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 as we get started. I want to tell you, I am really looking forward to January. I have been thinking about what I want to teach and how I want to teach it. And I am planning to offer some free workshops and webinars specifically for starting the new year and the foundational
things that I think. Every manager needs to know about and be thinking about at the beginning of the year. But if I'm being honest, it's not just if you're a manager, if you work with humans, it's really valuable to be thinking about this. So get on my email list so that, you know, as soon as I start to send out information about that and you can either go into the show notes. You'll see a link to my website, or you can go to my website and go directly to the new manager page.
So that is Kim nickel.com /, new managers and get on my email list so that you can find out when I offer these workshops and webinars. One of the things I want to teach you about more specifically is feedback because that encompasses so many things. Both in terms of planning for the year in terms of getting ahead of having difficult
conversations. Oceans and beginning to get your mindset in a place, not just to give feedback but also to request it and to request it in a way that will be helpful to you specifically and also what to do if you receive unsolicited feedback and how to measure out, whether it's valuable to listen to or not because not all feedback deserves the same amount of implementation you really want to be aware of. What is the feedback that you take on?
And I'm thinking about this in part because I'm right now, reading this book that is just filling my heart and opening my opening. My mind in a whole new way, it is called women who run with the Wolves, it is a classic, but this is the first time, I'm really reading it and there is a quote that author says her name is.
Clarissa, penkala Estes. And she says, when seeking Guidance don't ever listen to the tiny hearted be kind to them, Heap them with blessing could Jewel them but do not follow their advice and I thought that was so beautifully stated. And so useful in so many ways be mindful of what advice you follow. It is not all of service to you. So that's my first invitation to
you. Go to My website, join my email list and we'll get to hang out more and I'll get to teach you more in January. And the topic for today, I wanted to get into, is this idea of the question behind the question? Now this is a very specific tactic that I like to use. Anytime. Someone asks me a question that makes me feel weird if I'm not sure of Their intent, or if I just feel like I don't know, something about the way, they're asking this feel, it doesn't
feel, right? I've also been seeing so a lot, a lot of conversations where right now I see a lot of folks who are interviewing for new jobs and sometimes the interviewer will ask a question and your might think I don't even know if they're allowed to ask me that. Like they might be asking you about, you know, your plans to
start a family. They might be asking you questions about your past salary or other questions that they're really not allowed to ask and if you ever feel like you're in a situation where you feel kind of put on the spot because someone is asking you a question and you feels weird or you might feel a little bit like deer in the headlights. Like your mind goes blank and you think I am. Not sure what I Should even say to this, this is a tactic that
will help. And I also want to give you the bigger picture strategy behind it. So one of the things I help teach my coaching clients and my students is to understand the relationship, between the mindset emotions and actions and mindset. You can think about as how are you thinking about something, how are you see? Being it, what's your perspective? Your mindset is kind of that higher level look at how are you perceiving this way? How are you thinking about it and very often?
When we transition into a higher levels of leadership and responsibility and management, there's a huge mindset shift that has to happen in order to do that new job in an effective way. So for example, when you're an individual contributor off, When our mindset is in one of task execution, what is might ask? Someone needs to tell me what it is specifically, and then I will do it to the best of my abilities and that is my mindset.
But when you become a manager, very often, number one, you don't have someone giving you Direction about what you need to do, or how to do it. There's a lot more ambiguity and a lot more of your discretion comes into play. Into making that decision. So, if you're feeling like, I don't know what to do, and no one's telling me that's a good indicator, that you've got a mindset transition that you're
still in the process of making. And the other thing is that, when we're at the manager level, very often, your job is no longer to be the person who does the direct task.
You're now managing the people who are the individual contributors doing the task and it can be tempting to You want to stay doing the task because you feel successful and you're good at it and it feels satisfying and now that you're two steps removed from it. You might feel more frustrated, or more a drift or like, you're not really sure what your job is, because the mindset hasn't caught up yet, like you haven't felt at home in the new mindset of. It's not my job to do all the things.
That's the fastest way to become the bottleneck, by the way, And not delegate is when you feel like I'll just do it. I know how it's faster if I do it, then if I teach or train other people, it's a trap, but it's okay. We all feel, like we all go there on the journey to becoming really effective in the way that we manage people.
