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's episode is all about learning.
How do you learn to be a great manager?
And the 1st place to start is by acknowledging that when you
become a manager, managing people is a different job than
the thing you were doing before. You might be a really great
designer, but managing a team of designers is a different job.
You might be a really good attorney, but managing a team of
attorneys and non attorney staff is a different job.
You might be a really good engineer.
Managing a team of engineers is a different job.
You get the picture here, right? And so often we get promoted and
nobody will actually tell you that managing is a different job
and that there are different ways.
You'll need to be thinking about what your role is and what it
means to be successful as a manager.
Especially if you are managing people who have different styles
of communication than you, if you are managing people who are
motivated a little bit differently than you.
Because we often think about managing others the way that you
want to be managed, we think, oh, a good manager is someone
who would manage me exactly the way that I would like.
And then when you become a manager, it's easy to forget
that not everyone is exactly like you.
And so part of developing a suite of skills and tools about
being effective as a manager is keeping this in mind that what
works for you as a person might not translate exactly for
others. As a manager, you want to be
able to be effective with a range of people and a range of
personalities, because that's what you're most likely to
encounter in the workplace. Now this also becomes important
because when you transition into managing people, it can be so
easy to feel like a failure if you're not sure what the job is
or you're not sure if you're doing a good job.
One of the things I see happen a lot, and especially when you
know you get promoted to imagine manager, it's often because
you're really good at the thing that you do and then it's like
great, you're so good at this thing.
Now we're going to let you manage people who are also good
at this thing. There can be this disorientation
where you go from feeling high competence, high confidence.
I know what I'm doing, I know what success looks like, and I
have a track record of achievement.
To now stepping into this new role and not having that clarity
around what does success look like?
How is this role different? How do I feel competent and
confident when I'm doing something new and maybe I'm a
little bit worried about whether I'm doing it right or not?
And so it's very natural. A lot of times when we're trying
to understand, am I doing a good job?
We look to the emotions of others.
And specifically what that sounds like is are my people
happy? Is my team happy?
Are they happy with me? Are they happy with the work?
Is my boss happy? Are they happy with me?
Are they happy with the work? And one of the real challenges
here is to remember that sometimes people are unhappy and
it has nothing to do with you. Something else might be going on
in their life. And so they're showing up at
work and they are unhappy and they are impatient and they just
do not have a great attitude. And it's possible it has
absolutely nothing to do with you, has nothing to do with the
work. That's just kind of where
they're at right now. And so as a human, that's the
quality of attention and energy that they're bringing with them
into the workplace. The other reason you want to be
really mindful of this is because there will be times when
your job is to make a decision. Maybe to delegate something or
to not to give a promotion to somebody who wants it.
Or you simply make a judgment call based on information that
you have, that maybe someone on your team does not have that
perspective or that information, or they simply have a different
opinion about how they think things should go.
But the job of making the decision falls to you.
And so it's in your judgment and it's your responsibility to make
a decision and then follow through on it.
And people might not be happy with that.
And sometimes that's okay. It is okay that they are unhappy
with the decision that you've made.
And it can be difficult to hold the truth of those two things.
Especially when you're someone who has a lot of compassion and
a lot of care and you really want people to like coming to
work. And you want people to feel, you
know, purposeful and appreciated and becoming aware of what are,
you know, like what is the emotional tone of the folks
around you and how much weight are you giving that?
What are you doing with that information?
Are you giving too much weight to how they are feeling and then
trying to do your job to get people to feel a certain way?
And that can really lead us astray?
And so I wanted to mention that too, because when you're not
sure about what is the measure of success, how do I know?
When I'm doing a great job, it's really natural to look to the
emotions of others as your only source of information, your only
checkpoint. And instead I want to remind you
it's only one data point in the bigger context, in the bigger
picture. So that's one of the things that
I, you know, work with my clients on often when they're
first starting is trying to get them oriented into, let's talk
about what does success look like, How will you know when
you're doing a good job and how are you thinking, like, what is
your mindset around what the role of a manager is?
There are different ways to think about it.
Sometimes we think of it as, oh, my job as the manager is to
remove obstacles. My job as the manager is to
clarify priorities and direction so people know what to do.
