 Right. So this is how this is going to go. I am going to introduce a little bit of pop culture as well, which I've also been told you shouldn't do Jeff because not everybody will have the same reference points. But trust me, you don't need to know the pop culture reference you don't need to have seen Ted lasso. But if you have brilliant welcome. If you have seen it. Don't spoil it for anyone. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend trying to watch it. It's a fantastic film, very, very serious TV show, very funny, very funny. So I'm going to talk about what is mastering. I'll talk about what is coaching and I'll talk about what Ted lasso thinks about coaching and where the challenges in coaching for mastery might be both for the coach and the person being coached. And I'll try and bring in a couple of possible coaching tools that might be useful for you that you could take away before as Jamie hinted at touching on what I'm doing next. My focus is so there's Ted. Maybe you didn't know what the title was, but you might have seen the picture somewhere. It's about an American running football team. You can. Anyway, what is mastery? Well, Jamie mentioned one of my books scrum mastery, the three of my agile books, plus, plus a little fun side hustle with Nigel Baker and Paul Goddard pun mastery, they've all got the word mastery in them. Because I think mastery is very important, but it's also a bit of a play on words and that we were talking about scrum masters. So it's a little bit of a pun on that, but mastery is actually a topic that was attempted to be brought into the learning objectives of the agile training industry as well. So it came from a guy called Benjamin Bloom. Back in the 1960s. So even if you haven't heard of him and you haven't heard of the concept of mastery within education. You will have somehow even indirectly being exposed to what he talks about with regards to mastery through his learning taxonomy because I know the scrum alliance and scrum.org use Bloom's taxonomy and their learning objectives designed so this isn't to do with learning objectives as such, but he was looking at students in schools and how despite having the same lessons and the same teachers and very, very the same student achievement and trying to work out why that was and how some teachers can teach very, very differently and have different results and so on. He thought there were a few common factors that affected the ability for students to achieve what he called mastery. So his definition of master is on the screen here and the interest is in what you think of it really because it's not about what we call wrote learning. It's not about learning the right answer and the right way to achieve the right answer. What Bloom was defining as mastery is the ability to take a skill, take a concept and in unfamiliar circumstances, apply that concept or that skill. So learning some theory, perhaps learning a rule learning a formula, but then being able to apply it in different contexts. That's how he defined mastery. And that I think, given the unpredictable nature of the world that most of us are working the complex environment. It's rare that we're faced with situations where we can predict and follow predictable actions to achieve predictable outcomes. So what Bloom recommended is that students were to be given time, but also lots of contextual information when they're learning. Rather than being told to just read and remember or listen and remember, they were told to try and work on their own to try and solve real life problems. Think about the application of a theory to the subject reflect on it and for teachers to try and effectively step back from jumping in and helping. So letting people learn through mistakes if you like learn from experience rather than being rescued very, very quickly. And again, I mentioned it already, but it's important to know that it takes time to achieve this. It's not just a case of going to a class or even a series. Hold on to that while I introduce the second topic, the second topic won't be that unfamiliar for you as a community, I know. But one of the, one of the professional bodies that I'm a member of is the International Coaching Federation. And there are many different types of coaching organizations out there. I'm not here to send the praises of one or the other, but there is within that organization. A definition of coaching that includes ensuring people knowing what coaching is. So the ICF defined coaching as partnering, which I think is an interesting first word to choose with clients and a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them, not teaches them, tells them, inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. So as well as the partnering side of things, which I think is important, defining the coaches as a kind of partner for the person they're coaching. We also introduced this idea of a creative process. Now, I don't know about you, but when I see the word or think of the word creative, generally, I start thinking about subjective things. I start thinking about art. I start thinking about music. I start thinking about animation, things like that. I don't think of straightforward. I don't think of simplistic things. I don't think of rituals. I think of very creative, artistic work. And I think that's quite important. I think the fact that the ICF includes both personal and professional potential is important, because I don't think it's actually possible to split work life from home life. Even before we were most of us working from home all the time, we're living from work. This definition also goes on to specify that the agenda, not hearing this definition, but later on in the ICS definition, the agenda for coaching is always that of the clients. So the person being coached is always in charge of what they're being coached on. Now, many years ago, I was brought into one of a big consultancy company to provide some coaching for some people. And it turned out pretty quickly that coaching was a remedial process within that organization. It was given, it was only given to people who were deemed to be poor performance. And it was a manager's almost last resort to try and get this person to increase their performance through coaching. So the agenda was the manager, not the client. And I refuse to take that coaching engagement. That was an ICF definition of coaching. It's not about offering advice according to the ICF. Coaching isn't about solving people's problems. