E84: The Fragility of Humanity

Dr. Dave:

I love it. We're going to get started. Hello and welcome from the many locations who are joining here today around the globe. I'm Dr. Dave, your facilitator.

Dr. Dave:

I want to see if you could probably put your name up and change your name. And one way to do that is just to simply roll your mouse over your name tag or your picture, and you'll see three dots in an ellipse. Click on that and then click rename. And what I want you to do is just add your location and where you're coming from today. Why don't we spend a second or so doing that? I'm from the High Mountain Desert. Go ahead, and if you could just do that now. Just roll your mouse over your picture, and then just click on those three dots and change rename, and then we'll know exactly where you're from.

Dr. Dave:

I think people are getting the idea. Some people are getting that done. Hey, I just want to welcome you into the space of safety and healing. And I want you to try something with me today. I want you to repeat after me and I'm going to drop something in the chat and I just want you to un-mic yourself, and I want you to drop this and I want you to just repeat after me. It's a simple one-liner.

Dr. Dave:

If you get that into chat, then, you know ... I'm going to say, hello, I love you. Un-mic yourself, and then say, "Hello. I love you," back. Please un-mic yourself. I want to hear you. Hello, I love you.

Dr. Dave:

Hello, I love you.

Lizzy:

I love you back.

Dr. Dave:

Hello, I love you.

Dr. Dave:

I just want to say that love is the essence that I want us to experience in our time together. And I just want us to be patient and kind with each other as we're going through this process and we're learning from each other and we're spending time together.

Dr. Dave:

But I want to also pay some respects to the native people of our lands. I want to pay some respect to the civil right leaders to the Latin X members and also the Asian and Pacific Islanders who are just dealing with some trepidation right now. The LGBTQ+ group, BiPOC, and also non BiPOC mutual partners.

Dr. Dave:

During this Black History Month, the Agile for Humanity conference will take place going forward from this day annually during the Black History Month. And the big intent is for us to create this focus space for BiPOC to elevate our craft and mastery, and that is our focus today, is to elevate our craft and mastery. And we're looking in specific areas in product development, in agility, in design, technology.

Dr. Dave:

And we also want to make sure that we invite our non BiPOC. I call them mutual partners because it's a symbiotic relationship. It's a mutual partnership between us, to come along on this journey with us. We need each other in love so that we can actually elevate our craft and mastery.

Dr. Dave:

As I reflect on the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in the present times, I said it takes mutual partnership between all of us, all of us. And I want to quote Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb poem. I'm just going to take us an excerpt of that.

Dr. Dave:

And what she said is, if we merge mercy with might, and might with right then love becomes the legacy and change our children's birthright. For there's always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it. And I wanted to just hold onto those words and carry that with us as we're going through today, tomorrow, and throughout your life. I think these were very powerful things for us to just be brave enough to be at. It's a call to action as we move forward.

Dr. Dave:

I want to tell you, in 2022, I look forward to us meeting face to face. I do that once again, but we also will continue to have kind of like a virtual option to include our partners from around the world, because we have people who are coming from Ghana and different places in the world that we want to make sure that are still part of this community as we go forward. India as well. And so, I want to just make sure we continue to maintain the space of safety and healing for BiPOC and non BiPOC people to embrace our humanity and sharing the goodness that we bring in this moment.

Dr. Dave:

I want to just acknowledge some of the collaborators who we've been partnering for the last two months to bring this conference to reality. And so, I want to call out Anna Elsa, Ashanti who's here, Jenny, Joe, who's been killing us with that wonderful, good music. Andrea, April, Tracy and Steve. And Tracy and Steve are driving back home right now and I wish them that they get home safely today.

Dr. Dave:

Our sponsors. Our sponsors really helped to make some of this real for us. And so, [Source Sell 00:05:47] was one of our sponsors, Agile Alliance, Bearded Eagle, knowledgeshare.org, 5Saturdays.org, and Go Agile.

Dr. Dave:

I hope that you guys could find an instrument, a stick, pens that you could beat together like this to make some noise. It doesn't matter. You could use a cup if you want to. Anything that's going to make some noise as we go through today because I am just super excited to introduce Lizzy Morris. And I'm going to tell you a little bit, a friend and she's our keynote speaker today. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her.

