Podcast Ep. 174: Practicing Empathy in Fast-Paced Environments with Kris Chavious and Quincy Jordan

Episode Description

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Kristan Chavious and Quincy Jordan, two returning guests and colleagues.

In this episode, they are discussing the very special topic of empathy and how it can be a challenge to practice it in fast-paced settings; it can be tough to reconcile empathy with moving fast but there is a significant value in it.

Key Takeaways

Different ways to bring empathy into an agile team:

Empathy is known as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person
Empathy is also being able to understand someone else’s values
Get outside of your personal experience to see it through the eyes of others and connect with their emotional and psychological response to an event

Leading agile teams is different than leading traditional teams

An agile team is self-organized but a leader needs to support the decisions that the team members make versus telling them what to do
Displaying a level of empathy allows the team to grow; no team starts as a high-performance team; it evolves into one
In traditional teams, the work done is prioritized: “Just get it done”

Empathy in Self-Managed Teams:

Expectations must be addressed, especially in regard to job descriptions
Team members have to know that they have permission to make certain decisions
The culture needs to be shifted from fearing failure to celebrating it. Leaders must be able to support their teams in their failures

Empathy should be demonstrated top-down and bottom-up
Participating in meetings, turning on cameras, and really being present are crucially important to foster empathy and better communication

Assume a good intent, “You know they mean well,” even in the most tense scenarios
When you realize someone is having a bad day, try to adjust and to help who is in need at that particular moment (if it is an ongoing attitude, that is simply abuse)

Mentioned in this Episode:

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, by Celeste Headlee
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World, by John Mark Comer

Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]

Intro: [00:03] Welcome to Agile Coach’s Corner by AgileThought the podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now, here’s your host, coach, and agile expert, Dan Neumann. Dan Neumann: [00:17] Welcome to this episode of the Agile Coach’s Corner podcast. I’m your host Dan Neumann, and today joined by two colleagues from AgileThought. Here we have Kris Chavious and Quincy Jordan, both returning guests here on the podcast. So thank you gentlemen for joining today.

Quincy Jordan: [00:32] Hey Dan, happy to be here as always enjoy being on the Agile Coach’s Corner Kris Chavious: [00:37] Yeah, thank you. It’s always fun. So looking forward to it.

Dan Neumann: [00:41] Wonderful. Sorry. I stepped on your toes there, Kris. Your verbal toes didn’t mean to, and we will appreciate the listeners as well. So want to definitely appreciate folks tuning in and today’s topic is kind of fun. We had one of our colleagues at Missy suggest the topic of empathy and then volunteer, Quincy, the opportunity to come on and talk about it. And we roped in Kris too. So we’re going to be talking about empathy and specifically it can be hard to find empathy in fast paced settings, which a lot of work is, and not just agile work, but all kinds of work. And it might be tough to kind of reconcile empathy with moving fast. There’s a lot of value potentially in bringing empathy to your work life. And so that’s what we’re going to be exploring is what it is in some ways to do that. So, Quincy, what are your thoughts on empathy in the value of bringing it to work?

Quincy Jordan: [01:36] Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that, I think brought about this conversation with our colleague was, you know, the conversation around finding empathy in fast paced setting is oftentimes difficult and that while it might seem, it would be difficult to get them to reconcile. But you know, there are ways of staying agile and that, you know, one could bring empathy into the picture with teams and there’s several different ways to do that. I think empathy is a very critical component to any team and I believe that a display empathy makes see very significant, you know, difference with how well the team works together, how well the team jells, all those different things that, you know, help to contribute to a high performing team. Dan Neumann: [02:34] So Kris kind of thinking about empathy being the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Have you seen that be valuable in work that you’ve done? And I don’t know if an example maybe comes to mind?

Kris Chavious: [02:49] Yeah, I would say it is definitely valuable, obviously. It’s definitely valuable. I feel like it’s often overlooked. So the case of, you know, fast paced environment, we’re just moving and sometimes we forget to slow down and just feel, especially, in today’s climate with the pandemic and people having additional things on their plates is being mindful of that. But one thing that I did one time with the team that I was working with is when we built our working agreement, our team working agreement, we are on mural? And someone said, you know, can we have a, a box for values? And I never thought about that, individual values. Like what do we all value from a personal perspective? And then from a team perspective. So being able to understand someone’s values can kind of tie into empathy when it comes to dealing with that person one on one, you know, if you have a person that values full transparency and give it to me, give it to me, give it to me raw, give it to me. Right. You know, that I can just be straightforward with you, because that’s something that you value, you know. So understanding someone’s value and being able to use that and how you interact with them, I think is important.

Dan Neumann: [04:13] Yeah. And I could see that, you know, the values as a input, if you will, into starting to build some of those empathy and then trying to figure out why that person might have that particular value or exploring that with them trying to put yourself in their shoes and understand why they value, you know, give it to me straight or, you know, whatever their input personal value might be.

Quincy Jordan: [04:38] And I think part of, you know, the overall point with that is what you just said, then putting yourself in that person’s place, you know, seeing it from not only your point of view and it’s hard, you know, sometimes not to see things just from your world point of view. It takes a lot of intentional effort to really get outside of yourself and how to see things through the eyes and experiences of others. And so when I think about that, like from a leadership perspective and is there value placed on empathy? And I think oftentimes leaders are challenged with being able to do so, being able to find value in empathy, you know, there’s so many things coming at them that I think they take really almost like the most efficient route to try to get something done and remove the component that says, Hey, these are people that we’re talking about. These are people that we’re working with. These are people that we’re making decisions about. So I think it’s critical, you know, to appreciate that value, to show that empathy, to model that behavior as well, not just kind of give it lip service, but you know, to really truly try to model that be behavior because tough situations are going to occur. And so when they do, how do you respond to it? Do you respond to it with a no nonsense perspective, which there can be a time and place for that, or do you respond with a perspective that says, Hey, let me really try to understand what is actually happening to this individual emotionally, psychologically, what barriers are there that are preventing them from being able to bring their best self forward. And I think the more leaders take a similar type perspective, the better teams will perform the happier, or maybe not happier, the more fulfilled team members will be. I think that’s just really important to have that type of perspective from a leadership point of view.

