The Secret to Making a Positive Impact with Michelle Pauk

Michelle Pauk, a seasoned executive and leadership coach, returns to The Agile Within to share her transformative insights on positivity in the Agile world. Ever wondered how mindset shifts could powerfully change the way Agile professionals contribute to their field? Michelle argues that it’s less about proving your worth and more about making authentic contributions.

We navigate the fascinating link between neuroscience and personal well-being, examining how understanding brain chemistry can elevate our professional journeys. By drawing parallels with Agile methodologies, we shed light on how breaking down complex goals into bite-sized tasks, much like practicing daily gratitude, can enhance both contentment and productivity. In a world often caught in the chaos of corporate hustle, we champion a balanced approach that celebrates both triumphs and trials while steering clear of the pitfalls of toxic positivity.

The episode takes a heartfelt turn as we discuss resilience through positive choices, illustrating how small, mindful actions can lead to monumental changes in mindset. From the disillusionment of superficial Agile adoptions to the triumph of launching a consulting business after a layoff, personal stories punctuate the narrative, showcasing the tremendous growth that can sprout from setbacks. Join us as we celebrate the power of mindset in turning challenges into opportunities for both personal and professional growth.

Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/michelle-pauk

Discover Michelle's offerings on the Streamside Coaching website:
https://www.streamsidecoaching.com/

Email Michelle:
michelle.pauk@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:06 Positive Impact Through Agile Mindset
• 11:14 Exploring Well-Being and Positive Impact
• 19:24 Building Resilience Through Positive Choices
• 32:39 Navigating Setbacks With Positive Mindset

Transcript

Mark: 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 rocking. The Agile Within starts now.

Mark: 0:38

Before we dive into today's episode, I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, impact Agility. Impact Agility specializes in training and coaching through scrumorg and proconbonorg, empowering teams with cutting-edge tools and techniques. Their classes are designed to deliver actionable insights, whether you're a scrum master, agile coach, delivery manager or organizational leader. Whether you're a scrum master, agile coach, delivery manager or organizational leader. At the helm is president and founder Matt Domenici, who has guided over 50 organizations toward professional agility. With his hands-on experience, matt helps teams and organizations take ownership of their processes and outcomes, unlocking their full potential. To explore free learning resources, check out their training schedule or book a free consultation, visit impactagilityco Once again. That's impactagilityco. Well, hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Agile Within. Your host is always here, mark Metz. I have a guest today who's a repeat guest, and not just a repeat guest, but a third time repeat guest. I think that's a record here for the podcast. I want to introduce her Michelle Park. Michelle, welcome back.

Michelle: 1:59

Thank you, mark, I'm so happy to be here.

Mark: 2:02

Oh, great to have you back. So I consider Michelle a friend. I've used her as a professional coach and we've collaborated on some things in the past where I've used some of her material, so I think very highly of her. She's an executive and a leadership coach. She's also a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, if you're familiar with that. So that's no small feat. And she has her own company called Streamside Consulting, and it's based out of Nashville, tennessee, michelle. So I want to ask you, if my wife and I were coming to Nashville Tennessee for a day which is on our list, because it's not all that far from Columbia, south Carolina, where we live what's one thing that Michelle would say that I couldn't miss doing?

Michelle: 2:49

Well, this is a great question, mark, and I had to think about it for just a minute. But I would tell you and this is kind of a niche thing so you may not be interested, I don't know but I would tell you to go to my favorite garden center, which is like on the south side. So I live in Franklin, like just south of Nashville, and like when I get a chance I love to go to this Hewitt Garden Center. They have like all these beautiful bonsai. They have inside like orchids and lovely little like houseplants and tons of plants for outside. I just I get lost over there. I would tell you to go check that out, even if you didn't have something you were shopping for, just to see all of the lovely living green things around, kind of tucked on the side of the city there.

Mark: 3:39

So our listeners out here can't see, but as I'm looking at Michelle and looking behind her, she's got some very nice foliage and plants behind her. Is that where those any of those came from?

Michelle: 3:50

Yep, yep, that Monstera that came from Hewitt Garden Center. I've got some air plants that I've really neglected. I keep trying and just failing with those, but what you can't see is outside of my office. I've got a bonsai on my front porch that did not come from that place, but you know, I am a plant admirer and I like to keep them around me as much as possible. Really neat.