Sometimes my job as a manager is to advocate for the team and to
make sure that they are resourced, you know,
appropriately for the task at hand.
Sometimes the job of the manager is to be the one who makes
decisions. So there are lots of different
ways that we can look at this depending on what your situation
is, what is happening in your organization.
But when you have clarity in your own mind about what the job
is and how you will know when you are being successful, that
goes a long way to starting to reduce the stress and the
anxiety and that little background voice of self doubt
and second guessing. So with all of that in mind,
there are three things specifically I wanted to share
with you when it comes to How will you learn to be a great
manager? How will you learn to be
effective? How will you learn to be, you
know, the leader that you want to be for your team, and there
are three things that I've identified that I see as really
important, and so I want to share them with you here.
Number one, you need safety to learn.
That means that if you're afraid of making mistakes, if you've
got a lot of anxiety about doing things right and you're really
worried about getting it right the first time, that becomes
harder to learn. When you feel more safe.
When you feel safe to not be perfect, it becomes easier to
learn. Sometimes you might make an
error, but the important thing then is how you will deal with
it. If you feel like any error is
going to, you know, kind of ruin everything, you're going to walk
on egg shells. You're going to second guess
yourself. You're going to procrastinate in
making decisions. There will be so much time and
energy that gets sucked out of your life when you're afraid to
learn. So you want to have, you know,
like a dedicated place, whether it's a specific person you talk
with or whether it's in a class or just creating space in your
own mind where it's safe to ask questions, where you can be real
about what's hard and not feel like.
You have to present this all knowing you know straight a
student image right out of the gate.
You want to have a place where it actually feels safe to learn
because you will learn faster. You can also think of this as
process over perfection. This can be a tough reminder
when you're used to doing things at a very high standard and
you're doing something new and it feels a little wobbly at
first. So remember, the goal here is
process over perfection and when you create safety to learn
inside yourself, like when you are not judging yourself
harshly, criticizing yourself, thinking, oh, I should know this
by now. Am I supposed to know this by
now? Is there something wrong with me
that I don't? I don't magically and
immediately know how to do things when you're able to
remind yourself, look, I'm learning something new.
I haven't done this before. It is safe for me to learn and
in fact it's very important that I create safety to learn because
then I will learn faster. That's the attitude that we're
going for. So process over perfection.
The number two thing that you need when you're learning how to
be a great manager go for bite size learning.
And this is specifically because it can be very difficult to step
out of, you know, the full flow of daily life to attend a long,
you know, like 1/2 day or a multi day training on manager
skills. And I think of that experience
as kind of like binging. Like we lift you up out of your
workplace, we drop you into a classroom, you know, workshop
setting maybe with some of your colleagues or some of the other
folks that you work with. And then we're going to dump all
this information at you and we're going to just, you know,
it's like you're going to try to binge learn all of these tools
and frameworks and attitudes and practices.
And then we're going to pick you up and drop you back into your
work and say OK, go apply that. And the reason I don't like
binge learning is because it's often not that effective.
We tend to forget most of what is learned in a big multi hour
long training and when we are feeling stressed or pressured or
just like we're feeling tense and like we we really have to go
quickly. What you will tend to do is you
will do the most familiar thing. You will do the thing that you
are most practiced at, which is not the new skill.
You just spent three days, you know three days on you will do
the things that you have been doing.
You will not apply that new skill and this is something that
I have experienced both on the student side as well as being on
the trainer side. You know, like when I was doing
these day long trainings, they were so much fun.
People really enjoyed them. They had an amazing time.
But the ability to then take all of that learning from that one
day and apply it consistently and sustainably over time, that
part didn't really happen like it was.
It was really more left to each person.
It wasn't structured in a way that made that easy to do.
And so if you think about instead of bingeing your
learning, think about looking for bite size learnings that you
can lift easily. That's something that doesn't
feel so heavy, but something that you can lift and begin to
apply immediately. Something that you can bring
into the flow of what you're doing to become a little bit
more practiced, a little more effective, and to start building
your confidence with small things.
If we try big things too quickly, it's so easy to feel
frustrated and to feel like, oh, it's not working, you know, like
this. This isn't working with my
specific people or in my specific situation and so it
becomes a lot more doable when you start with something small.
