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.
I want today's episode to be an appreciation episode, and the
reason why is because a couple of days ago I was a guest
speaker at UC Davis. They had invited me to speak
about the podcast, about my coaching practice, and this was
all part of the coach certification program that I
actually took like five years ago.
So it felt really good to be invited back as an alumni of the
program and to share about the podcast and why I do it and how
that fits into the bigger work that I'm doing.
And one of the things that came out in the course of the
conversation is this question of how people find the show, how
people find it and listen to it. And it really clarified for me
that you really need to give yourself some credit because I
don't know how you found this show.
I don't promote it. It's grown entirely organically
over the last couple of years either.
My guess is you were searching for something in your favorite
podcast listening app, something for new managers, or something
that would help you at work, and somehow you found it and then
you chose to listen. Like you chose that.
You chose to find it, you chose to listen to it.
Maybe someone that you know shared it with you, or maybe
you've also shared it with somebody who's listening now.
But I think that's important to highlight for a couple of
reasons. Number one, give yourself some
recognition for what it means. The fact that you have taken the
effort and time to care about your own professional
development and how you are able to show up at work and address
whatever challenges or changes or uncertainties you're facing.
Because not everybody does that. Like, the easiest thing to do
when things are hard at work is to simply complain about it or
to, you know, talk with someone who is going to say, yeah, yeah,
no, that sounds so, that sounds so tough, that sounds so hard,
but not actually do something about it.
And the fact that you have found this show that you're listening
to it and that you're able to then take something from it that
will help you in a very practical, meaningful way at
work is so meaningful and so important.
And I would even say that if you haven't, you know, included that
in part of your performance review, if you if you haven't
said, yeah, you know, like I really care about doing a great
job here. And so of my own accord and my
own volition, I found this great podcast and it's given me lots
to think about and some practical ideas for ways that
help me be better at work. I mean, claim credit for that.
And the reason I want to highlight this is for a couple
of things. One is there are sometimes
things that you will do that you don't give yourself credit for
because in your mind it just seems normal.
It just seems obvious. And so you put in the effort and
you create some kind of positive results from that.
And then you don't recognize it. You don't give yourself credit
and you don't give yourself the visibility.
You don't let other people know. And I, you know, sometimes we
want to do things on the down low just for ourselves, for our
own personal private reasons, which is fine.
But I want to kind of shine a light on this alternative, which
is to give yourself the recognition and credit and then
make that visible to others, both in the course of your own
professional development and performance review
conversations, as well as this sense of being someone who is
resourceful and then sharing those resources with other
people in your organization or your industry.
And one of the things that I see this as important is because on
the learning and development side, well, actually let me back
up a little bit. So most organizations do not
have dedicated learning and development people.
Some organizations do like they'll hire people whose only
job is to help the staff and the employees develop their skills,
work Better Together, They actually hire people and that's
their full time job. Most of the time.
From what I've seen throughout my career is that responsibility
will often fall to the people who work in HR, but HR is a
really big job. There are a lot of things that
the HR person and the, or the HR team is in charge of.
They're in charge of hiring. They're in charge of, you know,
compensation. They're in charge of performance
reviews. They're also in charge of
addressing like problems and challenges with personnel.
And they have a lot of things on their plate.
And usually learning and development is a very, very
small part of that. So of course, they don't give a
ton of attention to it. And there's always this question
of, you know, how do we know if the learning is working?
And so, you know, to kind of spin it back a little bit and
give it even an another perspective.
I had the experience of working on an internal learning and
development team a couple of years ago, and it was for a
company that's known to have a really great culture.
They really care about their employee development, which is
why they had a dedicated L&D team.
I think at the time I was there, the entire learning and
development team was probably around 11:50 people or so.
So that sounds like a lot, right?
Like 10 to 12 people whose only job is to focus on the learning
and development of the staff and employees.
That sounds pretty good, right? But I mean, this was a company
of thousands of people located all around the world.
And so when you are one person or a small team and you're
trying to meet the needs of the organization by assessing across
thousands of people, what are the skills that are needed and
how can we best support and develop those skills?
The kind of problem you're trying to solve is a little bit
weird. Like it's a little bit like it's
really hard to dial in and specifically address the problem
of someone who is having a specific challenge with an
employee or or their staff in that moment.
It's really hard to meet people right where they are because the
scale of what you're trying to do is so big.