Dr. Dave:

And so, Lizzy is a transformation specialist that has a passion for guiding leaders through strategic change. Lizzy will tell you she lives to inspire people to shift and reframe their context as they do their journey of life. It makes her a dynamic inspirational trainer and speaker. Lizzy shares her career, business and life experiences through charming stories, intermingled with humor and inspirational insights.

Dr. Dave:

Lizzy is an agile thought leader, an author, a songwriter, and singer. I guess we're going to hear some pipes today. A business owner, a mother of six, a beautiful woman, human who believes in intentional, personal evolutionary living.

Dr. Dave:

Whether it's a conversation at workshop, a stage talk or a simple conversation, Lizzy is a person you want to get to know. And I'm grateful that I've had that experience and that opportunity. I want you to follow her on LinkedIn and I'll probably drop her handle in there.

Dr. Dave:

And then her talk today, it's going to be the fragility of humanity, which I'm really looking forward to hearing. And so, let's take our instruments out.. Please come off mic, and then we're just going to just welcome her. Hey, welcome Lizzy. Just give it up for Lizzie for a little while.

Lizzy:

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dr. Dave:

Lizzy, it's up to you if you want people to stay on camera or you want us to come off camera. It's up to you.

Lizzy:

You guys can be on camera because we're having a conversation.

Dr. Dave:

Okay, I'm going to go on mute.

Lizzy:

We're having a conversation, because it's kind of like a nice little intimate gatherings. It's like a party at the house. You have some people in the kitchen, you got some people on the couch and you're continuing the conversation.

Lizzy:

And so, I want to thank everybody for being here today and I'm glad that we're here to kind of kick this off. And what I was thinking about, what on earth am I going to talk about? Because I didn't actually  It's been a topic. It was like, Lizzy, do whatever, which was just so good.

Lizzy:

But then I thought about fragility and I thought about us as humans. Any of you who have caught my morning inspiration show, I'm always talking about our humanity is beautiful. Your humanity is beautiful. My humanity is beautiful. And I realize the more and more we talk about agile when we say, "Okay, well where can we position agile today for tomorrow?" What would we do with it that would make it better serve us tomorrow? And in focus of BiPOC, what is it that we need to do with this thing called agile?

Lizzy:

I decided I'd look at it and here were some of my thoughts. I'm going to look like I'm looking up in the edge just a wee bit, because I'm going to just flip you guys over a little bit. Here was kind of the thought.

Lizzy:

Agile For Humanity celebrate these BiPOC lives. And I thought, "This is cool. This is a good topic." If I can help everybody see the humanity, I think we're partway there. And then I heard this in my head, "Lizzy, really? You're going to make agile racial now? For real? You're doing this whole racial thing with agile. Can't it just be agile? Why'd you got to go mess with it?"

Lizzy:

And I heard that thought in my head like, "Lizzy, why are you messing with this thing?" And I thought, "Well, why not mess with it?" Because if we're talking about agile, aren't we talking about people? I mean who'd you do agile with, if you don't do agile with people because you don't do agile with stuff. Agile's all about doing agile with people.

Lizzy:

And then I thought, "Well, here's the thing that probably messes with people." Let's take a little step and let's be transparent for a second. Is it the label that's messing with us? Is there a label in our head if we're really honest or a thought that we're thinking why that question would come up? Lizzy, why does this have to be a racial thing?

Lizzy:

I mean, it may even go as far as being kind of that whole idea of the nails on the chalkboard. I know for me personally, guys, I got really sensitive teeth. If you were to scrape your nails on a chalkboard, it would just send me absolutely insane.

Lizzy:

But I think sometimes whenever we bring the conversation of race into the room and try to have a transparent conversation, that's exactly what it does to people. It's like nails on a chalkboard, which is why we're kind of where we're at.

Lizzy:

When I considered that, I thought, "Well, what is it we're really dealing with?" And I looked up the word fragility. I thought let's get the actual definition because sometimes intuitively in your head, you say a word, you mean a thing with it, but what's the dictionary saying with it? Here's what the dictionary's saying about fragility, guys. The quality of being delicate or vulnerable. The quality of being easily broken or damaged. And oh my gosh, when I looked at that, I was like, "Okay, that's us as humans."