Kris Chavious: [07:23] Yeah, you were touching on something I was going to say Quincy. Leadership, the style of leadership is different when it comes in the agile space than it is in a traditional teams. So leading agile teams is a lot different than leading traditional teams. And what we find is that many agile leaders that we have on organizations have been around for quite some time. So they have their style leadership for the traditional teams. But when you have more of an agile team, we say, you know, agile teams are suppose to self-organized and when you have a team that’s self organizing the style leadership doesn’t work. So more so, instead of command is more so supportive. So you’re saying that these teams can self organize, but you have to be able to support them in the decisions that they make as well versus telling them what to do.

Quincy Jordan: [08:08] Yeah. And I think that’s a really interesting point that, yes, we talk about teams stuff organizing, and I think that sometimes people don’t know what they’re signing up for when they say they’re going to allow teams to self organize. And I think it challenges their ability to be empathetic with teams that are making decisions that are not the decisions that they think they should make. Be it right or wrong. And sometimes you have to display that level of empathy in order to allow the team to mature, to learn, to fall, to get up, to crawl, you know, to do all those things that quite frankly are needed in order for a team to become a high performing team. Teams don’t start out as high performing teams. You know, individuals don’t necessarily start out as high performing individuals. they may in some spaces, but, you know, put them in uncharted regions, put them in uncharted territory and then, you know, they get challenge and now new behaviors come out. So it’s important to, one to be able to recognize that and to, really allow some leeway for that learning, you know, to take place.

Dan Neumann: [09:24] I as you guys were talking, I was reflecting back on a couple instances in my past. Even in not very agile organizations where some empathy ability to put oneself as a leader in the place of the rest of the people, maybe being impacted by a policy rollout by a process change probably could have made the change more efficient because of all the lost energy that happens when people feel like they’re not heard. There’s the water cooler conversations, there’s the distractions, there’s the hallway, there’s the guessing, there’s the, well, why didn’t they think of it this way and that way and the other way. And so, while it seems like maybe it can be more efficient to not demonstrate empathy, like it’s just business, we’re changing the time off policy to include sick time versus, you know, having sick days and well days. You had a couple people in your organization who really valued the sick policy, and now they’re like, wait, I have to take vacation when I’m sick, that’s jacked up. And, they’re like, I can’t tell you how many lost hours that was while people tried to debrief that. And, it wasn’t handled with empathy in the scenario that comes to mind. Quincy Jordan: [10:40] Yeah. You said one of the phrases that is oftentimes a lead in to, Hey, here comes a significant lack of empathy when someone says, well, it’s just business. All right, so something’s coming, that is going to be a colossal display of lack of empathy. That phrase for me along with, what is the other, companies. Well, these are people, people are making these decisions, so yes, it’s a policy, whatever the case, but there’s a person behind that. So is that person being empathetic to those who are going to be impacted by this? and if they’re not okay, why not? and I think there is so much carryover from the industrial revolution in even today, you know, in how things are being done, Kris, you mentioned about, you know, some of the leaders being from like a older genre oftentimes, and, when I think about like that carryover, I mean, we’re really only a couple of generations, you know, or so away, at most from, you know, like heavy factory worker type environment. Like everyone works for the plant, you know, the town plant or whatever the case. And so in that case, it’s, Hey, if you’re on the assembly line, you look and dress this way. If you’re supervisor, you wear the blue coat or whatever the case is, if you’re this or that, and there’s in that process, it does not recognize anything about the individual, you know, at all, there’s very little empathy towards the individual in that process. And we are now knowledge workers heavily. and so, you know, Dan, you had mentioned about like in the agile space, you know, earlier in this conversation. And as knowledge workers in the agile space, we are far more in tune, not perfectly, but we’re far more in tune to the human side of things, I think probably than any other area and ironically for it to be in the IT industry where, you know, many people went into the it industry, cause they didn’t want to work with people. So, you know, which is just part of the reality of things, where people decided to go technical because they didn’t want to deal with people. They don’t want to have to be empathetic. They don’t want to have to, say, Hey, how’s your day going? Or, you know, Hey, I’m sorry to hear about your child or any of that. They don’t want to have to do any of that. They didn’t want to be empathetic. They thought they went to school to get a degree to not be empathetic. And so, you know, I know it’s a little rant there, but that phrase is one that I always find interesting.

Kris Chavious: [13:58] Yeah, I’ve been somewhere, what they called it, they had a cult “just get it done” and they would tag items as just get it done. And like in JIRA, like just get it done, that’s what we need to do. And it didn’t matter what the team was. Some of the hesitations or concerns that they had, this is what the customer’s expecting, just get it done. But there was a disconnect because the work being done or the work that was being requested was being requested to the leader and not the actual team. So it was a disconnect when that customer probably should have been talking with the team so they could have that level of understanding between just get it done and why these are some of the concerns that we have and kind of meeting someone in the middle.

Dan Neumann: [14:46] Yeah. That’s really interesting to think of put on my Kanban thinking hat there, if the clarity that just get it done does from an ordering standpoint, seems like it could potentially be good, but if it’s just get it done, I don’t give two hoots about what else is on your plate, that definitely shows a lack of empathy.

Dan Neumann: [15:08] You guys touched on self organization or self-management was brought up a little bit earlier. And I thought it’d be interesting to kind of look at empathy from that standpoint. So for a lot of people, especially folks that are maybe newer to agile, they are used to being given work to do by a manager who presumably got to that level because they had some expertise, they, you know, demonstrated competence, they’re the ones who are supposed to figure out the tough problems and then hand a solution off to be implemented by others. And I’ve had more than once the people that are now being asked to go self-managed like, wait a minute, just tell me what to do, right? that’s your job. Your job is to tell me what to do. It’s not my job to go figure out how to solve the problem. I’m just a developer. I’m just a quality person. I’m just an analyst, et cetera. And so I think even as agile coaches, or maybe even, especially as agile coaches being aware of the impact to job descriptions, role expectations, potential impact to career paths, all those different things, even just the simple phrase of self-management, which carries a tremendous amount of change with it. Quincy Jordan: [16:20] I think, you know, so if I look at it through the lens of transformation, agile coaching, you know, that type of lens, it is crucial to educate everyone as much as possible as to what this is going to mean. So what does it mean when we say self-organized teams or self-managed teams? What do we think that means and have that discussion as early in the process as possible? Because you’re absolutely right Dan. When people are accustomed to someone telling them what to do, they’re like a deer in headlights when they have to make those decisions themselves. And not only that, they feel like a deer in headlight, but they feel like they’re going to get reprimanded if they make a wrong decision. So they have to know, and they have to be told that if there’s some telling to do, they have to be told that you have permission to make these decisions. Now, here are the boundaries, here are the guidelines, so that, you know, we still have to consider the risk involved. But we mitigate that risk by allowing that level of empowerment and that level of authority to mostly stay confined to the work that they’re doing. And then if it’s going to go outside of that, then they need to know, okay, those are decisions that then yes, you do have to get permission for those things. But I think it’s a very strong display of empathy to understand what that type of responsibility feels like to one who is not accustomed to making those decisions themselves. They are very accustomed to someone else, you know, telling them what to do. But as being knowledge workers, that’s part of where we need to challenge ourselves, you know, as well. That’s how we improve like process improvement and continuous improvement. I mean, it’s not just for the software, it’s for us as well as people.