Mark: 4:16

We'll put a link to that in the show notes if anybody's interested. So that's cool. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, absolutely that's cool. Thank you for sharing.

Michelle: 4:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark: 4:24

So the title for our episode today is the Secret to Making a Positive Impact and, michelle, I want to ask you, first of all, what are we talking about when we're talking about making a positive impact, and why is that important?

Michelle: 4:47

Yeah, yeah. So the genesis here is some thinking that I've been doing over the last couple of years. Now I actually put a post about this time last year on this topic of making a positive impact, and what I mean by that is there's been a lot of negativity in the agile space in the last year or two. I think we've had a lot of challenges in the industry. The job market has been really tough. I think now, as we're recording this in January 2025, people are reeling from this announcement about PMI and the Agile Alliance.

Mark: 5:16

This is the first I'm hearing of this. I don't know what you're talking about.

Michelle: 5:21

I know I read the email and then, like I just saw LinkedIn explode all over itself. Anyway, I think there's a lot of stuff out there that hasn't been so focused on what good people in the profession are doing. A little bit earlier in my career as an agile coach, getting really overwhelmed by what I felt like were non-success, so not making the impact that I wanted to make, not feeling like I was providing value, wondering how I could prove things I think that a lot of this has to do with the mindset with which we approach our work and that the things that we choose to focus on and what we see has a major impact on the actual value that we create. So there's some like mindset, attitude, behavior, stuff that's all wrapped into this that we can explore, of course, today, but the idea really being like let's worry a little bit less about proving it to other people and kind of focus on you know where are the opportunities for us to show up and make a real difference.

Mark: 6:31

I know people that have a chicken and egg sort of attitude about this. And they want to turn the script, or flip the script, so to speak, and be like well, the positivity will come out, followed by success, because success will prove that or will produce that, and I think you've got a little bit different take on that. That might be true, but tell us what you think about the reverse of that.

Michelle: 6:56

Yeah, yeah. So I had done some learning about positive psychology during my coach training and counted some really interesting ideas. So there's some work out of a lot of work out of the University of Pennsylvania. So Martin Seligman, who's the founder of positive psychology, has a lot to say about this. There's also a really great book, happiness Advantage, by Sean Aker, and he has this line in there that just stays like happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement.

Michelle: 7:30

But all this research over the last 20 years or so about what's the correlation between being happy and being successful and most people assume I will be happy when I am successful. In fact the inverse is true. So happier people actually see more success, and that seems kind of unfair. If you're feeling miserable and like you're not successful, like come on, this is just a cruel, cruel joke. But the cool thing about it is we can access, so we don't have to access happiness through success. That doesn't have to be the only path.

Michelle: 8:05

Certainly, we do feel good when we achieve things, but there are other ways of tapping into good feelings. These good feelings kind of change some things in our brain chemistry and so when we're feeling good for any reason, then we start to open up what we're seeing in our mind. So the thing that I noticed in my own application of this to myself was when I started to focus on activities and things that made me feel good, my mind was more open to seeing possibilities, whereas before I might have made some assumptions about this isn't something that's going to work, or this person isn't interested in what I have to offer and I started to see some opportunities that were always there. I just wasn't paying attention to them before, when I was in kind of down in the dumps. So I don't know if that makes sense.

Mark: 8:55

Yeah, you mentioned positive psychology and there's probably some misconceptions out there or just people who just maybe don't understand. You hear the word and you assume you know what it means, but talk to us a little bit about what positive psychology, maybe what it is and what it isn't yeah, yeah.

Michelle: 9:12

So you know I certainly don't consider myself an expert in this topic, but you know my understanding of it's. Like around 20 years ago or so, you know, martin seligman and others noticed and pointed out like, like, as a profession, psychology had been focused so much on things that were wrong with people. So you know, from a medical kind of perspective of what's, you know, how do we diagnose abnormal psychology? Or, you know, problems with anxiety or depression. So the focus is all on, you know, people being unwell, treating folks who are unwell and getting them to a point of kind of baseline wellness. That is helpful and it's necessary. It's also not the complete story.

