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.
If you already follow me on LinkedIn, then you might have
seen the story that I am about to share with you.
If you don't yet follow me on LinkedIn, then I invite you to
connect with me over there. So last week I had an incredible
opportunity to meet one of my clients in person for the first
time and she we took a a photo and she posted it along with
this short story onto her LinkedIn page.
And so the photo is of the two of us standing in a Blue Bottle
coffee shop in San Francisco, and she is holding a copy of my
book. You might not know that I am an
author and that I have written books because I don't often talk
about them here. But it's it's a it's a true
thing that I've done. And this book is called Every
Day Meeting Life in a Mindful Way.
And Miriam received this book in Paris when she went to the award
ceremony for the Cartier Women's Initiative.
She's one of the fellows in the cohort this year, and some of
you might know because I mentioned this a while back, but
this year I've been working with the Cartier Women's Initiative
to support the well-being programming for the cohort of
entrepreneurs. And it's a really cool program.
I definitely recommend seeing what they're up to, learning
more about them. And so Miriam and I connected
through this program. She also received a copy of my
book. And oh, and also, Miriam lives
in Armenia. She is at Armenian.
She lives in Armenia. Her company is based there.
Her company is called Safe U and she is working to help people
who are experiencing gender based violence in the world.
She's creating more safety for vulnerable populations of
people. And she had come to San
Francisco for a conference. And that is why, even though we
met online, you know, while she's been in Armenia and also
traveling for work, when it I learned that she was coming to
San Francisco for this conference, I thought, Oh my
gosh, what an opportunity we have to meet in person.
So we met, we took this great photo, we had a coffee, we had a
great conversation. And then this is what Miriam had
to share on her post, she said. This morning in San Francisco, I
had a truly inspiring meeting with Kim Nickel, my incredible
coach, a great author, and a podcast host.
Kim specializes in empowering leaders to master the art of
nurturing life and fostering growth, focusing on the profound
human aspects of life and work. Being in her presence is an
immediate source of serenity and tranquility.
It's a powerful reminder that women like Kim bring invaluable
gifts to our world growth, humanity, and peace.
I'm thrilled to have her book Every Day, Meeting Life in a
mindful way, personally signed for both me and my daughter.
I'm thankful to Kim for her support during my leadership
journey within the Safe U mission.
Her wisdom has been important in our shared pursuit of positive
change. Grateful to Cartier Women's
Initiative for this connection, and I loved that so much.
I love the way that she described this work.
And I'm gonna include you in this work, too, because you're
listening, because you're part of the, you know, my, my
listening community. And because the way I think
about leadership and the way I think about the opportunity that
we have when we step into higher levels of responsibility, higher
levels of visibility and higher levels of power in our
organizations, which is what happens when we become new
managers, is that this is also how we nurture life and foster
growth. When we remember that we are
humans first, that we are working with humans and we are
being very intentional in the way that we do that.
And this is a perspective that I hold.
It's the way that you know everything that informs what I
share with you here and the way that I coach and work with my
clients. And I want to tell you that this
is also, this is, this is not a requirement.
It is entirely possible to be a leader and to be seen, as I'm
going to put this in air quotes, effective.
You can be seen as an effective leader without holding this
perspective. And the reason this matters is
because so much about leadership is within and up to your
individual discretion, how you lead, how you manage.
You are the one who is making decisions about that.
Now. I think at at its worst, when we
see this in ways that have us feeling really discouraged or
seeing kind of the the way things work out in a very
disappointing or sad way in the workplace is when we see people
who are being just simply arbitrary, when leaders seem to
be making random choices based on personal wins.
And it's really frustrating, right?
So arbitrary is when things are based on random choice or
personal win. And I think we've got examples
of that both in the real world where we see people, people in
leadership positions making decisions and we think what are
they doing Like that is that does not seem to be based on
anything other than this person's individual random, you
know, decision, random personal win.
And then on the other side of it, though we have the idea of
things being within your discretion, discretion is a
little bit different. Discretion is the freedom to
decide what to do in a particular situation.
