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@chrismurman
Why Are We So Obsessed With Making Work "Fun"?
One of the best 360-degree review statements ever written about me describes the earliest days of leading software teams for me. There are chances I’ve written this into a post before because I use this story so many times in coaching situations. I wish I had framed the exact wording on my desk because it is both hilarious and embarrassing. “I’m not sure how productive we were on Murman’s team,…
Is What Agile Took From Me Worth It's Gifts?
It’s really in vogue to mock Agile right now. As much as I want to cast aside or ignore the comments made by everyone online, it’s hard to blame them. Jobs are super fickle, and organizations aren’t as willing to invest in the practices I’ve spent the past decade promoting. The conferences I’ve enjoyed aren’t selling as many tickets, because companies don’t see the need to fund the learning…
Transformation Is NOT A Group Activity
I think it’s fun to explore and learn what your spirit animal is. This is not meant to be a controversial take. In fact, you’re not even required to believe there is a “spirit” inside of you being represented by an animal. When I first clicked my way through a survey many years ago, I was mostly taking it to laugh at whatever it spat out. Little did I know it would encapsulate the work I spent…
What Are You Willing To Give Up To Change?
Please forgive the bragging, but I’d like to tell you about how I lost some weight this year. Eat the tomato instead of throwing it. When we were all locked indoors during the pandemic, I worried about texts I was getting from friends about regaining their college freshman fifteen. Perhaps it’s a new fifteen, feel free to attach any number designator you desire. My desire to stay somewhat in…
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Are Agile Transformations Adding Fuel To The Fire?
In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, there were 25 world records set in swimming competitions. If that sounds like a lot to be broken in a single year of events, it’s because it was at the time. Of those records set, 23 of them were broken wearing full-body tech suits according to Swimming World Magazine. “With ultrasonically welded seams and a zipper, the suit compressed a swimmer’s body…
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Is It Possible You Are Your Own Product?
When I first started working at Bottle Rocket Studios helping clients craft world-class mobile experiences, I thought I was an expert. I had spent years telling the world I was on my blog. Had even finished my pages for a book on building apps that I’ve bored you all about more than I should. I was the expert and I was expecting to be recognized as such there. Only to realize everyone knew the…
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How Do I Transform Mental Health Into Mental Toughness?
How Do I Transform Mental Health Into Mental Toughness?
This year marks a decade of this space. Before I begin, I wanted to thank each of you for reading. When I first started writing, I had dreams of carving out space as a thought leader in mobile technology. Took me down a path where I had to learn content strategies, social media referrals, and find the voice I wanted to project. Digital relationships became my currency. This blog helped me get a…
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Someone On Your Team Is Lonely Right Now, Perhaps Its You
Took me most of this year to get to a point where I could write this.
If you’ve never met Jake Calabrese, you should find a way to. He makes me happy every time I see him at a conference or get a text from him. Mostly, it’s due to him being an absolute wacko who knows how to make people laugh and makes everyone in the circle feel connected to him and the silly story he’s telling at that moment. I’m thankful to have many friends like Jake, but seeing him this year…
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Have You Ever Defined Fatherhood?
Have You Ever Defined Fatherhood?
“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”Winston Churchill I don’t know many men who have had the privilege to discuss with their fathers what it truly means to be a father. We discuss the duties of fatherhood. The desire to see our children succeed, however that may be. Stories of being faithful, hardworking, sacrifice, and the like, are told to us…
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How Would Stoics View Org Transformation?
How Would Stoics View Org Transformation?
“When the number of options available are limited, it is foolish to fuss and fret. We should instead simply choose the best of them and move on with life. To behave otherwise is to waste precious time and energy.”William B. Irvine, The Stoic Challenge On my best days, I feel like these words personify the work of organizational transformation. A problem is presented, and then a review of the…
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It's Okay To Talk About How Terrible 2021 Was -Now We Need to figure out what to do next
Felt so much better writing about this.
