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? 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.