Senior Leadership Challenges in Agile Orgs

I talk to these other founders, other CEOs, about what we’re trying to do at our company, and they kind of look at me like I’ve got three heads and and seven arms. Who else could I talk to who’s trying to do the same thing and would actually get it?

In this episode, Peter and Richard sit down with Melissa Boggs to talk about the unique challenges senior leaders face in Agile orgs and how that led us to create our 2019 senior leader retreat. Melissa talks about her experience as a participant at the 2019 event, and the trio shares their vision for the 2023 retreat, now that Melissa has joined Richard and Peter as a co-facilitator.

Interested in attending this year’s event in San Diego on Nov 7-8, 2023? Click here to apply.

Episode Transcription

Richard Lawrence

Welcome to the Humanizing Work Show. Today’s episode is a special one. Peter and I are talking with our friend Melissa Boggs. Melissa was a participant at our 2019 senior leader retreat when she was co-CEO at Scrum Alliance. Melissa has since become an independent speaker and consultant. And she’s now joined us to help host the 2023 Senior Leader Retreat; our first one back in-person since COVID. We talk in this conversation about the unique challenges senior leaders face in agile orgs and how that led us to create the 2019 event. Melissa shares about her experience as a participant there, and we all discuss our vision for the 2023 event, including the kind of leaders we’d love to see participating.

Peter Green

Before we get to that episode, just a quick reminder to rate and review the humanizing work show in your podcast app. Or if you’re watching on YouTube, please subscribe, like, and share today’s episode if you find it valuable to you. Your help spreading the word is super meaningful to us. Also, be sure to check out Melissa’s podcast, Wild Hearts at Work, which we’ll link to in the show notes.

Richard

And if you want to get access to more content, we produce not just the show, you can sign up for our newsletter where we share one key idea every week. Sign up at humanizingwork.com/ hwnews. Now on to our conversation with Melissa. Melissa, welcome.

Melissa Boggs

All right. So I want the juicy bits that I have not heard yet. What is the origin story of this Senior Leadership Retreat? Because for me, it started with an email saying, “Are you interested in coming?” But I know there was so much before that. So tell me where this started.

Richard

We had our first Senior Leadership Retreat in December of 2019, and at that point we had run in-person conferences for our broader community of people who had been in our workshops before our annual Humanizing Work conference up in the mountains in Colorado every summer. And I think we’d run six of them by that point. And we noticed that that conference was really useful for people up to a certain level in an organization, and then for senior leaders, especially senior leaders in many of the kinds of organizations that we worked with where they’ve gotten the team level Agile stuff right, and they’d created a pretty healthy environment for teams. But nobody was really addressing the challenges that senior leaders face on the other side of a successful team level; agile adoption, things like how career progression works now, how we do reviews for people that are on a self-organizing team– and there’s all these different things that we know the senior leaders among our clients were wrestling with; and some of them would come to our larger conference, but it was clear that there was a different group and a different kind of conversation that needed to happen that wasn’t happening anywhere.

Peter

There was another factor there, which is that there were executives that were not coming to the conference that we were working with who just expressed a real feeling of loneliness when they’re trying to lead an organization in this way. One of our friends, Hart Schaffer, described it something like, “You know, I’ll talk to these other founders, other CEOs, about what we’re trying to do (at his company, TheraSpecs), and they kind of look at me like I’ve got three heads and seven arms. Like, it just feels like, who else could I talk to that’s trying to do the same thing and that would actually get it?”

Melissa

I can say the same as a participant. Like, you know, it’s funny, I used this analogy about parenting the other day, like when you are trying to parent differently than you were parented, it is like trying to paint something from memory that you never saw in real life. And I think when you are trying to lead this way, it is the same thing.

When you are trying to lead from a place that is a new way of working, which self-organization is for most of us. We weren’t raised that way in the workplace. It’s like trying to do something that you have no frame of reference for except a few books and a few, you know, famous companies that maybe you got to read about.