That I just want to point this out because it's the mindset that then is shaping, the behaviors that we do and the decisions that we make and the emotion comes into play because As you might have a mindset of how you want to address something, but if your emotion is one of fear and doubt and uncertainty and your confidence, really like you can't find the confidence for it then that will prevent you from following through or from following through in the most effective
way. The reason we avoid tough conversations, it's the emotions either. We're worried about how the other person will feel and what emotions they will have. Or we worry about the emotions that we will feel in having that conversation. And so, it's very important as we grow in our work to have a greater understanding of, what are the emotions that are happening? What are is the mindset that's happening because those two combined to drive the actions
that you take or the action. Ins that you avoid. So the question behind the question. This way that this works is if someone asks you a question and it feels weird or uncomfortable. My favorite way to respond to that. Question is to say why do you ask it? Seems so simple and it works for any question. Any question someone can ask you. You can pause and look at them. And simply reply with. Hmm. Why do you ask? What is the question behind
their question? And this does a couple of things it puts the spotlight off of you and back to them. So if you're feeling like pressure to answer it gives you a little bit of space. You don't have to answer, you can ask them for more information that also buys you a little bit of time so you can gather your thoughts.
You can, you know, understand what is it that they're really asking for and it's helpful also because so if you're the person who is being asked the question, a lot of us have learned just do our formal education. We've kind of internalize this idea that your job is to answer the question that someone asks you and your job is to answer it quickly and it's to be correct. Now, if someone asks you a question, You feel pressured to
answer right away. If you feel pressured to have a right answer, that just creates a really difficult situation because I want to tell you as an adult working in the world. Your job is not to answer questions quickly and correctly, that might sound really weird and counterintuitive but instead our job is really to have an understanding of what are we trying to accomplish here? And what's the best way to do that? And the the best way can be a
lot of different ways, right? We can look through the lens of equity. We can look the little ones of inclusion, we can look through the lens of, you know, time we can look through the lens of like Regulatory Compliance. We can look through so many different lenses to answer that question. Is this the best way to approach this? And so it's not about having the right answer. Sometimes, there is no Writing on Sir. There's only this is the current
available answer. It's not about being able to respond right away to the question as asked, but you know, that reflex might be really, really, you know, conditioned in you. And so you might feel this immediate feeling of like, oh, I have to perform and give the right answer right away. So if you feel that start to flare up, I just want you to remember someone asks a question, you can always Always respond by pausing and asking. Why do you ask? And I want to give you a kind of
a sweet example of this. Because when I was thinking about this one of the first moments, I think I understood this concept in kind of an unexpected way I was I was maybe seven years old seven or eight years old and it was just after the Christmas holiday and for the Christmas holiday I had You've got a gift. It was this giant like chocolate candy. If you're familiar with Hershey's, kiss? Kisses, it was like a giant Hershey's kiss. And I was a little kid.
So this thing like I had to hold it with two hands, it was that big and of course you know my parents were very they're like you're not going to eat all that at. Once we're gonna put that in the refrigerator, you can have some of it sometimes and so I had this giant Hershey's. Kiss, it was wrapped in tinfoil. It was in the refrigerator and I wanted it, and I knew I wasn't supposed to have it, but my mom was outside working in the garden.
And I decided that what I would do was, I would go outside and super casual. I said, hey Mom, how long are you going to be out here? You gonna be out here a while and I don't remember what she said. I think she's kind of looked at me like You know, I'm gardening, you know, I'm sure she was thinking like, why did why did my child ask me this? But she know, she's gardening and then I just I walk casually back in the house and they went to the refrigerator. I opened it.