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but that would be more in the realm of mentoring or perhaps teaching or management. From the world of professional coaching, it's much more of a process of, you've probably heard this phrase, holding a mirror so that people can see what they can't see from their current perspective. I'm always told to remember that some things look bigger in a mirror. Right, so here goes, trying to explain something without getting too much away. So Ted Lasso, TV series about an American football coach, so he's both American and an American football coach, who gets hired by an English football or what he would call soccer team in England. And pretty quickly, he admits quite openly that he doesn't know the rules of the game. He doesn't even know how football or soccer works, but he takes the job anyway. Now, first of all, I think that is, you could call it brave, you could call it stupid, but at least it's interesting. You could take a job in a sport where you don't even in industries that I know nothing about. So I've worked in telecoms, I've worked in finance, I've worked in publishing, I've worked in pharmaceuticals. I don't know how a phone works. I don't know how interest rates work, let alone derivatives. I don't know how drugs are researched. I don't know any of this stuff. And yet I'm coaching in these industries. So for me, it was a, okay, that's kind of what I do. And I would suggest that a lot of you who are working in a complex domain actually don't really know what's going on. A lot of the time, and that's not meant to be an insult. It's quite normal for coaches to not know the details. But here, the chances are, by the time you actually understood it, things would have changed. And a lot of the problems that we face when working in this complex, unknown fast change in space are things like our cognitive biases. The things that we think without realising we think of are limiting beliefs, our assumptions about what's possible, either for us, for the people, our organisations, society, our assumptions, our habits and our default perspectives. When we're dealing with challenges like that, what we typically need to do is be quite explicit about the fact that we're shifting what we call the dominant metaphor from I am the expert to you are the expert. And along with that, we're shifting from I need to motivate you and monitor your performance to assuming that you are intrinsically motivated to perform and improve. And if anyway, I can stop you from becoming demotivated. So personally, I find it a lot easier to coach somebody if I don't know the domain. So if you're interested in reading up, there's an interesting book called the inner game. Some of you probably already read it, where there was fascinating. It was it's sport right so it starts with tennis but it also introduced the concept of golf, where teachers from different sports or coaches from different sports, took on students from the other sport, and actually their lack of knowledge of the game, help them coach. So that's the positioning Ted Lasso as an uneducated in the domain, but very educated in the world of coaching, and that that's enough in a complex space. So, a little bit more about Ted. Ted's generally a nice guy. You might call him a little naive. But ultimately, he has a positive view of the world. He has a positive view of people. And in one of the scenes he was being asked by members of the press about the pressures of winning. And he, I would say this was a relatively risky statement that he talks about success not being about the wins and the losses. You don't have ties. But it's about helping young people become the best versions of themselves on and off the field. Now, anyone who follows any kind of elite sports will probably know that you don't keep your job for long, if you lose all the time. But there is also in most sports and business, I would suggest and life, a short term and a long term game being played at the same time. There's the short term we want to win now. And the long term, we need to develop something for the future. And ICF have this view of human nature that I would, I would say that even if Ted Lasser wasn't a member of the ICF, but it's thumbs up to which is that every person that we're coaching is creative and resourceful and a whole. By trusting the process of coaching, the chances of success for that person being coached however that person defines success is increased. But that's quite a scary concept for a lot of people who's admittedly quite scary for me what if, what if those people don't know what success is what if they think they know what success is but they don't. And there's always that pressure from an organizational perspective from a management perspective from a shareholder from a personal perspective. I would rather achieve something now than invest in my development and maybe when something in the future, right, that would be a, that's a natural human logical fallacy called temporal discount. We focus on the short term over the long term. So we have this pressure. And if I'm, if I have that as a natural part of who I am, then when I'm coaching, that's going to play a part in our coach. Because I get a kick from winning, I get a kick from achieving, I get a kick from helping, I get a kick from solving problems. So there'll always be a temptation on me as a coach to go for that quick fix to achieve something tangible now. And people being coached, there will always be a little bit in the back of their mind of, yeah, I could solve this myself and yeah, that would be nice. But, you know, if you've got something that will definitely work, you know, if it's tested and reliable and you've got some advice. Don't make me reinvent the wheel just just tell me, I'll get there quicker. So we'll always have those short term temptations. But complex space again, it's not about the here and now as much as it is resilience for an ongoing, ever changing future. I do, when I'm speaking to people that I coach and anybody else who makes the mistake of asking me what I do for a living. So we will often try and explain by defining what coaching isn't as much as what coaching is. So not being a bad manager. Equally, it's also not therapy. All right. So Ted loves meeting people's minds because that's why you're all messed up and you know, put therapy on one hand maybe that's also useful. But coaching isn't therapy. Therapy focuses on the past, whereas coaching focuses on the future. Therapy assumes people are broken and need fixing. Coaching assumes people are whole and creative and resourceful and can solve their own problems. It's not saying that you should have one or the other or one is better. I