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 or
coming into the end of the year. It is definitely getting colder
where I am. I'm wearing warmer things as I
think I mentioned before and I've been thinking about
something that I want to share with you but I can't give you
all the details yet. I do want you to know that I
have been thinking and planning Neighing and putting together a
new offer for you. And this entire year, the only
way to work with me has been one-on-one.
I've had some requests for group programs and so stay tuned.
I will have more to share with you about that.
The anticipated release date of when this new thing is going to
be starting is in the new year. So just know.
So that there's more to come and I'm really looking forward to
offering a way for you to work with me, that lets us work
together in a small group. So the topic I want to get into
today. I want to talk with you about
mindset. I want to talk with you about
commitment versus attachment and I want to talk with you about
the mindset really required to do Hard things and to make
change. And the reason I am thinking
about this and I think it's a really great topic for us to
revisit is because when you start managing people, what I
tend to see most often is that we either continue to Simply Be
the way we were successful before we manage people.
So if what made You good at what you did was keeping super
focused and heads down on your work or kind of being a
perfectionist or leaning into people-pleasing and kind of
keeping a low profile and just try it.
Like doing everything you can to make things really smooth.
That might be a successful strategy when you are an
individual contributor. But when you become a manager,
those same habits Can undermine your ability to do this new job
because when we're in a manager responsibility, there's so much
more communication that we have to do.
We're now managing up in a different kind of way as well as
managing direct reports. And so, the requirement of this
thing that maybe you've never done before, which is to manage
a team of people. It won't help.
Up you to just do more of what you were doing before.
The way you'll sometimes, hear this described especially in the
coaching world is, what got you here.
Won't get you there and it's a combination of the skills that
got you. Here are not the same skills
that you will need in order to meet this new level of
challenge. But it's also the mindset,
though. That you're thinking won't be
the same kind of effective will need to update that as well.
And in very simple terms that could look like as an individual
contributor, your mindset might be, I will just do everything
that is mine, I'll just do it all.
And then, as you start managing, people that mindset will get in
the way of your ability and willingness to learn things like
Like delegating or to learn things, you know, the mindset of
what is our current process and who are our current people and
what are the current skills we have and what are the skills we
need in order to as a team, collectively work, better
together to accomplish all these things.
One of the things I see is that when you care very much about
doing a good job and you care about your team and you care
about the clients and you care about the work that can turn.
Into taking on more than is needed because the mindset is,
if it's not getting done, I'll just do it.
And that creates both overworking overextending that
also creates you becoming the bottleneck because you're kind
of taking everything on and it is kind of a reactive way to
address the problem rather than taking a different perspective,
taking a different mindset to how you want to address, what's
happening. Boundaries are also a skill that
becomes even more important than More demands and requirements
that are on you and boundaries. Simply mean, what is the
agreement you set with yourself? What are the agreements that you
have created with other people and kind of following through on
those? And we can do that from a place
that is really effective and creates more trust and creates
more safety. But so many of us didn't learn
boundaries in a way that creates It's connection.
A lot of us learned boundaries as a defensive tool when we feel
someone overstepping. Its if things go wrong then we
need a boundary rather than the mindset of oh boundaries are
just a really simple clear and effective way to make it easy
for us to work better together that's it or thinking of oh
boundaries are the way that I really protect my safe.
My sense of safety and my time. And I don't have to do that in a
combative way. I can actually do that in a very
useful and connective way. So very often there's the
mindset that needs to shift and the skills that need to change
as we grow into higher levels of responsibility, especially when
there's more at stake, which of course, can then flare-up are,
you know, uncertainty and our insecurities so things.
Get interesting. So, that's why we're here so
talking about your mindset and how important it is to notice
that the mindset the way that you're thinking about your role,
your responsibility, the way that you're looking at, the
problem or challenge will shape the actions, you take the
choices you make and the decisions that you, you know,
communicate Related to that. I want to acknowledge that we
can go through Growing Pains like change can be hard and what
I've come to see over and over again in my own life and also
with my clients it helps to remember, you know, there's kind
of two kinds of hard. There's the hard of this is
really new and uncomfortable. I don't like feeling that I'm
clumsy at a new skill. I don't like feeling like, I
don't know. What I'm doing.