I took out the chocolate candy and I think I brought it into like a blanket fort or something like this is me trying really hard to be sneaky but I remember hearing the front door open and she walks Sin and she finds me and she sees me, and I've got this chocolate in both hands, and I'm trying to scrape the chocolate off with my two front teeth because it was so big. You couldn't really bite it. I could just scrape the chocolate off and she looked at me like really, you know, you're
not supposed to be doing that. And so I thought. Oh right, of course, even if you are a parent, you've probably had moments like this where your child asks you a question and you pause And you think where's this question coming from what is behind this question? Like what is this really about? And so you can use this technique in the workplace in someone asks you a question you can always pause and ask huh? Like why do you ask, you can ask, where is this question
coming from, right? You want to understand what is the mindset of the person? Who is asking, how are they thinking? What is it that they are trying to solve by asking this question and if you are working with people who have area expertise in different areas, this actually becomes really important in terms of communicating effectively, because we don't always understand each other's domain and the language and the nuances of how things. Happen.
Right? So I sometimes see conflict between like the sales team and the product team sales says like hey we need the product to do this and the product team is like you clearly have no idea what we do. Otherwise you would not be asking for it in that way because you would know that that is not a possible thing or as another example so many many years ago in another lifetime, I worked for a beer company. And beer is a regulated product.
Here, in the United States, there are certain rules about how you can advertise it and sell it. And they are different in every state in the US. And I worked in marketing and we would go to our legal team and say, hey, we want to do this. We want to do that and legal would say. Okay, we're glad that you came to us that is illegal in these states, you cannot do that. It has to be this other way, right?
So, I might come asking a question about, you know, what are the, how do we want to do a sweepstakes? We want to do a giveaway? It's going to have all this cool stuff and the legal team would say, wait, wait, we need to back up because the way you're asking this question, clearly, you do not have like a functional understanding of some really important things that will affect the way that you do this.
So, if you're ever in a conversation at work with someone who has different functional expertise, Peace. You might find that they're either struggling to ask a question or they're asking you for something. But in a way that you think, this doesn't really make sense, what are they really trying to accomplish? Because the way they are asking, the question is their attempt to try to accomplish something? I think more casually. We see this a lot when people are having conversations about
career paths. So, More asked me, for example, can like, tell me how you transitioned from, you know, being a lawyer to teaching meditation and now you're a coach for new managers and often what they're really asking is, not for my story, but they are trying to understand their Story. And there's something that they're struggling with that, they are hoping to understand better by me, telling them what I did.
And sometimes it's actually easier to say, we'll just tell me. Where are you at in your career journey and what are you really struggling with? And let's look at that and then I can offer you, maybe something from my experience that will be helpful. So sometimes just remembering the reason they're asking this question, is there something they're trying to accomplish? And you can pause and say, like, how many understand what are you
trying to accomplish it before? I answer that, let me ask You this it's also a lovely sort of technique. When someone asks a question to Simply say, oh that's a great question. And part of what that does is it can help to build two things, it can build in a little bit of time, but it also helps to build Goodwill.
And especially if you are a manager and you have one of your direct reports coming to you with a question, you want to encourage them, generally, you want to Courage, open communication, you want to encourage them, coming to you with questions sooner rather than later. And so just by saying, oh, good question, I'm glad you asked. You know, why do you ask? What's going on that? Can be a way of taking that bigger picture to understand what is their mindset, how are they thinking?
And seeing, what are they trying to accomplish through this question? And it can help to get a little bit more clarity about what is this?
Shin really about. So that's what I wanted to share with you this concept of the question behind the question, use it. If you are ever in a situation where you feel put on the spot, if someone is asking you something that doesn't feel right, or that feels a little bit weird or off, but you can also use it and it's a way of building trust in a way of understanding. What is it that this person is trying to accomplish whether it's a Direct report or a cross-functional partner or even
a customer or client? I would say actually a lot of times clients may ask may ask questions, they may ask for things and you might think what the heck are they doing? This is like, what, what where is this coming from? You can simply ask them. Oh, great question, why do you ask, what are you thinking? Tell me where is this coming from? What's driving? This, what is it that you're trying to accomplish?
With this and that can bring more information into the shared conversation and that can make it easier to be collaborative and finding a path forward that works for everybody. So that is what I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to work with me one-on-one you can go into the show notes book, a consultation with me and we will talk about it. You can also go directly to my website canonical.com, then you Can find the link for consults there.
And again, be sure you get on my email list so that you can join me in January for some of these workshops that I will be offering. All right, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll talk to you later. Bye. 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.