Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here, and I hope you're doing well today.
I wanted to start by sharing a celebration, one of my clients
and I were talking and I asked her, you know, as you reflect
back over the six months that we've worked together, what have
you learned what stands out? And she thought about it and she
said I learned things don't always have to be so hard.
I felt less frantic this year, but looking back, I'm surprised
at all the things I was able to accomplish and I loved that and
I wanted to share that with you because it ties into my topic
for today, which is emotions at work and to approach this topic,
I also want to back up a little bit.
I don't often talk directly about mindfulness on this
podcast but it is The foundation of everything I do in my work.
And my mindfulness, I simply mean a quality of attention
where your attention is in the present moment with curiosity
and kindness. It really sits beneath my entire
Philosophy for this work. Why?
It's important what makes it effective, and it's a
foundational tool that you can use.
In your career, honestly, at any stage, but I feel especially
when you start Rising into a manager role, that's when it
becomes even more important and even more useful, especially
with respect to emotions. So emotions at work, so many of
the clients that I work with, they come to me for questions
that are having about being new managers at work.
Emotion shows up a lot specifically.
I mean I hear things like I want to feel more confident.
I feel a lot of imposter syndrome.
I want to motivate my team. How do I get my team to feel
motivated and engaged? I inherited a team that is
grieving how do I support my team with all of the grief and
the emotion that they're feeling.
I feel overwhelmed, I feel like I need to do it all myself.
I feel anxious about whether or not I'm doing a good job.
So this idea of emotions shows up number one because you're a
human. So congratulations,
congratulations. Being a human means that you win
an access pass to all of the emotions that are available to
humans which is a wide range and I think we sometimes simply
Overlook that what is driving our decisions or our challenges
or you know the reason we hold ourselves back and kind of Spin
and Self Doubt or uncertainty is because there's this significant
emotional component that we often simply haven't Not really
been prepared or equipped to handle.
We all, you know, we all kind of wing it and we figure out what
works for us. But I find that there comes a
time when it actually is really helpful to look at emotions
specifically. The other interesting thing is
that when you reflect on the most satisfying and rewarding
parts of work, those are going to be emotions to like feeling
inspired. Are feeling valued feeling like
you work with great people and it feels meaningful and fun
feeling respected for who you are.
And for what you contribute feeling appreciated.
For all that you do feeling proud of the work that you and
your team, or your organization are doing in the world.
I find like, when we think about the most satisfying parts of
curvier, those are Motion things.
So emotions become really important and as a manager, you
now have to deal, not just with your own emotions, but you're
now Reckoning with the emotions of your team in a new way and
the emotions of the people above you, in the organization.
So sometimes what happens is As We rise in our career and we get
a little bit Went into that middle range, right?
Where you're not the topmost person, but you're no longer the
bottommost person, your kind of somewhere in the middle becoming
aware of the different, like, emotional Landscapes of
organization. You're in, can be sometimes a
bit confusing. It.
Can sometimes be a bit challenging kind of like, you
know, you're now seeing this whole dimension of human
interaction and relationship that you didn't.
Fully appreciate was there. So where do we begin with
emotions and how to deal with them?
The first thing I want to share, is this idea that emotion
presents as physical sensation, which means that when we're
talking about a motion, we're talking about, what is the
physical sensation you're experiencing in the body as an
initial way of identifying it? So, if I asked you, you know, Do
you feel right now? And you said, I feel pretty
stressed. I'd say, okay.
So what does that feel like in your body?
How do you identify that as stress?
And you might say, well, you know, my eyebrows are kind of
scrunched up and I can feel like my shoulders are kind of tense.
You might say, well, I know I'm stressed because actually, I
haven't been sleeping very well. So my sleep is really poor and I
wake up, I don't feel rested, you know, we're interested in
what is the physical All expression, the physical
experience and the same for really enjoyable emotions,
right? So if I said how are you doing?