Think of it like you know a small step makes a big
difference because you will actually apply them.
Small gets it done. Done is better than perfect.
That is what will actually make a difference.
And remember, it was a just around 10 years ago or so when I
had been promoted to the manager of my team.
So we had worked together for many years and then there was an
opportunity to apply to the manager role because somebody
had left. I applied, I got the job.
It was like, Oh my gosh, amazing.
I got promoted. I'm neither now the manager.
And first, there were some interesting relationship
dynamics because I went from being their peer to now being
the manager and having insight about everybody's salary, for
example, and now being in a position of real formal power
over people. So there was all of this
relationship dynamic that I hadn't really understood until I
was in that role. So that was something that I had
to reckon with. And then the organization that I
was working for, they said, oh, you know, we have this manager
training coming up. It'll be in like 4 months from
now and it'll be you know, on the East Coast and we're going
to send you and like 10 of 10 other people from the company
and you'll all do this training together and it's 3 days and I
was like, OK, but in the meantime, you know, between now
and then I still need to figure out how to do my one on ones,
how to do team meetings. I needed to learn about the
formal performance review process, like how does that tool
work and when do I need to do things.
Like there was all this other stuff, you know, that was
happening in the meantime before I got to the training and then
when I went to the training. Number one, it's it is kind of
weird when you're learning with people you work with because
there are relationship dynamics happening there too.
I didn't feel like I could be totally open about the things I
felt confused about or I felt uncertain about because I'm also
trying to, you know, manage my relationship and manage a little
bit of of how I'm presenting to my colleagues.
And so I was a little bit guarded.
And that's just a real thing that happens when we're learning
with people that we know. Sometimes it's much easier to
learn with people that do not know you because you can be so
open about what's actually going on.
The other thing that was interesting is that we were
there for three days and of course in between our sessions
everyone's trying to check their e-mail and catch up to what's
happening at work because it's, you know, it's a, it's a a while
to be away. And then they taught us these
different frameworks and they said, you know, we we know that
you won't remember everything, but it's okay.
We have some materials for you to bring home with you.
And there was this huge binder, this 3 ring binder.
It was so heavy I had to pack it in my luggage and it was so
heavy. And I thought, I am never going
to open this binder. I'm going to bring it to my
office, I'm going to put it on the shelf.
I cannot imagine wanting to consult this binder again, like
that is just not how I learned. And the other thing they gave us
was a little wallet card. It was a little card that had a
summary of some of the concepts that they had taught.
And I looked at this and I thought, you know, I understand
why you're giving this to me. But honestly, I cannot imagine
being, you know, at my desk, getting ready for a oneonone and
then thinking, oh wait, let me pull out my wallet card and
remind myself of how to structure this conversation.
It it just was not how reality was going to work.
So, you know, when I started coaching and teaching, I thought
I want to do this in a different way because the binge learning
is not so effective, you know. But that's I think very much the
mindset of how learning was happening at the time.
Like it was easier to administer a training where you, you know,
fly 10 people from one company into this, you know, training at
this other location and then everybody just immersive binge
learns and then hopefully when they go back there's enough
learning that gets applied in the moment.
I don't know. I mean I try to have compassion
for it because I've been in the learning and development and
teaching space long enough to know the best of intentions can
still create less than ideal results.
But I am have become a very firm believer in the value of bite
size learning rather than trying to kind of pour all this
information into you and hope that you're able to take it and
apply it all perfectly to all the nuance and unexpected
circumstances that happen along the way.
Instead, let's make it bite size.
You know, when I first started teaching the essential skills
for new managers back in 2017, I envisioned it as a Swiss Army
knife. The class was only 90 minutes
long, and my mindset was if I only talk to you for 90 minutes,
that's the only time we ever get.
I am going to equip you with the equivalent of a Swiss Army
knife. Meaning that it's small, it it's
light, it fits right in your pocket, it's intuitive to use,
it has a lot of different tools, and you'll be able to pull it,
you know, from your pocket into any moment that you that you
need it. And you'll be able to start to
integrate some of these teachings right away.
So what initially started as a 90 minute class, Of course it's
now expanded into, you know, a bigger program and this podcast
and all of that. But it really came from this
mindset of we don't need a huge immersive information dump.