Michelle: 9:54

So if we look at like, if you think about even just general medicine, part of why you would go to a doctor is if you're sick. You also go to a doctor for preventative care. So there's things that we can do to just encourage healthiness and flourishing. If we spend time on those kind of preventative measures, then we have a lot less energy that has to go into diagnosing, curing and fixing. And so you know, martin Solomon kind of made a call to the psychology profession of could we spend some time maybe thinking about what leads to well-being and what leads to flourishing. Could we study that with the same level of intensity and rigor as we study pathology and things that are abnormal and unhealthy? And so from that has been a lot of research activity over the last 20 years of like, what are the things that lead to flourishing in people, that lead to a feeling of, you know, to well-being across multiple dimensions, and how can we be thoughtful about that instead of just treating it as accidental or not paying attention to it?

Michelle: 11:00

So there is, you know, psychological research that goes into all this stuff. It's not just like wandering around and like saying positive affirmations so, oh, that could be good, that can be good, but that's not the full sum of these things. And the other interesting thing that has happened, I think, over the last maybe decade or so, is tying this research into, you know, the emerging field of neuroscience. So you know studies, brain studies, brain imaging studies to see, okay, what's happening from a biochemistry perspective in the brain when we're feeling good or, you know, experiencing flourishing. So that gives a little bit of a you know, biochemical basis for some of this stuff. I've had worked with some executives who are kind of skeptical about, like the feel good things until you feel like oh, but here's the dopamine that's being released in your brain.

Michelle: 11:53

And then all of a sudden they're like oh, okay, now I can believe in this. I don't know, it's kind of interesting to look into that.

Mark: 12:00

Yeah, yeah, it's one of the things that I try to focus on is staying balanced, because most things in life and I talk about this a lot, you know it's not always black or it's not always white. It's somewhere in between toxically positive, and we're totally shunning the areas that we can improve and like locking that away under a safe and saying, well, I'm not going to. Really that's too harmful to me or that hurts too much. I'm just going to focus only on the positive aspects.

Michelle: 12:37

Yeah, yeah. So I see it more as like choosing, like with intention, to notice things that are going well. That doesn't mean ignoring all the things that are difficult, so just kind of accepting all of it as part of part and parcel of a normal career or a normal life. There are things, there are ups, there are downs. All of that can be used. You know, depending on how we look at that. Something that's difficult, we can see something that may be meaningful or significant about it. That doesn't mean we have to be celebrating the fact that we're suffering, but we can choose to see something useful in that and what it might bring us. So just a very simple example to share that I've personally found very helpful is this practice of daily gratitude, so common positive psychology practice, then? They've done research on this, like how does this affect people's well-being, their sense, impact on depression or anxiety, things like that Simple exercise is just once a day or however often feels good to you.

Michelle: 13:47

Write down three good things that happened, or three things that you are grateful for, and they can be very small things, so like. I have a little notebook here where I write down, like here's three good things, and some of them are like okay. So like yesterday I wrote, having a sense of space in my day was something I was grateful for preparing to share my book, that I'm working, so I felt good about that and then feeling cozy in my sweater. So these are not like, they don't have to be huge accomplishments, they don't have to be massive things. They can be very small things. Massive things, it can be very small things.

Michelle: 14:26

And so I think to me like the connection for agile practitioners. A lot of times we're seeking this major, you know, cultural transformation or some giant breakthrough. Just like we tell our teams, like, break it down into something small. We can do that with our own sense of meaning that we're driving from our job, from our sense of value that we're getting, from what we're offering, the impact that we're making on ourselves and other people, and so that can be reduced down to some fairly atomic qualities. And if you do this on a regular basis, you start to notice, you're training your attention to notice these things that are going well and these things that are positive, and that opens up more and more possibilities, because you're paying attention to what's there instead of ignoring it or not giving it any credit.

Mark: 15:13

You had a couple blog articles on this topic that I read and I really found those very fascinating and really they caused me to really look deep inside at me, because some of the things that I saw you specifically pointed out, I saw in myself deep and thought hard enough about it. I thought I can easily have times in my life where I would say you know what, michelle, that's all good, but I'm a busy guy, I don't have time to do that. Where am I going to find the time to do that? And what you talked about is, you know, as agile practitioners, coaches what have you? What do we preach to our teams? It's like, when they come in, like, oh my gosh, we have this huge year-long project that we have to deliver this product in a year. How are we ever going to get it done? Well, you don't need an elephant all in one bite right.