And you said I'm doing great actually feel really happy
today. Say Okay interesting, great tell
me what does happy feel like in your physical body and you
reflect and pause and say well you know it kind of feels like
this lifting kind of opening feeling maybe across the heart.
You might feel it in your face, maybe your face feels kind of
relaxed, maybe your jaw and your neck feel kind of relaxed.
And if you're listening and you're wondering my goodness,
what is she talking about? It's okay.
I get that a lot. Well, actually, I get that
50/50, I would say half of my clients have a real easy time.
With this concept makes intuitive sense for them, but
also maybe half of my clients feel Less aware of their
emotions as physical sensation, and that's when we actually can
have some fun. It's like okay.
Number one, if you think in terms of physical sensation.
First just notice what, if any physical Sensations are present
for you, right now, like are your hands cold, are you holding
a cup, is the cup heavy? Is it smooth?
Begin to tune into the physical? Stations because it can help
give you some information about the emotions that you are
experiencing now, the reason why it becomes helpful to think of
emotion as physical sensation is it just gives us another way to
Grapple with it and we want to become aware of the difference
between the emotion. We're experiencing the story
that we have around that emotion And what are the facts of the
situation they get very blurry when we're simply living, you
know, Full Speed Ahead that when we pause and say, okay?
So right now there's some let's call it, you know, some impostor
syndrome going on, you've gotten promoted to this new role and
your kind of questioning yourself.
If you can really pull this off and you're not really sure
because it's kind of a big job and you've never done this
before. And maybe your boss really
believes in you and you're afraid to disappoint them or
you're afraid, you'll let your team down because you think I've
never done this before. Like I've actually never done
this before so I don't, I don't know if I'm afraid of letting
people down, right? So you've got some impostor
syndrome. You've got some self-doubt in a
fear disappointment swirling in there, so we can start to say,
okay well, what are the facts of the situation?
Ocean. And that can include everything
from one where you promoted, what are your responsibilities,
how many people are on your team?
You know, what are what are the tasks that you're feeling most
concerned about, and why, like, we can start to get into the
facty part of it? And then we can look at the
story part. Okay.
So what's the story you're telling yourself about all of
these things and the story might be.
Well, there's a lot more at stake now.
It's not just me. I'm making decisions for it's
for my whole team. There's a lot riding on this.
You might tell the story of well, now I'm so visible.
Everyone is looking to me for guidance or answers and I feel
even more pressure about making a mistake so we can look at you
know what is the story that you're telling yourself about
the facts and about the situation?
And that might be a story about yourself and who you are.
Our it might even be a story of, you know, people like me don't
get big jobs. Like this are people like me
don't get the benefit of the doubt or, you know, people in my
family have always struggled with X y&z.
This story is the meaning that you're giving the particular
situation and it can be multi-layered which is really
interesting when we start to unpeel the layers to get more
clearly. Got it.
So there's the story of it and then there's the emotion and
emotions, very rarely, come alone.
Meaning, every emotion has a set of friends and if you have one,
you probably have others. So you might feel a swirl of
emotion, it might be a combination of enthusiastic and
scared. It might be a combination of,
you know, feeling intimidated and Feeling eager, it might be a
combination of anxiety. Fear pressure stress, some shame
flares and you know, remembering a time from childhood when you
felt really unsupported and kind of out on your own to do a big
hard thing, like it can all be a swirl.
And so we want to disentangle some of those so we can get a
clearer look at what are these emotions and play.
And this is also why I, as a manager, as you're learning to
become aware of the emotional landscape of yourself, your
team, the people that you work with, like, you don't have to be
able to read all the emotions. You simply want to be aware that
it is in play that every human has an emotional landscape and
then as humans work together, like, emotions are always a part
of the picture, whether it's Inning on the surface where you
can really see it clearly or whether it's underneath.
And, for example, one of the ways, I see, emotions underneath
the surface, playing out in our day-to-day work, is in
avoidance, when we are avoiding something, you can bet, it's
because there's an emotional driver behind that avoidance,
it's often discomfort. Or fear of a confrontation or
fear of uncertainty, or fear of the unknown.
