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. I'm feeling amazing today in the last week, I've had a few of my clients have some really incredible Transformations where they are able to shift out of fear, that they didn't even realize that they had and the way that they've noticed.
So, for example, one of my clients, Clients had been feeling a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear about what decision to make and what might happen if she chose this direction and what might happen if she chose that direction and because of the coaching that we've done, we had this call where she showed up and just realized, oh my gosh, I can feel safe even in uncertainty. And she did described it as being in The Cloud of Unknowing, which I Good.
Because I don't think she realized that but there is a book like the spiritual book written by I think an anonymous none or something from like 100 100 or 200 years ago called The Cloud of Unknowing. And I thought it was a beautiful way for my client to describe this. Feeling of you can be in the unknown in the uncertainty and you can either be in a panic about it. And the fear gets Really activated and in starts to feel anxious and rushy and just highly uncomfortable.
Like you're trying to get out of it as quickly as possible or you can rest In This Cloud of Unknowing, feeling so safe in yourself and feeling so grounded that you are capable that. You make great decisions that you have all the support you need and being in this period. Have uncertainty is actually not a problem. It's just an experience of life and I love that she was able to find that for herself in the process of the work. We did together.
Another client of mine. Very recently told me, he said, oh Mom. I'm I want to be more bold and I want to trust myself more and he started to see how he was doing that by having direct conversations with people. By not holding back and kind of holding onto the self-doubt of. Can I say this? Can I not will they take it the
wrong way? Instead, he was able to put that aside and when he did what he discovered was that he could be more bold and he could trust himself and it emerged as this kind of very authentic confidence that felt good to be in and then he had this incredible conversation with a person out. Work and he's like wow that
actually worked really nicely. I prefer that I prefer to live from that place instead and that always makes me feel so good because I think often times at work the things we think are work, things are really not there, really human things and they are things in the way that we have relationships, the way that we think about ourselves, the secret fears.
And by that, I mean, I mean sometimes we don't even realize it, we don't even see it for ourselves that we have this hidden fear about something that might happen. And then it twists the way that we build relationships and communicate and think about ourselves and it can really get us in quite a tangle. And so when we start to solve for that in the work context, it ends up solving for that in so many other areas of your life. And let's face it.
Work is one part of life. It might be a really big part, because we spend a lot of time there and it's directly connected to livelihood and to Financial Security and all of that. But life is always bigger than work work. Is just one venue just one place where as a human you get to experience your life and being being alive with other humans and in relationship to that. So today I wanted to talk with you about the importance of, how
you identify the problem. And this came up in a very clear way. For me personally, very recently where I was in a communication in a email communication with someone that I am going to be learning from and I joined her program. Very excited for it. And she sent me an email with a link to the calendar. It was like, if you click on this link, it will add this, you know, calendar and all the information to my, you know, personal calendar. And I got the email, I click the
link and I got an error message. And I was so frustrated, I'm like what's going on here? And I tried it a couple of times in the link didn't work and then I emailed her and then the email bounced back, like what is going on? So, I was able to message her through another social platform that we're connected on and I said, hey, you know, I click the calendar link, it didn't work. And I tried to email you, and it didn't work, and I'm like, what's going on here?
And she wrote back to me, she said, oh my gosh, thank you for letting me know. I had to update my credit card for the you know, for Gmail because it up into it updated, but it didn't update in all the places. And so that's why. Email is bouncing back and it still didn't though, it didn't fix the calendar thing. She emailed me again, here's the link, click the link for the calendar. I click the link. It didn't work. I was getting kind of
frustrated. I couldn't figure out what was going on. What is the problem? And I was also feeling kind of impatient like, why is this link not working? Like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm clicking it.
But maybe like she Not doing something correctly like what's going on here and what happened was I realized, like, oh wait a minute, she's sending it to my gmail address, but when I click it, it's opening it up like within Google and Gmail, you know, you can have multiple accounts but your browser when you open it, it'll be logged in, to your default account.
And so, what I realized was happening was that even though she was sending it to one email account, My Gmail when I clicked it to open it, it was opening it in a browser window that was logged on to my default account, which is a different account. And so it was confused because it was opening up the calendar, which was on which was, you know, the link was had been granted permission through my gmail address but it opened in a different browser login and so Google was confused.
