Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hi, and welcome.
I hope you're doing well today. I feel like everything has been
so intense and so variable in some ways it's been so
challenging as a human and especially a human who works
with other humans. So I hope you're doing well and
I want to also invite you. I have a couple of classes
coming up this month and also in November and December 4.
New managers at general assembly and you can go to my website.
Kim nickel.com go to the new managers tab to learn more about
that or just go directly to the general assembly.
Website to find out when my next crash course, for new managers
is coming and then we can have this conversation in person.
And what's fun is that because class is online, you can join
from wherever in the world you are today, I want us to talk
about people are selfish. People are selfish.
This isn't a bad thing. It is a human thing.
And as a manager it can be very helpful to remember this because
what it means is that people always want to know how does
this affect me, or what does this mean for me, or what do you
want me to do about this? People have this very personal
orientation and I talked in another episode about taking
things, Personally, as a human, we tend to do this.
It is not again, not necessarily a bad thing.
It's a human thing and the more aware of it.
We are the more we can remember, okay?
For ourselves, let me try to not take this personally, let me
look at this from a different perspective when that might be
more collaborative and more productive and more useful.
But as a manager what helps is that you, when you All right, it
like people are selfish. Then whenever you are scheduling
a meeting or whenever you are sending an email or whenever you
are, I mean, truly in conversation with people
remember that in the back of their mind, they're always going
to ask, like, what does this mean for me?
How does this new policy affect me?
Or what does this new Target mean for me?
People will also want to know like how are they affected by
things? And also what is expected of
them? What is it?
That you are going to want from them?
What is it? That others are going to want
from them and the more explicit and clear, you can be when you
are communicating the easier it can be for people to show up and
know like what needs to happen here.
One of the places, I see this a lot and especially in
organizations that get very very large is that people can get
very lost in the weeds and not feel connected to any sense of
bigger purpose or Mission. And people want to know that
their work matters and that they're contributing in a
meaningful way. And so part of the job of a
manager is you do get to T', the people on your team or the folks
that you work with with this bigger part of the organization.
Sometimes. Imagine it as you get to be a
bridge between. The team that you work with and
then the other groups, or managers or directors, or more
senior leadership because you'll be in different conversations
and you'll get different perspectives.
And part of the job is to translate, okay?
This is what's happening on an organizational level.
This is how it affects you. This is how it affects your
team, as one example. So many years ago, when I was a
director and I had this team of 18 people, And at a company-wide
level, we were going through some pretty significant
organizational changes. There was a new team that was
offshore that was being staffed up and trained up.
And there were also some new tools that were being rolled out
internally. Now, my team had two big
questions and one was what is happening overseas and how does
that affect us? Does that?
Mean, our jobs are threatened. And the other question they
thought was, why are we getting these new tools?
We like the tools, we have, they work for us, we don't want to
learn new things. We like the ones we have, and
there was frustration, There Was Fear, there was gossip.
There was like a lot of uncertainty, which by the way,
again, is normal, you know, as humans.
We don't I really like it when we feel like things are outside
of our control and we don't know what it means for us and so
because of where I was in the organization, I was able to get
other perspectives on what the bigger picture was what was
going on. And the truth is, I felt a lot,
I felt a lot of empathy with my team because I thought yeah.
Like I agree with you. The current tools we have are
great and it is going to take time to learn something new.
And it's going to be burdensome and not that much fun.
And I could also understand the fear of, oh no like your
Staffing up offshore. What does that mean for us are
our jobs threatened. I could totally relate to that
and appreciate that and what helped me to help them, right?
Because my intention is, how can I, as a manager show up in a way
that helps my team to do great work together?
And how can I do this? A way that feels both genuine
and authentic. But also what's the word I'm
looking for? Like, I didn't just want to
bring false positive eternity. And I also didn't want to lie,
right? And I also had information that
I was not allowed to share because that will happen to you
too. You'll get into situations as
you rise in your career. Well you were you will have
information that you're not actually allowed to share with
your team. So in my particular situation as
I was really understanding, you know, my team has some really
legitimate frustrations and concerns about what does this
mean for me? And how do how does this fit
into the big picture? That invited me to have a
conversation with them around. Yeah.
Like this is going to be a frustrating and I know it
doesn't make sense for us but there's all this other stuff
happening with the product on the back end that like we don't
see but it really does have a significant effect with things
that are happening within the company and especially with
respect to the the technology that supports so much of the
business. And it's something that we've
been delaying a long time. So it means it's extra
frustrating because there is so much that we'll have to deal
with now. So being able to respond both
with a sense of empathy, like I understand how you're feeling, I
have zero argument with that. Makes a lot of sense, I can I
totally appreciate that and also being able to say, yeah, the
reason we're doing this is because as an organization,
there are all of these other parts that we are up here.
Part of. And so this is all of us having
to learn this new thing, even though it's not fun.
And I can understand that it doesn't feel good and that's
okay. So just being able to
acknowledge and also help to see, here's what the bigger
picture is. Here's how you fit into that.
