Your job is to work with messy emotions.

An agile coach or scrum master is pulled in plenty of directions. Servant leadership is difficult because you need to put the needs of the team ahead of your own. It takes an emotional toll to do it properly, and it also requires practice and maturity. Today, on the blog, I would like to discuss the emotional work necessary to be successful.

I have spent the last three months with a new client.  It is refreshing and has taken me out of my comfort zone.  The experience has also opened my eyes to the emotional labor necessary to excel as a coach.  It would be best to work with the emotions of the people you are coaching; everyone has good and bad days.  A servant leader has to absorb those emotions and process them in ways that will benefit the team.  If this expectation sounds unreasonable, Kim Scott, the author of “Radical Candor,” says, “It is called management, and it is your job!”  A leader needs to put in the work emotionally to make the team successful.

The emotional labor expected of a leader comes in many forms.  A leader must listen to understand.  It is not enough to hear the words. A leader must understand the context and emotions of those words.  Next, a leader needs not to take the ups and downs of the job personally.  This is challenging for someone who takes pride in their work and has plenty of emotional investment in doing good work.  People will get angry with you, and others will demand more from you than you can give.  The key is that the anger and demands they create are usually their problems, not yours. As Collin Powel said being responsible means pissing people off.  As a servant leader, this is inevitable.

Finally, to solve problems, you need to set aside your emotions and look at situations in a focused and rational way.  Again, emotional control like this is more natural than said or done.  You will have an emotional investment if you care about anything you are doing.  To succeed, a coach or scrum master has to set those emotions aside during periods of stress so that they can “work the problem,” instead of being an emotional wreck.

Human beings are emotional and messy.  Having some emotional control or awareness is tremendous work.  The product of that work will be the respect of the teams you serve and grace under pressure when things go wrong.  It will enhance your leadership and improve your standing in the organization.

Until next time.