Dan Neumann: [18:44] And Kris, it looked like you wanted to hop in. I wanted to emphasize that the phrase you said, Quincy real quick is what does that empowerment feel like? So putting yourself in the other persons, you’ve just changed their world, try and feel what they feel. Yeah. Kris. Kris Chavious: [18:59] I say, Quincy touched on a lot of good stuff. So like, what should I want go in on. One thing you mentioned was fear, one thing you mentioned was fear, fear of making the wrong decision and fear or being reprimanded for failing. I think it’s important when you’re working with a self organizing team to shift the culture a little bit, to celebrate the failures, so to speak. So, you know, as a leader, it is talking to the team and letting them know that it’s okay to fail and I’m here to support you because if you’re going to let them make decisions, you have to be able to support them in the failure. So being able to like some companies, was it Spotify that would have failure retrospectives, and they would celebrate failures, like who failed this week or, you know, but having that culture where you celebrate the failure, because ultimately the lesson is in the failure, right? And so if you can learn from it, there’s power there. And it also builds confidence, knowing that if I make the wrong decision, my leadership will support me in that. And we learn from it and grow.

Quincy Jordan: [20:11] Yeah. Nothing kills confidence, more than someone just literally bringing down the hammer as soon as, you know, someone makes a mistake. Like you can almost guarantee you have shut that person down. Not only that person, but anyone else that witnessed it, it is going to take a significant amount of time and effort to recover from that. And you know, that type of, to some of degree, unintended consequence is dangerous. You know, like, I’ll go so far as to say it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. Not only to the team, but it’s dangerous to the organization because you have just single handedly affected how the team is going to deliver value. and that is a large part of, you know, why the team exists. What they’re supposed to be doing is to deliver value.

Commercial: [21:04] Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast@agilethought.com or tweet it with a #agilethoughtpodcast.

Dan Neumann: [21:15] I think several of our examples have been about leaders having empathy towards, you know, the people that are leading super important. You can do that by listening to your team, the teams, around your peers, et cetera, about what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling and trying to put that in there. So it’s active listening is a key to building empathy. I also think it’s important for everybody to think about the layer up and up above them and try to also be a little bit empathetic. There are some leaders who, you know, you don’t want to work for. Vote with your feet. It’s the wrong place to be. Other times it’s just they’re also in a tough spot. It’s easy to be like, well, I’m in a tough spot. Well, they’re probably weighing several facets too. And they’re probably also feeling a little bit to fear or uncertainty or some other feelings that you’re would do well to maybe try to comprehend as well. And it makes the decisions sometimes seem more sensible. So that phrase, why would a reasonable person behave that way? For me has been a key to starting to build some empathy for the other person. Okay. That looked weird. Why would they do that? I wonder if X, Y, or Z.

Quincy Jordan: [22:31] Yeah, I don’t think the empathy t-shirt only fits based on hierarchal, you know, decisions. So I think it should be demonstrated not only top down but bottom up. I think it should be demonstrated laterally, diagonally if that’s a thing, you know, and I think it should just be demonstrated in every direction because I think I was on a call, I think it was yesterday or day before yesterday. And, you know, someone had mentioned about, Hey, you know, people can take all the agile approach they want, but the leaders they were talking about were like C-suite level and so forth. Well, they’re measured based on quarterly earnings oftentimes, they’re measured on annual, you know, decisions. And so the comment was they have to factor that they have to look at things from a longer view, a longer roadmap. And I’m like, you’re absolutely right. You know, they have to like, that is how they need to view things in those who are part of that structure that are not at those levels, do need to understand that, they do need to understand that if you are, whether you’re a public company or not, but you know, you can’t, I would be remissive if I were to say that, Hey, yeah, I think it’s great for the CEO to decide today what’s going to happen over the next two weeks and not look out further than that. Like, that would be a major concern for me. You’re not looking a lot further than that?

Dan Neumann: [24:31] That doesn’t scale very well. Quincy Jordan: [24:32] Yeah. It doesn’t scale very well. So, you know, I do think that for those who are supporting those leaders by way of the team contributions that they make, that they should consider the challenges that are above them, that they don’t have to deal with. They don’t have to entertain. And that really just goes for everyone, you know. The QA person on the team, you know, could benefit from showing what empathy to the developer, the develop could show more empathy to the QA, you know, Hey, let’s not give it to them the last day of the sprint and expect for them to get through everything. Okay. Let’s not try to break, well, that is part of QA’s role, but let’s not try to demean in the process of the quality of someone’s code, if it’s just different, you know, not that it’s bad code or anything like that. So I think the empathy really could just be shown, you know, all the way around. And, it’s just important. I mean, there’s so many different aspects to it, but if we don’t consider the human side of things, you know, we’re doomed to fail because we are human.

Dan Neumann: [25:59] For sure. For sure. Kris, you want to maybe explore being present in meetings, which I think is super challenging, especially as a remote team. I mean, I’m sitting here with you guys, I’ve got the screen in front of me, a screen to each side and I’ve gotten my not to mention, you know, can we plug apple devices, iPhone the iPad, right. There’s so many things that ding and buzz and call for attention. I’ll open up a browser to, you know, go check Azure DevOps. And I’m like, how did Facebook pop up on my screen 10 minutes later? I’m like, how did that happen, I’m like, I’m lost, and so presence is part of building empathy.