I didn't realize that they were all the same. And I realized that in order for this to work, I had to log out of everything and then login again. So that I could make the browser window, the same email Associated, login as the email as the link, like I had to streamline all of that and it was happening. So seamlessly, I didn't realize it. And then when I did I logged out of everything log back in, click the link, it worked perfectly. And so I messaged her and I
said, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. It was my browser window. I figured it out. You know, thank you for being patient with me and she replied. Oh my gosh. Thank you for telling me. I've had that happen to and I have been very confused about that and my guess is. She also will have clients either in the present moment or in the future that might have a similar challenge that might have that same problem and they won't understand why, and now she knows. Knows what is going on.
So now she knows another way to troubleshoot it. So the reason I wanted to share this with you is because when we come up against a challenger a problem, the way you identify, what the problem is, is incredibly important because the way you identify and Define, the problem will limit the way you seek to address it. So, for example, when I was clicking on the link and it wasn't working and I thought, oh, maybe she sent the link wrong or maybe there's something
that she's not doing correctly. It turned all of my attention to her and it turned all of my attention away from what the actual problem was. And notice, the problem wasn't something that I was doing. It wasn't something that she was doing. It was about the way the process worked in the background. It was the system of how the browser window and the different. You know, profiles all worked and they're designed to work
seamlessly. So you don't see them which is normally fine until it's not and then it became problematic and so often times Times in the workplace, something happens that we don't understand why are we feel friction confusion
frustration? And when we Define the problem in terms of a person or their personality that limits our thinking, and our solution set tremendously because think about it, if we go to the place in our mind or we think this person, their Tonality just it's like, that's the problem. It's what they're doing are not doing. They must be doing something wrong because their personality is just like this, then what happens is? It gets us in trenched into, I'm right?
They're wrong it completely let's go of any agency or authority because you don't have agency or authority over who a person is or what their personality is and it's eliminates us being curious. Reyes, it kind of puts us in this direction of blame, where we stop being curious about what's going on, which means that we're not able to actually identify and solve for what the real issue is. Instead when you are faced with a problem or frustration, go
first to the lens of process. Go first to the lens of system. Of context. Like, what is the bigger picture here? That might explain why. I'm seeing this result. Why? I'm seeing this situation unfolding in this way? If it wasn't a personal personal issue if it wasn't about personality, then how else could I look at this? Because that will keep you in the place of curiosity, which
will get you more insight. More Knowledge, more perspective, more information, and it allows you to see the blind spots more easily, like with me in the browser, that was a blind spot. I would not have seen that if I was only focused on like, what is she doing? Oh, well, why is this not working? And then what's really cool is because I was able to actually see it and solve for it, then we learn together. So sometimes when things are not going well or Like, what is
happening here? If you see it as process, you see it as ecosystem, you see it as the bigger picture, then you can actually partner and solve it together, which gets us out of that, opposing conflict, working against each other, kind of energy. And that's the easiest place for our brains to go. We tend to jump to blame pretty quickly and often it takes intentional practice too. Slow down to take a breath. And ask what's actually happening here? What could be behind this?
What am I not seeing? Or what is so hidden in? Plain sight. I'm glossing over it. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while you can't you might be familiar with the who broke the toaster episode. I did, oh gosh. Maybe a year ago. It's back there if you dig for it. But essentially it was the same kind of thing where someone thought the Mr. Was broken because when he put the bread in it and they pushed the button down, it didn't work and he thought somebody broke the toaster.