would argue that most of the people that I coach could probably do with a bit of therapy as well. In my experience, a combination of all three is pretty powerful. But I think it really is important to define that coaching isn't mentoring and it's not therapy. Now this is where I take my biggest risk. So I'm changing sports again. I've mentioned tennis, I've mentioned golf, I've mentioned American football, I've mentioned real football, soccer. Most of those sports you're probably at least familiar with in passing. But I'm going to mention a more niche sport now, which is cricket. Some of you are familiar with cricket, but I'm pretty sure not all of you will be. And I'm not going to explain the rules of the game because that's not important. But my middle child plays cricket has done for a number of years and just because parents are a cheap resource. When he was playing for a local team, I was often corralled in to help. I was corralled in to be an umpire, a referee type person to help coach the children and provide effectively free childcare for a couple of hours in a weekend. And as an incentive for enticing me in the club offered to pay for me to get qualified as a coach with the national cricket ball. I thought, oh, this would be interesting. You know, if nothing else, I'll get to, I'll get to learn something about a different type of coaching. So I went, I went along and my first day in the classroom, myself and some other former professional cricket players were there. And we were asked the question. We were asked, what's the most important objective of a cricket training session. So the first question asked, I thought, that's a nice easy starter. Because I know, I know we go to training to get better practice so that we're better at what we want to do when it comes to a match. So I said, to get better, and I felt very smug. And he said, no, Jeff, you're wrong. According to the ECB, the England Wales Cricket Board, the number one objective of a training session is to leave the kids wanting to come back next week. So now I was feeling a little bit defensive because I thought they'd made a little bit of a fool of me. So my natural reaction was, well, okay, but let's just say that these kids turn up to training and they get worse. But they want to come back next week. That's a good thing. And he said, yeah, absolutely. Our philosophy is that if kids don't come back, they'll never get better. But if they come back and they have fun, they get better by accident. All right, I'll go with it. I'll go with it. But as a parent, I don't want my kids turning up to training and getting worse. So I just stick with it, Jeff, just stick with it, see what you think. So the coach, I became a qualified coach and I was told that the number one job, get them come back every week, only intervene when you think they might damage themselves. And ultimately, it was based on that I was introduced to this concept of what they call player led coaching. So these players and at the time this these were 11 year old boys and girls. They were in charge of what the training sessions were. It wasn't my job as a coach to decide what the training session was going to be on. It wasn't my job to, to design an activity to get them better at a particular skill that I noticed they weren't particularly good at. My job was to ask them what they wanted to get better at and then create a fun way for them to maybe accidentally get better at it. So we would ask them this, how do you want to get better? I'll be honest, my mind was was blown because these were 11 year old kids. Now, as far as I was concerned, they were just going to watch things on YouTube, and they're just going to want to mess around. They're just going to want to do the crazy little thing that they've seen on TikTok or whatever. They wouldn't want to, they wouldn't want to do the actual fundamental things that are essential to be good at school. And they didn't. But my challenge was to let that go. My job was to let go of what I thought the fundamentals and the essentials needed to be. It was to set them challenges that would allow them to see what works and what doesn't work with short feedback loops and reflect on it. Now, as an Englishman, okay, cricket is an incredibly English sport. I mean, we're not very good at it anymore, but we like to think we are okay. And what's interesting is even though we invented the game, right, last year, we were the worst team in the world. And what was also interesting was we were the only team in the world that hadn't really developed what you would call an extraordinary unorthodox player. Because until recently, all children in England were taught the right way to do everything from textbooks written by people hundreds of years ago. And based on traditions and heuristics, okay, so this is all stuff that has worked. But other countries seemed to be doing things differently. And we were taught another phrase which was don't coach talent out of a player. Okay, we'd seen so many. The England cricket word seen many, many children give up the game because they weren't textbook in how they played the game. So I was told not to play video clips in my sessions right but I've got two little ones that I hope will work if they don't work is no big deal. But the first clip is a traditional way of teaching someone how to bowl in cricket. And then I'll show you another clip of someone who doesn't follow that same process. Okay, so bunny is on the ball. Now we eat the apple the stage one. Eat the apple pull the magic string nice and tight. Okay, and then stage three pull the magic string and bowling arm over towards the wickets. So there's nothing wrong with what that man has just shown. Okay, but not everyone can do that or put it another way. Other people can come up with different potentially more effective ways of achieving the same goal. So here's the word. Yes, it's got a particular action. There were a couple more in there. I wouldn't know what you would do now. But you would notice one thing that none of them were English. Okay. Though if those players had grown up in England, they would have been told that's not the right way to do it. And they would have probably ended up giving up the game. So this idea of letting people figure things out their own way, setting them a goal. And then letting them reflect on how their attempts are helping or not, allowing them the space to experiment with different ways and see what works and what doesn't. It takes a lot of courage from the coach and the parents and the teams and the teammates, the players themselves. And favorite non Ted