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The Agile Within
Providing agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.
The Agile Within
From Cautious to Courageous with Melissa Boggs
Have you ever wondered how transforming your mindset could unlock your true potential? Join me as I chat with Melissa Boggs, a celebrated keynote speaker, leadership coach, and employee experience designer, who shares her exhilarating journey from cautious to audacious. You'll be captivated by Melissa's unique roller skating metaphor, which illustrates how moving from cautious to curious, then courageous, and finally audacious can help us overcome mental and emotional barriers. With personal anecdotes and actionable advice, this episode is packed with insights that will inspire you to chase your biggest ideas fearlessly. Plus, Melissa's humorous advocacy for the Oxford comma, influenced by her husband, adds a delightful touch to our conversation.
Together with Melissa, we also delve into the significance of finding supportive spaces that nurture growth, much like the skating rinks and experimental stages of Second City. Hear about a popular rink in Denver and how its community encourages courage and creativity. From realistic risk assessment to maintaining confidence, this episode offers practical strategies for leveraging community support to overcome challenges. Don't miss the chance to transform your cautious steps into audacious strides in both your personal and professional life.
Visit Melissa's website to view her offerings:
https://melissaboggs.com/
Email Melissa:
melissa@melissaboggs.com
Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-boggs/
Read about the Oxford Comma:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-why-do-people-care-so-much-about-it/
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, Mark Metze. 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 rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Well, I hope you're having a wonderful day out there. This is Mark Metze with the Agile Within. I have a guest today by the name of Melissa Boggs, who you might know. Melissa, welcome to the Agile Within.
Melissa:Hello Mark, Thank you for having me.
Mark:Oh, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show. I've had you on the list for a while, so I'm just very appreciative to have you and honored as a guest. So, melissa, you're from Denver, colorado. I have actually been there a couple times. It's been a few years, but let's say, if I hadn't been there before, what's one thing that you would say that I couldn't miss doing if I were to come to Denver?
Melissa:I mean I could say things like Red Rocks or Garden of the Gods, but I am me, so I'm going to tell you adult night at a roller rink around Denver, and we have nine of them, so you have plenty to choose from, no matter what night you're here.
Mark:Well, I was going to guess Rocky Mountain National Park, but hey, I'll have to include that too. Some roller skating? Yes, I should have guessed.
Melissa:I'll have to be 18 to join and because we have so many rinks, they have all sort of coordinated. So there is an adult night literally every night of the week and some nights, like Saturday, there's more than one to choose from. So, yes, all of those rings do have family sessions, but I personally prefer not to trip over other people's toddlers.
Mark:Well, that's interesting. Well, for those of you out there who may not be familiar with Melissa, if you've been under a rock, melissa is a keynote speaker. She's also a leadership coach and an employee experience designer. She's also a fellow podcaster, so she's the host of Wild Hearts at Work podcast and she's also a roller skater and also an ardent defender of the Oxford comma. Very interesting, I feel like there's a story behind that, melissa.
Melissa:A little bit. I mean, part of the story is that my husband was an 18 year English teacher, so if I wasn't a defender of the Oxford comma I would be in trouble. But no, I just. It's a funny thing. I am definitely a defender, like I use the Oxford comma religiously and think everyone should, because if you don't use it, sometimes the meaning that you convey is not what you meant.
Mark:All right. So note to self, when I look at the transcription for this podcast, I will make sure that the Oxford comma is used appropriately. How about that?
Melissa:Fair.
Mark:All right. Well, Melissa's joining us today. She has a keynote speech called From Cautious to Courageous. What is the meaning of from cautious to courageous? Give us a little inside look.
Melissa:Sure. So the overarching theme of the talk is that we all see possibility every day, whether it's in our jobs or in our lives, or in our personal lives or hobbies. We see possibility, yet we don't always move toward it, and so the premise is sort of that possibility can be your movement if you allow it to be so. I talk about how we all have these big ideas, whether it is a business idea or it is a process. You see that you think could be better. But there are so many reasons mentally and emotionally that we hold could be better. But there are so many reasons mentally and emotionally that we hold those ideas back, we don't tell other people about them or we don't pursue them. And so the overarching premise is that I help you move through the stages of what it would take to get from cautious to courageous, maybe with some other little steps in between.
Mark:So that's interesting that you have some steps to get us there, because one of the patterns that I see is oftentimes people see the possibilities and they want to go immediately from step one to beyond step four and go to step five right off the bat, and they get discouraged because maybe nobody comes along with them, nobody believes in their vision, nobody sees them as really this being something that's worth moving forward on. So how do you set the stage, how do you start getting people started in this process to have them the right frame of mind? It's almost like we're being agile. How can we break this up into some smaller steps that we can make progress towards?