Michelle: 16:10

Right, exactly, just, you break it down to something small and I think the thing is, you know, a lot of times we dismiss taking care of our own well-being or feeling good about the work we're doing as something that's nice to have, something that, oh, we will get along the way. It's not something that we put intentional focus in, and what I have noticed over the last couple of years is that when I've paid, you know, made that a top priority, like thinking about how am I feeling, how you know working on, like showing up with kind of genuine confidence, not like fake confidence, but like feeling, feeling comfortable and confident in what I'm doing. And that comes from a sense of contentment in my life in general. Like feeling balanced, like things, things that, like things that we see very commonly in corporate culture, where people will just run from meeting to meeting. You spend five minutes in every meeting hearing about how somebody is late for this because they haven't had a chance to go to the bathroom or have a snack or eat anything. Think of how much time and energy gets spent in this, like you know, gnashing of teeth around, how unbalanced we are. And OK, now contrast that with experience, where you have somebody who is fully rested, prepared and ready to like be with you and focus on the task at hand. That's a very different experience and as I've moved more and more of my work into one-on-one coaching, I cannot show up for a call with a client in that kind of impact that makes on the work that I'm doing.

Michelle: 17:59

So if we're thinking about this in terms of you know what's the relationship between how I am feeling about you know, my life in general or the you know just in my kind of presence, what is the impact of that presence on the people that you are serving?

Michelle: 18:14

And just kind of note, like try noticing. You know, usually when we're all in that state we're so busy, worried about whatever we're worried about, that we don't even pay attention to the impact that makes on another person. But even if you're looking at it, not from what impact you're making on others, but just go through your day tomorrow and look and you know, notice who's showing up calm and relaxed and ready to work and who's spending 10 minutes of your time talking about how stressed and frazzled they are. We all do it. I'm not trying to judge, but I'm just making a. You know these are some choices that we can make and how we show up, and they do make an impact on other people and our ability to think creatively and be collaborative, so this can very quickly become a cycle, from a one-time occurrence to getting in this cycle.

Mark: 19:04

In your article you had a term called a virtuous cycle that I haven't heard before. So tell us about a virtuous cycle. What is that?

Michelle: 19:13

Yeah. So a virtuous cycle is, like you know, the opposite of a vicious cycle, like where one bad thing begets another. In a virtuous cycle, we take one good thing and that builds on it. So, you know, as we're recording this in January, many people are in the. You know your goal is to get fit in the new year. Well, you're probably.

Michelle: 19:40

If you're going to be successful in that, there's probably a set of things that are stacking on top of one another to help you with that overall goal. So it might be, oh well, I want to exercise. Well, in order to exercise, I need to be getting better rest and I also need to be eating better. And so, you know, one good choice that you make, like maybe it's to go to bed a little bit earlier the night before. That allows you to get up early to do that workout and then, because you did the workout, you feel better, like you want to eat something nutritious instead of, you know, running by McDonald's. So the choices, like small choices that we make, can build on one another, and that's what I found as I was doing my own personal experiments with positive psychology, if I took even five minutes in the morning to do something that made me feel calm or happy or relaxed.

Michelle: 20:35

Then, when I went into that first meeting, I could persist that feeling, whereas if I did my usual like for my whole life, up until this point which was to like roll into it the last possible minute, or maybe having looked at an email or reading the news and getting stressed and anxious about you know oh how am I going to respond to this person?

Michelle: 20:57

Or I can't believe this thing happened. That kind of frantic energy. Bringing that into a conversation would mean I was distracted, not paying attention. I probably don't listen or care at the same level, and then I might be short-tempered or have trouble just even being curious about someone's perspective. So if I interrupted that cycle by doing something positive first, then I'd feel good about my morning. Then I'd feel more spacious in my day, be able to take time to go for a walk or connect with a friend or do the things that actually enrich one's life. So these little, tiny adjustments that we make can actually make a big impact in terms of helping you do more of the things that actually help you feel great about what you're doing.