There's that kind of hard the growing pain of learning
something, new, and being in that stage, where you're not
super good at it yet, but you continue to practice and
continue to apply the learning so that you can become highly
skillful at it. There's that kind of hard,
there's also the kind of hard it's kind of related to that.
It's the hard of letting go of a An old habit or an old pattern,
right? Like, oh why is it difficult to
kick old habits? Even if we know that they don't
serve us, well, because habits are easy and changing them can
feel hard, right? So, we can put those two kinds
of hard kind of on the same place when you think about
change, and we think change is hard.
It's because our habits have a kind of gravity, and it feels
easy to be in there, and it can feel All to be learning
something new that is hard. Also on the other side, we have
the other kind of hard, which is the heart of things, staying the
same and not working or things, staying the same and being
stagnant and not growing. The pain of not changing, the
pain of staying in a pattern, or a relationship or a habit that
doesn't work anymore or that is Isn't useful in this context or
the pain of continuing to use a tool, a system a process that no
longer really fits the situation, or the people or the
conditions that you're in. That is also really hard.
And so, when you think about how do you want to approach a
challenge or a goal or a problem, there's a part of you
that's going to think That's going to be hard, change is hard
and I want you to remember that mindset of?
Yes, it is, but it's also hard to try to stay the same or to
not grow and change. And so, would you rather choose
the challenge of growing pains? Or would you rather choose the
pain of staying the same or staying still and stagnant?
The other addition I want to give to you As you think about
this, when you reflect on those questions, please do that from a
place. That is not being self judgy
because when we get really judgmental or when we kind of
try to bully ourselves into change by, you know, activating
our shame are feeling of like uh, like I should have figured
this out by now, that kind of self judgement and pressure.
It doesn't help us move towards That which will help us if that
makes sense. That kind of self judgement and
pressure actually makes it more difficult.
It's like adding a heavy layer that you then have to carry and
try to move through. So I really encourage you when
you reflect on yourself and where you are now the kinds of
challenges you're facing and whether you want to choose the
discomfort of growth or the Discomfort of continuing to cope
with things that you've outgrown better still staying in.
I want you to do that from this place of real kindness and real
self compassion so that if you're making a change, you're
not doing it. Because you're beating up on
yourself, but you're doing it from this place of, you know,
what? It's time, even though this will
be uncomfortable. I'm going to choose it anyways
because it's worth it for what's on the other side of that.
I really. I just want to say this again,
come at it from a place of real self compassion and kindness
because that inner critic, that inner perfectionist that really
harsh. Sounding judge doesn't actually
help. It just makes you feel bad and
it's really hard to create sustainable positive change from
a place that feels bad. Bad.
Okay, so when you are thinking about your current mindset, when
you're thinking about, how you manage people, we often, you
know, what I've seen is this other pattern that shows up.
So if you've had a history of bad, managers, or as I like to
think of it just very unskillful people.
I think most managers when we think this is not a good
manager, they're not necessarily bad people.
They're just not skillful. Right.
They just haven't learned, they just start trying to figure it
out too and maybe they're not doing it in a very effective
way. But if you have had in your own
work and life experience a bad manager or a bad experience with
a manager, then what often happens is what then when you
become a manager, you think I'm going to be exactly the
opposite. And so you're really trying to
Define yourself From being the opposite of what that person
was. The other thing that happens is
we think, well, I'm going to manage people how I want to be
managed, and we forget that people vary and are different
and so we end up making choices for managing people that are
really ideal, like, for us personally, but might not be
effective or helpful for the people or the situation that
were managing. And then the other thing is, as
I sort of mentioned before we I think I'll just continue to do
the things that have made me successful, so far.