And so it is lonely and sometimes you’re like, “Am I crazy? Like, should I just go down the same road that all my bosses went down just because it’s easier that way?” And so, yeah, I think you hit it on the head with what we needed as senior leaders.

Richard

So, when we sent out the email to all the people who could have attended this thing, kind of describing the problem as we understood it, and what might be possible to see if there were people who’d be willing to try this kind of thing, what went through your mind when you received that email and what particular challenges were you thinking, “Oh, this would be a place to address those kinds of things”?

Melissa

Well, first of all, I will say I’m not sure I knew that it was the first time. So however you described the challenges and the connections that you were trying to make sounded very like, “Been there, done that.” That was like, “Oh, I’m just now getting invited to this very special thing. That’s awesome.” So I felt special.

Richard

Welcome to the club.

Melissa

Yeah. And of course, I knew the two of you. So there was already a trust there of, like, whatever you guys were doing, I was going to be excited to join in on. I think it was a combo. I’ll be really honest, of both. We have some challenges we’re still trying to figure out because at that point when we joined, I think we were about a year into our own transformation, if you will.

But I was actually also quite eager just to tell our story. And I’m not, like, embarrassed to say that because it wasn’t just my story, right? It was our story as an organization. And I was anxious to get out that what we had done was possible. And I found the same from other folks. Like when we got to the retreat, we were all excited to tell our story because we were proud of what our teams had done. We were proud of what we had been willing to try. And then there were these other things that were like, “Oh, you did that. Okay, tell me how you did that.” And so there was this like clashing– not clashing, connecting– of the challenges and the celebrations that sort of like wove in together.

Richard

Yeah. One of our big hypotheses going into the event was that the thing that you are good at would be the things somebody else was struggling with. And vice versa. And it was fun to see that play out.

Peter

Kind of picking up the thread on telling our story, it was interesting when you said that for a minute I wasn’t sure if you were talking about Scrum Alliance or if you were talking about the bigger “our story.” Like what are we collectively, as executives, trying to do and how is that different? And that is something that was at the back of our minds going into this retreat: It is hard to find examples. It is hard to hear practices or challenges and how people overcame them. Just kind of what are the anecdotes, what’s the storytelling around this new way of leading organizations? And so in the back of our minds was, “I wonder if there is a bigger story that we collectively could tell that would just be useful.” I always thought that in the agile space, the coming together of those 17 folks back in 2001 had a multiplying effect on what each of them were doing individually in their organizations.

And I always felt like we sort of need the equivalent of that in the broader organizational space where we bring people that are doing a bunch of interesting, cool stuff that doesn’t seem to fit in the old grooves and let’s get them together and tell their story. So I think that was a motivating factor, at least for me.

Melissa

You know, I can only speak for myself, but I will say I think I came in with “I’m excited to tell my story, our Scrum Alliance story,” and I came out with “I’m excited to tell our Humanizing Work story.” But I think I came in with the excitement to tell my story any time I come into a new group like that with a bunch of other rabble rousers, if you will (is the right word?), you actually don’t know what that’s going to feel like if I’m being honest.

Like, you don’t know. Like, are we all just going to be competing for who’s the most rebellious or are we going to connect and like, you know, like who’s going to write the book first? Or are we going to connect and come out of this with a collective story? And obviously it was the latter. But going into it, my partner at the time– the two of us– hadn’t really been around other people.

None of us had, you know, who were doing the same type of, you know, what felt like crazy things in our organizations. And so you just didn’t know how that was going to show up, but it showed up beautifully.

Richard

So we invited pairs because we’ve noticed that people who are leading this kind of change are almost always a pair of people leading these things. And so we invited you and your co-CEO at the time, and then several other pairs, and about a dozen people gathered in San Diego for this first one. What was the experience like when you got there and as you got into the conversations, what kinds of things happened that seemed important to you?