Remember when we all gathered in masses to see bands play live? We’ve all met these types of people before. The random stranger who walks by you after leaving screams, “that band was awesome!” Yeah, dude. We were in there with you just now. You don’t need to tell us something we all just witnessed. We get it. That’s what the past two weeks have been like for me reading year-end posts from…
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Why Do I Constantly Feel My Ideas Are Dumb?
Have you ever left a meeting wondering why nobody gave your idea consideration? You're not alone, and I would like to talk about what happens as a result.
The last writing experience I had in this space was quite the roller coaster. I had an idea pop into my head while I was doing something unrelated. Without a deluge of meetings or pressing tasks in front of me, I cranked out the post it in a couple of hours. Don’t worry, the roller coaster part is coming. Since I had discussed the idea with my wife before writing, I decided to send Beth the…
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What's Your Transformation Persona?
What’s Your Transformation Persona?
I’m a member of the last generation to know life before the Internet. I’ve been able to witness how people have managed to craft personas based on their time spent online. This didn’t happen on purpose, of course. We saw this raw nerve connected to a network of other nerve endings capable of anything. Had no idea how together or alone we were in this exposure, so there was a lot of feeling around…
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Do We Really Need a Code of Ethics in Agile Coaching?
Do We Really Need a Code of Ethics in Agile Coaching?
Ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.
— Oxford Dictionary
One of my favorite improvements to running conferences (when we used to attend those in person) was adding a code of conduct. It was clear the behavior of a few dictated the need for everyone to play by a different set of rules. Granted, it hasn’t halted all of the behavior it was…
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As a White Man Trying To Make Sense of What’s Going On Around Me...
As a White Man Trying To Make Sense of What’s Going On Around Me…
This weekend I watched Just Mercy, an amazing story of a lawyer who went to bat for people who needed an advocate for them on death row. At the end of the movie, the lawyer played by Michael B. Jordan said, “We can’t change the world with only ideas in our minds. We need conviction in our hearts.” It brought tears to my mind in light of what’s happened in the past two weeks.
Before I go on,…
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Random Thoughts From My Quarantine
As I type this opener, I’ve snuck out of my house to a secluded bench in East Dallas near the lake I love. It’s a beautiful spring day that would normally have the bike and running path filled with attempted fitness seekers like myself. Picnics should be occurring at the Arboretum, and the Farmer’s Market should be filled with people fellowshipping together.
It’s just not the case.
Nearly a…
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What A Complex Relationship With Emotions Has Meant To Me
My friend Kirby and I were chatting several years ago. We were both project managers running teams at a mobile dev shop having the time of our lives. We had a lot of things in common that we felt made us successful.
Passionate, organized, and great with clients. Team members really enjoyed being with us because we try to have fun and will fight for them. We also had a tendency at that time to get a little wonky when things got stressful.
You see, we are both emotional people.
Other peers were able to keep calm and remain focused when things caught fire, and we saw them being lauded for it. Some were even promoted, and we wondered if our emotions were getting in the way of that.
To our credit, we both were successful in our own ways. I was eventually placed over our agile practice, and she’s now a PM director at that same company. Maybe we were just young at the time and had not been stepped on by challenges to know how to respond. Our boss at the time did an amazing job acknowledging our emotions, and yet at the same time we knew we had to keep them in check to be successful.
Nevertheless, the conversations we had at that time still ring true looking back. In professional settings, often the unspoken rule is to keep your cool when things go wrong. The same question we used to ask ourselves still needs consideration.
Will an emotional person be able to be as successful as someone who’s more stoic?
We’re still not supposed to be that emotional.
Becoming sad and insecure in moments of stress will result in me being known as the colleague that cries at the drop of the hat. Losing my temper can result in me either retreating into myself and unresponsive to others, or flying off the handle to become the leader that yells at the closest person to me.
All of them can have severely negative reactions in careers where the wrong words from a client or colleague can leave me looking for new work.
It began when I was a child when my emotions were used against me as the kid who people made cry on the playground. I turned into an aggressive adult with a chip on his shoulder as a young adult as a result. Kept my sense of humor through it all, and I”m thankful to learn quickly. So as I was building something of an IT career, I thought I could overcome my emotions.