Kris Chavious: [26:35] Yeah. That’s a big thing. One of the challenges I have, or I’ve had is, you know, turn the cameras on. You know, you have some places that culturally it’s just not something that they do, but having the camera on it shows as a indication that you’re present. You’re not looking over here. You’re not looking down, I’m looking at the screen, I’m here. I’m giving you my attention. So that’s a challenge you have because from people are just not used to having that camera on. So it’s important to talk about the benefits of being present and having that camera. I always, as a joke, I want to see your beautiful smiling faces. You know, that’s, I just want to see that, or I want to see when I say something wrong and it turns you off it, it hits you the wrong way. So that I know I can maybe afterwards or apologize to you, or we have a conversation. I saw that I said something in your face, kind of skewed a little bit. Cause most people don’t have poker faces, you know, but it’s important to have that camera on so we could see that you’re present so that you’re hearing the message and you can truly understand, going back to empathy, understanding. Dan Neumann: [27:47] Yeah. I share when I interview candidates, and we probably still have an advertisement running, so when I interview candidates, I’m like, look, you are here, your resume’s over to my right. I’m making notes down here. I’m not off on three different things. It’s just don’t be off put if I’m like up and over and down, like I’m all here for you. Quincy, it looked like you wanted to hop in.

Quincy Jordan: [28:06] Yeah, I actually I had to do the exact same thing. Like I’ll tell them, I’m taking notes over here. Have your resume in LinkedIn up over here. I’m looking at you right here. So if you see me looking around, it’s not that I’m not paying attention. It’s that I got all these monitors up and I’m taking notes and looking at things. And so forth, but it’s all about the conversation that we in right now. Yeah. So I do the exact same thing that’s kind of funny.

Dan Neumann: [28:31] One of the tips, I think all three of us have come across recently is a visualization technique for building some empathy for the other part. And the phrase is picture them like a five year old kind of young and innocent, et cetera. Differentiating that from expect the performance of a five year old. That’s not what we’re saying, but really putting yourself in trying to picture that person as somebody who’s well intentioned and well meaning. Have you guys found that to be successful? Have you tried it?

Quincy Jordan: [29:04] I have tried, recently, with some of the coaching things that we’ve been doing, as far as imagining them being younger. But prior to that, I would still try to take the perspective of assume good intent and which I think is the purpose in doing that particularly exercise. And so assuming good intent for me generally starts with, what would have motivated the person to do whatever it was? Like, what was the reason behind it? And mainly that whatever that was, I’m not preview to that information at the moment. So that immediately triggers in my mind, and this is just partly the way that I think, but immediately triggers in my mind, I have more unknowns than knowns. So that means there’s a variable or multiple variables out there that I’m not aware of. And if that’s the case, then I need to figure out a way to better understand those variables. So I can take those variables and assign something to them that is reasonable and make sense and should fairly be assigned to it. But assuming good intent, I think is, for me has been very, very healthy. I haven’t always done that and so it’s been very healthy for me for quite some time, once you know, I took that approach of, Hey, assume good intent until otherwise verified.

Kris Chavious: [30:46] Yeah. I love that. I love that because it’s depending on your personal head space, you just never know, if you’re having a rough day, you may think that that person is trying to do all kinds of things or, you know, and it’s like, just because that’s where my head is at right now, you know, but assuming good intent is like, you know what? They mean well, you know, trying to take it from the perspective you know they mean well. You know, not trying to sabotage anything or they mean, well, I like that approach because I personally have gone to the negative when someone’s done something or said something not really looking at the different angles where they could be coming from. So taking a step back to evaluate, you know, what they could have been thinking when they did something. I love that approach, Quincy. Quincy Jordan: [31:41] Thank you. And I think that when I look at, when it is a tough business climate, that is one of the scenarios where I find myself trying to do that even more than other situations, I guess, or, or maybe just a heightened sense of it, you know, at that time that, I mean, you can see it. I think most people are aware of it. Maybe sometimes they don’t know what to do with it, but you can see someone’s just having a bad day. Like you can tell, something’s going on, you don’t know exactly what it is, but something’s going on, and if you recognize that something’s going on, then I feel a personal responsibility to adjust, not pandering to it, not cosing it or not causing it to increase. But I feel a personal responsibility to say in this particular moment, I am the stronger person and at this time, because I’m the stronger person in this moment and they are having a weak moment, I need to carry some of their weakness in my strength. I feel a responsibility, you know, to do that because I see that something’s going on. Now, is that something that’s ongoing? No, at that point, that’s abuse. That’s someone taking advantage of a situation. But I see that as a personal responsibility in that particular moment to help that person out, not because it’s just, you know, part of my job or something, but because it’s another human being that is struggling with something. And maybe there’s a way that I can help, you know, in some small facet, you know, for today, like you never know what that might do. Like literally that person may be contemplating, some very catastrophic things in their life and you could actually impact them in the way that goes far beyond, you know, did we deliver all the stories or did we reach this sprint goal? And, you know, all of that stuff is important. But if we’re not looking at the human side of things, then, you know, I just feel like we’re missing the point.

Quincy Jordan: [34:15] So, definitely, and tying it back here and we’ll shift to a closing, tying it back to the kind of companies aren’t a thing by themselves. They’re a collection of humans organized to, you know, achieve a particular vision. And so it’s super important to remember the people part. So I would love to get some closing thoughts from each of you here as we get to the back part. And then I’ll be curious about your continuous learning journey as always. So, Kris, would you kind of give us a brief losing thought?

Kris Chavious: [34:46] And you just said it, I think ultimately people are people, people are not resources. Oftentimes we look at people as resources and we work them to capacity. At the end of the day, it’s a person and trying to understand where that person is coming from, trying to get to know that person as a person makes your empathy journey more impactful, because you’re getting to understand and feel that person, you get to know them. One thing I’ll close with, Quincy yesterday, you know, he said the pictures of the animals, and he said, which animal are you today? How are you feeling today? Which, you know, they were numbered, but it’s a post check. It was a post check to see how we’re feeling that day. And I think it’s important to, I do it all the time. I open my meeting with how’s everyone feeling, right? So that lets me kind of gives me a pulse of how things are going, how they’re going, how they’re doing. And hopefully they’re being transparent and honest, you know, cause the natural response is great or living the dream, you not living the dream, you look down, you know, you know, so is really truly getting to understand and get a post check how people are feeling. Cause ultimately people are people.