Melissa

So the first day there was a lot of content. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that you all had already prepared, which was really useful. But it wasn’t just like you talking at us. There were activities that we were doing together. We did Leadership Circle, which was great, and there were pair activities which at the time were incredibly useful for my partner and I to just have conversations in a safe place with some folks around.

You know, you weren’t sitting with each one of us, but if there was a moment that we were getting stuck, whether it was on the exercise or just emotionally, you know, there was someone there who could come and sort of help us get unstuck, which happened from time to time in that first day. And then I loved the fact, though, that, as that day wore on and we started to talk among the pairs, you all tuned in to the fact that maybe we just need to have some space to storytel and to ask questions of each other.

And so the second day, we did a much more open space style approach, and I think both were necessary. You know, we’ve talked about this when we talk about how we’re designing the 2023 retreat. We needed that first day to create some familiarity with one another, some safety and some just sort of knowing what we need to learn from each other.

I don’t think we could have just jumped into open space, but that one day felt like six days in terms of emotional intimacy with complete strangers that, by the second day, was very easy to go into; “Here’s what we’re doing. How can that help you? Does anyone have an answer to this question?”

But yeah, there were definitely some emotions there, and there was connection there and also just some logistical takeaways that were great.

Peter

Do you remember, besides the leadership circle, a question or a topic… Because I think it would be helpful for folks listening to have an idea of like, “Well, what are you talking about at this retreat?”

Melissa

Oh sure. So I know that part of the story that we were telling was about our structure at the time. And also, hiring events were a really big deal for us, like we were hiring in a very, very unique way. But we were also learning things about compensation from other people and all of these things that, when you talk about things like “We’re going to operate our company differently,” most people are only thinking about the hierarchy.

Like you’re just thinking about, well, we’re not going to have VP’s and directors and managers– cool. If you’re not, then what systems do you need in place to replace the function and the role that those different, you know, titles actually played in the system. And so every single one of us had a different element that we had been working on in terms of those systems, which was just really cool..

And there were some times that you were like, “Yep, that’s really cool. Doesn’t fit with this other element that I have.” Like those things with conflict: Still cool. That part isn’t for me, but that [other one] might be, you know? And it was just neat to kind of take those things and put them all together.

Richard

I really enjoyed that dynamic where it wasn’t like you were all trying to build the exact same organization in different contexts, but you were clearly all doing the same kind of thing. You could trace it back to the same principles, even as how you were doing, hiring at Scrum Alliance looked different from how one of the other participants was going to do hiring for the reasons that made sense in their context.

Or, you know, how hierarchy shows up in your organization. I know a couple of the participants had pretty traditional work structures because they’re a business unit in a much larger organization, and they weren’t going to change that part of it; but they did change how those layers functioned and you could have both of those groups in the same room at the same time learning from each other.

It was really exciting.

Melissa

Yeah. So I’m curious. I’ll flip the script back to you guys. What was it like for you to work in this room with people that you knew that you kind of worked with, like on a one on one basis or two on one basis, but now they’re all in the same room. They’re sharing ideas. That first day, maybe they were a little bit shy, you know, like what was that like to walk into that room and kind of see this dream that you had right before your eyes?

Peter

Imposter syndrome. Holy cow. They’re all here. (Melissa exclaims, “No!”  Peter insists,) “Oh, yeah, for me, big time.” Like, did we bring the right content? Are we the right people to facilitate these conversations? I hope so. But what if we start, you know, running that program that we mapped out and then like “eh…” So 100% imposter syndrome for me mixed with hope and excitement.

So I think there are a lot of leaders that will probably resonate with.

Richard

Mm hmm. Yeah. Very similar experience because we are acutely aware of how high leverage and high value the time is for leaders like this. So getting that many people with that much influence and limited capacity to step away from the work for a couple of days, it felt like just so much trust in us that like, “Oh, can we live up to that?”

We also had this hope that just getting this group of people together where we would frequently find ourselves saying in smaller coaching conversations, “I really wish, you know, you two knew each other because she’s solving exactly the thing you’re solving.” So the opportunity to test that was pretty exciting, but there was definitely that fear going into it that we don’t have anything new to offer and they’re not actually that interested in talking to each other.