Lizzy:

When you think about us in the workplace, because when we think about agile in many cases, that's where we we've got the construct of frame. It's around our everyday working. Well, when I think about us in the workplace, a lot of us, regardless of our packaging have had some kind of career trauma, some kind of stuff that didn't quite go the way we thought it would go and it's left a scarred. We've been broken in areas.

Lizzy:

And when we look not just at our career, we look at our lives because that's what I realized we have to pay attention to. We've got to pay attention to the human because when we start looking at this human in agility, that's where the fragility happens. Because as humans, we have these dimensions

Lizzy:

... of our lives. We've got our health. We have got our relationships. We've got our finances. We've got our careers. We've got our businesses. We've got our dreams, our aspirations. These are all themes that are dotted around our life. And when some of the themes are not hit the right way or we've been damaged in one of these areas, it's a scar. It is brokenness. And when we take a look at our BiPAP history, we can see there has been a lot of damage. And often we can think, well, where do we go from here? And what is the next step? And how do we now move past? How do we make it better? How do we take this agile stuff, rip it, make it do what it's got to do. And this is the story I thought about.

Lizzy:

The story that came to mind was this Japanese tradition. And some of you may have heard about it, you may not have heard about it, but you'll have definitely seen it. But maybe you don't know what it's called. It's called kintsugi. Kintsugi, let me pronounce it correctly. I tried to practice to make sure I'd get the pronunciation absolutely right. But I still may be messing up. But it's this concept that we take the brokenness and we don't throw it away and we don't hide it. What we do with the brokenness is we make a point of talking about it, about actually putting it on display. This is how it's spelled kintsugi. Now the kin stands for gold, so it's the idea of looking at what we've got, looking at all the marks, looking at all the scars, looking at all the brokenness that we've gone through, putting it on display, but putting it back together with gold.

Lizzy:

Now, when you think about gold, gold is considered to be precious. It's considered valuable. So what are we saying? Our experiences, all that is our humanity, all of our brokenness, in every area of our existence, it's absolutely beautiful and worthwhile being on display. Now, if I show you this picture, that's probably more things you've seen this kind of art. You've seen stuff in the stores and you're like, "Oh, okay, okay. I've seen that." That is the practice of kintsugi, the idea of taking what is broken and putting it on display, not hiding it, but putting it on display.

Lizzy:

Now, let me give you the story behind it. So let me take you down how this whole stuff came around. So there was this Shogun, he was born 1358, lived til 1408 and his name was Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. And he had this really nice teacup that he liked. It was his favorite teacup, then it broke. So he's like, "You know what? I love my teacup so much, ship this thing off, get it fixed and bring it back." Now when they brought it back to him, they'd used staples and it just didn't look cute. And he was really kind of offended. He's like, "What is this? I want to use this. This is my favorite thing."

Lizzy:

And so what happened was he said to his teams that were around him, "Guys, I need a little bit of innovation. Here. What can you do with it?" So what they did was they took the glue of the time and they blended it with real gold and they put it back together. This became the beginning of what is called wabi sabi, the concept of cherishing old and rustic things and admiring the rustic-ness to them, admiring the brokenness.

Lizzy:

Well, the story goes on a little bit further as this concept and this frame of thinking kept going. So there was this guy, really looked up to as a guru, Zen guru, of the day called Sen no Rikyu and he's invited to dinner at this rich guy's house. And this guy knows he's coming. He's like, "Hey, I'm going to show you what I've got." So he has this this amazing ancient vase that he brings. And this Rikyu guy is like, "Whatever." Instead he spends the whole time staring outside at some old rickety tree, that's waving around and just admiring this tree. And when he leaves, the guest gets really kind of peed-off. He's like, "Forget this." And just breaks this expensive antique vase that he was trying to show him. He just crashes it to the ground, goes to bed and like, "I'm done."

Lizzy:

Well, staff, and you got to love your teams, because sometimes they know you have these little breakouts of human behavior, our fragility of our emotion. They picked it up and they used the wabi sabi concept and they put it back together with gold. So now when Rikyu comes back some months later, he's looking and he's like, "Ooh, now that is magnificent." That's what he says about the broken vase that was in essence worth so much, but he saw the beauty when he was able to see all the marks of the brokenness.

