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.
My name is Kim Nicholl. If we have not met before, I'm
glad that you are here because it means that you care about
being a great manager and it means that you're thinking about
leadership and it means that you probably also, you know, care
about people. And I think all those things are
really important in every single industry in the world.
And I have been thinking a lot about career journeys, how
they're often non linear. Mine certainly had a lot of
pivots. And on Thursday this week I'm
having a conversation with one of my favorite career coaches.
Her name is Wendy. You might have heard me mention
her here before. We are hosting a free webinar on
career pivots and side hustles. Or I think of them also as side
quests because sometimes we have kind of the main nine to five
career, and then there might be something we explore on the side
that then turns into something big and beautiful that we didn't
expect. Or that simply reveals a skill
or a talent OR an aptitude that we didn't get to access in our
regular job. But then once you realize you
have that skill, you can then use that in your regular job.
And specifically, as an example, I wanted to tell you a little
bit about when I was a fitness instructor.
So many years ago, I had become a lawyer.
I was working in publishing, not as a lawyer, but we were
publishing like all the books that you see in TV shows.
And when there's a lawyer or there's a judges chambers like
the wall of books, the company I worked for published those books
and I was promoted to become an editorial director.
And I was the director of this portfolio of content and I had
many people on my team and we had been peers.
And then I got promoted and now I was their manager.
So there was a lot that was happening that I was trying to
figure out on the fly. There was not training, there
was not a lot of guidance. It was just congratulations, you
got the promotion, you're the manager now.
Go. It was a little bit of a
surprise. They didn't expect it to feel so
weird to actually be in that role.
And one of the things that was happening concurrent with that
is I had become a fitness instructor specifically because
there was this one class that I just loved.
I went to that class every week. I was like the front row girl I
want. I just love this fitness class.
It felt so good. And the teacher of that fitness
class was going to offer a teacher training.
She wanted to have more teachers in my city who could teach this
format. And I didn't think of myself as
a fitness person. I didn't really even identify as
an athlete, even though I literally had been an athlete in
college. But in my mind, I wasn't, you
know, I thought, oh, athletes, you know, there's they're,
they're like this. And I don't know, like I, I love
to row and I'm on, I'm on the crew and I, you know, but yeah,
I didn't necessarily take on that identity of being athletic
or being really into fitness or the gym.
I just, you know, I liked this class and it felt really good.
And so I went to this class and I, you know, I took her class
like every week. And so when she offered a
teacher training and it was over a weekend and I thought, Oh my
gosh, even though I'm not a fit pro, I wonder if I can take that
class just so I can learn this format even better.
I just loved the class and I wanted to learn it better.
And I thought, you know, if I learn how to teach it, maybe
I'll be able to guide myself through this class on my own.
I won't have to just wait till she teaches.
I can just take that class anytime I want because I'll know
how it works. And so I signed up.
I took this class. I came in feeling not like an
impostor because I wasn't trying to be a fitness instructor, but
I came in as an enthusiast. I said I love this class.
I just want to learn everything about it.
So even though I felt like I didn't quite belong because I
was in this program now with other fitness instructors like
professional fitness people, I still thought, well, I'm an
enthusiast. I'll invite myself into the
room. I can be here, I'll learn, you
know, but I'm not going to encroach or like present myself
as a fitness instructor. Well, an interesting thing
happened, which was as we were going through the training, this
instructor who I really looked up to comes to me and she says,
so when are you going to start teaching?
And I said, what? Oh, no, I'm just here because I
love this class and I want to learn it really well.
I, I don't plan to teach it. And she's like, what?
She's like, she's like, why not? And I said, well, I'm not a
fitness instructor, you know, I have, I have like a desk job.
And she looks at me and she's like, Kim, this isn't rocket
science. And by the way, you know this
class better than anyone else in here because you come every week
and these are professional instructors and they lot, they
know lots of different kinds of classes.
They teach lots of different things.
They're learning this for the first time.
She's like, you actually know this movement better than
anybody else here. Like you can do this.