And fortunately, we’ve kind of falsified those fears.

Melissa

Yes, your original hypothesis was correct and you were the right people. So I’m curious then. I mean, I know we’re going to shift in a minute into talking about what this year’s looks like. But do you feel differently going into this year’s now, like you’ve done this before, you know all of us. And hopefully we’ll have some new folks, new faces.

What does it feel like now?

Richard

Now it’s changed to. “Do we have anything new to offer or did we already talk about everything last time?” So it’s still there!

Peter

I think there’s a little bit for me, but it’s much less than last time. It feels like this time as we’re planning it, my biggest concern, (since the imposter syndrome is on the “concern” side, I’ll share that): My biggest concern is can we get everybody to come again? And it’s less about whether they’ll find it valuable and more about the world has only gotten crazier– that the economy feels like every day it’s going to yo-yo to a different outlook.

And so I think just being able to block that time again, the concern is more for me about whether  we can actually get commitments from the people.  Because what we found last time is that when we got the right people in the room, really cool things happened that I think made a difference for them. And so there is still a leap of faith to say, “I’m going to block this time. 

I’m going to pay the fee. I’m going to pay for the travel, and I’m just going to go.” So that’s on the concerned side, the biggest thing– I think we learned a lot about the right mix of content that we bring with facilitating kind of open space structures to let the leaders share with each other.

So I feel much more confident about that mix than I did last time.

Melissa

I was just to say, just to allay your fears a little bit; I mean, yes, it’s always hard to get away. Right. But we all got away then because it was important. And I think we just need to be reminded after three years of doing things on our own because of COVID, Right? I mean, I think we all sort of like in some ways turned inward to run our companies.

When you’re faced with an emergency, you’re faced with a crisis. You just turn inward, you batten down the hatches, and you do everything you can to just survive. And we are at a place now where we should be turning from surviving back to thriving. And that’s not always a natural transition for humans to make, like, hey, it’s okay now, you know, like things are normalizing now, but if we can sort of like turn our perspective that way and go, “Okay, we’re not just focusing on the present; now we can actually focus on the future”, then I think it’s going to be really powerful for us all to get in the same room again.

Richard

So let’s talk about our vision for 2023. Melissa is joining us in hosting the retreat now–so, flipping around to the other side of it. And it’s great to have you on board. Before we get too much into the particulars of 23, let’s talk about that. And Melissa, what led to you wanting to do that? And what has it been like as we’ve started to plan this together with kind of a new, larger team?

Melissa

A dream come true, first of all. So obviously, I had an incredible time at the 2019 retreat. And since then, for those listening, I mean, we’ve kept in touch as a group. I wouldn’t say all the time, but, you know, we’ve had a couple of Zoom calls, we’ve created some content together. And just as a group, have tried to stay connected even through the crisis.

And then, you know, my life changed a bit. I am no longer at Scrum Alliance and now a solopreneur, if you will, speaking and consulting as well. And a lot of the same areas; like the organizations that I work with are probably best friends with the ones that you all work with. So there came this funny moment where I came to you guys and said, “Hey, does it make sense for me to still be, you know, in the group?” Because now I am essentially a consultant too, but I still want to be connected. Like I didn’t want to lose, you know, the connection to the two of you and the connection to the group as a whole. And so we just got to talking about what it would look like to come together and do some of this as a party of three or four, if you will.

So here I am. What was that like for one of your participants to be like, “I don’t want to leave”?

Peter

I think it just goes…

Richard (interrupts)

I think that was validation that the community is a thing of its own. It wasn’t just, “I want to come to another one of these events,” but “I want to stay connected to this community.”

One of the things I’m excited about, in addition to just getting to work with you and having new ideas and new energy as we plan this thing, is also bringing in and extending the community. So we have a few new clients we’re excited to introduce to the group that met in 2019. And then you also have several clients that we haven’t got to meet yet but that we kind of know are going to click with the other ones that we’re bringing into the room.