Lizzy:

See when we're talking about authenticity, right, which is what we love. We love this word. We love this word about authenticity. When we talk about it, what we're talking about now, is really bringing the humanity back to the picture. Because you see, I can't be authentic if I'm not willing to put on display those scars, those cracks. But because I honor those, I understand it's part of the journey, I understand it's part of the evolution, I know by you seeing my cracks and seeing that I honor them, that they've helped me to be where I am today, it helps you to do what? Pause and honor your own. So now you can come to the table with your good, your bad, you're indifferent, because that's how we like to label things, right, and bring it all together. And so you can be on display. We can be on display.

Lizzy:

So instead of having to hide the scars, because see that's where the pain and the trauma never gets a chance to heal, because you're always hiding it. It's always pushed way down. We're going to rooms and we're not accepted. We thought we're not as good as everybody else in there and they're the thoughts we tell ourselves, based on the experiences and the thoughts we've heard others say. We can kill the beauty that is us. But if we understand that, yes, I haven't had so many great experiences. And working in certain areas has been very challenging because when I showed up, I wasn't expected and I wasn't accepted, because that happens a lot of times.

Lizzy:

I remember years back, first time I was married, my last name was Chen. And I'd show up at places and somebody would expect to see somebody Asian and then they'd go. I'd go, "Hi." And they'd go, "You?" And in many cases I had already been hired for the roles of the contract, so they couldn't then push it away, but they were totally stuck by, this was not what we were expecting. See, we have those, we have expectations. But now as a community coming together, when we think about agility, all our expectations, they are probably going to be shattered, but here's the thing be prepared for that. It's probably going to happen. What we expected, we're not going to get. But it doesn't mean there's not beauty in having shattered expectations.

Lizzy:

If we take a note and a little bit of inspiration out of the wabi sabi tradition, broken expectations are beauty, they're magnificence. We have the ability to learn from them. We have the ability to make something amazing. So when we look at the many hues of BiPAP. The many shades we come in, the many cultures that we come in, we are looking that are traveled through time from when humans first existed, [inaudible 00:21:46] calls us to be fragmented, because now we moved to many different places in the world. We have our own individual culture. There's a sense of not seeing where we come together, but that fragmentation now, see it as gold. See each one of the separations of these pictures as entwined in gold.

Lizzy:

So although I may come to the scene in a different model from you, I got a different human model, you got a different human model from me, we're still part of this family of humanity. So although there are things that block this experience, they block this concept of we are human and we should respect our humanity and embrace our humanity, we've got to understand some of the things that are blocking are fragility, the fragility of our human experiences. For instance, if we look at the journey of black lives, of indigenous lives, we are seeing command and control. It's historical command and control, enslavement, inequality, segregation, legalism. It's all about trying to control the situation. But if we sprinkle it, if we make fragile be that gold that we put in the fragmentations, then now we can emerge self-organizing teams. That particular principle can come in place now to help us begin to put back together the places where we've been separated. It can cause us to innovate the new shape that we're going to emerge.

Lizzy:

So really what we're saying guys, is fragility is human fear of change. I'm scared. I'm scared of what it's going to look like. It's not going to look pretty. It's going to be a bit ugly and Oh my gosh. That's what's going on, but that's okay. It's a part of the process. Let's bring it down to the simplest thing. I'm going to respect you. You're going to respect me. I'm going to be open to you. And you're going to be open to me. And I'm going to look at you face to face as an equal, eyeball to eyeball. We're going to come together and we're going to see each other and we're going to celebrate.

Lizzy:

The step that we need to take to make this successful, is to consistently eyeball what it is we put together and how we put it together. Maybe there are some things that we need to shatter again. There may be some things that we need to break on purpose, by just throw it to the ground and start over. We may need to do that. But you know, when we throw it to the ground and it breaks, we've done it together. We've broken it together and together we put it back. We put it back honoring the fragments, honoring all the pieces and allowing all that brokenness to show because it's showing how we're innovating, how we're inspecting and adapting to be who it is we can truly be, which is a team of humans working together to make change possible in organizations, to make change possible in communities, to make change possible in the world.

