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 today.
I wanted to start by reminding you of how important it is to
surround yourself with people who believe in you.
And I know we tend to do this through our friends and our
family, but especially in the context of work, it becomes
really interesting when you start to have, have people who
are similar to the level of work that you're doing and they do
not work in your same organization.
And the reason why this is so valuable is because when you are
talking about the challenges you're dealing with that work
when they're not also in that same environment, they see
things very differently, they see you.
Differently so they can't just agree and say yeah.
So I know that that one person is so difficult or I don't know
what senior leadership is doing or yeah.
Things have been kind of tense at work lately.
They can't get into that agreement with you.
Instead. What happens is, they'll see
things from a different perspective.
They'll see you through a different perspective.
And as a result of that conversation, you begin to get A
different perspective on yourself on your options on.
Also, the things that you're doing incredibly well, I often
find, it's so easy to overlook your strengths, your unique
qualities and skills, especially if you're in an organization or
in an environment that doesn't readily acknowledge and honor
them. So if you are really good at
building relationships, You're really good at empathy.
If you are really skillful in a lot of these kind of invisible
abilities, and they're not necessarily quote-unquote
technical, but you rely on them and you use them in an expert
level to do high quality work with other humans.
Sometimes we forget to see that for ourselves if we don't
experience other people, recognizing that and reflecting
that That back to us. And I'm sharing this all in part
because I just had this amazing experience at a conference, with
other coaches. So, they are my peers were all
in similar business and doing similar kinds of work, but we're
not in each other's day today. And so the quality of the
conversation and the things that I came away with have just been
so nourishing and so expansive. And I think sometimes when we
are King in an organization. We forget how to do that.
We have to be really intentional because most of the
conversations that you'll have at work, well either be with
other people in your workplace or it might be a very informal
conversation with the people you live with.
When we are either complaining about work or being frustrated
with our boss or frustrated with our team or when we're feeling,
you know, like a specific celebration about something.
But there's a different kind of conversation, you have.
And it's important to be mindful that you can choose to put
yourself in a room or choose to put yourself in a conversation.
That is different than the ones that happen informally in the
course of the workspace. So that's what I wanted to open
with. And so today, I wanted to also
talk with you about how I think about the Your communication
skills that you need as a manager.
And as a leader and for a lot of us, they become you skills that
we haven't needed in order to become a successful as we are
right now. So for example, you might be
really self-reliant and because you are self-reliant, you don't
ask for help you figure it out. You're Scrappy, you take a lot
of responsibility. Stability.
You just get in and do it and that can be incredibly valuable,
especially just as a human in the world and when we are an
individual contributor, that's great.
Those qualities will really serve you there.
But then what happens is, when you start to rise into higher
levels of managing others and you rise into higher levels of
leadership with new responsibilities, Those same
exact qualities, can hold you back because you will rely
exclusively on them. And as you are managing others
and as you are rising into leadership, that will require
additional kinds of communication skills, like
learning, how to ask for the support and the help that you
need learning how to ask for resources or to make difficult
decisions. Visions that maybe not everyone
will be happy with. This has also been something I
can relate to very much because I feel like a lot of my early
life was the, you know, kind of the internal perspective of if I
can, just make everyone happy, then I can have what I want and
things will work. And, you know, that the
discomfort of disagreement was so great that I would go to
Great Lengths to avoid any kind of disagreement.
Or even the perception. Like my own.
Internal belief of is this person happy or unhappy?
Are they mad, or are they okay in my personal life in my school
life? And in my early professional
life, I didn't even realize for so long that that was driving so
much of my behavior and choices. Until then, of course, I became
a manager and realized that you may need to make decisions that
not everyone will be happy with or even realizing that the
people that you work with are humans and sometimes they will
feel angry or sad or distracted and maybe it has nothing to do
with you. Maybe it has to do with their
own life or what's happening in the bigger world.
And so the goal is not to make everyone happy.
We start to ask different kinds of questions.
What is the goal? Here, what is Our intention
here? How are you going to make
decisions? And that will look really
different when you are a manager versus when you are an
individual contributor. And this includes not just a
formal manager, reporting structure, this includes
managing relationships. If you are a product manager or
a Project Lead, this cludes managing up.
So being able to communicate effectively and influential E2
people in higher positions of decision-making, power in your
organization, learning how to communicate, effectively will
look different and I think sometimes we just forget that.
We think the thing I've been doing before is the thing that
will continue to work rather than thinking of it in terms of
I An amazing job with these skills that I've developed.
And there are now new skills that it is time for me to learn
and realize that any time you are learning a new skill.
There may be some discomfort, the discomfort of doing
something new and not feeling good at it, the feeling of
discomfort in the uncertainty of, can I do it correctly and I
Might not it might not work the way I think.