Melissa:Absolutely so. The first thing is we haven't really talked about this part yet, but actually the full title of the talk is From Cautious to Courageous A Live Roller Skating Journey, and the answer to your question is the way I get them in the right mindset is by using my roller skates. So in this talk I have four choreography sets that reflect the step that we have just talked about. So I move people from cautious to curious, from curious to courageous, cautious to curious, from curious to courageous and from courageous to audacious. With each one of those steps I have a set of takeaways, actually from the roller rink, and the intention of this was like to give people something relatable, and it seems to be working so far.
Mark:How do you start this off? Where you see people are are cautious, I assume that you actually want to get people to first see the possibilities before, before getting started you know.
Melissa:So the funny thing is, when I first started writing this, I thought that that was the goal. I thought that was the point that we needed to be able to see a. And as I did the research and I started like examining myself, I realized that we all do. I mean, that wasn't, that didn't need to be the point of the talk, even though I thought it did. So I actually start this talk with the presumption, from the stage, that you already have it, like you've already seen the possibility, whether it was earlier in the conference that you're at, or it was five years ago. You know, you saw something that you thought would be really cool to do, but you're holding on to it, and so I presume that you already have an idea.
Melissa:And I talk about why we are cautious, I talk about how our brains are just protecting us. It's their job and how do we move out of that space of oh, no one's going to listen to me or that's too hard because it's pushing against the status quo, et cetera, et cetera. So I start out just by talking about caution in general and saying it's natural, it's understandable that you feel this way, but you have a really good idea. So how do we break you out of that thinking?
Mark:And how do we move past the analysis paralysis, where there's always more research that I need to do, there's always more information or data that I need to provide before I can get started? How do you move people past that?
Melissa:So this part of the talk really came from my work with leaders, because often I tend to work with leaders who are interested in non-hierarchical structures. So they're interested in distributing their authority and their power. But that is a very scary thing to do and their caution in that situation is it's warranted. I mean, they are responsible for the entirety. You know these are generally CEOs. They're responsible for the entirety of the organization. So even if they distribute their power, they at the end are still accountable for it, and so the very first thing that I try to get them to do and I move on to this in the talk is let's just ask some questions about it.
Melissa:Right, I'm not asking you to do anything, change anything, take any risks right now. There's no risk in asking the question generally of yourself what's the best that could happen? What's the worst that could happen? What do I have to lose here? These are not rhetorical questions. These are actual questions that we need to think through, write down and then help ourselves. At least at that point we're not saying no anymore, we're just asking a question.
Mark:I see how that can be very helpful, especially when you're presenting this to leadership, because many times it's we need to start solutioning Now, we need to figure out a plan and then we need to execute that plan and create that safe space to say hold on a minute time out, let's just talk. Before we start putting solutions together, before we start even throwing options out, let's just talk about, like you said, what's the worst that could happen. What's the best that could happen you start having a much wider lens to look at as opposed to a narrow lens, would you agree?
Melissa:Oh, absolutely. I don't know the neuroscience behind this, but there's just something about getting out of that no brain space. About getting out of that no brain space, like of releasing your brain from having to protect you and instead saying, okay, brain, let's think about something else, like, think, let's think through those possibilities. It releases it from having to protect you and starts putting your brain into a place of, like, not quite planning, but let me give you something else to do, not quite planning, but let me give you something else to do, which is answer these questions as I move from like cautious to curious. In the talk I give these takeaways and I won't go through all of them, but one of them that's a fairly new integration for me that I have not actually used in previous talks but I'm using now.
Melissa:You saw it here, folks is the way to get curious is by integrating play. Children are full of wonder, children are full of possibility and excitement, and if you can integrate play for me that was roller skating If you can integrate play, then again you're putting your brain into a different space, and whether that's creating play around the question itself or just in a different way, like one of the things that was illuminating to me when I look back at my journey is that as I started to integrate play through roller skating, it opened my mind in totally unrelated topics. It opened my mind in totally unrelated topics as I gained confidence in roller skating. It gave me confidence in totally unrelated topics, so that's one of my favorite new ones that's now a part of the talk is about integrating play to open your mind to curiosity. I want to ask you, mark oh, I'm flipping the microphone. Here we go.
Melissa:You don't have to share it right now, but as we're talking, is there a seed of an idea that's like rolling around in the back of your brain that you've been hiding from.
Mark:All right, I'm thinking on that. I've got it written down.