Lizzy:

So I leave you with this, direct action, direct like, "Okay, Lizzy, what's the next step? What's the next step?" The next step is this, frame our agility with fragility. Don't hide it. Let's actually now frame it. Yes, we're humans. Yes, we got issues. Yes, we get messed up. Yes, we're not always the nicest people

Lizzy:

... in the world. Yes, that's true. But we recognize it and we recognize that is now the frame moving forward. It's understanding and embracing the humanity of each of us in whatever stage of the journey that we're actually in, because we're not all at the same place. But feel we have the opportunity and we have the choice today as BIPOC supporters, BIPOC people to take all the things we've gone through.

Lizzy:

There's a picture here that I'm going to show you guys, which just kind of did this thing for me. I was, Oh my gosh, this is probably really showing what it looks like. This is what we do with the scars. Look at that. That is a beautiful piece of art. But it's a beautiful piece of art that's broken and put back together. Yes, we have a history of brokenness. The future may have brokenness ahead of us. We can expect to that, but we can still make the pain beautiful if we come together. That's the key. If we come to together via community, make connections, have true collaborations, we will change the world with Agile for tomorrow. Thank you, any questions?

Dr. Dave:

Don't all be, don't all go at once. Get off mute and aspire to fire up a question for Lizzy.

Jenn Wong:

Hi, this is Jenn Wong.

Lizzy:

Hey, Jenn.

Jenn Wong:

I could put my camera on, but I'm not quite presentable.

Dr. Dave:

Please, Jenny.

Jenn Wong:

Fine. I'll tell you how broken I am in the morning with my hair all crazy and makeup, but hi. Thank you, Lizzy, for your talk and thank you for sharing the concept of Kintsugi, if I'm pronouncing it right. I'm not even sure myself, but I love the concept of taking what is broken in and putting it on display. It's really tapping into being vulnerable, which a lot of people just don't instantly embrace, right? It just takes a lot of time. So I think, the question that I have in terms of that, are there any recommended steps in helping people get from the point of where they're at to that point of vulnerability so that they can put what is broken on display?

Lizzy:

I think the first thing we always have to remember is everybody's got brokenness. So even the most put together person has got them brokenness that they just haven't put on display. And they may not be at a point in the journey where they are comfortable enough. And that vulnerability that they have, they're not ready yet to kind of release it to the world.

Lizzy:

But don't wait on others to be ready. This is where we lead. We lead from a point of vulnerability if we think about servant leadership. It's all about taking that step. That I'm going to take this step. I'm going to take this weight on me to give you an example of what you can follow. So it's the prototype, right? Sometimes in areas, we are going to be the prototype. Our lives are going to be the prototype of letting people know it's okay. Look, I'm still standing and I'm still okay. And I was vulnerable. And I shared with you a very vulnerable moment, but I'm still standing and breathing. You can do it too. So sometimes it's you being willing to be what I call the bridge, allowing your experience to be a bridge that other people can take to get themselves to that next level of vulnerability.

Jenn Wong:

Very good. Start within here first, right?

Lizzy:

Start here. This is the only piece that we can control is this stuff, is that.

Jenn Wong:

And the rest will follow. Thank you.

Lizzy:

Yeah, that's right. The songs that we listened to, the Bob Marley song, there was a couple of lyrics that I wrote down from it, right? I mean, I've been hearing that song since I was a child and I never really paid any attention to it until it was just played. It was interesting. One of the things he said is, "Could you be loved?" Right? That's where a lot of us stand, right? Because when we're looking at ourselves, we're not loving us. We think we love us, but we're really not loving us at all. And because we're not loving us, we find it hard to really believe that anybody could love us as we are, broken. Whereas it's so, we don't want to put that on display because we feel it's going to somehow disqualify us.

Lizzy:

But in this world that we're in today, what is drawing people and causing that stickiness is people seeing other real people that, "You're broke? Yeah. Me too, oh my gosh. But you were able to still achieve that, you were able to still do all those things? Yes I was." So if, could you be loved? Yes, but the love of start here, in appreciating who you are and the journey that you've gone through. And I think that's where sometimes we get a little bit stuck and I love the way he put, "Don't let them change you." Because if somebody else tries to make you something, it doesn't stay.