Mark: 21:47

Tell me if you agree. I would think that practicing, whether it be doing something you enjoy, whether it be positive affirmations or just something for you.

Michelle: 21:58

Yeah.

Mark: 21:59

Keeps you from getting to that irrational mindset. And let me explain a little bit about what I'm talking about, because this is something that I experience is I can very easily get into the doom and gloom. Everything is bad, I don't have time for anything, so I'm going to shut everybody out and I just get. Have time for anything, so I'm going to shut everybody out and I just get a very negative mindset and that continues to just and it's really gets to a point where it is.

Mark: 22:25

It defies rational thought and I've had somebody shake me up before and like where is this coming from? This is not, this isn't logical, and you kind of have to just shake yourself out of it for just a minute and step back and say you know what? You're right, I am being irrational and this mindset is just too much and I need to take some time for myself and have a different viewpoint. Now. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but I like what you're saying about don't always just go to the doctor when you have a problem. Be proactive about it and let's put a plan in place to keep you healthy, not just go to when you're sick.

Michelle: 23:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah and I love how you're describing that, marcus, like that kind of a rational, because that is usually what's at the core of our distress is some exaggerated thinking. So psychologists will put that under. They have different labels for it, like distorted thought or thought distortions or irrational beliefs, but they're so common and automatic that when something bad happens, our minds immediately go there and it requires some space to foresee that thought for what it is, which is a thought, not necessarily reality and then make a choice about what we want to do with it. Almost every one of us has gotten a phone call at some point in time from an unexpected time, like, oh, you get a call from a family member at an unusual time of day. Immediately, what pops in your mind before you answer that call? You think who's in the hospital, who died, and it may be.

Michelle: 24:15

Oh, I was just running an errand and I had a couple extra minutes, I thought I'd say hi, like, like. Sometimes it is something catastrophic, but but most of the time it's not. And so this tendency that we have to like, go to the worst case scenario, that's a something that psychologists call catastrophizing, and that is a very natural thing that people do. The longer that that thought just stays in your head, uninterrupted by another person, some way of externalizing it, the more you believe it and the more damage it can do. So all of these things that we're talking about from building that virtuous cycle, whether that's something that creates positive emotions, to finding something that gives you a state of flow all of those positive things will interrupt that kind of thinking or take some of the poison out of it.

Michelle: 25:12

And talking with other people like you shared, mark, having somebody else say else, say like, hold on a minute, like that's. That's one of the things that they've shown in the positive psychology research is that you know other people, relationships with other people, is the single greatest up when we're feeling down, and that you know, if we have blows that we suffer in our lives, having other people around is the thing that insulates us from from the worst effects of that. So you know, phone a friend, individuals and interactions that's what we always talk about, right?

Mark: 25:41

That's right. That's right. What about the case of where you're having to whether it be work with or, just you know, maybe taking it out of a work perspective?

Mark: 25:52

You know, we definitely have that to talk about and that's probably what many of our listeners. But outside of that, what if you like? I'm just trying to think, what if you have a neighbor that you see all the time and they just have this negative view on life and you're like boy, this is just really. No matter how positive I try to seem to be, the conversation turns negative. What advice do you have in that sort of a scenario?

Michelle: 26:20

Well, I guess my advice would be the only people whose thoughts or behavior we control is our own. So you know, there are people who have all ranging kinds of ways of approaching the world and you know, good, bad and different doesn't really matter. So you know, there's actually some sort of depressing but like some research that shows that you have a genetic predisposition to how, like sunny, your outlook is on things Like there's just there's kind of a fixed point where you know you can do some stuff but, like in general, you may not be like an overly optimistic, sunny person and some of that may be your genetics. So you know, feeling bad about it isn't going to help. But you know, when you're encountering people who are like you experience as difficult or just you know, don't they don't lift your spirits.

Michelle: 27:14

I guess you know my thought. There is well, okay. So I may not never be able to influence that person's perspective or outlook on things. I can choose how they affect me. So I can either walk away from that feeling like oh, that was a real downer, or I could choose to engage with that person and be like, well, you know, I approached that person, you're trying to understand their perspective, or I was kind or I listened, and you know that may be. You may not be able to change their perspective at all, but you can change how interacting with them affects you, just by how you choose to think about it.