I don't want to have this conversation because I'm afraid
of what this person will say. I don't want to have this
conversation because I am afraid of the emotions.
This person will have. When I tell them, you know, X, Y
and Z. So when we're in a voidance, you
know, when you know, there's something you have to do or you
need to do, but you stay in a void.
Dance or you stay in indecision, there's a good chance it's
because there's some emotion underneath that is driving that
behavior. And when you get more
understanding of what is that emotion, what is the story that
that emotion is about? How does that relate to what I
am experiencing or perceiving or the fact Enos of the situation
everything becomes easier. And so You know, I had mentioned
this client, the beginning of that our show today and she
realized, oh, I'm surprised at all.
The things I was able to accomplish even though I was
less frantic. And one of the stories she had
was that in her career, you have to be frantic and anxious in
order to be successful, that was what she had seen modeled by
others in her profession, was that ambition?
Meant anxiety, if you're going to be ambitious.
Vicious. You have to be anxious and
frenetic. She just never seen someone who
could be kind of calm and relaxed and easeful and
successful at the same time and so, her fear was if I let go of
my anxiety, will I lose my drive for ambition?
Well, I not, you know, be as active in the work that I do.
So we Unwound. The story.
Looked at the facts, looked at the Chen and found another way
to kind of challenge. Her her subconscious, underlying
assumption around the role of that anxiety in her career.
And it turns out in case you're wondering, you actually do not
need anxiety. In order to motivate yourself to
be ambitious. There are so many other ways you
can drive ambition. And one of my favorites to share
with you is the sense of legacy. The sense of purpose, the sense
that hey, you know what, you're here for a limited amount of
time on the planet. Why don't we use this time to
contribute something? Good to those who are coming
after whether that's the new people coming into your career,
whether that's your sense of Legacy for your family, or for
your community, or for your field of Industry.
I find that when we think in that, in that turn the sense of.
Hey, you know what? As long as I'm here, let's make
it good. That is such an energizing place
to motivate yourself without it being driven by like the fear
and the stress and then you know, the energy just feels
different, it feels easier to move forward.
We can get out of our own way and still have some time to
relax and enjoy and celebrate. So emotions at work, this is A
topic, I want to revisit again in the future because there are
so many different angles to it and to how it shows up in the
workplace. But for today, I simply want to
call your attention to how emotions, show up at work,
especially for new managers in terms of the self-doubt, the
overwhelm, the questioning, how you can best support your team,
and help them feel motivated as well as realizing emotions.
Are also part of the best part of work that feeling satisfied,
accomplished respected valued connected.
Like it's one of the things that is the best part of humans
working together is the emotional part.
So as you go forward into your week, it might be fun to Simply
notice what are the most prominent And emotions that you
experience yourself and what are the most prominent, emotions
that you notice or perceive in the humans around you, and it's
just a practice of noticing of Simply becoming aware so that we
can then become curious and start to learn more.
But step one is to Simply acknowledge and notice.
What emotions are present. Here, we practice that with
Ourselves first, because you have direct access to the
emotions. You are experiencing, whether
you realize it or not, and then we can start to bring that
awareness to understanding and relating with others in some new
and really effective ways. So I look forward to talking
with you more. This is what I've got for you
today. And thank you for listening.
I'll talk to you next time. Oh, and wait.
One last thought. Before I sign off, I am taking
new clients. So, if you want to work with me
one-on-one, we can do this work on a deeper more personal level.
Go into the show notes, you'll find the link to book a consult
directly on my calendar. And we can also talk about how
to present this as a Learning and Development request.
So that if your company has budget, Your professional
learning and growth. They might be able to sponsor
some or all of your work with me.
All right? That's it today.
I'll talk to you next time. Hey before you go if you like
this podcast leave a review. Tell me why you listen and what
has helped you? Thanks so much.
I'll see you next time.