Lizzy:

You got to evolve you because you're evolving out of the complexity that is you and all your life experiences. So you've got to evolve you. And then he said, "Or even rearrange you." Right? And so, if you think about times where people have wanted to rearrange us, when you think about rearranging teams and the dynamics don't work. This team was working so well together, then he pulled all of these pieces apart and it just didn't work the same because we're rearranging something and not allowing it to evolve itself.

Lizzy:

That's what we've got to get really good at as coaches, as professionals. When we're talking about this fragility, is really looking at each individual and appreciating the individual even as you form them into teams and we form them into communities so that your individuality, it's still spotted, right? I don't lose you, you're still there. Because when we look at individuals and interactions over processes and tools, it says we've got to bring the individuals to be able to still stand in their individuality while having these interactions. Because that's where the magic, that's where the beauty and the creativity comes, is when I stand as myself, you stand as yourself, but we're choosing these interactions that we're having.

Colleen:

Hi Lizzie, I'm Colleen.

Lizzy:

Hey, Colleen.

Colleen:

Thank you so much for that lovely speech and the concepts of the Wabi-sabi and the Kintsugi. They're really wonderful. And hi, Dr. Dave. Long time no see.

Dr. Dave:

I know.

Colleen:

I used to, just so you know, so some of you know me when Dr. Dave lived in Southern California. I used to help him with this wonderful thing that he did called Five Saturdays, just helping kids. I call it Agile Summer School, that's the easiest. Anyway, I wanted to bring this topic up because I know the folks here. I actually saw some of my friends, Andrew Lee and others. And so I know this is a very safe community, and I wanted to throw this question out because of a story that I experienced. My question is, how deep are we willing to even embrace the diversity in the Agile community at large?

Colleen:

And let me tell you a really poignant story about this and BIPOC and other things. I'll try to, I want to be delicate because I want to respect people's privacy and names, but I'll make it specific enough so that it has meaning. There's a really well-known person who has written about clean coding and all these other kinds of practices. And I read that person's book and I thought it had good ideas in it. And I went out and I posted some tweets and out on LinkedIn about this person. And immediately a lot of my friends who I trust in the Agile community, texting me personally on my phone saying, "Oh my God, be careful. This person has hurt the Agile community tremendously." They aspire to, they follow QAnon and other things. And I thought, "Whoa, I had no idea." And yet this person is an O'Reilly author, there's a lot of interest in that.

Colleen:

Now, but I said to myself, it would be a huge victory to me if that person could come into a community like this and we really hash it out and try to understand each other, right? And I know there are these walls and I was very glad that my colleagues tried to alert me and I immediately went out there. And I actually didn't take down the post because I decided I was going to keep it open and say, "Thank you so much for letting me know. I had no idea, but I also didn't want to participate in cancel culture of any kind." Right? Saying that this person should be shunned.

Colleen:

Because the belief was, I should take down this post and I should follow these other people who do clean code and don't believe in QAnon, with by the way, I want to say I don't, obviously. But, it was one of those things that was a pivotal teaching moment for me about these things that exist even within our own community that are so important. And, I just thought since this is a BIPOC community and, Lizzie, you just brought up some beautiful things about sharing your vulnerabilities and in places where you're broken.

Colleen:

That was a story for me, for like, "Whoa, I had no idea. I wasn't aware." But I also decided I would just leave that hurt out there and not apologize for it because it wasn't my intent to support somebody that supported racist beliefs. But I also thought, what if that person still has some valid things to say, do we take down that person's posts and forever and nullify them? And that's absolutely not, in my opinion, now that is my choice. And so yeah, I may be, some people may not like that. But I thought if we're really going to begin this healing journey, it has to start with something as radical as that kind of hurt that obviously a lot of people experience.

Colleen:

So, I really commend Dr. Dave, thank you so much for bringing us together. But I would say that as this conference grows, my victory would be, over time could we bring in people of utmost different views that actually would be "almost like enemies" and help to hash that out. Because the concepts of open space and the concepts of conflict, that peace is not the absence of conflict, it's how we flow through the conflict. So that's like, if this community could be the seedling of that, that would be very meaningful. And I just wanted to thank Lizzie and Dr. Dave for putting this together and coming together. But I'd love anybody's thoughts including Lizzy's on that because that was a powerful, Agile story that I just wanted to share.

