Welcome to the new Manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
As you might be able to tell, I have a cold.
My voice is a little off because my body is a little off.
I have been dealing with a cold for about a week now and it's
slowly getting better, but it's still has me feeling a little
bit deflated and a little bit congested.
I do have to give big, big hugs and so much appreciation to my
partner Warren, who made me chicken soup from scratch and
brought it to me. We don't live together.
And actually when I'm sick or when he's sick, it actually
works out great because you know, he's got a big talk coming
up and I didn't want him to get sick for his talk.
So I haven't seen him other than a very brief chicken soup
handoff that he was so sweet to bring me and to come over.
And, you know, one of the things he said is he's like, it's very
hard to care for you because you're, you're very
self-sufficient and you're very independent.
And it's a true thing. And so, you know, if you are a
person who also tends to be very self reliant, this is a reminder
to let people care for you and to be open to receiving support
even when you think, you know, you can just do everything by
yourself. I think there's a lesson in
there too, for the workplace and being a manager and how it can
be so easy to think that it's your job to do all of it, to do
all of everything and to forget that actually, you know, what
I've observed is as you go higher in your in your career
and in your advancement, like so much of the job changes from you
doing everything to actually you delegating to you hiring, to you
being able to communicate and kind of distribute the workload
effectively and realizing what are the different strengths and
qualities that you have on the team.
And as a team, what strengths and qualities might we be
missing? What might we want to develop
that we maybe don't have right now or didn't need and now we
need them. And so actually developing the
ability to be open to receiving support, to be open and willing
to asking or advocating for support becomes an important
skill that we often forget is a skill that you need to develop.
Because so early in our careers, especially when we're coming in
as individual contributors, our job is to really focus on the
tasks that are assigned to us and to execute them well, to do
the thing and to do it at a high level and to do it to
completion. And I remember when I was early
in my career and I reached out and asked for help for
something. What the guy, what the guy said,
he's like, wow, you gave you gave up early.
And I was like, what? Like I thought I was doing
something right by saving time by asking someone for help, But
I feel like I'm being criticized.
Like, in his view, I somehow was not demonstrating sufficient
determination or something like that.
It was a very weird moment, but it really kind of gave me pause.
And I think as a result, I overcorrected.
And then for, you know, quite a long time, it was like asking
for help was my last resort. It was the thing I would do when
I was really at my end. And one of the things I've
learned, you know, still learning in my own life, as
evidenced by my my partner and his comment, it can be a tricky
thing to learn how to receive support, to ask for or advocate
for support and to see that as a positive quality, as a positive
trait and definitely in your leadership journey.
It's something that I want you to be aware of sooner than I was
aware of it because there is a thing, you know, where the rules
can kind of change when you're an individual contributor versus
when you start being a manager. And if you're wearing both hats,
you know, for a lot of folks, there are times when you're
sometimes wearing the manager hat, but you still have
individual contributor responsibilities.
And so it can be hard to know kind of how to, you know, work
with that dynamic. So that's just something I
wanted to put on your radar. And maybe a thing to think about
is where in your work could you be asking for help?
Where in your work could you be engaging support or delegating
something to someone else? And so much of the mindset to
around delegation is, is shifting from the thought of,
oh, I'm just like dumping work on someone or I'm just
offloading because I have the power to do so.
And so I want to, you know, get this off my plate and give it to
somebody else to do. It's not like that.
But you can think of it more in terms of, OK, what is our
overall goal and what are the different, you know, skills and
qualities that we have on the team?
Who else on the team is equipped or positioned to do this?
And why might it be a good idea for them to do that?
Or who on the team needs to develop the skills and ability
to do this? And so even though it would be
faster if I did it, it actually is a really good learning
moment. This is the best way for them to
learn how to do this is to assign it to them and let them
work with it and then bring it to me.
And then we can work together on, you know, either how to
improve it or change it like it will.
It will help me learn where they're at if I delegate it to
them and see how they work with it.
So you can really start to think in a more holistic and more
strategic way about who is doing what.
And as a manager, definitely part of your job is making
decisions about who is doing what.
How is work distributed? What are the priorities if the
people on your team are getting mixed messages about what they
should be working on? Because you know, sometimes
there's another director or another person in a position of
power who is asking of your team their time and their effort and
work. Then they will look to you to
either clarify or kind of stand up for them and say, Oh no, like
the priority is this. And this is what we're working
on. For these reasons, here's what
we can do. Here's and, and here's why and
here's what we can't do. And here's some perhaps other
alternatives or let's talk about or negotiate how how we want to
address this. So thinking of of it in those
terms is I think a a learned perspective, a learned skill.
And you know, you can feel so much pressure to get it right.
And I want to offer you this thought of, you know, it's not
necessarily about like getting it right, like it it being it's
right or it's not right, but it's more like a very dynamic
living thing, like things might change.
So part of your role is to be mindful of, OK, like what if
anything is changing right now? What might we need to adjust?
Like how can I respond to the moment?
How might I be able to anticipate changes that might
come like as we come into the holiday season and I can
anticipate some folks being away on vacation or some folks
getting sick and not being available.
There are all of these different kinds of questions that you're
going to be asking when you're in that manager role, when
you're thinking about the work and your team and who's doing
what. So that's what I would like to
leave you with today. If you are also interested in my
course on communication strategies for managers, the
next cohort starts in January. We're going to start right in
the first full week of January, so you can enroll now.
For some of you that will actually be great because you
can use 2024 budget legit to, you know, apply to 2025
learning. So hopefully that works out like
end of year can be a such a great time to ask your work to
sponsor you to see if your work will cover the cost of this
professional development so that you can be more effective in
your job and you know better at what you're doing and help your
team even more. And your work might be delighted
because as we come into the end of the year, there might be
extra budget available and they might say, oh, what a great
idea. Thank you for raising it.
Thank you for finding this learning opportunity for
yourself. That's so great that you're
taking the initiative to do that.
So I'm going to put a link to my course in the show notes.
You can also find it on my website, kimnickel.com.
And if you want to work privately with me on coaching,
you can also find information in the show notes about that too.
All right, I'm out. I'm going to go blow my nose,
going to take a little sip of water and maybe take a nap.
I hope you have a great and very, very healthy rest of your
week and I'll 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, kimnicolcom and sign up for a coaching
consult. It can get better.