lasso quotes is whether you think you can or think you can't be probably right. And for me, that just sums up how powerful self belief is. I'm not someone that thinks if you can believe it, you can do it because there are limits. But I do believe that if you don't believe in your ability to do something, then you haven't got a hope. And one of the studies, one of my favorite studies and was done in schools and it demonstrated this idea about an environment of belief. It became known as the Pygmalion effect, but it was the Rosenthal Yakovsky study. And children were split into two groups. The teachers of those children were told that some scientists have done some tests and that those tests had shown that one of the groups of children was going to show significant improvements in their ability during the next school year. Now, in reality, there was no such data. It was just simply randomly selecting children. But the results a year later were statistically significant. And the argument here is that teachers reacted to what they expected to see. So they expected those certain children to get significantly better. And they noticed when they did get better. And they built on it and the kids then reacted to those children's reactions and the belief and expectation to magnify and became a powerful thing. Remember, I said earlier on this coaching is built on the premise that people are created their resource for their whole. I find in my world as a coach, it's not that difficult to believe this but I am. I've been challenged on it time again, but also from a scrum master perspective a product and a perspective any kind of leadership perspective within organization, you have to trust that people want to be successful. Which might sound like a strange thing to say why, why wouldn't you, but I do get a lot of people that say to me yeah but not everybody wants to be successful Jeff people are lazy some people just now they just don't care. If everything else is equal, and I'm given the choice between being successful and not being successful, I'm going to choose being successful at the time. But the problem is that not all things are equal all the time. So change is a big thing. As Ted lesson says most of the time changes a good thing. Most people would generally disagree with that on instinct, I think, but my experience is people actually do like change. People regularly updating their phones and software and houses and cars and whatever. They like change. But what they don't like it and change force upon or being asked to change to something that they don't believe they have the ability to do. Okay, so there are two big barriers to change. And coaching is all about change. And those are limiting beliefs about their ability. I don't think I can do that. And the fear of failure. If I fail something bad will happen. So instead of Carol Dweck's growth mindset, that idea that talent, you're not born necessarily with talent skills can be learned. And even more so if you believe you can. And it's scary. And even more scary, the older we get because first of all, change. Acknowledge it involves acknowledging that we're not as competent as we can be we kind of have to admit that we're not great at something. That's changing. We don't like to do that. That's that's the damage to our ego. It also involves adopting something that generally speaking, we will be incompetent to begin with. And we don't like to be incompetent. We don't like to look silly. We don't like to look bad. We don't we worry about being judged. There's a lot of fear of failure. But not just for other people, but judging ourselves. So you'll also have heard the phrase psychological safety that's really important when it comes to change this idea that we can do something. And we are safe around failure. We're not going to worry too much about the consequences of that learning journey coaches can really dial that psychological safety up. We have an environment of confidentiality. We also have this view that everyone is whole and resourceful. We have this adopt this stance of continuing positive regard, which increases people's chances of learning faster growing faster and accelerates it even more. And life and business is about change. You know, no matter how much of a status quo bias we all have and we all do have a status quo bias. It's happening. It doesn't mean we're open to it. We just need to make sure that people are in control and feel in control of the change that's going on and feel that that change is achievable. And if it's not iteratively achievable, it will take time to get there that we are supported on that journey. So coaching can't be imposed on someone. Esther Derby said, don't go around inflicting your help. So even when the company comes to me and says, Jeff, we've got someone we would like you to coach that person still gets to choose whether they want my coaching or not. It's not my choice. It's their choice. They have to want something. I can't force anything on anyone. I can't make anyone do anything. So we'll agree a goal will agree something aspirational. But it's still achievable. But the most important thing is whatever a goal we agree is their goal. Okay, now, I used to believe that if things are too comfortable, we're not growing. And I think I'm okay with that. I think I'm still okay with that. If we're comfortable, we're not growing. And not everyone wants to come to cricket or come to work to be the best. Okay, there are other things going on in their lives that mean now might not be the right time for them to even to strive to become the best that they can be. Let alone be the best overall, it's other things going on. And sometimes right now, the best they can be to borrow that phrase from us. Yeah, it's just to be. And that's okay. So my philosophy, I would say then goes back to that ECB statement of just make sure they want to come back. If they have fun, they at least give themselves a chance of getting better in the future. And they might improve by accident while they're having fun. But it is worth, I think, being upfront about the possible discomfort of coaching the idea that we've got someone here who's going to help you grow but growing involves acknowledging your need for growth. It involves stepping outside of your current status quo, trying new things that you're naturally going to be incompetent at to begin with, right, that conscious incompetence of something new, but also learning things about yourself during this coaching process, and changing your mind about things changing previously held beliefs that in go of things. That's the