Melissa:Okay, again, you don't have to share it. I'm just curious if it is bringing up things for you Because again, my theory maybe it's not a presumption, my theory is that everybody has something, and again it may not be work related, maybe it's like some design you want in your garden that you didn't think you could pull off, I don't know. But like, yeah, I'm curious if by the end you have one.
Mark:So my coaching hat is on. So I'm thinking more as a coach when you're delivering this and I'm thinking about the individuals I've worked with in the past who maybe have their arms crossed when you're saying this and their lips pursed and they're like I'm not here to play, I'm here to do work. What does this, Melissa, mean by play? What do you say when you have that type of an individual that maybe is not motivated towards? I'm getting air quotes here fun yeah.
Melissa:So I guess it would be different, if you're asking me if that was an audience member for a talk versus a one-on-one coaching situation. In a talk situation I wouldn't address them at all. But I believe in letting people see things through and that sometimes impact does not happen immediately and maybe that part of the talk doesn't resonate with them. That's fine. I have like three to four takeaways for each of these steps, so you can't expect to be everything to everyone and for everything to resonate. Maybe that just doesn't work for them. And I feel like the same if it was one-on-one coaching, like okay, integrating play doesn't work for you. And I feel like the same if it was one-on-one coaching, like, okay, like integrating play doesn't work for you, that's fine. I've got plenty of other tools that you know might be more appropriate for your current state of mind and you know what it is that you're trying to achieve.
Mark:We've started with with people being cautious, and then you talk about moving them towards curiosity, and I believe the third step or the third phase that you mentioned there was being courageous. So how do you move from curious to courageous? Talk about that with us.
Melissa:Yeah. So I'll share two of the three takeaways that I suggest. Move you between those two. One is just consistency. It's showing up for that idea, whether that means you have a mural board and once a day you go to that mural board and you add some more to it, or for me, it was showing up at the rink two times a week, consistently, and then one that's showing up for yourself, right, that's showing up for the idea and it's trying things and iterating on those things, but the most important thing, whether those little experiments work or not, is the consistency of it. That, then, actually leads into my second takeaway, which is community. When you consistently show up for something either building or finding or building a community around it is what is going to keep you going. It's what helps you be sustainable. We can all be courageous for 10 seconds, right, but most of these ideas that we're talking about, that people have, require some amount of sustainability. It requires chasing after something for a period of time and building and building, and building, and so when you have people around you who are not only cheering you on, they're helping.
Melissa:When I think about this, I think about the different tricks that I was trying to learn as a skater. And there's these specific rinks. I talk about the different tricks that I was trying to learn as a skater. And there's these specific rinks I talk about. Rinks have personality and there's one rink in particular that I go to in Denver that everybody just sort of knows. That's the one that you go to when you want to try new stuff and there's a couple reasons for that. One, the floor is amazing, and only a skater will understand that. But the floor is amazing. But two, there is a consistent group of people that show up there every week and you start to get to know what the other people are working on. You may not even realize that your friends are like kind of watching out the corner of your eye and you'll hit a spin or you know a specific move you're trying to do and there'll be spontaneous applause from across the room because people know that that's what you're trying to achieve and they're there for you and you only get that by consistently showing up for yourself and for the community.
Melissa:I also talk about the third stage. This is a term coined by Second City, the improv troupe. They had two shows a night and then they had this third show. That was free and it was mainly college kids that showed up, and this is where they tried all of their new stuff, because the risk was lower. The risk was lower. And so finding what your third stage is is it a specific team that you know is going to be encouraging? Is it a specific job that you know that they welcome innovation and new ideas? Is it just a hobby community that you want to join that when you try things there, they encourage you to do so. How do you lower the risk so?
Mark:that you feel courageous enough to try something. It takes me back. One of the previous guests we've had on the show and I follow her quite carefully, cherie Silas was talking with her Love Cherie, and we were talking about overcoming resistance to change and one of the things that Cherie she said this many times is that when she goes into an engagement and she's trying to enact change, is that she really just ignores the detractors, and many times we feel like it's our job to change their minds, to turn them over to our side, and that's what we're being judged on. But she said, when she comes in, those are the last people she wants to interact with, because they're going to create the negative energy that we don't want. She says she would rather focus on people that build up that positive energy and that positive inertia.
Mark:And it seems like common sense until you get into the heat of the battle and then you're like well, these people are saying negative things. I want to prove them wrong. I want to have some perfect argument where they will have no other option but to agree and to come over and do as they're told. And boy, how wrong is that? It just seems for me and I've observed others. It's like we subconsciously fall into that trap as opposed to staying with our allies, the people who will build us up, the people that will give us energy to be able to see change come through. Do you have any insight as far as that, melissa?