And because she said that, I thought, oh, well, you know,
maybe I, maybe I could teach, OK, maybe I, maybe I could do
that. And then what ended up happening
was she gave my name to the group exercise manager at a gym
in my town. This gym had wanted a teacher to
teach this format. So they had reached out to her.
They said, hey, we know you did a training.
Is there anyone locally that you would recommend that we could
talk to? And so she said, yes, talk to
Kim. They I went in for an audition.
I had to teach a class in front of a bunch of people I didn't
know. And they gave me the job.
And so I then was teaching one Class A week, Saturday mornings
at the 24 Hour Fitness in San Francisco on Church at Market.
If you know the neighborhood, you know exactly what that
corner is. And I taught this class there
for years and I loved it. And one of the things, you know,
especially as I look back, one of the things is that I didn't
plan. Like the goal wasn't to quit my
day job and become a fitness instructor.
It was more like, there's this thing that I love to do and I
want to do it in a way that kind of works with the rest of my
life. Like Saturday mornings was
perfect. And then I had my, you know,
like my job. But the thing that happened was
that I learned so much about leadership and about, you know,
managing a group of people. I learned so much through that
experience that I was then able to use not just in my day job,
but that helped me understand something that I am good at,
something that I care about. And it really was one of the
very first steps into this new career path of coaching, of
professional learning and development, of personal growth
that has become something that is so rewarding to me both
personally, professionally, financially, like in every way,
because I had allowed myself that curiosity to take on that
side quest, to take on that side hustle.
You know, the job didn't pay very much at all.
It was the kind of thing where I definitely was not doing it for
the money, but what I gained from what I learned was
invaluable. I mean, one of the things was
that every day you'd walk, you know, I'd walk into that room to
teach. I never knew who would be there.
Would I have three students or 30 students, right?
I didn't know who would be there.
I didn't know, not just like who would be there, but I also
didn't know how my students were arriving.
So I taught Saturday morning because that meant some of them
had been out late the night before and they were coming in a
little, little bleary eyed. And it's like, OK, we're we're
going to take it easy. We're not going to push hard
today. I had students come in who were
recovering from injuries. I had students come in who were
really, really strong in one particular way, but their body
was a bit imbalanced. And so they would be really good
at some of the movements and then other ones would feel more
challenging because their balance or their range of motion
was not at at matching kind of what their other strength was.
And so the ability to both understand, OK, we're going to
start here, we're going to end up there.
I'm going to guide you and facilitate this physical
experience while being mindful that every single person's
individual body and mindset are different.
I'm going to have to make sure that I can connect with each
individual while still gathering their group and guiding us
through this movement experience.
Right. Like that meant not taking for
granted that people had abilities or ranges of motion
from one time to the next. You know, like a lot can happen
in a week. And so I might have a student
come in and one day they're feeling totally, you know, on
fire and they're just really all in and they've got great energy
and their bodies feel great. And then they come back the next
week and they say, Oh my gosh, you know, I had a bike accident
or oh, I've, I've, I've got a cold.
I've had a cold this week. So I'm feeling really under the
weather or even coming in emotionally fatigued or
challenged because of something that was happening in their
personal life. I had this one student who came
in and she always looked like really sad and kind of
withdrawn. And at first I thought, oh, my
gosh, she doesn't like me. This is a classic mistake I
think a lot of us make as leaders as we take things so
personally. And I think, oh, you know, she's
kind of cold. She's she's not really engaged.
Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to reach out to her?
Like what? What's going on?
And for a while I took it personally.
And then I thought, you know what, there's probably more
going on here. And I just, I need to make this
not about me. I just need to be here for her.
And it's OK for her to be here in any kind of mood she's in.
And what I learned much later, what she came up and told me
like a year later after coming to class all this time, she
said, you know, things have just been really, really hard this
year. And I always look forward to
coming to class because it's the one place where I know I can
just be me. And I wanted you to know how
much this class has meant. And I was so moved.
