Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad that you're here. And I hope you're having a great
day. I have been releasing new
episodes on Mondays for a couple of months now and I'm feeling
quite proud for creating more consistency and how I produce
and release episodes. If you've been following me for
a while, you know, I did not used to always be this way used
to be a little bit more. Haphazard never really knew what
a new episode was coming. But since October November or
so, of last year, I'm proud to say that I have become much more
consistent. And if you are looking to create
consistency in your life with anything, I will tell you the
one thing that helped me to do it so that you can take it and
apply it in your own life. And it's when you're feeling,
Resistance, look for the love and this is because your brain
is very intelligent. And of course, you know all the
reasons why you need to do things.
But anytime you're in resistance or avoiding or procrastinating,
it's because there's some little nugget of love that you are not
paying attention to. And when you connect with that
and for you, it might be a sense of deep purpose or it might be
the compelling reason. Why?
There's always going to be a nugget of love in there.
And when you connect with it, it makes it a lot easier to let go
of your judgment to drop your resistance and to move forward
towards the thing that you want to do.
So in my life, in this podcast, it was about becoming more
consistent with my episodes and deciding that what I really love
is, I love knowing that on Mondays, you get a new little It
of inspiration. In sight, maybe an idea that
will help make your week better. So that's what I wanted to start
with today. Now, the core topic I wanted to
share with you is this idea of facilitator mindset, the job of
a facilitator is to make things easier and when you think of
yourself as a facilitator in a manager, Next, a couple things
will happen. First.
You'll start to question. Will, what exactly are we trying
to accomplish here? Because if you're thinking, how
do we make things easier that's naturally going to draw your
attention to the question of what, like, what are we trying
to do? What is the outcome?
We're trying to create. What is the goal that we want
it? Immediately begins to connect
you in spite of all the noise and all the distraction.
What is the Come you want. What is the thing that really
matters here? It will also start to get you to
pay attention to the bigger system or context you're in, or
you can think of it as the environment that you in that
you're in. So when you think about how can
I make this easier, you'll start to look at what are the elements
of the system? I'm working with in, what are
the characteristics of the environment?
Environment that I'm working in. What are the different
personalities of the people that I'm working with?
And all of this is just so helpful because it begins to
distill and organize all of the information that you're
surrounded with. So instead of feeling
overwhelmed, you begin to look at how things relate to one.
Another, what the end result is that you're going after and
then, where can you exert some influence?
Lance or where can you make a decision that will simply let
everything be easier. Another thing that happens when
you think with a facilitator mindset, is it places your
attention on other people and it really orient's you, in this
sense of I'm here for you. Like I'm here to make things
easier for you. Whether the person you have in
mind is someone on your team or your manager or your Customer or
your client that this orientation of, I'm here to make
things easier, not just for me, but also for you helps a lot
because that also gives you the perspective to ask, like, what
is this other person need in order to make this outcome
happen? And they might not be able to
see it because they're so in the weeds or on their own thing or
because of their position in the organization.
They may not have the same ability.
To understand all of the different pieces.
Like, I've talked in the past how when you become a manager,
you have access to more information, you get a different
perspective on how different things fit together so you can
ask questions and find really helpful answers in a way that
another person might not be able to see if it's somebody on your
team. So years ago, when I was
managing a team they were mostly Lee older than me, the people on
my team that were experts at what they did.
They'd been doing it for years and when I stepped into the role
of being their manager, you know, my job was not to tell
them what to do. They knew what to do.
My job was not to onboard them. They had been on-boarded.
My job, really was to facilitate things for them.
What did they need? What could I do?
Could make things easier for
them. And sometimes that was about
adding context to information that was coming from leadership
or from upper management. Sometimes it was helping them
focus on the things that I wanted to them to focus on and
eliminate the distractions that were getting in the way of them
doing their best work. And sometimes it was simply
letting them know. I'm here to help.