Quincy Jordan: [36:00] Yeah. I think I want to write off of that a little bit, there. So, and say that people are people too, right? So we may have also seen, you may have seen before, like those pumper stickers or t-shirts or whatever they say, pets are people too. Well, you know, people are people too, so let’s treat people in the way that we should. And I completely agree as far as like the resources and so forth, which is, another one of those trigger words for many, you know, because we have to admonish people, we have to encourage people, we have to provide opportunities. and I think the simplest way to do that is to just say, okay, well, how would I want someone to treat me then that is how I would treat someone else. Now that doesn’t always mean that’s always good. Some people don’t, you know, treat themselves very well. But, at least there’s an earnest effort, you know, if that’s the case and if there’s a earnest effort and there’s some level of sincerity there, then eventually the empathy is going to come to the top. Eventually it’s going to surface and eventually, it would cause people to walk away with a better experience by someone showing empathy towards them, be it a teammate manager, you know, C-Suite, whatever the case, they’ll be much better off, you know, in that way. And if we can do that, that’s great.

Dan Neumann: [37:49] Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. No, the people part, you know, being able to feel the feelings of the other person then use that in a good way, use it as you guys plot a course forward together. So it’s critical input into plans. So, I’m curious about continuous learning journeys. We’ll go backwards. Quincy, anything you want to share about your continuous learning journey?

Quincy Jordan: [38:13] Yeah. You know, I mentioned before, you know, I do a lot of reading and quite frankly, it’s not always like full books because it just takes too long. I like to kind of jump around and get the thing that I’m looking for. But I did hear about, this book the other day and it made me very curious. So I went and got it, went and bought it. I haven’t actually started reading it yet. I’ll probably start this weekend, but it’s called Do Nothing: How to break away from overworking, overdoing and underliving, by Celest Headley. And as I understand, you know, from what I learned so far without getting into it yet, it’s more about how culture shifted from essentially enjoying life to trying to work to live, and learning how to get back to that place. Obviously, still maintaining the responsibilities that you have and so forth, but enjoying life and not, you know, looking up 20, 30 years later and you know, what you accomplished was that you worked every day.

Dan Neumann: [39:30] Well, I’ll be curious to hear about that journey.

Quincy Jordan: [39:33] Sure, absolutely. But yeah, so I’m always curious about things like that, things that are that reference the bigger picture, how to harness the things that matter the most, that those are the types of things that, you know, tend to interest me and what we do every day as coaches and transformation, all that stuff. It’s just a way for me to express that.

Dan Neumann: [40:02] Perfect.

Kris Chavious: [40:03] You were talking about the book and I’m like, I’m reading the same book, but no, I’m not, but I’m reading a book just like that called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and it’s by, John Comer, but it’s same thing. People, you know, equate a good day of value on how much work they did. And it’s like, that’s how we’re programmed, but there’s been times where I’ve taken off work for a week just to do nothing. And it was the most amazing thing. Cause even when we go on vacations, we do stuff. We go ziplining and go ATV and no, we need to do nothing and just recharge. So yeah, I’m a big reader as well. I’m a big reader. Lately, I’ve been doing lots of mindfulness, meditations and things of that nature to be more self aware with me. 2021 was a busy year, had a lot going on and with full transparency, I lost a little bit of myself in a lot of things I had going on. So 2022 is more so about taking care of myself. One part of that is being more mindful of who I’m presenting myself as for the day. So I charge myself with mindfulness techniques and self awareness meditation. So I can make sure that I’m bringing my best self to the organization because energy is contagious.

Dan Neumann: [41:31] Perfect. A true story. So we’re going to leave it there with energy being contagious. And I want to appreciate the energy both of you brought and we’ll catch you on a future Agile Coaches Corner podcast. Thanks guys.

Outro: [41:45] This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views opinions and information expressed in this podcast asked are solely those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of AgileThought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.

Speakers

Dan Neumann

Principal Enterprise Coach

Dan Neuman is the Director of the US Transformation and Coaching practice in the Agility guild. He coaches organizations to transform the way they work to achieve their desired business outcomes.

With more than 25 years of experience, Dan Neumann is an experienced Agile Coach with a deep knowledge of Agility at the team and organizational levels. He focuses on achieving business outcomes by shifting both mindset and practices, resulting in a disciplined, yet practical approach to solving problems.

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Podcast Ep. 174: Practicing Empathy in Fast-Paced Environments with Kris Chavious and Quincy Jordan

Intro: [00:03]

Welcome to Agile Coach’s Corner by AgileThought the podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now, here’s your host, coach, and agile expert, Dan Neumann. Dan Neumann: [00:17

Quincy Jordan: [00:32]

Hey Dan, happy to be here as always enjoy being on the Agile Coach’s Corner Kris Chavious: [00:37

Dan Neumann: [00:41]

Wonderful. Sorry. I stepped on your toes there, Kris. Your verbal toes didn’t mean to, and we will appreciate the listeners as well. So want to definitely appreciate folks tuning in and today’s topic is kind of fun. We had one of our colleagues at Missy suggest the topic of empathy and then volunteer, Quincy, the opportunity to come on and talk about it. And we roped in Kris too. So we’re going to be talking about empathy and specifically it can be hard to find empathy in fast paced settings, which a lot of work is, and not just agile work, but all kinds of work. And it might be tough to kind of reconcile empathy with moving fast. There’s a lot of value potentially in bringing empathy to your work life. And so that’s what we’re going to be exploring is what it is in some ways to do that. So, Quincy, what are your thoughts on empathy in the value of bringing it to work?