And for example, last week I had to bring my car in to be
serviced. And the person who helped me was
so helpful, was so wonderful. And at the end of the service,
when I came back to pick up my car, he said, oh, and we've also
decided to give you a 10% loyalty discount today.
And I was, I mean, honestly, just very delighted and
surprised. And it was.
So I thought, Oh my gosh, that's so thoughtful.
You didn't have to do that. My guess is that it was within
his discretion. He had the freedom to decide
what to do in a particular situation, and this is true for
you as well. Throughout your career, whether
you are in a formal leadership role or not, you are always
making decisions. You always have different, uh,
freedoms to choose what will happen and when.
You are stepping into this leadership role and the
decisions that you make will have a ripple effect on many,
many, many other people. Then it really is in your hands
to decide how do you want to do this, What kind of leader do you
want to be, What kind of manager do you want to be?
And so I think of this also as a bit of an art.
Like, you know, there's there's a little bit of getting to
decide how you want to approach things, what your underlying
philosophy is. You know, like the way that you
perceive and think about people and challenges and the work
you're there to do will absolutely inform the decisions
that you make that will affect your team and the work and the
way things get done and why. And so remembering that that
number one will be helpful if you find yourself going into
comparison mode. Like if you're trying to decide,
oh shit, I is it OK if I manage people in a way that, you know,
is really kind? Is it OK if I have a generosity
of spirit? Or is that considered being, you
know, like a pushover? Like being able to feel into the
distinction between how it's entirely possible to be kind, to
have a generosity of spirit with people, and also be really
clear, be really direct, be really upfront about what the
expectations are, about how individuals fit into the bigger
picture. All of that can be true at the
same time. And that's one of the reasons,
for example, when I teach about giving feedback, I make this
distinction between we don't need to be brutally honest
because I believe there is no need for brutality in our
relationships at work. I don't think it solves
anything. I don't think it helps anything.
I I just don't think it's necessary.
So there's no need for for brutal honesty and at the same
time we don't need to be around the Bush or kind of talk about
things in a sideways kind of way.
It actually takes a lot of respect and a lot of courage to
turn toward someone and to name the difficult or the
uncomfortable thing to say, OK, this is might be an
uncomfortable conversation or this might be difficult to hear.
But the reason I'm telling you is because if I don't make it
clear, if I don't help you understand or see this, then
it's going to end up just, you know, being more protracted and
difficult down the road. Like, if I don't tell you this
thing now, then how can I expect you to learn or adjust or change
or grow, right? The sense of the reason I'm
being direct is because I have so much respect for you and I
don't want to keep this information from you.
So we can really approach giving feedback in a way that
understands and really respects the human experience part of it.
And we're doing it not through being brutally honest.
And we're also not just kind of, you know, trying to avoid
hurting someone's feelings by not telling them something that
is actually quite important, especially if it's about their
performance or especially if it could potentially affect their
career growth. So you have so much discretion
in how you choose to be a leader, in how you choose to
manage people. And a lot of the time, I see my
job as helping you to learn how to trust your own voice and
judgment, because you are the one who is in your position and
like needing to make decisions on the day, right?
And it can be so easy to try to look to others and try to
understand like, oh, like, what's the right answer?
What's the right approach? But really, I I want to help
build in you an internal compass, like an internal sense
of what is it that guides your decision making?
Can you understand what your decisions are based on?
Can you make room for yourself to do things in a way that maybe
hasn't been modeled before, meaning other people might
question or challenge or say, Oh well, that's not how we do
things here and yet still offer you that sense of internal
confidence where you say, I know this is not how we've done
things in the past and yet this is how I would like to approach
things now For these reasons. And it might be the reason of I
think it's time for us to change the way that we do things.
I think the shape of our business or the situation that
our clients are experiencing or something happening within our
organization, I think it's signaling it.
There's it's time to perhaps approach this in a different
way. And so we can work in a very
collaborative and very kind and very supportive way, even as we
are looking to perhaps do things differently than they have been
done in the past or than they have been role modeled for us.