coaches, as well as people who have been encouraged to acknowledging that coaching if done right shouldn't be comfortable. But it is pretty cool, even if it is uncomfortable, I think so. I feel incredibly fortunate to be invited in to people's worlds. When I'm coaching somebody, they are trusting me. They're trusting me with their hopes, their anxieties. They're honest and sometimes politically incorrect views, and my confidentiality clauses help there, but just to be invited into that world to be part of helping people become their true amazing selves and fulfill their potential I think it's a huge privilege. And it is a partnership. For a lot of people in the organizations that I work in, my coaching relationship with them is often the only place where they can be truly honest and vulnerable. I wouldn't say weird, actually, it's not that abnormal, but a situation this morning with one of my coaching clients where he's had to sign an NDA about something significant that's going on at work. We can't even talk to his line manager about it. But he can talk to me about it. I have no ulterior motive. I only have one goal. And that is to help that person get closer to their goals, not my goals, not necessarily their boss's goals, their goals. But for me, the only way that I can be successful about that is to develop my curiosity so having a coach, I think is a huge privilege as well. I have a coach, I have a coach supervisor as well, someone who will listen to me with curiosity, with empathy, without judging me, I can talk to them about my screw ups, my insecurities, my worries, my anxieties, and my successes. Someone who I know has my best interests at heart. Okay, I'm pain and they're not doing it for the goodness of the heart, necessarily, but they want my success and no one else's in this relationship. They're not waiting to one up me and say, Oh, you did that, I did something even more. They're not there to tell me where I went wrong or what I need to do. And quite often, the best thing my coach does for me is say nothing. One of my favorite quotes is from one of the master coaches, I would say, Nancy Klein said, How do I know for certain what I'm about to say is more important than what they're about to think. I think great coaches really hang on to create that space for the people that they're coaching to think and be curious. And another phrase that I've adopted personally is I had to make it a ritual because it didn't come naturally to me. Turns out, like I said in coaching you find out a lot about yourself turns out that I'm more judgmental than I thought I would be. Usually about situations than people but generally speaking, I'll look at something either that's a good thing or a bad thing has just happened. When in reality, it's probably neither. So my ritual was to repeat to myself anytime anything happened to me was it's not good. It's not bad. It's just interesting. But a great coach doesn't judge situations. They're more interested in creating this environment, not just of psychological safety, but curiosity. Because without that, self mastery hasn't got a chance. I can't honestly reflect on situations if I'm too busy judging a lot of the people I coach. And it's, it's kind of a sad thing, but it's a reality. That's the truth. So it is what it is. But as well as being often the only person in an organization who they can speak to honestly. Quite often, I'm the only person they have that really believes in them. Without that person who believes in it's very difficult to believe in yourself. So my job isn't to be a yes, yes, yes, you're amazing hype man or yes man. I don't let the people that I'm coaching just wallow in self pity. Part of my job will be to help them challenge their, their scripts of imposter syndrome or people pleasing or something like that to try and do that with real data, real evidence to try and create new evidence of different interpretation. This is, this is, this is a dad joke for you. We've asked for the dad joke. It's a good one. My kids definitely grown at this one. But there is a lot. People tell me that there isn't so it should think there's time and so it's a construct like I'm not clever enough to work that one out. But for me, forget a lot. There's a lot to be said for living in the present because it's the only thing you actually have any control over past can't be changed future might never come. Certainly the future we're imagining so. This idea of living in the moment is something that great coaches will do themselves but also encouraged with their coaching to, to experiment with the practice in order to achieve mastery if you spend too long sitting in the past. You ruminate you either wallowing your successes or your failures, don't do anything about it. If you're thinking too much about the future, you're not doing anything. So having a future goal powerful brilliant learning from past experiences brilliant. But either you're going to spend too long. If you spend too long in the past, you're either going to be paralyzed, or you're going to be just wallowing. So, coaching is a great way to what I'm called centering self. And honestly, my job has many, many, many different aspects from teaching to to writing to speaking, but the coaching side of my job is by far and away, the bit of my job I enjoy the most. For me, that hour. I'm really there. Okay, I don't have to worry about my past mistakes or successes. I'm not planning my future. I'm not worrying about my to do list. I have one goal, and that is to focus on that person that I'm coaching and that's why I'm my happiest. Okay, and that that centering. I think this is a key to master focus. I saw Sheree's avatar. And I told Sheree about Ted last time a while ago. And the way that I told her was was this quote here, Ted's talking about happiness. It's the hope that kills you. No, it's not the hope that kills you. It's the lack of hope that kills you. And the happiest animal on the planet is the goldfish because they've got a 10 second memory. And it's not because they forget their failures really quickly. I was also I was told once that if you worry about something. Mark Twain said most of the worries in my life are about things that never happened or something like that. If you worry about something, whether it happens or not, you've experienced the pain. So you might experience the pain twice. If you didn't worry about it might never experience the pain at all. So the goldfish, okay, they might experience the pain, but they're not going to experience it mentally multiple times. But equally, if they see something nice, they get that pleasant