And because you're often trying to address things on an
organizational level, like if you're hiring a trainer or
someone from outside, you're trying to address something on
it on a big organizational level rather than on like a supportive
individual career level. That's usually where coaching
comes in where they'll say, OK, this specific leader has
specific challenges and skills they'd like to develop.
So we're going to pair them with a coach and just give them that
highly personalized individual one-on-one resource.
That's often why that resource is reserved for for folks at the
higher level because it tends to be more expensive, because it
costs more, because you have, you know, one person, a coach
giving support and working with only one employee.
As opposed to some of these other resources where they'll
say, OK, we're going to bring in an outside trainer or we're
going to partner with some kind of like content learning
provider and we're going to be able to have like asynchronous
on demand learning for, you know, all of these people.
And then we have to do assessments and we have to
measure the result. We have to measure the outcome.
And this is one of the really tricky things because if you
remember to a couple of episodes ago and I shared that quote from
this VP who said the most, you know, the most measurable things
of my job, the way I'm able to do those are through
unmeasurable things like trust and emotional intelligence and
being able to say the hard thing without pissing people off and
being able to recognize when, you know, my team says
everything's OK, but I can tell there's not all of these
unmeasurable skills is what allows you to create the
measurable performance. And this is true like within
organizations, but it's also true on a personal level, right?
Like I think about from what I've heard through the clients
and the students that I've worked with and the kinds of
things that they are able to identify to know, is this
working? And by this I mean, is the
coaching working or is the class or the course working?
How do you measure if those was a good investment of your time
or energy? Well, the things people tell me
from their own individual experience are things like, I'm
not getting sick at the end of the year.
I've had clients say I, you know, I use, I would work
really, really hard and it was very stressful.
And I'd be OK until the end of the year.
And right around the holidays, my body would just kind of
collapse and I would, I would just always get sick.
And then I learned how to do things differently, how to not
take things personally, how to communicate in a way that didn't
stressed me out so much, and I wasn't getting sick anymore.
So that was one of those measurable things.
People will say I'm not exhausted at the end of the day.
I'm not impatient with my spouse or my kids.
That is the kind of measurable result that I think so matters
as an organization. There are usually numbers that
they're trying to measure like did this turn into more money?
Did this turn into, you know, higher quality output?
Did this turn into like reduced attrition, right.
Like maybe maybe there was, you know, people were leaving and
then they got trainer, a trainer or coaching for this one leader
and then people stopped quitting.
You know, there are there are different ways that in an
organization they're trying to turn a measurement into numbers.
What are those numbers? But on a more human level, the
things that tend to matter most that then, you know, become what
allow you to perform and hit those outside numbers are things
like, you know, I'm not so stressed, which means when I
come home at the end of the day, I'm less exhausted.
And because I'm less exhausted, I have more patience.
I can really be present with my family.
I feel more, you know, engaged and like, they like hanging out
with me more because I'm not so stressed or worried.
That is a measure that matters, even if it doesn't fit neatly
into an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, and then one of the other
ones that that often comes up, it's the, oh, I'm not waking up
at 3:00 in the morning thinking about work.
When we're measuring the ROI of your professional development,
we're usually not asking, oh, you know, how are you sleeping
at night? But when we're stressed or we're
worried, and especially when we care a lot and so we really take
our responsibilities seriously, that metric of how well are you
sleeping can be very revealing. It can be very important.
And so you might not share that with the HR partner who wants to
measure the effectiveness of, you know, the program.
But I mentioned it because you want to be mindful of that.
You want to be mindful for you, what is your measure of success?
What are your measures of this is working, this is worth it?
This was something that I'm glad I did because it's going to help
me. That's something that you want
to keep track of for your career, not just this particular
moment in this particular job. And so I think, you know, when I
asked myself like, why is it so common that managers don't get
support when they need it? Why is it so common when surveys
go out and they say how many new managers get training or
coaching or support? Why is that number so low?
Why is it that like 60% of people surveyed say, no, I had
nothing given to me? Why is that?
And I think it really comes down to it's a hard thing to solve
for at an organizational level. The organization will try to do
something, but from a place of compassion, we can say, you know
what, the HR people have a lot going on.
Your manager has a lot going on. If you're lucky, there will be
someone that you work with who also cares about professional
development and will support and encourage you to do that.
This is also one of those disconnects.
If an organization says we want you to improve your skills and
get more, you know, like emotionally resilient and more
become more of a creative problem solver.