However, you need. Tell me how do you want to work
together? What would be most helpful?
All for you, if you are managing a group of people that are
really expert that have more knowledge that have more
experience than you, I want to call your attention to this
example because what I see a lot is the insecurity comes in
because you might think if I'm the manager, I'm supposed to
have more experience or knowledge, but that's not always
true. Ultimately.
I believe a great manager makes things easier for people to do
good work. And it doesn't matter.
If you have the most information or the most experience, you
don't need to have the most information or the most
experience in order to be a great manager.
Who helps people do great work, right?
If you are managing a team of folks who are a lot younger than
you or that have new experience and they're just learning and
trying to understand what's expected and how Why I work in
this environment, it's still really helpful to think in terms
of facilitator mindset. How can you make it easier for
them to feel successful to understand?
What is expected to understand what they're doing really well
to feel valued. Like, how can you think about
ways to make it easier for them to be doing great work?
Facilitator mindset is also really Helpful, when you think
about your boss, your manager, how can you make their life
easier? How can you help make the
desired outcomes that you both want easier to have happen?
And once you start practicing facilitator, mindset and just
having this question, the back of your mind, how can I make
this easier? What are we trying?
To accomplish who are the personalities involved.
What are the things I can do? Or the decisions?
I can make that can facilitate the outcomes that we want.
It starts to make the work more dynamic, because you'll feel
less like, I'm doing it wrong or, oh, I did it right this one
time and it has to work all, you know, in the same way with all
the people, it gets you into a state of being more Dynamic,
more. Or willing and able to learn as
you go more resilient. So you'll take things less
personally, which number one is good for you because it takes a
lot of energy. Let's be honest.
When we take things personally, and you end up creating better
outcomes and it can be simple. So, this is the idea.
I want to share with you here today, facilitator mindset.
How can I make things easier in the A couple of years before the
pandemic most of my work was facilitating, group trainings in
different companies and I typically be there all day.
So I'd be on site around 7:30 or 8:00.
We'd set up the room, make sure everything, you know, we had
everything and organize the way that we needed it, then we would
run a full day training on public speaking and
communication skills. We'd wrap up around 5:00.
Five and then have our after Workshop, debrief, and any
cleanup and answering any questions.
Now, public speaking is something a lot of folks have
fear around, and they were stepping into a workshop with
strangers that they'd never met, and they were committed to be
there for the full day. So, one of the things I got
really good at was learning to ask this question.
How can I make it easy for these folks who are coming for the
day? How can Make it easy for them to
get the most out of this training.
How can I make it easy for them to do something?
Scary? That, maybe they've never done
before? How can I make it easy for them
to be here for the whole day? And that was everything from
thinking about food to standing up to moving to creating a
dynamic learning environment. So people didn't shut down or
zone out to actually keep people engaged.
Aged and present and actively learning through a full day
event. And that's also what made it fun
every time, even though I was always teaching the same course,
kills the group dynamics were always different, the individual
personalities, always different, the culture of the organization,
always different, even within a single In addition, the culture
of the teams were different. Like the engineering team and
the marketing team and the finance team and the sales team.
They all had really different Dynamics and personalities.
And so it became really fun to find all of these ways to reduce
the friction and to increase the ease with which we collectively
could reach our goal. Can I my give them this
information and create the environment that allows them to
take it, to make it their own. And then to do the scary thing,
which is speaking publicly in front of their peers or folks
that they might not know very well.
So this is what I want to offer to you.
Facilitator mindset, how can you make things easier?
Have fun with it? Don't try to be comprehensive
and find like 20 things. It's start with just one thing
maybe even just today. What is one thing today?
That can make things easier that can make it easier for you and
your team and the folks that you work with to reach that outcome,
that you're here to reach. All right, let it be easy.
That is what I wanted to offer to you.
I hope you have an amazing week and I will talk to you next
time. 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.
Kim nickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult.
It can get better.