Lizzy:

That is so funny that you said that because a lot of people are not cognizant of the very hard experience I went through in our community. Because it's not really a story that I've shared. But when I chose to go down the CST path, that was when I realized our community had issues with Pijen, right? And I had some issues with Blacks and I didn't know it. I thought I'd come into this beautiful inclusive community that was saved from all the horrors of the rest of America. And I bumped into it face on and bumped into the protection of it, right?

Lizzy:

And I had a choice at the time. Because at the time I was hurt, I was angry, I was really, really shattered. Because as a result, I had lost a lot of relationships that I thought were authentic, right? Because I choose to push and call out some of the issues that were there and that wasn't easy to do them. Well, had I not pushed and not hold out and still kind of walked through the path, I

Lizzy:

I wouldn't be here today, right? I wouldn't be able to be classified as a thought leader and be able to be the second black that's walked in these shoes outside of [Devonne 00:39:11]. We are going to have to keep pushing because we're still early in the game.

Lizzy:

I was doing a talk yesterday, and some of the ladies talked about how the window of grace is really small. How much more grace do we have to get people to get with the program of you've got to respect to everybody and give everybody room? There was a phrase that was used, the difference between calling in and calling out. And it stood with me. Stephanie [Moffler 00:39:40] said this, "We have got to decide who we're willing to call in and who were willing to call out." And sometimes people do not realize that they're holding these deep-rooted views.

Lizzy:

I'll give you a context, right? Let me put myself on display. I have a habit of saying, "Hey guys." But it's a habit. But it's a habit I'm becoming more conscious of. So I'm saying, "Hey, beautiful humans." While I'm building a new habit of saying the "Hey, beautiful humans," but I've been around now coming into 48 years on the planet. So I've got a lot of old habits. There are people who've been on the planet longer than me. So their habits have lived longer, and they're deeper rooted.

Lizzy:

So in our community, as where seeing the exposure, the brokenness, the fragility of the humans in our community, we have to understand it's that. And it's come from cultures upon cultures, conversations upon conversations, tradition, families, and we're not going to break it overnight.

Lizzy:

So yeah, cancel culture is something we're doing. But as Agilists, is that what we do? Or do we bring them in, and we reflect and we take our construct of retrospectives, and we take our construct of openness and collaboration to say, "Let's use our tools. Let's use open spaces to talk about these things." When you said that when you had that connection, knowing you're following this, the story I have in my head is you must be this way. Is that really who you are?

Lizzy:

Ask the question because sometimes we can assume from somebody's actions that is absolutely what their intention is, that's absolutely what they're doing. What if there's another story to that that nobody's bothered to ask?

Colleen:

I fully agree with you. And I want to commend you for getting your CST and helping set an example of diversity. I think it's just wonderful. It's so ironic that I was talking with a friend in San Diego who is a black woman who is going for her CEC and has faced what she would call hazing. And it's just so interesting that you brought that up. And we talked extensively about this and how we can help create a better understanding and true diversity within the communities that we walk in. So thank you for paving the path.

Lizzy:

Well, I thank God for the broad shoulders of Devonne, although his shoulders did cause a problem because people just weren't ready for anybody else. That packaging, they weren't ready for them to be two of us. But I'm hoping that we're going to start to really change the landscape, and groups like this here and conferences like this are bringing to attention that we're here. We're part of the community, and we deserve to be sitting at the table, able to make decisions and shift the way things look. And not token shift. You know what I mean? Really be able to drive and be given space to make an inclusive place so that when we show up at the table, we want to stay at the table. Because somebody can invite you to dinner, and they make you feel so uncomfortable, you're never going back.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. I just want to give us a quick time check. I love the flow of what's happening here. So I want to give us maybe a few more minutes to wrap up and then take a break. And then we'll go into future search where we can continue to have this conversation for a lot longer. I just wanted to give us that opportunity to keep going for a few more minutes.

Michael Tucker:

Yeah. Lizzy, I was thinking about what you're saying, and something that was really present to me when you showed that slide about self-organizing teams and having this conversation around healing. I can speak for my own experiences, that for me, what that healing has looked like, a part of that healing journey is self-organizing myself with other individuals like me, where I do feel safe and I can allow that healing to take place. Because sometimes, in the mass group of everyone, that can happen.