Oh, and also reminding people that they are a valuable part of
the big picture because I also believe that people want to feel
respected appreciated. And valued.
And when, as a manager, I'm coming in and really saying that
you are going to be deeply inconvenienced because of some
new policies or some new things that are happening that are
outside of our control. The least I can do is to
reaffirm and say, I know this will be challenging.
We're going to do this, the best that we can, I believe in you.
And I, you know, I have so much appreciation for the work that
you do. And I think sometimes we
Overlook that human component that people do want to feel like
someone at work cares about them that especially if it's someone
in a managerial role. They want to feel like their
frustration and discomfort is recognized and not taken for
granted. Like you want to understand that
if you're going to expend extra effort to do something or learn
something that your boss sees and appreciates that and says
thank you. Sometimes that's the only thing
we can offer, right? Maybe you're not able to
increase their salary or you're not able to reduce the hours,
but this appreciation and really recognizing as a human.
What is this mean? For them can go a really long
way. Way, and it can matter quite a
lot, another way to think about this.
That people are selfish is that when you are sending an email to
someone, Make it easy for the reader to get what they need to
out of it. And I say this because one of
the things that I also see with my students, when they are new
to managing and they're wanting to do a really good job, is that
it's easy to be two comprehensive when you are
giving someone information and that the idea comes from a good
place it's like you're trying to be thorough.
So You're getting all of this extra context, but what happens
is the person gets this wall of text and they don't know what to
do with it. So to the extent that you can
visually organize it and make it very clear.
Like, this is my ask of you, or this is why I'm telling you this
or this is how this will affect you.
So I want you to know be be clear and precise without hiding
the message, like let it be clear on the Upside the other
mistake that you can make is you can be to spare in the
information and then it will creates a lot of confusion and
e-mails back and forth. I remember this other job.
I was at and the manager emailed me a question.
She said, oh are you available to be with this client on this
day? And my response was well I don't
know because I don't know what time and I also don't know where
it is and the location of it. Depend, you know, will
influence, how much time it will take me, which, you know,
affects how I look at my calendar.
And so there it was so frustrating because she had
asked an email with a very simple question, but I didn't
have the information I needed in order to be able to give her a
quality answer. And also this person was in a
different time zone. And so as you know, especially
when you're working with a team across time zones that that can
create Eight extra burdens of time because you're not all kind
of synced up. So being thoughtful, being
mindful realizing, okay, this person is selfish when I'm
sending them this message. It is to everyone's benefit, and
it is to everyone's greatest efficiency and ability to work.
Well, if I make sure that I send the information they need, and
in the way that they know, What to do with and, you know, like
you've been on the other side of having received an email and you
just see who it's from and you sigh heavily and you roll your
eyes. And you think, oh my gosh, what
is this person want? This email is going to be a
mess. Like you don't want to be that
person. You want to be the person that
when the email comes into their inbox and they see it's from
you, they're like, oh okay, I'll know what to do with this.
This person writes, great email. and it seems so trivial because
I mean, you've been doing email and written messages for a
really long time, but it's one of those skills that is easy to
overlook and it is so easy to be careless and sloppy and to think
that quick responses are more valuable than thoughtful
responses and I want to offer you that that is not true that
you will actually Ali save time by slowing down being thoughtful
about how you send a message because it will then reduce the
back and fourth annual get higher quality responses from
people. So, I'm a big fan of it like,
taking your time. I also want to share a couple
other thoughts around this 0 which is this, okay.
So if you've taken my class, you know, I have this Exercise.
It's so much fun. I love to do this live with
students as a group, where we explore the qualities of an
awful manager. And it's really important that
we remember that being an awful manager, it doesn't mean that
you're a bad person. These are two separate things,
you could be a really lovely person.
You might have a manager. You enjoy them as a person.
You would like to have lunch with them, you think they're
wonderful. However, the the way that they
manage is actually quite awful, like maybe they're a
micromanager, or maybe there's no trust or maybe they just, you
know, never have a kind word to say, they only see what's not
getting done. There are lots of ways that
people are not great managers, but we want to separate, it's
not them being a bad person, it's about the behaviors.
The quality, is the skill or lack thereof that makes things
difficult. And so, Sometimes.
Things will go badly for you because people are selfish and
not just people that report to you, but also people above you.
So your manager, the other people in an organization that
are connected to you. And I think this is one of those
things that can be really frustrating because we can have
this belief that wow, you know, if I'm doing a good job and
people say I'm doing good work, then good thing.
It will happen for me. And that doesn't always happen
that way. And it's not necessarily because
people are bad, or they are mean.
Sometimes, it's just because they're selfish, and as a result
of that, things will go badly. So, as one example, I was in a
conversation, I was coaching someone at this conference.
It was, it was just like this, 10 minute coaching session, but
it was amazing. She had come in because she was
Feeling really frustrated, she wasn't getting promoted and she
said my performance reviews, have been consistently really
strong and I've been talking to my manager about it and like
nothing is happening. And as we were talking, it
occurred to me to ask and say, you know, how much work would it
be to replace you? And she said something like, oh
I mean, actually probably be pretty tough because she was
really good at what she did and like the role that she played
she was performing so beyond her own role that the team.