You never know the effect that you're having.
And just because someone on your team or someone in your group is
not responding the way you think they should be responding,
number one, it doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job as a
leader. It also doesn't mean that
they're doing a bad job as a person.
You know, we can have some space and a little bit of grace for
understanding. There's probably more going on
here. We can be gentle in our inquiry
without needing to dig deep and say, hey, like, tell me
everything about what's going on.
Sometimes it's private. People don't need to speak about
it. For me, it was as long as
they're safe, as long as they're moving in a way that is safe for
their body, that's good. Like, that's success.
You don't have to look at me and be smiling the biggest smile.
It's OK. You're also welcome here exactly
as you are. And so after all of those years
of learning about leadership and managing the room and walking
into the room, and sometimes, you know, the music wouldn't
work, the equipment would be broken, or, you know, things go
wrong all the time. Things happen that we don't plan
for. And yet there's always this
intention. What is my role here?
My role is to greet everyone, help them feel welcome, guide
them through an experience that leaves them feeling more alive
and at home in their bodies. And ultimately that was one of
the big insights I had in the course of doing that work, which
was understanding that anytime someone goes to the gym, it's
because there's something about themselves that they would like
to change something. They want to be different about
their body and how they move, either bigger or smaller or
faster or a greater range of motion or more balance, or
there's something. And my job was to be mindful of
the conversation they're having in their head when they're
looking at themselves in the mirror.
And what became so rewarding to me was realizing that I could
invite them into a better relationship with themselves and
their bodies and however they were feeling that day.
So that when they looked in the mirror, it wasn't with criticism
or feeling disappointed or comparing their body today to
how it used to be, you know, a year ago or 10 years ago.
But instead look to themselves in the mirror, find themselves
in the present and with so much appreciation for what their body
is offering and able to do right now.
To meet that reflection with appreciation and compassion and
love and listening, right? There's such this fine line
between is this the right time to push more or is it more
valuable to back off? And I think in our society so
much, we get this message of it's always better to push more.
And I know that is not true. Sometimes the most wise thing
you can choose and sometimes what being a leader means and
being a manager means is understanding.
You know what in this moment, Pushing is not what will help
here. This is a time to back off.
Sometimes taking a step back is what will help us to move
forward. Taking a moment to rest is what
will help us to focus, to move forward.
And all of these insights and ways of thinking and learning
how to hold space and learning how to command attention, but in
a way that is inviting and in a way that is supportive.
All of that, all of these really valuable leadership skills and
executive presence skills and management skills.
I learned that not from my nine to five job working downtown on
the 26th floor of a high rise in San Francisco.
All of that I learned in the studio, guiding the most
wonderful humans through an hour of sweaty, stretchy, inspired
fitness class. And from what I've gained from
that, not just the insights, but honestly, there are people that
I know now that I met in that class that have become friends,
that have seen my career journey and for whom I have been able to
witness their growth and transformation and change over
these years as well. The friends that I met in the
teacher training classes and all of the experiences that I had
through that part of my career have been so rewarding and
continue to ripple out. And so I wanted to share that
story with you today just as an example of how you will learn
things through the course of your pivots, your side quests,
your side hustles, through the things you do that are not your
job, that will help you to show up to be the most effective and
authentic manager and leader that you can be.
You will learn this through how you are in relationship to your
family, both your family of origin and your chosen family.
You will learn this through the way that you experience and
participate in your community, in your friendships, in your
most intimate partnerships, the way that you learn how to be
present and to think about connection.
And what is it that we're trying to do here?
All of that you can gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge
from. Bring that into the workplace.
That's what I get excited about. So that's what I wanted to share
with you today. Thank you so much for listening.
And if you want to work with me one-on-one, if you want to
explore what that can look like, then book a consultation.
There's a link in the show notes.
Or just go to my website, kimnickel.com.
Join me on Thursday if you're able to.
We are going to talk about pivots, career side hustles and
side quests. And that's it.
All right, I hope you have a really great day and I will 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.