And so we're just doing more of the same as how we were an
individual contributors. And now we're just doing more of
that. But now we have a different role
and a different kind of set of responsibilities and it's not
always a match. So instead of the mindset of
I'll just do more of the same, I will do what I would personally
like best. That's how Managed to fall or
the mindset of all just do exactly the opposite of this not
great experience that I had before.
Instead I want you to imagine you can put those aside and
instead we want to think from this more of a clear blank page.
What is the intention that you want to bring to yourself to
your team to the situation now? Like, what's going on now?
And what will be in greatest service and most helpful and it
helps to take a holistic picture to understand yourself as a
human, as well as to realize you might have a variety of
personalities on your team and I include both your manager,
right, because you're managing up as well as managing your
team. And so we want to take a
holistic picture so that you can make decisions that aren't
simply coming from a habit of doing, more of the same or From
a place that is reactive, right? Like we want to kind of update
your your data set based on who you are and who you work with to
help you make decisions about how you go forward and your
mindset. The way you're thinking, will be
really important to that having compassion for yourself.
As you realize this might require, some change is going to
be important to that. Because the other thing is, when
you are intentionally creating self compassion for yourself,
that is a way that you create safety, I should do a whole
other episode on how to, how do we create safety, but it's
really hard to change when we feel unsafe, right?
And so part of this idea of creating safety, creating the
safety of, I'm not going to be perfect at this.
Creating the safety of this might be difficult.
And it might, you know, I might feel uncomfortable with that and
that's okay. I'm not supposed to be perfect
right now. Maybe people will be a mad at me
or disappointed and I'm going to create safety for myself.
And also for them, it's going to be okay.
We can actively create safety and it connects to the mindset
that we're holding towards ourselves and towards our work
and our situation. I wanted to give one more
example. This is something I see my best
clients do a lot and I love it so much so I want to share it
with you but it's this distinction between commitment
versus attachment and these are mindsets, right?
This is the perspective that you hold the way you think about a
thing. So attachment is the thinking of
things need to be this exact certain way and if they're not
it's a problem. Whereas commitment sounds more
like I'm committed to this result or to this outcome and
the path. There actually might change it
might be easier and might be harder than might be unexpected
things that happen. I'm open to how we get there but
the commitment to the desired outcome, the commitment to the
result, that is steady. So there's this really lovely
Clarity and strength of it. Intention.
But it includes this really nice.
It's almost like you can breathe because it's not rigid and
contracted and clenched. It has a sense of resilience.
A sense of movement, a sense of, you know, regardless of what
happens. Here's where we're going, let's
do this as effectively as we can, right?
We're still were on the same team, you might not have all the
answers up. And that's okay because you have
that steadfast commitment. And what I found is that when we
are holding this mindset of commitment, it allows us to be
more generous of spirit, more forgiving, also more direct and
clear, right? But when we are holding the
mindset of attachment, that's when we start to get very
defensive, we can become controlling, we start taking
things really personally and things.
Start to feel more contracted and Tents and brittle, which is
really interesting to notice. So commitment versus attachment
as an example of mindset and why that is so important to
understand for yourself especially as we're moving into
the end of the year and starting to think about the year to come,
this is such a great time to pause and reflect and notice
what is your mindset, how are you?
Reading safety. What kind of hard are you
choosing? What kind of hard do you want to
choose? As we move into the new year and
noticing, where do you fall on the commitment side?
And where might you get a little hooked on the attachment side?
And you know, you're a human. So you're going to experience
the full range of it, but as we can kind of raise that cell
phone wareness, so you can be more intentional and what you're
choosing and why creates a Better experience for you and
everyone you work with. Thank you so much for listening
if you want to work with me one-on-one this is the perfect
time. We're going to wind up this
year. Get you set up for the new year,
go into the show notes you can find the link to book a consult
so that we can talk about what we'll do together.
And again stay tuned because I have some things to share with
you coming up in the new year. Thanks so much for listening.
I'll talk to you next time. Hey before you go if you like
this podcast please leave a review.
Tell me why you listen and what has helped you?
Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.