And the manager were actually benefiting tremendously by
keeping her where she was. And I said, well, you know, I
want you to consider this possibility which is that it is
a lot easier for your manager to keep you where you are for you.
You to get promoted. It's actually going to take a
lot of their work, like your manager is going to have to do a
lot of work to hire or train or get someone into your role at
that capacity. And from what you've told me, it
sounds like this person is so busy that they probably just
keep putting it off because they can, because you stay and just
look on her face. She thought, oh my gosh.
Like, I'd never thought of that before.
And so, she went Way with this entirely New Perspective, number
one, not taking it personally, like she wasn't doing good
enough but sometimes you can be doing a really great job and
because you make the lives of the other people that you work
with so good. It's almost like they're not,
there's no incentive for them to place you someplace else because
it will make their lives harder. Like it's so straightforward,
but we often just don't notice or don't think about this.
This. So, hopefully, that isn't
something that happens to you, but it could.
I mean, because people are human and people are selfish and if
you are making someone's life so good based on where you are,
they might just not be motivated to help you learn and grow and
go into a new role. And I'll share to back when I
was managing this team, there was someone on my team who had
been getting consistent very high performance reviews who
Desperately wanted to get promoted, but the challenges
were her manager kept changing. So she didn't really have an
advocate to kind of support her and navigate, the the
organization, and how to find a new role within the company.
But also I just want to say, like, as a company, we were very
disorganized. Like, we were just, we were not
good at identifying internal talent and then finding New
positions for it because it was almost like this feeling of
everyone is so busy and things are changing all the time.
And so there was just not a lot of advocacy and not a lot of
clarity about how to move in two different places.
And this person on my team was so frustrated and just felt so
powerless, like everything she tried.
Nothing was working and one of the things that I felt most
proud about. Even today years later, I still
think back as This was something that I feel proud of.
During my time as a manager in this company was really
advocating for her and helping her to get the visibility and
helping her, to figure out how to navigate this very complex
organization. So that she could get promoted
which was good for the company because you want to use the
talent that you have and you want to place them into the
roles that will best serve. Serve organization, as well as
that person. And that also really helped her
personally because she was so stagnant.
She was so eager to grow, and she was so ready for it, but
things had kept changing and it made it ridiculously difficult
and for me coming in as her manager and saying, okay, like I
am going to Endeavor to get you promoted because I see that you
deserve it. I see that you've been kind of
blocked by all of these circumstances outside.
Your control. And this is something that I can
do. And so by teaming up with her
and then using my position to really support and advocate for
her. She was able to do that.
That does something that feels really good.
So as a manager, you have that power too, who are the people on
your team and around you that you can encourage and uplift and
support and sometimes that means your life is going to get a
little bit difficult because when that person moves into a
new role in the company, you will have to figure out who's
going to do their job now. But that's part of the job and I
believe that you will be fine and that you will figure it out
and it's going to be okay. When you show that you care.
It matters a lot to people when you are clear with them with
your team about what's expected. So there's no surprises and they
know what to be focused on. It matters a lot to people
especially right now I feel like we've been saying this all year
and maybe this is going to be just true forever going forward.
But I mean as humans where our professional world and our
personal world, the lines between those are now so blurred
and there's so much. That's Happening in the world.
That's creating lots of anxiety for people and other kinds of
challenges that it really can help to create trust to create
an environment in which people can do great work together and
that includes you, right? Like you want to be able to do
your best work also. So remembering that people are
selfish. It is not a bad thing.
It is a thing that tends to be true and how can you you
remember that in order to become an even better leader and a
better manager for your team, sometimes people need a voice
telling them that even though things are hard right now, We
are in this together and we're going to find a way through.
I don't know exactly how, but I trust that we will find this
path together. Sometimes that's the message
that people need from you because they're going to be
wondering like how are we going to get through this?
That's the kind of leadership that really makes a big
difference and you won't see it on any kpi you won't see it on
any Excel spreadsheet or on the bottom line.
But it's one of those things that is that kind of invisible
skill and it makes a difference Beyond which you can see.
But you know, that There because I know you've had experiences
like that too. So, thank you so much for
listening. I hope you have a really great
day at work, whatever that looks like for you, and if you want to
connect it, do find me on LinkedIn.
You can follow me there and that's another place where I
post where my workshops and classes are coming up or jump to
my website if you also want to find upcoming workshops, or if
you want to know about one-on-one, Coaching, I love to
support you on your leadership Journey as a human in your work
and in your life. Thanks so much.
Take good care of talk to you later.
Do you want personal confidential help with your
situation at work? I offer one-on-one coaching and
can help you overcome challenges reach your goals and become a
more effective leader to schedule a consult.
Go to my website, Kim nickel.com coaching and we'll schedule time
to talk about what's going on with you and how I can help talk
to you soon.