Melissa:I mean. What I hear Cherie talking about is energy management, and by that I mean my own energy management. We only have so much to give, and especially in this situation where we are trying to be courageous about a big idea or we're trying to activate change in an organization. There's only so much we have to give. Do we want to spend that on again trying to convince people who don't really want to be convinced in the first place? I think the best way that we convince those people is with results, is with actually doing the work and showing them that there is a different way, whatever that way might be okay.
Mark:So we've talked about moving from cautious to curious. We've talked about moving from curious to courageous, and there's one last act in this play, and that's audacious. How do we move to audacious?
Melissa:one last act in the play. I love it so much. Um, so at this point I start talking about how sometimes courage is not enough, and that sounds really daunting. But sometimes, whatever our big idea is, or the thing that it is that we think needs to change, could be systemic. It could be something that is so large and so daunting that we have no choice but to actually embrace audacity. And audacity is defined as like, essentially, being brave or fearless in the face of something that we value. And so I talk quite a bit here about harnessing things.
Melissa:Well, first, recognizing things like collective pain, and often, if something is so systemic that it requires audacity, it is because we have some amount of collective pain and we have to learn how to move through that pain, not ignore it, not pretend it never happened, but also not dwell on it. So this is another place where I say, like seeing possibility and like the possibility of what could be on the other side of that pain is what gives us movement through the pain. And then I also talk about collective effervescence and the notion of people being together. In.
Melissa:You know, most people think about collective effervescence like the way that you feel at a concert when you're standing with a bunch of strangers, your favorite artist and you're all singing at the top of your lungs. You've never met before, but they feel like your best friends because you have something that is uniting you, because often something that requires audacity is not something that you can do alone, something that you can do alone. And so healing through your collective pain, moving into some sense of collective effervescence, is what enables you to get to audacity, and it's really just an extension of community, you know, and a lot of the things we talked about before. But it's bigger. If you're going to address these big systemic things in an organization, you can't. You can't do that by yourself, even if you could affect the change by yourself. You can't do that by yourself. Even if you could affect the change by yourself, you will be so burnt by the end that you won't be able to enjoy it.
Mark:And so, moving through pain, moving into effervescence as a whole, what about this shared pain that might be very longstanding pain that's been in an organization or in a team or what have you for a very long time, where people just it's almost too painful for people to talk about. So whenever you bring it up, you see people start shutting down because it's like we've tried to address this in the past, nothing's going to change. We've tried to fix it before, so I'm not going to put. We've tried to fix it before, so I'm not going to put any effort into doing it now. How would you, I guess, what advice would you give and how would you start addressing these systemic problems like that?
Melissa:It actually connects back to what you were talking about just a minute ago about the like, the detractors, because I feel like often the people who are saying that, who are saying no, I don't even want to try, it is because they have been through whatever that legacy of pain is. There's no simple answer to that. If there was, then all of us Agilists would be billionaires. The one thing that I have seen be the most effective is giving people a new story to tell. We are going to tell the same story over and over and over until we have a new story to tell. It is nature of humans to tell a story, and so, in the absence of a new story, we're going to tell the old one. Right.
Melissa:But in this case it also kind of again connects back to the detractor, where it's like I'm not going to try to convince you, I'm going to show you this new story, I'm going to create this new story, and again, that might take some audacity and a bunch of other people to help you do it.
Melissa:But if I can create a new story to tell, then I don't even have to be the one to tell that detractor. That's not how it is anymore, because it's going to be obvious and other people are going to tell them that, no, we are having a different experience now. You see this too, I think. When you have a leader changeover, when a new CEO comes in and people are like, well, this is the way it's always been, it is up to that CEO to create a new experience for those employees, and once they do, you can't really argue that things are the same as they used to be, because they're just not. But again, that in itself is not a simple answer either. It's not something that's done quickly or easily. But again, at the end of the day, people need a new story to tell.
Mark:So you said need a new story. I feel like the word story is very intentional, because you could have said a new initiative, a new option, a new procedure, a new solution, but you chose story. Why story?
Melissa:Because, whether we realize it or not, we as humans are naturally always telling ourselves and other people a story Like there's a narrative, you know, for everything, every new procedure. I am telling myself a story about why we have the new procedure, whether or not the new procedure is going to work, where the new procedure came from, what was the motivation of the leader who designed this new procedure. We're always telling each other and ourselves stories about the very tangible and tactical things that are coming up at work or in anything. I mean we write stories about our spouses and our children too, and so, again, it's not a matter of controlling the narrative. I want to be clear that that's not what I mean. I mean you actually have to create a new experience so that the story is evident and sort of unarguable.
