Continuous Learning
I have been working with Scrum and Agile for 15 years now and I still learn something new just about every day. Each and every team I work with, every manager, every executive, every organization is different and because of these differences what I thought I knew before often does not apply to the current situation. I learn on the job daily. I learn outside of working by pursuing my ongoing and ever-broadening interests in what I think supports “Agile” in mindset and in practical application. Most recently I am focused on my emotional intelligence skillset and learning to better recognize what people may be feeling and how to interact with them most productively in any emotional state. All of this starts with learning to recognize my own emotional state at any time and to add depth and nuance to describing what I am feeling and why I am feeling it. This may not seem to be related to being an Agile coach but for me it most assuredly is. The better I understand myself, the better I can understand other people, the better I understand other people the better I am able to work with them. All of this is just to say that I am continually learning and I do not believe any good or great coach can ever stop or would ever want to stop learning. There is so much to know and so little time in ones life to learn it that I know I will never be done learning. I hope you will never be done learning either. This simply makes the world a better place for all of us.