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.
Today, I want to talk with you about the distinction of being
and doing. And we live in a world that
becomes very obsessed with the doing part, with all of the
actions. We have this real bias for being
active and taking action and we measure productivity and
outcomes. And you know, like that's all
okay, but it's also limiting because if all we do is obsess
about the actions and the productivity, if those are the
only things that we see as valuable, then it means that we
are disregarding a very vast and rich source of value.
And it can be easy to then focus on trying to solve for the wrong
things. And one of the ways I see this
come up a lot is when we feel overwhelmed by the To Do List.
There are so many things on my To Do List.
How can I do them all? Or when you're facing a new
situation and the question in your mind is what do I do?
What should I do? Like, what do we need to do
about this? We can jump right into the
question of doing an action when what might be more useful is to
slow down and shift our perspective to the being side of
that equation. How am I being right now?
So in the instance where you feel overwhelmed by the To Do
List, if we take a step back and instead of trying to understand
how do I take action on all of these things, the question might
be who am I being but I am saying yes to every request?
How is it that my To Do List has become so big?
Why am I not delegating? Why am I not saying no to
things? Why am I prioritizing being
agreeable and simply going along with things rather than choosing
instead to really assess my capacity, the capacity of my
team? You know, why is it that I'm,
I'm not challenging or advocating and you know, making
some other decisions about what happens on my To Do List so we
can look at the being side of the equation?
How am I being right now? And that can illuminate so much
and help us then to solve for the right issue.
I'm remembering many years ago I was also teaching meditation in
companies and there was one client I had and I led a, you
know, half hour meditation class for their team.
And at the end of the session I asked folks, you know, what did
you notice what happened in your meditation?
And one of the guys raised his hand and he said, you know, I'm
an engineer and I've been working on this one problem.
And when I paused and meditated and I was able to actually kind
of hold the problem in mind but from a different perspective.
And he said I realized I was approaching it not in the best
way and I could actually approach it from a different
angle. And I think I just saved myself
like 5 hours of work because now I'm not going to work on the
wrong thing. Now I can actually shift my
approach and work on something else.
And I thought, that's such a great example of how taking that
moment to pause your doing, to realize that the doing is not
the most important thing and it's not always the first thing
we need to do, that there's so much that is gained when we
pause to reflect on how am I being and how am I being in this
context, which may have changed. So a couple of ways we can
approach this. One is to think of three
different aspects of yourself as a human.
There is the thinking part of you, your mind, your thoughts,
all of your ideas. This the internal narrator, the
story that you are telling yourself inside your own mind.
Sometimes it's very loud, sometimes it's a little bit
quieter in the background. But most of us have an internal
voice that is narrating or giving us ideas or you know, the
the thoughts that are in your mind.
That's one aspect. We also have the emotions part
of being a human. You have feelings.
You have emotions, and whether or not you're able to identify
exactly what they are is a separate question.
But we have a sense of, you know, do I feel, you know,
contracted and small? Do I have a feeling of actually
feeling really relaxed and open and uplifted?
If I have an emotion, is it kind of a restless, uneasy kind of
feeling, right? That might be how you experience
anxiety. Maybe it's a feeling of like the
emotion of feeling so grounded, right?
Like you feel really self assured.
You have a great sense of what you are here to do.
You have this real feeling of confidence or of clarity that
leaves you feeling very grounded.
We have the emotional aspect of being a human and then we have
the action part of being a human, the doing the choices,
the, you know, engagement in the world, all of the things that
you do. And as I mentioned before, we
tend to focus on and get measured and rewarded by the
action part. So for example, in your
performance review, we're often looking at what are the actions
you have taken and what are the results of those actions.
Very rarely in a performance review do we ask the question,
oh, tell us about the thinking that you had, you know, or tell
us about the emotions that you had those.
Those are usually not what we capture, at least not directly,
because you can identify those, not necessarily in an obvious
way, but in your performance review, in the work context, the
way that you make decisions. That's a combination of how
you're thinking and then the actions that you take.
Okay, I was looking at the challenge in this way.