Quincy Jordan: [01:36]

Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that, I think brought about this conversation with our colleague was, you know, the conversation around finding empathy in fast paced setting is oftentimes difficult and that while it might seem, it would be difficult to get them to reconcile. But you know, there are ways of staying agile and that, you know, one could bring empathy into the picture with teams and there’s several different ways to do that. I think empathy is a very critical component to any team and I believe that a display empathy makes see very significant, you know, difference with how well the team works together, how well the team jells, all those different things that, you know, help to contribute to a high performing team. Dan Neumann: [02:34

Kris Chavious: [02:49]

Yeah, I would say it is definitely valuable, obviously. It’s definitely valuable. I feel like it’s often overlooked. So the case of, you know, fast paced environment, we’re just moving and sometimes we forget to slow down and just feel, especially, in today’s climate with the pandemic and people having additional things on their plates is being mindful of that. But one thing that I did one time with the team that I was working with is when we built our working agreement, our team working agreement, we are on mural? And someone said, you know, can we have a, a box for values? And I never thought about that, individual values. Like what do we all value from a personal perspective? And then from a team perspective. So being able to understand someone’s values can kind of tie into empathy when it comes to dealing with that person one on one, you know, if you have a person that values full transparency and give it to me, give it to me, give it to me raw, give it to me. Right. You know, that I can just be straightforward with you, because that’s something that you value, you know. So understanding someone’s value and being able to use that and how you interact with them, I think is important.

Dan Neumann: [04:13]

Yeah. And I could see that, you know, the values as a input, if you will, into starting to build some of those empathy and then trying to figure out why that person might have that particular value or exploring that with them trying to put yourself in their shoes and understand why they value, you know, give it to me straight or, you know, whatever their input personal value might be.

Quincy Jordan: [04:38]

And I think part of, you know, the overall point with that is what you just said, then putting yourself in that person’s place, you know, seeing it from not only your point of view and it’s hard, you know, sometimes not to see things just from your world point of view. It takes a lot of intentional effort to really get outside of yourself and how to see things through the eyes and experiences of others. And so when I think about that, like from a leadership perspective and is there value placed on empathy? And I think oftentimes leaders are challenged with being able to do so, being able to find value in empathy, you know, there’s so many things coming at them that I think they take really almost like the most efficient route to try to get something done and remove the component that says, Hey, these are people that we’re talking about. These are people that we’re working with. These are people that we’re making decisions about. So I think it’s critical, you know, to appreciate that value, to show that empathy, to model that behavior as well, not just kind of give it lip service, but you know, to really truly try to model that be behavior because tough situations are going to occur. And so when they do, how do you respond to it? Do you respond to it with a no nonsense perspective, which there can be a time and place for that, or do you respond with a perspective that says, Hey, let me really try to understand what is actually happening to this individual emotionally, psychologically, what barriers are there that are preventing them from being able to bring their best self forward. And I think the more leaders take a similar type perspective, the better teams will perform the happier, or maybe not happier, the more fulfilled team members will be. I think that’s just really important to have that type of perspective from a leadership point of view.

Kris Chavious: [07:23]

Yeah, you were touching on something I was going to say Quincy. Leadership, the style of leadership is different when it comes in the agile space than it is in a traditional teams. So leading agile teams is a lot different than leading traditional teams. And what we find is that many agile leaders that we have on organizations have been around for quite some time. So they have their style leadership for the traditional teams. But when you have more of an agile team, we say, you know, agile teams are suppose to self-organized and when you have a team that’s self organizing the style leadership doesn’t work. So more so, instead of command is more so supportive. So you’re saying that these teams can self organize, but you have to be able to support them in the decisions that they make as well versus telling them what to do.

Quincy Jordan: [08:08]

Yeah. And I think that’s a really interesting point that, yes, we talk about teams stuff organizing, and I think that sometimes people don’t know what they’re signing up for when they say they’re going to allow teams to self organize. And I think it challenges their ability to be empathetic with teams that are making decisions that are not the decisions that they think they should make. Be it right or wrong. And sometimes you have to display that level of empathy in order to allow the team to mature, to learn, to fall, to get up, to crawl, you know, to do all those things that quite frankly are needed in order for a team to become a high performing team. Teams don’t start out as high performing teams. You know, individuals don’t necessarily start out as high performing individuals. they may in some spaces, but, you know, put them in uncharted regions, put them in uncharted territory and then, you know, they get challenge and now new behaviors come out. So it’s important to, one to be able to recognize that and to, really allow some leeway for that learning, you know, to take place.

Dan Neumann: [09:24]

I as you guys were talking, I was reflecting back on a couple instances in my past. Even in not very agile organizations where some empathy ability to put oneself as a leader in the place of the rest of the people, maybe being impacted by a policy rollout by a process change probably could have made the change more efficient because of all the lost energy that happens when people feel like they’re not heard. There’s the water cooler conversations, there’s the distractions, there’s the hallway, there’s the guessing, there’s the, well, why didn’t they think of it this way and that way and the other way. And so, while it seems like maybe it can be more efficient to not demonstrate empathy, like it’s just business, we’re changing the time off policy to include sick time versus, you know, having sick days and well days. You had a couple people in your organization who really valued the sick policy, and now they’re like, wait, I have to take vacation when I’m sick, that’s jacked up. And, they’re like, I can’t tell you how many lost hours that was while people tried to debrief that. And, it wasn’t handled with empathy in the scenario that comes to mind. Quincy Jordan: [10:40

Kris Chavious: [13:58]

Yeah, I’ve been somewhere, what they called it, they had a cult “just get it done” and they would tag items as just get it done. And like in JIRA, like just get it done, that’s what we need to do. And it didn’t matter what the team was. Some of the hesitations or concerns that they had, this is what the customer’s expecting, just get it done. But there was a disconnect because the work being done or the work that was being requested was being requested to the leader and not the actual team. So it was a disconnect when that customer probably should have been talking with the team so they could have that level of understanding between just get it done and why these are some of the concerns that we have and kind of meeting someone in the middle.

Dan Neumann: [14:46]

Yeah. That’s really interesting to think of put on my Kanban thinking hat there, if the clarity that just get it done does from an ordering standpoint, seems like it could potentially be good, but if it’s just get it done, I don’t give two hoots about what else is on your plate, that definitely shows a lack of empathy.