That was his first guess to identify the problem. He thought the toaster is broken. Somebody broke it. And I tell you I could already see the wheels turning in his mind as he was imagining which of his colleagues had broken the toaster and then just left it on the counter could see him getting heated. Thinking somebody broke this, who is it and starting to blame and accuse people in his mind? And so when I was in that kitchen with him and I said, oh that's really interesting like
what does that even mean? What is happening and I glanced down the counter and I sought on microwave and I noticed that the digital display on the microwave wasn't on, Ah, that's kind of weird. And then I walked down to the refrigerator and I opened the refrigerator and normally There's a light that turns on when you open the refrigerator door, but this time there was no light and I realized I think the
problem is not with the toaster. I think maybe there's no power coming into the entire wall and it turns out, that's exactly what happened. The circuit breaker had blown and there was no electricity coming into the entire wall of the kitchen. So he had Miss identified, the
problem. We do this all the time and we feel so Justified. That's the thing I really want to direct you to is to notice when you feel really Justified really defensive for me, I despair I describe it as feeling very by T like there's a part of me I think about like a little dog. I just want to bite somebody because I'm feeling very frustrated and upset and that tends to be what what it Feels like for me, I get a little bit by T and frustrated and impatient but you want to notice
for yourself. What is that look like? What does that feel? Like when you're in it and realize to, this is not bad. Like I'm not saying that's a bad thing, you're a bad person. You're a very human person. It's a very human response. But what you want to be aware of is when you feel that in your body when you feel the frustration tightness in the throat, You feel that little tension headache, start behind your eyes and you think, ah, why is this happening? You feel that heavy sigh.
I can't believe this like what is going on here? Use that as a signal. To pay attention and become curious. You want to access your curiosity because that keeps you in a state of open, Discovery investigation, and exploration. And that will help you to pull your attention up out from this very specific granular moment to looking at the bigger picture, which is what is the process that is happening here. Sometimes it's around
difference. Of expectations differences in communication Styles misunderstandings in what the priorities are. There can be so many different
ways to understand. Like why is this happening sometimes it's about I'm thinking of another client who had a situation where there was a document that was changed and it was changed not in the correct way and when she went back, she realized oh the track changes feature ER, what like we haven't been using that correctly and rather than blaming her teammate for not being, you know, detail-oriented enough or not catching all the errors or whatever she said.
Okay, as a team, we need to really clean up the way that we use the track changes feature, because if we're not precise about it, it can lead to unforced errors. Can lead us to make mistakes that we Me too. If only we tune up our process for document review revision and how we use the tracked changes tool in our document system as a
manager and leader. This also helps you to build trust with people when they make mistakes especially if you have folks who are very high-performing and take it super personally as at like a personal failure. If They're not perfect and we're not perfect and especially as you are growing and doing things for the first time or stretching beyond the comfort zone, and expanding your skillset doing new things. It's more valuable to build in
that feeling of trust. I've got your back, we learn things together, nobody gets attacked or or a heavy blame like you like, you're not going to be a heavy blame Target.
If something doesn't go absolutely perfectly according to plan or smoothly and all of that comes from the way that you identify and describe the problem building in that kind of trust to, for how do we as a team addressed problems challenges and Mistakes by looking at process rather than personality and individuals, it really does create a more robust and a more resilient team the way that you learn together means that you will learn faster and that is valuable and it will
also keep more trust in the team as opposed to feeling like I need to either hide things until they're Just Right Where I Need to you know, slow things down until they're just right? Because you know we none of us like to feel blamed and especially if you think of yourself as being really do Urgent and a hard worker and doing great work. It can feel so paralyzing. If you're feeling worried about all like, what if I do this wrong, sometimes it will happen.
But the way that we describe the problem and then move to address, it makes all the difference. So that is what I wanted to share with you today when you learn how to think differently about defining the problem. And when you get out of the blaming frame, when you get more into curiosity and when you're able to feel emotion intentionally without a Target, then you will use your energy better, you will use your attention more effectively, you will use your time in a much more useful way.
It is a huge time-saver not just in the moment but So in terms of as you build that trust and as you build that feeling of I've got your back, it's okay to not be perfect because we we know how to learn it ends up. Saving you so much time and it just creates a better experience, honestly. Like, it feels better to live in that headspace then in the head space of blame and fear and frustration and impatience, I
know because I've done both. Now I've learned so much about how to take a better approach and I want you to have that too. So, thank you so much for listening. If you want to do more of this work in a more specifically detailed supported way then reach out to me from one-on-one coaching. Or you can also get on my email list to learn about the next time I offer a group which we're kicking off on Tuesday. It's going. Be really great. Cannot wait.
All right, have an amazing week. I will talk to you next time. Bye. Hey, before you go, if you like this podcast, leave a review. Tell me why you listen and what has helped you? Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.