What is most effective is what you will use, and what you will
use is something that is bite size, something that is an easy
lift, something that you can really hold in your hands and
use it in your particular work situation.
So this is #2, go for bite size learning, remember that small
gets it done and you'll also start to build your confidence
when you find success in applying small concepts.
Bite size concepts. The 3rd.
When you're thinking about how do I become a more effective
manager, I know there are things I need to learn.
The third aspect that you need is continuous learning.
So remembering that this is not something like you cram for the
night before and you learn it once and you're done.
But remembering that the objective is to be learning as
you go to think about continuous learning, something that you
will continue to actively engage in, and that sense of learning
is never done. It's not like, you know, you
take the test, you get the grade, OK, done like move on.
It really is this curiosity, this mindset of growth and
discovery, because as you go in your career, you're going to
learn so much more about who you are as a person and what type of
leader and manager you are and want to become.
You will be learning things all the time from the people around
you, both from the people whose style of managing and leading
you really admire and and start to learn from that example.
But you will also learn from the people that you see who are just
maybe not doing so great. And you might think, wow, I
can't believe they they did that.
I I would not, I would not want to lead or manage my team in
that way. Like, no, Like, we've got to do
this better. We've got to do this
differently. There will also be times when
you simply learn from your experience being a human and you
realize, ooh, the way that they're, you know, managing this
that is so, so good. I'm having such a great
experience of being managed in this situation.
I'm going to use some of what I am experiencing and learning and
bring that into my team. And honestly that's one of the
things I love the most. Because when you think about
learning from your direct experience, then it locates the
zone of expertise in you as opposed to in some external
expert. You know, I sometimes have a
little bit of a bias because I remember when I was trying to
understand how to be a better manager, it just seemed like
there were some very academic messages that felt so distant
from the messy reality of daily work in a changing industry with
all of the personalities that I had to work with.
And it just felt not that applicable.
And some of the most powerful and inspiring leaders that I
have known and that I've had the pleasure to work with.
So much of what I've observed and learned is that the
learning, like the way they were able to learn to do that was so
much through their lived experience and not primarily
through an academic study. So I really like this kind of
organic approach. And I also have this philosophy
of people want to work well together, people want to have a
great experience at work. And we are human, which means
that we have emotions, it means we get tired, it means we have
different priorities and different things that motivate
us. So the more that we can stay
curious and be interested in continuous learning, then it
starts to relieve the sense of pressure.
It starts to make learning and leading something that's more
like, you know, it's engaging and it's fun and we're always
finding ways of getting better and it just feels like less
pressure, more momentum, more confidence, and you start to see
your progress. That's also what becomes more
sustainable. And I think sustainability wins
at the end of the day, because if you're trying to learn in a
way that isn't connected to sustainability, you're not
learning in a sustainable way, you're not applying what you're
learning in a sustainable way, then what is the point?
Like, why? Why learn if you're not going to
be able to apply it? Or why you know?
Like if if you're not able to really take it in and make it
yours and make it work for who you are and the circumstances
and the work situation and the personalities that you're with,
then you know is it Like how valuable is that learning if
you're not making good use of it.
So these three things you know when you realize okay, So I'm
now a manager and there are going to be some things for me
to learn, some skills to develop, but also some mindset
to shift. There's going to be a lot of
learning as I step into this role.
Three things that will help you safety to learn bite size
learning and continuous learning.
And once you tap into that and see and understand that you'll
then have less stress, less anxiety and pressure.
You'll also start noticing these small wins and that is what
builds your sense of confidence and progress and momentum and
that is a good thing. So that is what I wanted to
share with you today. If you want to work with me
one-on-one, go into the show notes, book a consult and let's
talk. If you want to join my group
program, I have the next cohort is starting this week, I think
it's starting tomorrow from when this episode will go live.
So there's still time. If you're listening to this on a
Monday to join the group program, in the show notes,
you'll find the link to learn more about that.
Otherwise, stay connected, keep listening to the podcast or join
my e-mail list. You'll hear about when the group
is offered next. Have a great one.
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, kimnickelcom and sign U for a coaching
consult. It can get better.