Dan Neumann: [15:08]

You guys touched on self organization or self-management was brought up a little bit earlier. And I thought it’d be interesting to kind of look at empathy from that standpoint. So for a lot of people, especially folks that are maybe newer to agile, they are used to being given work to do by a manager who presumably got to that level because they had some expertise, they, you know, demonstrated competence, they’re the ones who are supposed to figure out the tough problems and then hand a solution off to be implemented by others. And I’ve had more than once the people that are now being asked to go self-managed like, wait a minute, just tell me what to do, right? that’s your job. Your job is to tell me what to do. It’s not my job to go figure out how to solve the problem. I’m just a developer. I’m just a quality person. I’m just an analyst, et cetera. And so I think even as agile coaches, or maybe even, especially as agile coaches being aware of the impact to job descriptions, role expectations, potential impact to career paths, all those different things, even just the simple phrase of self-management, which carries a tremendous amount of change with it. Quincy Jordan: [16:20

Dan Neumann: [18:44]

And Kris, it looked like you wanted to hop in. I wanted to emphasize that the phrase you said, Quincy real quick is what does that empowerment feel like? So putting yourself in the other persons, you’ve just changed their world, try and feel what they feel. Yeah. Kris. Kris Chavious: [18:59

Quincy Jordan: [20:11]

Yeah. Nothing kills confidence, more than someone just literally bringing down the hammer as soon as, you know, someone makes a mistake. Like you can almost guarantee you have shut that person down. Not only that person, but anyone else that witnessed it, it is going to take a significant amount of time and effort to recover from that. And you know, that type of, to some of degree, unintended consequence is dangerous. You know, like, I’ll go so far as to say it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. Not only to the team, but it’s dangerous to the organization because you have just single handedly affected how the team is going to deliver value. and that is a large part of, you know, why the team exists. What they’re supposed to be doing is to deliver value.

Commercial: [21:04]

Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast@agilethought.com or tweet it with a #agilethoughtpodcast.

Dan Neumann: [21:15]

I think several of our examples have been about leaders having empathy towards, you know, the people that are leading super important. You can do that by listening to your team, the teams, around your peers, et cetera, about what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling and trying to put that in there. So it’s active listening is a key to building empathy. I also think it’s important for everybody to think about the layer up and up above them and try to also be a little bit empathetic. There are some leaders who, you know, you don’t want to work for. Vote with your feet. It’s the wrong place to be. Other times it’s just they’re also in a tough spot. It’s easy to be like, well, I’m in a tough spot. Well, they’re probably weighing several facets too. And they’re probably also feeling a little bit to fear or uncertainty or some other feelings that you’re would do well to maybe try to comprehend as well. And it makes the decisions sometimes seem more sensible. So that phrase, why would a reasonable person behave that way? For me has been a key to starting to build some empathy for the other person. Okay. That looked weird. Why would they do that? I wonder if X, Y, or Z.

Quincy Jordan: [22:31]

Yeah, I don’t think the empathy t-shirt only fits based on hierarchal, you know, decisions. So I think it should be demonstrated not only top down but bottom up. I think it should be demonstrated laterally, diagonally if that’s a thing, you know, and I think it should just be demonstrated in every direction because I think I was on a call, I think it was yesterday or day before yesterday. And, you know, someone had mentioned about, Hey, you know, people can take all the agile approach they want, but the leaders they were talking about were like C-suite level and so forth. Well, they’re measured based on quarterly earnings oftentimes, they’re measured on annual, you know, decisions. And so the comment was they have to factor that they have to look at things from a longer view, a longer roadmap. And I’m like, you’re absolutely right. You know, they have to like, that is how they need to view things in those who are part of that structure that are not at those levels, do need to understand that, they do need to understand that if you are, whether you’re a public company or not, but you know, you can’t, I would be remissive if I were to say that, Hey, yeah, I think it’s great for the CEO to decide today what’s going to happen over the next two weeks and not look out further than that. Like, that would be a major concern for me. You’re not looking a lot further than that?

Dan Neumann: [24:31]

That doesn’t scale very well. Quincy Jordan: [24:32

Dan Neumann: [25:59]

For sure. For sure. Kris, you want to maybe explore being present in meetings, which I think is super challenging, especially as a remote team. I mean, I’m sitting here with you guys, I’ve got the screen in front of me, a screen to each side and I’ve gotten my not to mention, you know, can we plug apple devices, iPhone the iPad, right. There’s so many things that ding and buzz and call for attention. I’ll open up a browser to, you know, go check Azure DevOps. And I’m like, how did Facebook pop up on my screen 10 minutes later? I’m like, how did that happen, I’m like, I’m lost, and so presence is part of building empathy.

Kris Chavious: [26:35]

Yeah. That’s a big thing. One of the challenges I have, or I’ve had is, you know, turn the cameras on. You know, you have some places that culturally it’s just not something that they do, but having the camera on it shows as a indication that you’re present. You’re not looking over here. You’re not looking down, I’m looking at the screen, I’m here. I’m giving you my attention. So that’s a challenge you have because from people are just not used to having that camera on. So it’s important to talk about the benefits of being present and having that camera. I always, as a joke, I want to see your beautiful smiling faces. You know, that’s, I just want to see that, or I want to see when I say something wrong and it turns you off it, it hits you the wrong way. So that I know I can maybe afterwards or apologize to you, or we have a conversation. I saw that I said something in your face, kind of skewed a little bit. Cause most people don’t have poker faces, you know, but it’s important to have that camera on so we could see that you’re present so that you’re hearing the message and you can truly understand, going back to empathy, understanding. Dan Neumann: [27:47

Quincy Jordan: [28:06]

Yeah, I actually I had to do the exact same thing. Like I’ll tell them, I’m taking notes over here. Have your resume in LinkedIn up over here. I’m looking at you right here. So if you see me looking around, it’s not that I’m not paying attention. It’s that I got all these monitors up and I’m taking notes and looking at things. And so forth, but it’s all about the conversation that we in right now. Yeah. So I do the exact same thing that’s kind of funny.

Dan Neumann: [28:31]

One of the tips, I think all three of us have come across recently is a visualization technique for building some empathy for the other part. And the phrase is picture them like a five year old kind of young and innocent, et cetera. Differentiating that from expect the performance of a five year old. That’s not what we’re saying, but really putting yourself in trying to picture that person as somebody who’s well intentioned and well meaning. Have you guys found that to be successful? Have you tried it?

Quincy Jordan: [29:04]

I have tried, recently, with some of the coaching things that we’ve been doing, as far as imagining them being younger. But prior to that, I would still try to take the perspective of assume good intent and which I think is the purpose in doing that particularly exercise. And so assuming good intent for me generally starts with, what would have motivated the person to do whatever it was? Like, what was the reason behind it? And mainly that whatever that was, I’m not preview to that information at the moment. So that immediately triggers in my mind, and this is just partly the way that I think, but immediately triggers in my mind, I have more unknowns than knowns. So that means there’s a variable or multiple variables out there that I’m not aware of. And if that’s the case, then I need to figure out a way to better understand those variables. So I can take those variables and assign something to them that is reasonable and make sense and should fairly be assigned to it. But assuming good intent, I think is, for me has been very, very healthy. I haven’t always done that and so it’s been very healthy for me for quite some time, once you know, I took that approach of, Hey, assume good intent until otherwise verified.