Mark: 27:52

What would you say if somebody told you like I can be supportive for a certain amount of time or to a certain level, and then I just need to take a break?

Michelle: 28:01

after that, go and take a break. Go and take a break. Yeah, I mean, the people that we choose to be around has a big impact on our mood and you know how we feel feel. So you know being intentional about the relationships and the connections that lift you up.

Michelle: 28:20

I think you know it's unrealistic to believe that you can only interact with people who you have a great time with. Especially if you work at a company, you're going to have some people who aren't your favorite and that's. That's okay, you know. But just be careful about where you put your energy. So I think a lot of times, especially as agile coaches, we might get fixated on like, oh, here's the one person on the team who is resisting what I have to offer, or thinks agile or scrum is a crack and they want nothing to do with it. Why would we choose to spend all of our time focused on that individual instead of focused on the people who are interested and are getting value? Like we can train our mind to look for the negative things and focus on them, or we can train our mind to look for all the positives. So if you're feeling like, oh, I'm not being successful with this team because I have this one person who's not buying in. Well, that probably means you have maybe six or seven other people who are seeing value.

Mark: 29:31

Let's maybe put our attention over there instead of on the one who's giving us some heartburn. So I'm thinking about the balance aspect of this too, because one of the things you said is maybe understand where they're coming from or their perspective. One could take from that strategy of oh well, I'm just going to kind of excommunicate them and I'm just going to block them from all my communication and problem solved right, I just won't even listen to that person. But what is that going to? I think that's going to promote more negative vibes or negative energy more so.

Mark: 30:00

So maybe take a chance or take some time to get into you know, I wonder really what the point of view is from this person. Why are they feel? Is there a story behind? Yeah, I don't know about, but that doesn't mean you have to spend 40 hours a week on it. That doesn't mean you have to spend 40 hours a week on it. If you get an answer that's like, okay, that's who they are and they're not going to change, then there's nothing I can do about it. But at least I've given them the respect to hear them out.

Michelle: 30:29

Right. Right, I think in doing that, the key is separating your experience from what their experience is, separating your experience from what their experience is. So, just because they don't enjoy what's happening, or like, you don't have to assume that emotionally, like you don't have to take that on emotionally as your job to fix that, your job to do anything about it, your job to judge it. It is probably beneficial to try to understand it, but that doesn't mean you have to do anything with it. And so that I think creating a little bit of space, like realizing this person, like has no control over my wellbeing or how I'm enjoying my job, like I am choosing that if I choose to like let someone's negative energy make me have a bad day, that is a choice I am making. Like I can pay attention to this one nasty thing somebody said in the meeting, or I can pay attention to all the rest of the day.

Michelle: 31:26

That went perfectly fine. That is a choice. But you know, to your point, like I would never recommend like completely, unless you're in some kind of like abusive situation like that. Of course, you know I say the word never, I don't mean the word never, but for the most part, most of the things that we're encountering are just differences of preferences and personality and we don't, you know. Getting everyone to go along, I think, is unrealistic and it just sets us up for frustration. So if we can just learn to appreciate that there are differences and not assume responsibility for them emotionally, I think that sets us up for better success in this kind of work.

Mark: 32:05

Maybe I'm getting a little personal here, but do you happen to have a story that you could tell us from your point of view, getting into Michelle's world, of where this made a difference in you, where you were maybe not the most positive person in the world and things were not looking good, but you made a decision to start using a positive nature and seeing that truly have an outcome? Do you have an experience that you could share with our listeners and with me?

Michelle: 32:37

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So a few years ago I was coaching at a large company, part of a large transformation, and I had been at another large company doing another large transformation. I was seeing some of the same patterns that I found personally very frustrating. It's like, oh, we're going through the motions, we're working with all these teams and everybody's still stressed there's very little of what I felt like was the point of Agile. There were all the symptoms and trappings of Agile, but I felt like we were really missing what the real value was. I got pretty depressed about it and I started I call it losing my religion phase, because I was just like is it even possible to bring these kinds of ideas to a very large, bureaucratic old company and make any kind of difference? Large, bureaucratic, old company and make any kind of difference? And I started to conclude like it was all pointless and that there just wasn't any point. So I spent some time wallowing in that During that time, of course, I had different teams or things I was working with.

