Welcome to the New Manager Podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nicoll. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
If you're new to the show, my name is Kim Nicoll.
I am a coach and I'm here to help you be more effective at
work, to be a better manager, to be more confident in taking a
very human centered approach to leadership and basically working
with other humans at work. Today I want to invite you to
consider what's working. It's so easy to focus on the
problems or on the things that are not working as well as you
want them to be, especially when you are really good at problem
solving. It's kind of like you will
inadvertently scan for all the potential problems.
And the problem with that is, if you're only looking at the
problems, the challenges, the difficulties, then you will
neglect to notice and appreciate the things that are working
well. And this is important because
there's a lot you can learn from things that are functional, from
people that are bringing strengths and great qualities
into the workplace, including yourself.
If you're a person who has a pretty loud internal critic,
then the odds are you will overlook and then diminish your
strengths, your excellent qualities, the things that come
easefully for you, but might not realize that not everyone can do
those things easefully or not everyone has that perspective.
And so when we think about what's working, we're not trying
to ignore the problems. We're not trying to ignore the
challenges. We're actually wanting to
develop a more accurate and complete perspective of the
situation, the environment, and the people.
The brain has a negativity bias that just means that the
problems the pain points will tend to be more vivid in your
mind and in the minds of other humans.
We tend to remember bad experiences more vividly than we
tend to remember good experiences because, you know,
kind of subconsciously we're trying to protect against future
bad experiences, or trying to avoid future disappointments,
future failures. So we tend to have a little bit
more stickiness around those negative experiences.
This isn't a problem to solve, it's just something that is
helpful to know about how a lot of brains tend to work.
So if you know that the brain tends to hold on to and have
more vivid these challenges and problems, then of course you can
remember. Oh right.
I need to also make sure that I have an accurate picture of the
whole situation, which means spending more time becoming more
vivid and clear about what's working.
What strengths am I using? What strengths do I see my team
using? What qualities are working well
in our relationships with other teams, with our customers, with
your manager? When you start to think in that
way, it will help you to both balance out the the heaviness
that sometimes problem solving can have.
And when you start noticing where things are going well, we
can start to ask other kinds of questions, like why is this
working so well? What's happening over here that
this is working beautifully or that this is like working so
well, you might not even notice it.
What are the factors or the environmental components or what
is the process or the tools or the personalities?
What is it that's happening that's making this work?
Well, you want to understand what those things are.
You also want to ask yourself, is there anything that I can
learn from what's working and use that over here with this
other situation where maybe things are not working so well,
We can learn and gain so much knowledge and perspective and
value by looking at what is working by bringing that lens of
appreciation to looking at the things that are functional and
going smoothly. We don't want to take those for
granted. We actually want to identify,
acknowledge and amplify them. The other thing, if you tend to
be a very good problem solver and then you tend to focus more
on the problems, is that you can over index or kind of over
prioritize solving the problems when the truth is not every
problem needs to be solved. And it's funny that I'm saying
this as just now a siren went by the by my apartment, you'll
probably hear that in the background.
That wasn't something to solve. That was just something that was
happening in the moment. And if I had spent any energy
trying to solve for that external noise, it would not
have done any good. Some problems are actually not
solvable. They're not to be solved.
They're just to acknowledge, OK, yeah, that's what's happening
now. And how can I focus attention on
something more useful, something that will be more effective?
So as you go into the week, my invitation, my encouragement for
you is to take a step back. Ask yourself first for yourself,
what's working? What's working in your life?
What's working in your day? What's working in your personal
relationship with your team, with your manager, with your
inner world, with your outer world?
What are the things that are working well?
And then begin to imagine that you're extending like a bubble
outwards and start looking for very intentionally what's
working a little bit further around you.
Then ask again like what's working a little further around
you. So you might start with your
immediate team or the colleagues that you work with most
regularly, and then start thinking you know, the next
level out, the next level out, the next level out.
From that, start tuning your attention to notice and identify
and appreciate what's working well in your world.
And even when things seem like they're falling apart or things
are, you know, just not working well in your inner world or in
the bigger world, there's always something you can find that will
give a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of
sense of, well, you know, at least this thing is working and
that can be very powerful just to help us to not feel
completely overwhelmed when we faced big, complex challenges.
Because you will in the course of your work and your life.
But being able to manage your attention, to remember, you
know, can you get a more accurate picture?
Can you expand your view or sometimes draw your attention
into a different direction to identify and notice and
appreciate what is working? Why is this working?
How can you begin to draw your attention there as well?
If you're a person who likes to get very operational, I
recommend that you document the things that are working in some
kind of, you know, some kind of document that you can refer to.
Do this for yourself. This will be helpful later when
you're having performance review conversations with your manager.
You want to be very comfortable identifying and talking about
the things that have been working well all year and with
your team and the folks that you manage.
It's also really helpful to document so that you remember
what are the things that they're doing well, what are the
strengths or the, you know, just the things that you're
observing. And some of those you want to
tell people because, you know, other people have inner critics
too. And they might diminish or
simply not appreciate the strengths and the positive
qualities that they bring. So it means a lot.
It makes a difference to be able to say, to tell to somebody,
hey, I just wanted to let you know, I really appreciate the
way you, you know, whatever that thing is.
It's a way to signal. I see you, I appreciate you.
You are valued. I respect you.
And that is the kind of activity that builds trust and that
builds goodwill over time. And there always comes a time
when we're a little bit crunched.
You want to have that trust and that goodwill established
beforehand. So those are my notes for you
for this week. I hope you have a really great
week and come back next week and we'll talk a little bit more.
Thank you so much for listening. Have a good one.
When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your
life. And when you're happier in your
life, you're more effective at work.
I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com
and sign up for a coaching consult.
It can get better.