feeling multiple times. So from a coaching perspective, trying to coach people trying to coach teams trying to coach organizations to not take that failure or that feedback personally. Okay, and not overplaying that time and time again. People, teams, organizations, they are not their outcomes. The bad outcome is not necessarily the result of a bad person or a bad thinking process. So detaching yourself from the actions, great coaching tool. And this coaching. Is it built on hope? This is something that I get asked a lot. Hope's not a strategy, but hope I think is different to belief. Generally, in the people that I'm coaching, I don't take work for organizations that I don't believe in and don't believe have the setup for success or the attitude for success. I think there's a lot of evidence that coaching isn't just about hope. But having hope for the future I think is important. I think it is necessary to pass that feeling on. Feelings are contagious, outlooks are contagious, mindsets are contagious. It doesn't work without hope, certainly doesn't work without belief. Now, again, I'm not going to spoil anything for you with Ted Lasso, but this is another character from Ted Lasso. So my only quote from the show that isn't from Ted. Obviously, for anyone who's read one of my books, you probably know why this quote stood out for me. Just love this idea that there's a difference between a good mentor and a great mentor. And I'm not talking about mentors myself really, but this idea of, I mentioned in my Scrum Mastery book that Scrum Mastery is the best Scrum Mastery is actually trying to do themselves out of a job. My job as a Scrum Master, my job as a coach, as an agile coach, as a professional coach, is not to develop self-reliance upon me. My goal is to create independence. Okay, and remember that going back to Bloom's point, students reach a mastery level once they can take a skill, they can take a concept and they can apply it to unfamiliar situations. They are independent. They don't need a rule book. They don't need a playbook. They don't need someone to tell them the answer. They can figure it out, even if it's not perfect. So my advice, what is my advice? My advice to you is that whether you're coaching an individual, whether you're coaching a team, whether you're coaching a friend, whatever, figure out, first of all, what their goals are. Okay, because until you know that, you won't know whether you're getting any closer to them. When it comes to teams, I encourage you Scrum Masters to try and figure out what those teams want to get better at. Collaboratively explore what milestones might be, might be available for you. I think where their appetite is, whether it's around getting into flow, whether it's around being more proactive, whether it's around actually taking action, whatever it might be. And appreciate there's lots of reasons why people might not naturally throw themselves into change. Okay, they might worry about themselves about being good enough. You might have imposter syndrome. They might be thinking, well, if I can't do it perfectly, I can't do it at all. They might worry about doing things on their own. What does that mean? What are the consequences, fear of judgment? So, time-wise, wrapping up. Coaching for mastery is an important part of what I do. It's an important part of what I believe. Some of you might have seen earlier on this year, I publicly stated that I was going to be stopping, I had already, but it's going to be stopping offering certified Scrum Master classes and advanced certified Scrum Master classes and product owner classes and things. Because what I've been doing with organizations is more meaningful to me, I believe. So what I do, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes, so I have, I've been working on what I call agile mastery pathways. Over time, trying to provide that stability, trying to provide the space and the time for Scrum Masters, for product owners, for agile teams, for agile coaches, for leaders to develop their mastery and to be there with them through that journey. To be there forever, not to create dependency, but rather than give them a tiny bit of information, then say go on, go and apply some context, and then not be there after the course. People tend to sink or shrink. So trying to create that partnership, coming back to the ICF definition of coaching, partnership in a creative process. So workshops, coaching, different tools, different learning styles, learning that people learn in different ways. Going back to Bloom's study from the 60s. Same teacher, same content at the same time, but depending on this. So videos, apps, books, different contents, different contexts. I'm not going to go through that too much. But just briefly, in terms of my, my metrics, what I'm doing at the Agile Master Institute. People are still coming to me asking for what I've always done. And I'm telling them that I'm not doing that. I'm doing something instead, which takes longer, which is ultimately more expensive, which requires more effort, which requires more coordination. So all of these demos saying it's not a quick fix. It's going to take quite a bit of time. We're going to have to coordinate things over a longer period of time, but the results are worth it. And with anything that you take this time to get the results to be like this. And they're coming in, which is good. I'm happy to take any questions on that or anything around mastery. But I think that will do it. Who's, who's, who's doing the questions to me. Okay. So we really got a few. We have one. June long asked. I'm not sure if that is still here or not, but in player like coaching. I think that when we were discussing about how a coach should be, you know, let them learn from themselves. I agree with you about this, but in reality, like in Premier League, all of coaches have been players before, which means they have a deep knowledge, you know, about soccer, for example. And some of them are fired because of losing games, which you mentioned, if, if following that, he thinks or he or she thinks only the Ferguson of M United matches the coach role. What's your opinion on that. I'm not sure who that person is. No, so he's the most successful football coach in English. