Appreciation – Bernie Maloney

Unfortunately, saying thank you seems to be an after thought more and more.  So at least once a month, I will take a few minutes to publicly appreciate someone that has had an impact on me.

This round:  Bernie Maloney

I’ve known “of” Bernie for a few years but over the past year or so, I’ve had the opportunity to really connect. There are so many wonderful aspects to share about Bernie but I’m going to focus in on one particular situation.

At Agile2016, I was chatting with Bernie about the process of applying to become a CST (Certified Scrum Trainer). He knew that I had been working on this and followed up to determine the current status. Happily, I shared that I was now passed to the interview stage and will be heading to Munich in October. He simply asked something to the effect of “how was I feeling about it?”. I shared that I was actually a little nervous: not about content knowledge but about reacting to anything that I perceived as inappropriate. Keep in mind, that I have no reason to believe that anything would be but I don’t enjoy being critiqued by people that I don’t know (or feel mutually invested in yet) to determine if I’m “worthy”. I guess I just know my potential triggers.

Bernie’s response: “I know something that might help you keep yourself in a state of mind that you want to be during the interview. Would you be interested?” Ummm….OF COURSE!

Now my respect would have gone up with just the acknowledgement of my feelings and the offer in itself but nope, Bernie makes time for me a few weeks later. For over an hour, he shared knowledge about how our brains, especially our unconscious minds work. He taught me two techniques to help myself put my mind and body in a calm state. He was caring, knowledgeable and generous.

Over the next few weeks, I practiced. I’m not surprised in the least bit…they worked. At a city meeting, during a dispute with a neighbor, etc. each time, I successfully applied what he had taught me. Then I was calm in my responses.

I’m purposely writing this post before the results of the CST interview. Truthfully, the results don’t matter when it comes to this appreciation. I get to interactive with Bernie maybe 2-3 times a year (max) and here he was finding time to help me. He modeled why I love this community and am so very grateful to have him in my life.

So thank you for trusting me to be open to learning, for sharing your knowledge, and for investing in me.

Much respect!

Picture from LinkedIn