Kris Chavious: [30:46]

Yeah. I love that. I love that because it’s depending on your personal head space, you just never know, if you’re having a rough day, you may think that that person is trying to do all kinds of things or, you know, and it’s like, just because that’s where my head is at right now, you know, but assuming good intent is like, you know what? They mean well, you know, trying to take it from the perspective you know they mean well. You know, not trying to sabotage anything or they mean, well, I like that approach because I personally have gone to the negative when someone’s done something or said something not really looking at the different angles where they could be coming from. So taking a step back to evaluate, you know, what they could have been thinking when they did something. I love that approach, Quincy. Quincy Jordan: [31:41

Quincy Jordan: [34:15]

So, definitely, and tying it back here and we’ll shift to a closing, tying it back to the kind of companies aren’t a thing by themselves. They’re a collection of humans organized to, you know, achieve a particular vision. And so it’s super important to remember the people part. So I would love to get some closing thoughts from each of you here as we get to the back part. And then I’ll be curious about your continuous learning journey as always. So, Kris, would you kind of give us a brief losing thought?

Kris Chavious: [34:46]

And you just said it, I think ultimately people are people, people are not resources. Oftentimes we look at people as resources and we work them to capacity. At the end of the day, it’s a person and trying to understand where that person is coming from, trying to get to know that person as a person makes your empathy journey more impactful, because you’re getting to understand and feel that person, you get to know them. One thing I’ll close with, Quincy yesterday, you know, he said the pictures of the animals, and he said, which animal are you today? How are you feeling today? Which, you know, they were numbered, but it’s a post check. It was a post check to see how we’re feeling that day. And I think it’s important to, I do it all the time. I open my meeting with how’s everyone feeling, right? So that lets me kind of gives me a pulse of how things are going, how they’re going, how they’re doing. And hopefully they’re being transparent and honest, you know, cause the natural response is great or living the dream, you not living the dream, you look down, you know, you know, so is really truly getting to understand and get a post check how people are feeling. Cause ultimately people are people.

Quincy Jordan: [36:00]

Yeah. I think I want to write off of that a little bit, there. So, and say that people are people too, right? So we may have also seen, you may have seen before, like those pumper stickers or t-shirts or whatever they say, pets are people too. Well, you know, people are people too, so let’s treat people in the way that we should. And I completely agree as far as like the resources and so forth, which is, another one of those trigger words for many, you know, because we have to admonish people, we have to encourage people, we have to provide opportunities. and I think the simplest way to do that is to just say, okay, well, how would I want someone to treat me then that is how I would treat someone else. Now that doesn’t always mean that’s always good. Some people don’t, you know, treat themselves very well. But, at least there’s an earnest effort, you know, if that’s the case and if there’s a earnest effort and there’s some level of sincerity there, then eventually the empathy is going to come to the top. Eventually it’s going to surface and eventually, it would cause people to walk away with a better experience by someone showing empathy towards them, be it a teammate manager, you know, C-Suite, whatever the case, they’ll be much better off, you know, in that way. And if we can do that, that’s great.

Dan Neumann: [37:49]

Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. No, the people part, you know, being able to feel the feelings of the other person then use that in a good way, use it as you guys plot a course forward together. So it’s critical input into plans. So, I’m curious about continuous learning journeys. We’ll go backwards. Quincy, anything you want to share about your continuous learning journey?

Quincy Jordan: [38:13]

Yeah. You know, I mentioned before, you know, I do a lot of reading and quite frankly, it’s not always like full books because it just takes too long. I like to kind of jump around and get the thing that I’m looking for. But I did hear about, this book the other day and it made me very curious. So I went and got it, went and bought it. I haven’t actually started reading it yet. I’ll probably start this weekend, but it’s called Do Nothing: How to break away from overworking, overdoing and underliving, by Celest Headley. And as I understand, you know, from what I learned so far without getting into it yet, it’s more about how culture shifted from essentially enjoying life to trying to work to live, and learning how to get back to that place. Obviously, still maintaining the responsibilities that you have and so forth, but enjoying life and not, you know, looking up 20, 30 years later and you know, what you accomplished was that you worked every day.

Dan Neumann: [39:30]

Well, I’ll be curious to hear about that journey.

Quincy Jordan: [39:33]

Sure, absolutely. But yeah, so I’m always curious about things like that, things that are that reference the bigger picture, how to harness the things that matter the most, that those are the types of things that, you know, tend to interest me and what we do every day as coaches and transformation, all that stuff. It’s just a way for me to express that.

Dan Neumann: [40:02]

Perfect.

Kris Chavious: [40:03]

You were talking about the book and I’m like, I’m reading the same book, but no, I’m not, but I’m reading a book just like that called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and it’s by, John Comer, but it’s same thing. People, you know, equate a good day of value on how much work they did. And it’s like, that’s how we’re programmed, but there’s been times where I’ve taken off work for a week just to do nothing. And it was the most amazing thing. Cause even when we go on vacations, we do stuff. We go ziplining and go ATV and no, we need to do nothing and just recharge. So yeah, I’m a big reader as well. I’m a big reader. Lately, I’ve been doing lots of mindfulness, meditations and things of that nature to be more self aware with me. 2021 was a busy year, had a lot going on and with full transparency, I lost a little bit of myself in a lot of things I had going on. So 2022 is more so about taking care of myself. One part of that is being more mindful of who I’m presenting myself as for the day. So I charge myself with mindfulness techniques and self awareness meditation. So I can make sure that I’m bringing my best self to the organization because energy is contagious.

Dan Neumann: [41:31]

Perfect. A true story. So we’re going to leave it there with energy being contagious. And I want to appreciate the energy both of you brought and we’ll catch you on a future Agile Coaches Corner podcast. Thanks guys.

Outro: [41:45]

This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views opinions and information expressed in this podcast asked are solely those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of AgileThought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.

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