Mark:All right, great, melissa. So we've moved through these four steps that you talked about moving from cautious to curious, to courageous, to audacious. So, given that, for people that have listened to this podcast, for people that have listened to your keynote speech, what do you want them in conclusion? What do you want them to feel, what do you want them to do as a result of this?
Melissa:That's a really good question.
Melissa:I want them to feel just a spark of hope. I hope that that spark grows into a much bigger flame, but I think the most that I can hope for is to move people out of that cautious space, at least recognize that they're in it and move them just one step forward. And then, in terms of what I want them to, what I hope that they will do is take some of those takeaways and actually integrate them. I mean, that's what every speaker or podcast guest wants you to do, right, but I think it's asking a lot in this case. Right, it's asking you to take a risk, it's asking you to try something, but I think, the more that we do that all of this talk about unleashing innovation and creativity becomes much more natural when we know where we are with our ideas and we have some concrete ways in which to open those things up and chase after them. And so I hope that they feel strong and empowered, and then I hope that there's this spark that turns into a flame that actually has us innovating in the world today.
Mark:Well, I'll tell you where my mind goes. You didn't ask me, but I'm going to tell you as I think about moving from cautious to courageous, or from cautious to curious. Too courageous, or from cautious to curious, I should say, is I think about some advice that I got from somebody who was just an average ordinary guy, and what it boils down to is that these risks, that we start thinking about, these what-if scenarios, this, oh my gosh, if I try this, am I committing like career suicide? If I do this, am I committing career suicide? If I do this, am I going to be banished?
Mark:Generally speaking, things are not as bleak and as doom and gloom as we think. The repercussions from most decisions are not as bad as you think and, to quote somebody that was just, I can't thank them enough. But I was having a really bad day one day and had something that just was made no difference in the world, it just was something consequential. And he just pulled me aside and say, mark, it's not the end of the world, what's up? What difference does it make? And it just kind of gave me a jolt and just kind of shook me and I was like you know what? You're exactly right, I made the proverbial mountain out of a molehill with this because of my mind's headspace where I was, and so I try to remind myself it's not the end of the world If you take this risk. What's the worst that can happen? I think you even used those words as you were talking what's the worst that can?
Melissa:happen. I think you even used those words as you were talking.
Mark:Things aren't as bleak as they always seem and the risk. While you should do a risk assessment, just be real, Just give a gut check, Maybe even ask somebody am I taking too big of a risk here?
Melissa:I think you can lean on your community, like you said, to help you with that Absolutely. Another just quick nugget that I talk about is that, believe it or not, we're actually not afraid of failure. We are afraid of getting hurt, whether that is in roller skating or in front of your boss in some presentation, the failure itself is not actually what you're scared of. So if you're afraid of getting hurt, how can you take that risk and still protect yourself in some way, right? So in skating, that might be protective gear In your presentation to your boss, maybe it's a little bit of talking with the boss beforehand and kind of preparing them for whatever it might be. How can you reduce the risk of getting hurt without eliminating it altogether, because that's just impossible. And so, yeah, I think that also kind of goes along with what you're saying around, like it's not, it doesn't have to be that bad. You have some control over how terrifying the situation has to be.
Mark:That has to be a confidence booster when you go through that exercise. Melissa Agreed, yeah Well, this half hour has come and gone really quickly and I hate that it has, but I am very thankful for all the learnings that I've gained from this and being able to have a discussion with you, melissa. This has been absolutely wonderful. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Melissa:I have a very cryptic, decoded, vague way of getting to my website, which is melissaboggscom, and also my email being melissa at melissaboggscom and also my email being melissa at melissaboggscom I make it very, very hard to find me. I'm also very reachable on LinkedIn, so I always tell people feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a message there.
Mark:So, yeah, many, many ways in this digital world that we live in, Great, and so we've talked about this, this talk that you give from cautious to courageous. Is that something that, if maybe some of our listeners out there are interested in you coming to an event, coming to their company, whatever, I assume that's something that you offer as well.
Melissa:Oh, yes, please Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your grandma. It is a very fun, memorable. You know we've really been talking about like the meat in the content, but I also just want to add it's super fun nostalgic music, it's roller skating, choreography on stage. That keeps it very memorable, and there's also just some really cool elements of integration and having time in the talk itself to reflect. And so, yes, please, I am international, so if you or someone you know has an event, I am there for you Internationally known.
Mark:Love it All right, melissa. Well, thank you so much again for coming on the show. This has been fantastic and that brings an end to another episode of the Agile Within. I hope everybody will join us later and we'll see you at the next episode. Thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.