And that even broader cross-pollination is pretty exciting to me.

Melissa

Yeah, definitely. Already I’ve had the same type of moments where like clients I’m working with, I think of people in our group and I’m like, “Oh man, you’ll have to meet each other.” So it’s going to be really fun to do that all in person. And also, you can’t beat San Diego. Like, you can’t. It’s one of my favorite cities.

So, vision: We’re not just rehashing what we did in 2019. We do have more things to talk about and more things to cross-pollinate. So does anyone have a sentence that we can share about, like the vision for the retreat itself?

Richard

We wrote down a bunch of stuff about this. We talked about it.

Melissa

We should just share that.

Peter

And so I’ll tell you, I don’t know if this is a vision statement about it, but as we’ve brought in more people (well, we haven’t brought them in yet), as we’ve considered expanding the tent a little bit, there’s this mix of real excitement because we know some of those folks are going to make awesome contributions.

Some people who we will bring in you don’t know at all. Some people that you’ll bring in, we don’t really know at all. And I think there is this tension that we’re trying to manage a little bit between, “Well, why don’t we just open up for proposals or applications or something and just go huge and let’s just get 100 people that all seem to be doing this kind of approach to leadership. What if we just got 100 people together?” And so one of the goals that I have this time is to grow it safely, because I do think that there are more people that can contribute and more people that can benefit from it. But I think if we just open it up wide open right now, I would be worried that it would get diluted a little bit.

So could we maintain the concentration of awesomeness while also growing the pipe a little bit wider?

Richard

I think part of that, Peter, is that we don’t really know explicitly what makes somebody a good participant and contributor in this kind of community. A lot of that is intuitive. That feeling in us that says, “I want that person to talk with that other person,” and then kind of the second degree version of that through Melissa, if she wants somebody in her community to talk with somebody in our community, they’re probably going to hit it off.

And so I think one of the things we’re testing here is what are some of those patterns, so that we might be able to find people who would also be a good fit– and it’s funny, when I say “good fit,” it isn’t like get a group of people together who think exactly the same things and are doing things exactly the same way.

And the thing that made somebody a good fit was that they could help others stretch in their leadership in a way that was congruent with the principles that had got them to where they are.

Melissa

Absolutely. I also think about– this is a slight tangent, but just in the coming together of this– in the crafting of the vision and the crafting of how the three of us were going to work together, we had to employ tools that we teach teams all of the time, like we had to drink our own champagne, so to speak.

We had to talk about a working agreement for how we were going to work together. We had to talk about the cross functionality of our facilitation skills and who plays this role? Who plays this role, you know, naturally, and how do we blend these things together? And we even had some conversations about what we did not want this to be or how each one of us did not want to feel, you know, at a certain time. I had some apprehension because the two of you are a well-oiled partnership who have worked together forever.

And, you know, I want to bring something to that, while also fitting into it and not forcing. And I think it’s been like just– I don’t know,–magical to me that the conversations that we’ve had are just really affirming, but it’s not always that easy. And so, you know, we had to have some of those potentially difficult conversations, although I will say, I don’t feel like any of them were really too difficult for us.

We have quite aligned values, so that helps.

Richard

Well, I have an example in mind of one of these conversations that might be useful to other people who are trying to figure out how to work together. I remember we had a conversation about our– we sort of listed out desired outcomes and I guess undesired outcomes, things we didn’t want to see. But instead of just looking at that list and saying, “Okay, close enough,” we made ourselves prioritize and draw a line and say, if anything above this line doesn’t happen, we’re going to be unsatisfied with the outcome and we might get the things below the line.

 

And I thought that was a really useful exercise to say, “These are the things we’re going to make sure we’re aligned around. And these other things around the edges; it was good for us to talk about them, but those aren’t showstoppers.” And I think many groups of leaders or other would-be collaborators avoid that level of precision in the conversation.