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah, very different style. And to be honest, I didn't have, I still don't have the luxury of seeing behind the scenes. And but from what I, from what I've been told, so I've spoken to someone who worked under Ferguson United and other and other teams as well. The idea of having yes, experts coaches who can help guide and teach. And this idea of letting people figure things out and grow together is growing and belief in the players ability. To self reflect and grow, but also the willingness to reflect and grow is important. So I don't have, I don't have the data to say whether or not other Premier League coaches are adopting a player coaching approach or not. They are there to be a players. Yeah, I Google there to, you know, so at least I know like the new culture for the United Manchester United. He used to play for Dutch League, right. So, yeah, most of I don't think I think the soccer field, it might be like exception to coaching role. Like to my knowledge, most of them are used to be a football players. And after they got retired, they became a coach. So, there are. Yeah, thank you for that. There are a number of examples of successful coaches who haven't been successful players. And that's not just in football either. But it, there are also a number of successful players who don't make successful coaches. So, I think there's necessarily a correlation, a very strong correlation between success as a player and success as a coach. The, I could have chosen to talk about Chicago Bulls and Phil Jackson. Other other other sporting and just I just wanted to get cricket out there and do a little bit of sales pitch for cricket to the rest of the world. But yeah. But I got to the point I agree with you. I just don't have these, you know, concern, you know, anyway, yeah, I agree with you. Anyway, thank you. I missed them. I didn't see any other questions. Do you want to just, if anybody else has a question, feel free to just raise your hand and it looks like Karen, go ahead. Hi there, Jeff. What a great time we've spent with you. I wanted to ask you, you know, what questions do you typically ask, or what things do you do to get a gauge on if people want to come back. What's the best way to understand what they want to work on next time. So whether people want to come back or not. I mean that's, so there's the, the actual numbers, right, so how many people actually staying retention rates, churn, things like that. But I would like to know that before it got to that point, I'd like to know that people weren't happy before they actually left, whether that be a cricket team or whether that be my office. So I would be looking, I'd be looking at morale, I'd be looking at energy levels, I'd be looking at other indicators that suggest that they're happy. And for me, lower productivity or lower quality are indicators of unhappiness. They're not indicators of poor performance. For me they're indicators of things like overload or stress or demotivation. So I'd be looking for anything that said to me that these people might not be happy and might not be wanting to come back. A lot of, a lot of people you won't know, they're not thinking about it, they'll just be looking for jobs, they're going to be applying for jobs without you really knowing about it or so. What was the second part of the question Karen? You know, what's the best way to tell what they want to work on next time you just ask them or, you know, you've got, so I mean from a cricket perspective it was literally at the start of the session turning up saying, so what would you like today's session to be on? And the idea that I don't have any time to prep for that. I just have to have to figure it out there in there. In the office world these things you have a little bit more time for potentially. So I mean a retrospective is a great chance, but I would couple that with a typically couple that with from a team perspective or individual perspective and what's your, what are your goals? What do you believe your strengths are? Whether that be a wheel of milestones or whether you're using my squad acronym or whether you have your wheel of life or whatever it may be. Some things that those teams define, or that team defines as important to us. That's important to us. We want to be a great team and this is how we define a great team. So this is what we want to work on. And I would genuinely just ask them. Okay, thank you so much. I'm glad I asked. I saw something in the chat about how do you get leaders to agree to change. You can substitute leaders and genuinely, I know, I know most people say yes, but leaders, but they're just human beings. I know they don't feel like it sometimes, but they are just human beings. And so they have the same insecurities that everybody else has. So it might be for different stakes. And there may be other factors in their own status, but generally speaking, people will only change if they think that the positive outcome of that change significantly outweighs the cost of making that change. Everybody will interpret benefit and cost in different ways, and it will be personal to them because it's not usually a financial thing. Okay, there is the benefit to me in terms of living in line with my values, career progression, the status that I get, whatever it is for me, the benefits. If I want to get fit, it's not just the fact that I can look at the scales in the morning and there's different numbers there. If I want to go running around with my three-year-old, I can do it without getting out of breath. That's a benefit to me, right? But there's a cost to it as well. So what are the costs? Maybe there's a financial cost of joining a gym, but equally there's the opportunity cost of I can't just, you know, lie in to the last minute, maybe I have to get up early and go for a run or get on a bike or, you know, to change my eating habits or something like that. There are costs to it. And equally from a leader's perspective, why should I change? What's the benefits to me in changing? Am I likely to be a more successful leader? Am I likely to get that next career lead? Am I likely to have a greater sense of fulfillment about my career when I look back on it? What are the benefits to me, but also what are the costs? Do I have to, do I get a feeling that I have to admit that I was wrong with what I was doing before? Do I have to perhaps take somebody else's advice? But actually I'm the leader. I should be telling people, you know, these insecurities could be coming through. So how can I, first of all, work out or help them work out whether or not it's something they want in a safe way and associate and then start tackling the costs of doing that. And usually a lot of them are psychologically. So in terms to do that, I need that trust. I need that safe relationship where they trust me, they can be vulnerable with me, know that I'm not holding it over them. And