If an organization is telling you that, but they're not
providing any measurable support for that, like it will interfere
with your KPIs or if it will somehow not be recognized in
your performance review, then we're going to have this
disconnect, right? And like if the, the sounds,
this is so businessy, but it, you know, it's like, if the
incentives don't align, then you won't see that happen.
You'll continue to have this disconnect.
And so I think that it's important if you if you do work
in an organization that is supportive of your learning and
growth, amazing, make the most of it.
If you work in an organization where that's just not available,
we don't have to feel angry or mad about that.
We just want to be really clear and accepting.
OK, that's probably not going to become available to me there.
But what can I do anyways? Because it's of benefit to you
personally, both in your personal life and in your career
life to find something that will help you and my in my
imagination, you know, like that's why we're here right now.
That's why my voice is in your ear, because you are a person
who sought something out because you knew that it could help you.
And that's the kind of person you are.
Like you are a creative problem solver.
You are a resourceful person. You are someone who can evaluate
the landscape and say, OK, that's not going to be available
over there, but what else can I do?
And so I really just wanted to acknowledge and celebrate you
for that because that is a big deal.
I think all of our organizations benefit from that mindset.
And also just everything that you do that also supports your
well-being over time. Even when you leave this
organization or you leave this role and go into another role,
it all adds up. It all matters.
So I wanted to leave you with that.
I think one of the questions that you might take from this is
the question of, you know, why is this happening?
Anytime we're facing some kind of complex challenge, it can be
easy to kind of get into the weeds.
But if we take a step back and say, why is this happening For
me, for this episode, I was thinking like, why is this
happening? Why is it happening that new
managers are overlooked and underserved?
Why is it happening that people will say people don't quit jobs,
they quit managers? Like that Seems every time,
every time I mention that to somebody, they say, Oh yeah,
I've heard that people don't quit jobs, they quit managers.
And at the same exact time, managers are not getting
coaching or leadership training or support and learning how to
do that job. And then how that job is
different than being an individual contributor.
Why is it true? Like why is this happening that
we know the relationship you have with your direct manager
has as significant an effect on your mental health and
well-being as your relationship with your partner or spouse.
You spend so much time in relationship with your direct
manager, it has a massive influence on your health and
well-being. We know that managers affect the
well-being of the individuals that they work with.
And again, why are managers not receiving more support?
So when I ask myself this question, why is this happening,
I come to see this perspective of, well, it's really hard to
do. Incentives are not always
aligned, resources are not always there.
And so in light of that, what can we do to address this
instead? How can we get creative?
So here we are like I am here creating this for you.
You are here because you are someone who cares and you are
learning and you are going to be able to show up a little more
resourced when you go into work the next day.
So I hope you appreciate that for yourself.
Give yourself a little pat on the back and make sure that you
get credit for that. Like include that in your own
sort of sense of identity, of being resourceful and creative,
of taking initiative. And if it feels right, maybe
even bring that up at work in your next performance review or
in your next one-on-one with your manager and make sure that
they know that you're doing this work outside and of your own
volition. And my hope is that this is the
kind of resource that helps you feel more confident and more
relaxed so that you feel healthy, that you're enjoying
your life more, that you have more energy at the end of your
work day and at the end of your work week, so that you can enjoy
parts of your life that have nothing to do with work.
My hope is that this is the kind of resource that allows you to
enjoy your family more and your friends more so that you can
really be present for them and with them.
And that this is the kind of resource that will help you to
sleep better at night. Because I'd like for you to feel
well rested. Sleep is really, really
important. I don't think we're going to be
able to effectively address the complex challenges facing us in
the world unless we are well rested.
So that's what I wanted to share with you today.
Quick announcements, I am teaching a new class, I'm
calling it leadership orientation.
It's on June 18th. So go into the show notes to
learn about that or go to my website, kimnickel.com to learn
about that class. That one is just going to be two
hours and you're going to uncover your leadership values,
you're going to learn more about your leadership style and it's
going to be a lot of fun. So sign up for that.
And then coming up in July, I'm offering again my six week
course on communication strategies for managers.
Now with both of these courses, if you sign up with a colleague
or a friend, you will save 20% off the price.
So hopefully your work will be excited to support you and cover
the cost of that. But even if they don't still
consider coming because it's going to benefit you directly.
And you know, that's what we're here for.
We need to be a little selfish, you know, when it comes to your
learning and development, you need to care about that.
So information about that is in the show notes or on my website.
If you like the show, leave a review and a rating.
And I hope you have a really great week.
Thank you so much for listening, 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, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching
consult. It can get better.