And this really is, in my mind, one of the essential examples of
what it is to be a leader. Because sometimes being a leader
means going first. Because you see a vision of
what's possible but doesn't exist yet.
You have something in mind. You have a vision of how we can
work together to accomplish these goals or to achieve these
results. And maybe nobody else can see it
yet. But from who you are and where
you are and the way you see things, that's that leadership
place and then the discretion to decide based on that vision.
Here's how I will manage this situation.
Here's how I will manage this person, this relationship,
right. This is how I will manage this
moment. All of that is something that
you can initiate, that sits within you, and that is
definitely a mindset shift. You know, often for us, early in
our career, the job is about learning the job.
What am I supposed to do? And someone will say, here's the
thing I need you to do and you need to do it in this way,
Great. But that changes the longer
you're in your career and the more that you grow into higher
levels of leadership. Because often what happens is
you'll find yourself in situations you've never been in
before, and you might find yourself in situations that no
one has been in before. So there's no pre written guide
to how you are supposed to do things.
It is a lot of making decisions in the moment based on your
discretion, your perspective, your underlying reasons, the
vision that you see of what's possible.
And then part of that job is to communicate to others what they
need to know in order to be on board and in order to know what
they are supposed to do now. I think we all want to have an
understanding of how we fit into the big picture.
And we want to have clarity about what is expected of us and
what we need to be doing now so that we can feel successful that
we're doing the thing we're supposed to be doing and that we
are not going to, you know, be scolded or, you know, have
someone say, like, that was not what you were supposed to be
doing or you did it all wrong. It's like if you want me to do a
certain thing in a certain way, please tell me clearly so that I
can get to it right. And this is a lot of what that
job is now as you move from that individual worker contributor
role into this new mindset. So these are kind of the main
concepts I wanted to share with you today.
The awareness of the way that being a leader can be very
arbitrary. But when we come back to this
idea of it's in your discretion, every decision, if you have the
freedom to decide how things will be done, then that's
something we want to understand and to identify and feel
comfortable with the basis for your decisions because they
might look different than someone else's.
And the perspective that I hold, that I'm guessing is also true
of you. Otherwise you'd probably be
listening to some other show that being a leader is about
nurturing life. It is about nurturing growth.
It is about helping not just, you know, the people on our
teams to grow in their careers, but it's also about how do we
contribute to, like, life and growth in the organizations and
the people that we are connected to.
One of the things I've written in one of my books is this idea
that as a human, you were born and you were gifted with a life
and you do not get to keep it. You only get to choose how
you're going to give it away. Every day and in every day,
we're making decisions about how we're directing and giving our
attention, our energy, our talent, our skills, our time.
That's some of the most important decisions that we make
as people. And then also in our career and
in our profession, you're gifted with a life.
You do not get to keep it. You only get to choose how you
want to give it away. So seeing yourself as a leader
and as someone who is here to help make things better.
And and and this is my, perhaps my last note for today.
Realizing that sometimes it is the smallest decisions, the
smallest choices that can have the biggest ripple effects and
in ways that you may not even fully appreciate, You know, I
mean simply by taking a few moments to really be present
with someone at work can make such a big difference.
So that is what I wanted to share with you today and I want
to invite you to work with me. There are a couple ways to do
that. I am taking one-on-one clients
so you can go into the show notes, book a time on my
calendar for a consultation, gives us time to meet to talk
about what is going on with you and what would be the plan for
us to support you and help get you where you want to go and to
have the leadership experience you want to have.
So that is in the show notes Book time on my calendar and
let's talk about one-on-one coaching.
Or if you want to know about my group program, make sure you get
on my mailing list. I will be talking more about
that and when you can sign up and that is also in the show
notes or you can go to my website kimnickel.com, you'll
learn all about that. Lastly, if you are curious about
my books, if you're still thinking, wait, she wrote books
about mindfulness and life. If you want to know more about
that, I am on Amazon, but I will also put a link to my books in
the show notes. All right, Thank you so much for
listening. 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.