I made the decision to prioritize these things and then
I was able to communicate them and then the team could act upon
them. So that is an example of how
your actions, the way that you communicated, the priorities you
set that came from the way that you were thinking, the way you
were seeing things, the emotion comes in, in terms of how you
are working with other humans, how you communicate effectively.
If you're a very high empathy person, it can show up in terms
of performance through this sense of, oh, because I could
really understand the challenges that this new hire was going
through. Being able to empathize with
them helped me to then design an improvement to our onboarding
program. Or I was able to deescalate this
client situation because I was able to really understand and
feel where they were coming from and so I was not reactive.
I did not become defensive when the client called us and they
were so angry and threatened to to leave and I was able to save
that client relationship and rebuild trust because of my
awareness and ability to work with emotions.
So the emotional space and the thinking space are always in
play and in fact are often what will drive the actions that we
take and the outcomes that play out as a result of that.
But if we think about the actions as the doing part, we
can consider your thinking and your feelings as your being
part. How are you being?
Meaning, How are you seeing things?
What is the perspective or your thought process?
Or, you know, are you being creative?
That is a being thing. And the emotions, how are you
being? Are you being, you know, like
reactive? Are you being kind?
Are you being patient? Are you being, you know,
curious? And when we combine how you are
thinking with the emotion that you're experiencing, that being
a combination, is what will then shape the way that you act in
the way that you're doing things.
And one of the reasons I wanted to, you know, point this out
today especially is because when you are faced with a situation
where you feel really stuck or completely unsure of what you
should do. If you're thinking, Oh my gosh,
I do not know what to do here, then I want to remind you of the
value of being, of taking that time to slow down, to reflect,
to remember that action is not the only or even the most
important part. That who you are being the way
that you are thinking and seeing things, the way that you are
feeling and the way that you're able to influence because of
that. That all happens 1st and it's of
so much importance. You know, sometimes we think our
job is to solve all the problems, and that feels like a
very doing, active kind of thing.
But there will be times when the most powerful and appropriate
thing you can do in the moment is to slow down and simply take
some time to be with a person, a challenge, a problem, to simply
be present with it, to hold the space for it, to acknowledge it
and take that time to kind of, you know, reflect and notice.
One of the reasons I'm thinking about this too, and I'll, I'll
put a link in the show notes to this resource because it was
really good. I attended A webinar a month or
so ago and it was hosted by the Center for Care Innovations and
they are an organization in Oakland.
They do amazing work in the healthcare space and and
especially working with underserved communities and they
had this what they call a knowledge share webinar and it
was around breaking the cycles of trauma through recognition
and healing. And it was such there were so
many great Nuggets in it. So I I can't put them all in
here for you right now. But one of the things that one
of the speakers shared was he said, you know, the main
ingredient of change is the opportunity to have reflection
and space to think about how we can do our work better.
And that really landed for me because if we are in a reactive,
ever doing place, like if all we're doing is trying to react
to every situation and we are doing, doing, doing, doing all
day long, then we eliminate, we reduce the amount of time to
reflect and have space to think about, how can we do this
better? Are we solving for the right
thing? Has anything changed since we
started on this? Right has, is there anything
that we're learning as we are experiencing this and going
through this together? So there were so many really
great ideas and concepts. And you know, one of the things
I want to remind you of too is that the skill of being an
effective manager and working well with others.
There are so many lessons and insights that transcend
industries, meaning you can learn a lot from other leaders
and other people who really care about, you know, how to how do
we work together who are in other industries than yours.
And so for me, I always am interested in what are the
conversations people are having about how do we work Better
Together, especially under really challenging circumstances
because there will always be different kinds of challenging
circumstances. And so this one around, you know
breaking the cycles of trauma through recognition and healing
and all of the insights that they shared about the healthcare
space and what that looks like. That one note the main
ingredient of change is the opportunity to have reflection
and space to think about how we can do our work better was so
resonant and I knew I wanted to share that with you.
And it's it's so interesting because we have our internal
experience as humans, our own internal environment of our
thoughts and our emotions and your lived experience and your
perspective as a human person in the world.