Add to that I’m a male who grew up in West Texas, where emotions weren’t really welcome on the football field. There were more than a few conversations where I was told to stop crying by adults.
Perhaps even learn to stifle them to the point where I can craft myself into a better version of myself. It’s a little shameful to admit that to all of you now, but I really wanted to change who I was inside so I could be the type of employee I thought I was supposed to be.
At the time I had some experience being a scrum master and product manager. Even showed a few other teams a few tips on how to better use the manifesto to improve the way they work. It was at the moment I got to start coaching teams where the complex relationship with my emotions too a turn for the better.
I would show up looking for a way to help, and thus ask them a few questions about how they felt about their current way of working. What came out were many different answers than I was expecting. It dealt with more of their feelings than I ever thought people would admit to me. Sure, it was wrapped around too many defects or moody scrum masters, but there was a lot of emotion when they talked to me.
Eventually, I became known as the person you confided to when things were going poorly. Jokingly even set up scrum “confessional” sessions. Even though I was clueless about how to help with some of their problems I was learning so much about the emotions of others and how they impacted their work. One teammate even pulled me into a room to confess an attempted suicide.
I was swimming in emotions. Just weren’t my own.
One could think I would be completely out of my depth for these conversations with my previous struggles with my own emotions. Instead, my emotions allowed me to connect in ways I’ve never thought possible with colleagues.
What happens when new challenges wreck all that growth?
It was around this time where my marriage fell apart, and my ex moved our kids far away from me. Living on my own, swimming in these emotions, I had to get ahold of my own again.
I also saw in my young son a similar story forming. He processes his thoughts externally and often struggles to keep his emotions from taking over situations. My hurt was doubling because I was scared he was “cursed” with my makeup.
Went back to questioning how I would be productive when I was filled with own conflict and a healthy amount of questioning about my self-worth.
A change in scenery was necessary, so I decided to take my budding coaching skills on the road consulting with clients as opposed to an internal version. Would my emotions be able to function in this scary world of high dollar-per-hour face time with people?
There was a lot of good and bad in those early days. I would be on cloud nine wowing everyone with my facilitation skills or workshop creation. Could also be in very depressed states where I wondered if I would always be let down by this cloud of emotions seemed to get me into trouble when I would get upset.
I learned of radical candor, emotional intelligence, and unconscious bias. My skills were increasing, and awareness was growing. There just seemed to be a glass ceiling to my self-image because of these darn emotions.
It was at this time where a very good friend offered her services as a life coach to help me get to know myself again. Pradeepa helped me realize that I was spending so much time being aware of the emotions of others. Helping them understand and deal with them. And at the same time, I was ignoring my own.
Some of you can see where this was headed. Strange how often we are the last to see what was going on with us.
It wasn’t really about my emotions after all.
My emotions became a representation of the part of myself I didn’t really like. I saw them as the cause for so many struggles I had my entire life. In reality, my complex relationship with them wasn’t so complex at all. I simply had to understand my emotions made me amazing.
They were my superpower the entire time. My emotions allow me to connect to myself more easily. Understand how I feel, as well as others, and help us all see where they originate from. Now that I have found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, I’m allowing myself to be the emotional creature Beth needs. Sure as hell deserves it.
Do I get emotional when I’m on calls with clients still? You bet. When I get called out and respond defensively, I can admit how I’m feeling and apologize. Conflict seems less like a struggle, and more of an invitation to become curious (thanks Lyssa).
Accepting myself was easier than I thought. Just needed to give my emotions permission to exist. I’m okay when they go overboard in relation to the situation, provided I take the time to find out why. I’m no longer held captive by my emotions.
I embrace them.
If you have ever felt this way, please reach out. I would love to help. I want to share with you how amazing your emotions are. They aren’t a mistake. You are not broken. We’ve never been. We’ve just misunderstood ourselves.
Let those superpowers loose, and help others understand their emotions aren’t a bad thing.
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