As as I'm learning this new skill, we want to be aware of
the growing pains that come along as part of the ride
because when we don't understand that, yes, it is time to learn
some new skills and they will be uncomfortable because sometimes
learning something new is uncomfortable.
When we don't acknowledge that. What happens is that we avoid
it. We isolate.
We try to put a mask or a cover. Like I hope, I hope this works
and I hope people don't, you know, notice or get upset.
And we also tend to get over responsible and overworked.
So instead of learning how to communicate differently or
manage our own experience of it, we kind of doubled down on the
thing that we know and we grow our coping This is also how we
can get a kind of scope creep, that erodes our boundaries and
it can very easily create an unsustainable relationship that
you have with your work where the ability to communicate
requirements, boundaries requests if we're not doing
that. And then we're really kind of
setting ourselves up To go into a relationship where we're just
building our coping strategies, we are overworking being overly
responsible, and avoiding the discomfort of communication by
taking on the discomfort of an absence of work-life balance.
So, when we think about why is it important to acknowledge
that, as you're growing, there may be some discomfort.
There may be new skills that it's time to.
And giving yourself the acknowledgement and the grace of
where you are in your particular Journey.
It makes all the difference in the world.
So some specific communication skills that you will need to
have. I talked about self-advocacy a
lot self-advocacy. Is your ability to speak up on
behalf of your self advocacy is speaking up on behalf of someone
and there will be times that you need.
To speak up and advocate for your team, or for it the client,
or for your idea. And self-advocacy is when you're
speaking up for yourself, whether you're asking for a
resource but also it's about your own, inner conversation
with yourself. So if your internal conversation
is 0, I can just make do, I don't want to bother anybody.
I shouldn't need to ask for help.
I should be able To figure this out on my own.
I mean, yeah. But if you are standing up for
yourself and for your well-being, you might make other
kinds of choices about your time about your energy about how you
are choosing to be with all of the demands and requirements.
So advocating for self also looks like that.
It's just What you choose for yourself because you decide I
want this. And every part of me is worthy
of care. And so I'm going to do this
because this is good for me and that's okay.
You will also need the skill of being direct and clear and kind
and where I see a lot of folks get tripped up on this is
they'll either be direct but they'll forget the kindness and
it's not that it's From a mean place.
But if you tend to be uncomfortably being direct, then
you will avoid it until you kind of just have a break you get.
So frustrated, you say look okay I've been trying to tell you and
you haven't been getting it. So this is what I'm trying to
say. It'll come out with a lot of
frustration and impatience behind it.
When you're not practiced at it, or it will simply be very
reactive. And you'll kind of drop the
kindness part and you'll drop also, the clarity of what are
you trying to affect here? What is the effect that you want
here? And for a lot of us, you know,
we're kind of trying to understand what is required.
What is expected? When we think about being direct
and clear and kind, it is such a great service.
It is the idea that I'm going to make this as easy as possible
For us to communicate and to understand what is expected and
required here, because I know that's what we want to do.
We really want to save time, we want to save energy, we want to
build trust, we want to work well together and so I'm going
to be direct. But from this place that is
clear, because I've done my own thinking, first about what is it
that I want to be clear about and what are the clear outcomes
that I want us to create together?
Weather. And I'm going to be able to
deliver this from the ground of kindness.
It doesn't mean the person won't be unhappy or frustrated, or
they might not have their own reaction, but you can have so
much more control about your side of that.
And when, you know that it becomes less scary because you
start to do it more and more, you start to To do it in small
ways. So that, then the bigger ways of
being direct or things feel more high stakes, those start to see
it feel a lot more, like I can do this because I have been
practicing in these other areas. And I have to say that is one of
the skills. So the ability to be direct and
clear and kind in a way that builds trust, it is one of the
skills that will save you and everyone you work with So much
time. Sometimes I see my clients get a
little bit. Like we, they tend to think that
communicating fast is. High-value like it's
demonstrating being highly responsive, but what ends up
happening, is it just creates this great sense of urgency.
It's reactive and so it actually creates more confusion and more
back and forth. And that gets really draining
for everyone and it takes a lot of time, rather than When we're
able to slow down, be mindful notice, okay?
What's actually happening here? What is it that I want to affect
here, what will be my strategic approach here?
Then our communication becomes more effective more efficient.
Everything starts becoming easier.
When we do some of that intentional work and how do I
want to communicate this upfront?
You'll also use these same skills in giving feedback.
Back, you're going to give feedback up to your manager,
you're going to give feedback across to the colleagues that
you work with. You may give feedback of course
to the people that report directly to you in a formal way.
And as you think about how can you use the skill of feedback?
What are all the different ways that you can use this to help
you get more work done easier. And with just a greater A sense
of like a greater sense of Harmony, like a greater sense of
ease fullness, not just that, the work becomes easier, but it
just feels more easeful. I know so many of my clients,
say, I need to give feedback to someone and I don't know how and
I feel really anxious about it. So I've been having the
conversation in my mind non-stop for like a month and we avoid
the conversation. You're actually Having it over
and over and over again, in your own mind.