Michelle: 33:47

I didn't count them as like oh, that wasn't a valuable experience, I didn't offer anything. You know, I felt like I'd have ideas and then I convinced myself oh, no one's going to support this or I'm going to be shot down. And so, you know, I kind of I think I hit like some sort of rock bottom about it and just realized like, well, maybe I can't change this situation, like I was in a position where I didn't want to change companies and also I had done that before and it didn't like my feeling about it. And so I'm like, okay, I'm really out of options here. Maybe there's something to some of this positive psychology stuff. So I started doing my own little experiments and just really focusing on my mindset.

Michelle: 34:31

Maybe six months after I'd really put my focus there on like, am I enjoying what I'm doing during the day? Am I taking the time to be thoughtful, like to do all the things that I need to kind of recharge my batteries throughout the day, I got an email from an SBP at the company about helping his leadership team with installing this framework that he'd heard about, and so they had just gone through a transformation for their 500-person part of the organization and they were like, oh hey, as leaders we haven't done this ourselves. Maybe we ought to transform our own leadership team to support, better support, the rest of our organization. And so you know at first.

Michelle: 35:18

If I had gotten that email, like even you know, six months before, I would have been like oh he's asking for this thing. I don't have any experience with that. Plus, this is a senior level leader. I'm sure all they care about is like just squeezing more work out of people. Like I don't want any part of that, like I would have found reasons to say no, pass it off to somebody else, or just entered that conversation assuming that nothing good would come out of it. Instead, I remember like having a moment like where I thought about that and then I was like wait a minute, why don't I just see what they want.

Michelle: 35:52

Like, why don't I just, like here, have a conversation, hear what's important to them, and then you know I can offer them what I can offer them. And so we did have that conversation and I shared you know, here's my perspective on this. I think a lot of work at the leadership team level is about culture and attitudes and behaviors. These are things that I'm interested in and can help you with. What do you think? And they said sure. And so then after that I worked with that leadership team. We did something that was my approach that I came up with myself so doing one-on-one coaching with the leaders, doing a team assessment and a workshop to help them figure out from an appreciative standpoint. So this is again like positive appreciating what's already there, what are you already doing? That's agile, and so from that we noticed a lot of things that they were already doing well. Then we found a couple of small tweaks to make that would improve their effectiveness. As an agile leadership team had an amazing time with these guys and it was probably I mean it's like a highlight of my coaching career. So in the blog post that you mentioned, mark, I said something around like you know, people are really worried about getting laid off and like, oh, you don't need to worry about this if you like, stop worrying. And the interesting part that's not in the blog post is that.

Michelle: 37:17

So after you know I'd done this work with this team, my company then went through a change to their remote work policy. So I've been hired during COVID as a remote worker. They said, okay, you're going to have to relocate to another city with an office or take a package. So I got laid off. That ended up being the most amazing thing for my career. So it launched. It gave me the space to launch my own coaching consulting business. And that team that I'd worked with, that leadership team, I had a consulting engagement with them. After kind of my initial severance period, I went back to work with them as a consultant. So for the last six months I've been working with them again. So these things you know like if any of these things around mindset, if I've been feeling like bad about what I had to offer, not looking for the opportunity there, all of those could be different. You know blows, but there's opportunity in all of it.

Michelle: 38:20

So, even getting laid, out for me ended up being the most amazing thing that happened last year, and you know so. I think there's a lot of not to get overly emphasizing what I know can be a really, really difficult time for people. But you know I'm grateful for the time that I'd spent focusing on you know how I was showing up, because that has helped me kind of navigate through, you know, some difficult, potentially difficult spaces since then.

Mark: 38:45

So I think everybody can agree. I mean it's we don't live in Disneyland, we're not always going to have a happy ending. But I have a very similar story that I'll share, because we're running low on time to a time in my life, and that was when I was making the transition from being a developer to being a manager, and I wanted to just dip my toes in that, because my dad always told me you need to probably scratch that itch at some point to see if it's what you want to do and if it's not great. But you don't want to get to the, to the end of your career and say, boy, I wish I would have given it a shot. And so I had a recruiter call me and say hey, mark, I've got this position for this, for this developer job that think you'd be great for we also have a management position for the development org, if you know anybody that's interested. You know, if I didn't have a positive mindset about it, I would have just been like, oh, woe is me, I'll never get a shot, nobody will ever give me a chance.