Michael Tucker:

And what I mean is that people are at different places. They're in different places. And when you need healing, you just need what there is. You need the healing. You don't need to explain and these kinds of things. And so I see that principle playing out in that way. And I see this space as very much a space where, as someone who's done that and self-organized myself in that place and have been present with myself and loved myself to nurture myself back to life, then I can come to a place like this and participate and share that love with others.

Lizzy:

Yeah. I agree. But you look at hospitals, right? There are certain wounds where they put you in special wards where lots of people can't come around you because those wounds are deep. You don't want those wounds to be reinfected. You need time for those to heal before you can come back with community, even families. So I think that's such good advice that people have got to be okay when you've got a wound that's that deep to withdraw for awhile and get yourself together, get yourself healed so you can come back and create more spaces and recognize when people have been cut that deep.

Dr. Dave:

I think we have probably time for maybe one more comment for about two minutes, and then we'll wrap up this portion of the conference, and then we'll take a break.

Ron Hall:

Hey, folks, good afternoon. Can you guys hear me?

Dr. Dave:

Yep.

Lizzy:

Yeah, we can, Ron. Hey.

Ron Hall:

Yeah, hey, thank you so much. I wasn't quite sure what this was going to be today. I've been an Agilist for quite some time, and I'm always looking to understand, and I guess how do we connect the parts of fragility. And I guess that is through our servant leadership.

Ron Hall:

I think there was a couple of interesting pieces that you mentioned here, like the Bob Marley song. I think you said, "Could you be loved? Could you be loved?" I look at it in the sense of, could you actually start to radiate love from the particular space that you are in? Even though other people don't love you, even though you're moving through parts that aren't connected, the love that you bring is what starts to connect these disconnected parts.

Ron Hall:

And maybe for us, that is where our servant leadership comes into place, where we start now to bridge the gaps between people who don't think like us or people who don't agree with us, people who don't see us the same way. How do we start to connect, create those small feedback loops, those small levels of communication and understanding and we can build from that? I just wanted to get your take on that.

Lizzy:

It actually takes that confrontation. But I don't like to call it confrontation because personally I hate confrontation. I'm just one of those people [crosstalk 00:47:47] confrontation. What I'd rather say, it's a conversation. And the conversation may say, "I don't want to misinterpret what you said. I think I heard you say." We talk about clarifying. "I think I heard you say that. Is that what you meant to say? Is that what I should have heard?" So then that person can qualify their intention. You know what I mean? And it gives the opportunity.

Lizzy:

And then you can say, "Okay, I see that's what you're saying, but here's what I am saying, and here is my intention, and here is my feeling." Because the only thing you can master and we can give, if we're choosing to love, then we have got to make the choice to love and to be kind, regardless of what we're getting back. It can't be conditional.

Ron Hall:

Yes, exactly.

Lizzy:

It's like when you think about light, light is not waiting for darkness to go, "Hey, here's some big room for you." Light's just going to be light.

Ron Hall:

Exactly. Exactly. No matter what.

Lizzy:

Going to be light.

Ron Hall:

Yeah. So it must be almost that you must be able to stand within your own space regardless whatever is around you and hold true to who you really are and do not let those things influence.

Lizzy:

Yeah. We're deciding what we're putting on display because we've had more years of practice at trauma and healing.

Ron Hall:

Yes. Right.

Lizzy:

We just have. It's almost in our DNA.

Dr. Dave:

So let me interrupt.

Lizzy:

Go ahead. Sorry.

Dr. Dave:

Let me interrupt. I think we're at time for this segment, and this conversation will continue when we get into future search as we break into smaller groups. It's 11:02 at my time. So figure out your time, and let's say 10 minutes from now, let's all come back. Turn off your cameras, go to the restroom, stretch your legs, drink some water. We've been at this for about an hour, and I think this is a good time for us to pause.

Dr. Dave:

And then when we come back, we'll get into our murals, and we'll walk you through how to do future search. Because we want us to think about something that we want to solve for the future and how are we going to get there. It's not just about what's impacting us now. It's about not only what's impacting us now, but what can we do in the future? Because that is important. Otherwise, we're going to be stuck. So I'll see you guys and gals, I always catch myself with that. Now I'm going guys and gals. I'll see you guys and gals in about 10 minutes.