 

Like “We generally agree, it’s fine,” until at some point it’s not anymore. One of those things that  “I didn’t think it’s that important to you, so I’m not going to make something out of it.” And then suddenly it is that important to you and it’s a big conflict. So I really valued that prioritization and kind of clear line in our desired outcomes.

 

I think that set up a lot of our later conversations for success.

Melissa

For sure.  And I’ll say too, I loved, in that activity, though, that wasn’t a list of tasks, it was a list of outcomes. So we still, even while creating some constraints for ourselves, left so much room for creativity: like, so much.

Richard

Well, let’s share what the top three are and the ones that were above the line. I pulled them up. 

 

  1. Number one was a sense of solidarity and encouragement for the participants and for us. Like that sense of “Other people are in this with me.” It’s not like Hart said, like  “I have three heads and seven arms and I’m green and people have no idea why I’m doing these crazy things in my organization.” But number one, people leave with the sense that I’m not alone in this and I’m not crazy. It can work. 
  2. Number two, participants learn practical things from each other, like you shared, Melissa, around the open space in 2019. So many practical things came out.
  3. And then number three is that the three of us have a great experience leading a thing together and gain clarity about how to collaborate in the future.

So we have both external kind of customer facing goals and internal goals, and then there were various other things that we listed that would be nice to have or one of us cared about it and the other two didn’t as much, but we agreed that those three are the things that we’re going to do our best to create for us and our participants in this.

Peter

I came across an article and I can’t ever remember where I come across these things. I sort of just consume things everywhere and I am not good at sourcing. But the article said that we focus a lot on aligning on values and when we talk about culture. So what’s more important than values, because people with different values can work together really effectively, but they do need to align on outcomes and expectations.

And those (that list) sounds like a really good list of outcomes and expectations no matter what our other values are. Now, of course, those are informed by our values, and I think we do happen to be fairly aligned on a lot of that stuff. But for leaders that are listening to this, I think it’s much more important to align on those things than saying everybody else needs to feel about the world the same way that I do in order for us to work well together.

Richard

Now, this event is, like the 2019 one, invite only, and we’ve invited a handful of leaders that we know would be a good fit for it. We’ve almost certainly not invited everybody we know or who knows us who should be there. So how would someone know if they should reach out to us and say, “You know, I think I’d be a good fit for this thing”?

Melissa

I’m kind of putting myself back into where I was then, because I do feel like, you know, I was sort of your ideal person at that time; not because of any huge accomplishment, but because of where I was in my journey. Like I was exactly where I needed the connection and I needed the practical takeaways.

So I would say, if you are someone who is, A) just challenging the status quo in your organization or with your organization, even if it’s just in one or two elements of it. You know, like we said earlier, you don’t have to be; “We have no managers and we just pay people what they asked to be paid.”

It doesn’t have to be that dramatic. But if there are elements of your organization that you don’t find in books or you don’t hear about in other places because you’re doing it in a more creative, innovative, human centric way. And you are someone who wants to share that and hear others share their stories, to me, that’s the starting point. What do you guys think?

Peter

Earlier in the conversation, you mentioned one of the things that was interesting to you about this group of people was it didn’t really matter what your structures and systems were like, but the distinguishing thing was we know a lot in the world about how to set up a team, set up cross-functional teams, and there seems to be a desire to create an ecosystem around teams that supports them, and doing that well.

And so I think we are looking for are the people who are wrangling that particular problem, which is “What’s a really human centric way to structure things like how do we pay people, how do we know who to hire, how do we know who to fire, and how do we do that in a kind way and in as kind of way, as you can in that scenario, how do we figure out how to do performance management or set goals and hold people accountable?”

Like all the systems that need to go into an organization that’s trying to do this kind of self-organizing team thing or trying to take an agile approach. If people have as their primary job figuring out those systems, that’s probably a good filter.