Mark: 39:40

But I said, well, hey, I'd be interested in the management position. So she said okay, sure, let me present you and within the same day she calls back hey, mark, talked with the client. They said that you don't have any experience being a manager, so you're out for that, but they really would like to bring you in as a developer. And I said can you just give me a shot, because I think I can sell them on it? I think I have the attributes and if you just give me that chance, I think I can prove them.

Mark: 40:10

She was like you know, I'm kind of sticking my neck out on a line because I'm a recruiter and I'm supposed to give the client what they're looking for. But I'll give you that chance. And ultimately they did, and I must have said something right because I did get the position. But if I would have been in that negative mindset of just nobody's ever going to give me a shot you know, until I get the experience, who's going to give me the experience I would have never, never gone for it. And, like I say, that's not, that's not to say that it's always going to work out that way, but you have a zero percent chance of it happening if you don't, if you don't try to make it happen.

Michelle: 40:47

That's. That's right, exactly so. If you, if you don't believe in what you have to offer, who else will believe in it? Believe in what you have to offer, who else will believe in it? And I love you sharing that story, mark, because that to me is like kind of at the heart of it. Even just seeing the opportunity there, recognizing that it's something that you could try, and then being okay to go with whatever happens after that Like you got rejected by the recruiter that didn't stop you from going and saying, well, give me a try.

Michelle: 41:17

And I think that's the heart of a lot of this kind of thinking is that even when we have those setbacks, they give us an opportunity to learn something, to try to expand our courage at the very least. Even if it's just okay, well, I did something courageous. It may not have had the result that I wanted, but that kind of action, if we take that on a continuous basis, that's the thing that pushes us forward. So, yeah, I think that's really cool to hear that from you. I hope that inspires people to take that brave step in favor of themselves, because that's where it all starts.

Mark: 41:56

I do want to give an opportunity for you to share if our listeners out there want to get in touch with you either, just if they have questions, I'm sure, about some of this content. I know you well enough to know you're very warm and open to having a dialogue, having a conversation. But well, let's start off with that. First of all, how can people get in touch with you?

Michelle: 42:15

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn my profile. I'm sure we can probably put a link or something in the notes. You can also reach me at michelleatstreamsidecoachingcom. That's my website or my email for my business. Happy to talk with anyone who's curious about some of the ideas that we talked about here or would like to call me out on something. I'm glad to have that conversation too. But, yeah, I've got some things that are coming up that I'm excited to share with the audience.

Michelle: 42:49

Mark, I'm working on a new group program on. It's going to be called Leadership Essentials for Transformational Change. So if you are an agile coach, a scrum master, if you're a project manager or somebody who is trying to change something or lead something that involves some kind of human behavior change in order to make something happen, especially if you're at the middle of an organization you're maybe not we're not CEOs you're able to just kind of put out a decree and then hope that everyone goes along with it. This program is designed for change agents at those levels, helping you get the influence skills, the conversational and dialogue skills that can move things forward in a respectful and effective way. So that's going to be coming up in February. So if that piques your interest, please find some time with me. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or you can book time directly through my website, which is wwwstreamsidecoachingcom, so I'd love to talk with folks about that if that's interesting to them.

Mark: 43:56

Great. We will definitely put all those links in the show notes. And I'll just say, michelle, having employed you as a professional coach on a personal basis and also sitting through some of your offerings that you've had, I can't say anything but very positive, glowing things. So if you do sign up for something with Michelle, I have no doubt whatsoever, I'm fully convinced and confident that you will find value in it, because she does such a great job and is very empathetic. There you go For what that's worth, or maybe what it's not worth, michelle.

Michelle: 44:29

That means a lot. Your endorsement means a lot to me. So thank you, Mark. I really appreciate that.

Mark: 44:35

Well, michelle, thanks for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure again, glad to have you.

Michelle: 44:40

Oh pleasure, the pleasure was mine. Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate the invitation, the opportunity to share.

Mark: 44:46

Great, All right, everybody. That brings it into another episode of the Agile Within. We'll see everybody next time. 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.