again, from an external perspective, that's a lot easier than trusting someone inside the organization because the more senior you get, the fewer positions there are, the more competition there feels like amongst colleagues. So they don't want to share their vulnerabilities and their insecurities with their colleagues who might be competition for the next senior role. So having an external coach is often more palatable for you. How did I get music? Did you hear that? Okay. Thank you. How was that? So if you have time for a couple more, I don't know if you do. I want to respect your time there, Jess. So what books are you currently reading? If you have time to read or listening to? I'm actually looking at marketing. I'm reading marketing books at the moment because marketing is a side of my world that I've never really put a lot of effort into. So I'm trying to learn about how messaging is more impactful and resonating with people. George. All right. Where'd you go, George? Thank you. First of all, thank you, Jeff, for this presentation. So when you were talking about change, failure and change, it kind of struck me because I always had the tricky time figuring out how do we identify or define failure? And how can we tell, you know, when somebody kind of self-imposes failure on himself, comparing to when he or she actually fails? So, Mike, would you have any suggestion on that? So self-sabotage is common. There are generally reasons for it. So, like I said earlier, when all things are equal, people would choose success over not. But sometimes failing does have what we call secondary gain. Okay, so if I fail, then other people might come around and give me hugs, they might feel sorry for me. All right. And maybe that's what I need right now. And the only way that I can get that is to fail. It's just an example. Maybe some people might fail because they're perfectionists and they don't feel they can achieve perfection. So they will actually wait, and they will actually bring their procrastination, they'll dilate their procrastination, they will delay until they know they can't succeed. So that the judgment that others have on them, and sometimes that they have on themselves, isn't that I failed, it's that I didn't have enough time to succeed. And they will bring that upon themselves because they would rather have that judgment than I didn't succeed. So working with the thing there is all of that stuff is unconscious. People don't realize they're doing that. So having a coach can help them see that. This is the way that mirror is. I can see those blind spots. And they can start experimenting with different behaviors that might lead to better results for them. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. What is your biggest moment as a coach? I'm still getting them now, but the first one is probably still the biggest one, which is that it's not my responsibility. Yeah, I was a project manager, I was a problem solver that all the examples of success and recognition validation were I sport thrown on people who solve problems, the firefighters, people who work things out. And so I figured that that's that's what you did in life. And there are times when that's really, really valuable. But you can be, I think, so much more valuable to more people if you stop trying to figure their problems out. And it was one of the first moments that I had as a coach, and it's still one of the biggest, and it's still one that I have to keep reminding myself time and time again. Because I still have that desire to do things and solve problems and help people with all these different things. But yeah, that's what I would say. And I think probably many of us in this room are natural problem solvers. So that's just that's our reaction to the most things, you know, we, oh, there's a problem now. I'm going to solve it right. So that's definitely been a hurdle for me as well is to learn to do more listening. And that is much telling. Right. Well, what will you say to our management team that says they have failed at agile and they don't see how it will work now. Say to management team that says they failed at agile. Well, there's a lot in that and it might be it might just be wording. But the idea that you can succeed or fail at agile is an interesting concept. All right, and that that would be one of the first things that I'd look to have a conversation about. Because what is failing at agile actually mean, because the goal is to use those things to become successful as a business. And so, if there are, if there were reasons for trying it, and those reasons are still there. Then I would be keen on thinking, or keen on talking about, is that worth looking at again, there are different ways to do this. But you mentioned in my introduction today talking about organic agility. So for me, the agility there is with a small a. You don't have to subscribe to the agile manifesto to have agility. Looking at what what is it that we need for our context as an organization. What is our context, demand of us to be successful, and our behaviors are our values are the things that we recognize and more and encourage and incentivize the stories that we tell are they coherent with the kind of behaviors and mind sets that we need for our context. And if they're not, can we slowly change them? Can we start telling different stories? Can we start encouraging, rewarding, recognizing, banding appreciating different things, different stories. And that's not necessarily about being agile, but if there is some agility in there that will help with that, brilliant. So I would, I'd look at that kind of conversation, and I'd also look at giving people the opportunity, creating the opportunity for people to change their minds without feeling like they have to admit that they were wrong. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to convince them, because then they have to agree that I'm right in there. I want to find out what they want to achieve. Thank you so much for the extra time, Jeff, and, and all of you who have stuck around. We just appreciate you so much for coming and joining us today at Scrum Masters of the Universe. I feel like it's quite an honor. Everyone I had posted or I'll be sending out an email later today with just information in it again as well as the links to his website, you can check up different offerings. The amazing programs that he is going right now, especially the mastery program. What is it? Mass pathways? Slowly butchering this because I'm nervous today. No worries, but Yeah, thank you everyone. I appreciate coming. Take care. Thank you. Bye bye.