Melissa

Yeah. And I would add: and it’s your primary job and you are at a level of responsibility that you don’t have a lot of peers. Because you know, we have a lot of agile coaches for whom that is their primary job and we have a lot of resources for our Agile coaches. But this is very specific to you’re probably a C level and you don’t have a lot of peers– like you don’t have a chapter or a community of practice to go to every week.

This can become your community of practice.

Richard

I think that’s important, Melissa, because one of the outcomes that we saw at this event that is different from what I’ve seen even at Agile conferences in conversations about org level things, is that the leaders left these conversations thinking, “I’m going to go do this now” rather than “I’m going to go try to influence somebody who can do this, to do this.”

Melissa

Yes, yes. Like the ability to actually execute when you get back without– Yeah. Like not just influencing someone or like asking for approval from, you know, three layers above you.

Richard

Yeah. This was a group of people who were not limited by their authority. They were limited by “I don’t know how to do this thing that nobody in the world seems to be doing,” or “The risk feels too high to just go for it.” I want to have a community of people that are also wrestling with things of a similar nature.

Melissa

And I just have to say, much love– much, much love– to those of you who do have to go ask three levels of authority and there are definitely a number of amazing communities and conferences for those folks too.

Peter

And I would say many episodes of both of our podcasts that would be useful in that scenario.

Melissa

Exactly. I will say I’m not sure it was a direct link, but it did come out of that retreat and it was not too much longer after that that I did start my podcast. And the vision and intention of the podcast was to help people not feel alone. So I can’t help but imagine that there was some influence of that, like coming out of that retreat and going, “Wow, it was really nice to have a response.” My tagline for the Wild Hearts at Work podcast, (his Is not a plug) was always that whenever I would come with some radical idea, people would say, “Well, in the real world…” And when I was at that retreat, I was hearing “Real World” stories and I had something to take back and say, “Yeah, well, in the real world at, you know, NewBoCo or at, um…”

Peter

TheraSpecs– Pharmavite

Melissa

That’s real world, you know and the podcast is sort of in the same vein, like I have people come on and tell these stories so that we have a rebuttal for that horrible phrase “In the real world.”

Peter

I’m glad we have a video of you saying that in that voice.

Melissa

Now it’s a GIF.  Great! It’s going to show up at the retreat. Great.

Richard

Anything else we should say about this?

Melissa

I guess just, as someone who has been an attendee, a participant, community member in that order and now a facilitator, this was such a safe place for me. When you are in that level of leadership, as much as we want to be, and we are, authentic and vulnerable with our teams, you also want to maintain their trust and you don’t want to be in front of them crying and talking about how hard it is.

Even Brené Brown talks about how there is such a thing as oversharing, right? And this was a place for me and I, along with the two of you, want to continue to create this space that I could come and be like, “Yeah, man, like this is hard. And they don’t always understand what I’m trying to accomplish.” And it was just a place that people understood the things that weren’t understood in my daily leadership life.

And so it was very meaningful to me again, which is why I didn’t want to let it go. And, you know, I’m committed with the two of you to continuing to create that space.

Peter

Well, I’m fired up about that, too, Melissa. And I can’t wait to get to the details of planning this thing and especially to be in the room together with all these amazing people. So thanks for agreeing to come on board The Good Ship Humanizing Work Senior Leadership Retreat Planning Association Group

Melissa

Now it’s the….

Peter

Will that fit on the side of a ship? It’ll have to be a big ship.

Melissa

And now it’s like “The Humanizing Work/ Melissa Boggs Senior Leadership Retreat.” It’s a pretty long name. We might need a combined team name, a group name to…

Peter

To quote a great movie, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” 

Melissa

Yes, I love it. Oh, that’s the best. Well, thank you, guys. This has already been super fun. It was super fun to come on here and talk about it. And I don’t know, it just helps to recreate the excitement every time we talk. So I cannot wait.

Richard

So if you’re one of the senior leaders, we hope you can join us in San Diego in November. See you there.

 

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