.

Allison Pollard: 43:14

Yeah, like, what seemed like a basic like process. Ask, got into so many different areas of again, like, what's some of the growth strategy? What are some of these roles that need to be clarified, like what's the goal that everyone's working on? We actually did have some like interpersonal challenges and one person eventually got let go from the company. That, like their behavior was unfortunately just, you know, over the line and toxic that the company said like we cannot abide by, that, you know, like we cannot have this organization, that's not how we do things here and, you know, decided to let him go.

Mark Metze: 44:02

Well, allison, let's not let's not leave on a sour note. Let's leave on a good note here. So tell you what let's? We've had a great conversation here. How can people get connected with you and contact you if they want to reach out?

Allison Pollard: 44:21

Yeah, the best way is probably linked in. You can find me there. You can also go to the helping improvecom website, especially if you want to learn more about the three C's. We have our upcoming managing amazing people class, where we introduced that as a diagnostic tool, along with a couple of other ideas that managers can use to have more positive and productive one on one relationships with people. So we recommend that, and certainly we have a blog and newsletter that you could subscribe to you on our website.

Mark Metze: 44:58

Awesome. Well, allison, this has been great. Love learning about the three C's, learned a little bit more about coaching and dealing with people, so that's been wonderful. I wish we lived close enough that we could grab a coffee, but between South Carolina and Texas that will be quite a drive. Where would it be? Mississippi, louisiana, I don't know somewhere.

Allison Pollard: 45:21

Right right.

Mark Metze: 45:22

Drive.

Allison Pollard: 45:22

Well, I will say, agile 2024 is going to be here in Great Pine, texas, in the Dallas area. So hey conferences for this year. That could be a really good one to attend.

Mark Metze: 45:34

Would love to meet you there, and our listeners as well, so that's a great suggestion. Thanks, allison.

Allison Pollard: 45:39

Awesome.

Mark Metze: 45:41

All right, Allison, thank you so much, and thank you for listening to us here on the Agile with him. This has been another episode with Mark Metz and Greg Miller. We'll see you next time. Bye, y'all. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile with him. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile with him and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, Mark Metz.