So, learn that skill because it will save you so much time and
so much energy. So thinking about communication
skills, realizing it's not just the what you say it's not just
the words, but it's also the mindset, you're bringing to how
you are going to communicate, how will you be direct and
concise? Kind and clear, how will you use
that to establish balance and boundaries?
How will you use that to give effective feedback to anyone,
you need to give feedback to both the people that report to
you. But also to working Partners in
the organization, even to clients that can be one of the
scariest things for folks, is to think about, how do I give
feedback? Back to a client because you
know there's a fear of making them angry or feeling like.
Oh I can't have any boundaries with clients because their
clients. And if you work in an
environment where that's the prevailing belief, then you're
going to resist it, you're going to just go along and be like I
guess I can't have boundaries with clients because I don't see
that modeled anywhere and you will forget that you are also a
brilliant person. And who can establish
relationships in your own way. They might look different, they
might work better. I see this a lot actually with a
lot of my clients, they work with me, they learn how to think
differently about what their problems and challenges are.
So then they approached the solutions from a very different
angle and things start working in.
These really like surprisingly beautiful ways and then what
happens is, Colleagues, look at them and say wait, how did you
do that? How did you get that client to
behaved so well or how did you get that person in that other
department tube you so available for you like how did you create
these incredible Partnerships in the organization and it comes
back to do. It's the way that I communicate
and is the way that I'm thinking about how I'm going to do it.
I've got a strategic thinking happening, I'm being very
mindful I'm being very aware of my own boundaries and limits and
needs and instead of avoiding that or just hoping that other
people will see and figure it out.
I've learned how to take control of that in a way that is really
effective for me specifically because we're all different.
And I just want to acknowledge to that communication skills is
not about kind of making you different and how you
communicate We still keep your own voice and your own style,
but we're able to clarify and then amplify and grow some new
skills, if that makes sense. And the reason I mentioned that
and the reason why this matters when you're thinking about, how
do I improve my communication skills is because it's not about
mimicking, somebody else, it's not about Taking this other
person that you work with who's really different from you like,
so if you are an introvert, it's not about learning how to
perform the behaviors of an extrovert.
Okay, it really is about understanding.
What is it that makes you effective in your own specific
way and leaning into that, and once you do it, just becomes
everything becomes easier. So that is what I wanted to
share with you is, when you're thinking about the skills for
communication that got you here, realizing there will be new ones
now that you're growing into leadership and into Higher
levels of responsibility as a manager.
And I want to invite you to come into this 12 week program.
That I'm leading, we start February 14th.
So registration is open now and you want to be there if focusing
on communication skills and mindset are important to you
right now. And honestly, they are important
to you right now. And I see that because this will
set up your year to be so much better than if you continue to
feel like you're in a voidance or stumbling or struggling with
this, it's a small group. We meet every week for 12 weeks,
we're focusing on communication, skills, and mindset, and all
these different situations and because it's live and we are all
together. You get to ask me questions and
learn from me directly, but you also get to learn with People
who are also managing but who are not working with you.
So you'll start to see your own challenges in a new light.
You'll also start to see your own genius in a new light
because my guess is that there are things you're doing well
that you might be overlooking and not fully appreciating.
So we're going to get more clear on what your specific strengths
are and then how to use those to develop.
Complimentary and additional abilities and capacities.
Right now we've got a product manager a project lead.
We've got a senior director, a couple of new directors.
So if that sounds like you then I want you to come and join us
because this is going to be incredibly helpful and the one
hour that we're together, each week is going to make the rest
of your week so much. And that in turn has a Compound
Effect that's going to Ripple out for the rest of your year.
So come bring your questions about communication and
boundaries and how to be direct and how to say the uncomfortable
thing, but in a kind way, bring all of that here so we can
workshop at together. So that you feel supported and
more capable and prepared to then do that out in the
workplace because we're also talking mindset, you will also
be learning. And what are the things that
keep you from going forward? When you think I know I need to
have a conversation but I just don't want to.
We're going to uncover for you, what?
Specific level and flavor of avoidance or discomfort.
That is because you can have all the information in the world,
but you won't actually apply it if you don't feel like invited
into it like You can have all the information in the world but
you still won't put it into practice until you understand.
What is the, what is the bridge for you between the knowing and
the doing? And it's always in the being who
you're being, and that's a mindset thing.
So, that's what I wanted to leave you with today and invite
you in to go to my website. Kim nickel.com go to the new
manager, page and right at the top, you'll see a link.
Link to register and you'll see all of the information so go do
that. And let's get you in and we will
make this happen. All right, have an amazing week.
Thank you for being here and for listening and I will 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.