And we're always engaging within an environmental context, which
is both, you know, the professional culture that you're
working in, the kind of other cultural norms, the other
social, cultural norms that you're working within.
You're also working within different constraints that might
affect your specific industry or your business or your particular
organization. And so we're always wanting to
be aware of both what's happening on your internal
environmental space, your external environmental space and
how those two interact with one another.
Because this is also where we, you know, think about influence.
How can the way that you are being on the inside influence
and affect those around you and those that are in the external
space. And when we have this awareness
too, it helps us to solve for the most useful thing.
So, for example, if you have a lot of selfdoubt or if your
confidence has really been shaken because of, you know, the
way people are treating you at work, this is something I, you
know, hear from some of my clients.
If you are and only in the workplace, you might think, oh,
I have to try harder because, you know, I must not be very
good because of the way that that they're treating me.
And sometimes that's actually not the right thing to solve for
because you're actually amazing, but you're just working with
people who are not able to see it or acknowledge it or
recognize it because of their own shortcomings or biases or
whatever. And sometimes what we need to do
is both. Remember that so we don't
internalize that and make ourselves feel smaller.
And sometimes the answer is to find a place that feels better
suited for you. And so we want to know what are
we trying to solve for so that we're not kind of internalizing
this heavy, heavy doubt. We're not undermining ourselves
unnecessarily sometimes. Just being able to see that, to
realize, oh, actually no, I'm very competent and I'm very
skilled. And here are all the reasons why
I understand that. And it really is a mystery to me
that it's not recognized. Like, it's really unfortunate
because we could do incredible work together.
But for the fact that there's some kind of, you know,
limitation in your ability to recognize and work with this,
I'm thinking too of someone who had a very similar experience,
recently, started a new job and was telling me she's like, wow,
Like, they are so kind and they really appreciate what I'm
bringing into their organization.
And you know, The funny thing is it's like, she's like, I'm the
same person I was a month ago, but the way that they treated me
in my last company, that was not very good and now I'm in this
new company and I'm the same person, but I'm being perceived
and welcomed with so much more appreciation and respect, she
said. It's kind of weird, I'm not used
to that, but it's really nice. So we are always, you know, an
internal environment of our own experience and we are also
existing and working in a dynamic external environment as
well. So my hope for you today and
what I want to leave you with is as you go through your week, see
what happens. If you tend to your being a
little bit more, even if you only increased it by like 5%.
So just for this week, let yourself feel a little bit okay
with, you know, don't worry so much about the doing, what do I
need to do? There's so much to do.
OK, set the doing part aside for a moment and instead let's take
a little bit more time, attention and energy to reflect
on. How are you being?
Let's take a look at how you're
thinking, how you're seeing things.
Let's really care for and Createspace for your emotions.
How are you feeling? And if that's something that is
uncomfortable or difficult, then that's a thing I can help.
And help teach you and help you learn to become better with.
That's one of the best things with coaching is actually having
a space to be a real human or you're not having to be so
measured or controlled in the emotions you express or the
thoughts you express. You actually have a space to
process and get it out so that you can then make some decisions
around what What does it mean. Now that you can see this more
clearly and feel this more clearly, what do you want to do?
We get to the doing part only after we spend some time with
the being part of who you are. So take a little bit of that
with you. Remember, there's so much value
in your presence in the way that you're being.
There's so much value in taking time to reflect and giving
yourself space. And you know, it doesn't have to
be like you take off a week to go away into the mountains and
meditate and go into, you know, a retreat setting.
You really can learn how to find these moments, like these little
pockets where you can rest and reflect and find a little bit of
a little bit of something, a little bit of insight, a little
bit of awareness, a little bit of relief as you navigate all of
the things that are coming your way.
All right. So thank you so much for
listening. Thank you for being a human who
cares about the way that you work with other humans.
It's not always easy, but it is so important.
And I for one, want to say good job you.
Thank you so much. All right.
Have a great week 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, kimnicol.com and sign up for a coaching
consult. It can get better.