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. First, today I want to say thank you for listening, for being a part of this community. I publish my podcast through Spotify and so every year at the end of the year they do a special wrapped edition for podcast hosts. And so I learned. I learned that 84% of my listening audience found this podcast just this year, which is
incredible. And I just want to thank you for being a part of my audience and a part of this community. Just I appreciate that so much. And for me, I know that there are so many other podcasts I listen to. There are probably a lot of podcasts you listen to. So I want to make every episode useful and practical, which is why I very rarely have guests. And I will tell you, I get pitched a lot. There are a lot of people who e-mail me and say, oh, I want to be on your podcast.
I wrote this book. I did this you know, thing, so and so. But for me, you know, I really think about how can I use our time together to support you in a very practical and useful way. And if I'm going to bring a guest on, I really want it to be the voice of someone that you might not hear otherwise. And so I'm, I tend to be very,
you know, selective. And I don't often have guests, as you know, which makes today's episode really special and something I'm very excited to share with you because I thought, who do I want to amplify? What voices, what stories do I want you to hear? What came to me was, oh, obviously it has to be you. It's about your voices, your stories. Because you are a current practitioner, you are in the
trenches every day. You are the one who is managing people and taking the insights from this podcast, putting them into practice. You are making it real and you are learning things as you go. And so I am so pleased to present and share with you today the very first Listener Spotlight episode. In just a moment, you are going to get to hear a conversation I had with Amber Lee.
She is incredible and I'm so glad that you get to hear her story and the things that we talk about because she is a people manager and I know for sure you are going to get a lot of value from hearing what she has to say. So if you are interested in potentially being in the Listener Spotlight, then make sure that you get on my mailing
list. I'll put a link to that below in the show notes, you'll want to go to kimnickel.com, the new managers page and then get on the wait list for the group program. That's how you get on the e-mail list for all things related to managing people and to work. And also get on that emailing list. If you want to get my free training on self advocacy, that is where you're going to find that. And it has helped so many of my clients and students in so many
different ways. I would love for you to also feel more confident speaking up for yourself in all kinds of different situations at work. So you'll find that also on my website kimnickel.com new managers and then get on the wait list. So having said that, get ready for an incredible conversation. Get ready to learn from the wisdom and insight of Amber Lee, who is a manager. And you were going to learn more about her. Here we go. Welcome, Amber Lee. I'm so glad you're here today. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Can we start by having you introduce yourself? Just tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are and what you do. Yes. OK. So my name is Amber Lee. I am based in London, in the UK and I work in mental health. That's my background. So I've worked in mental health for about 13 years now, mostly in kind of clinical and community mental health teams. And I'm currently in my first
ever management role. I made the move last summer from kind of clinical mental health teams to a small mental health charity. But the role that I have stepped into is head of Impact and communication, which is looking less at the person to person support I used to give. And instead kind of zooming out a little and having a look at the impact of that person to person support is having on the people that we're supporting and on our kind of wider mission
work that we're doing. So I'm a year and a half into that role. So new role and new kind of industry so to speak, moving in the nonprofit world. And I manage a tiny team of two 2 1/2 but sometimes but two and separate to that. I'm also an illustrator and I run a small illustration studio and do lots of really wonderful creative work as well, looking at representation and the visibility of women of colour. Amazing. And yeah, How did you find the podcast?
So about I had a three month notice period before heading into headed into this role and I'm a bit of a over consumer especially when I'm anxious or worried about something new like I'm very much like give me all the information and I work out what works. So I was looking for lots of really wonderful resources to support me during that three months of winding down the old role.
And before I stepped into this role, I was looking for specific resources to support people that are about to become first time or new managers. And because the name of the podcast is so wonderfully titled and very original. Trying to keep it simple, just be really clear about what we're talking about today. Which works because the people that are looking for it can find it, which is what happened to me. So that's how it happened.
Oh, that's awesome. OK, so it sounds like then you started listening to the podcast before you, like officially or formally got into the role. And I'm so curious to know what your experience was like when you first started in that role and what like if there's anything you can remember about how did listening to the podcast help you? And I I'm actually, I'm probably asking too many questions all in a row, but I'm gonna go with it anyways.
And the other question I I'm so curious about is, you know, like what have you learned in your experience of being a new manager that maybe wasn't obvious to you when you started? Yeah, totally. OK, so this idea of how it felt stepping into reality, what did it feel like to become a new manager, having tried to do all the prep work that I could do
beforehand? It's interesting because I am a people person and I think my my personality, my people personness, but also my background kind of working in mental health also lends itself well to being a people person. So I feel like that helps a lot and that helps with the kind of transitioning and meeting new people. I love meeting new people. So there was a lot of ease in
that space. But I think what was most surprising potentially, or didn't I didn't feel necessarily prepped for, is just the logistics of transitioning from being a worker, someone who is working in a team and doing, doing their work and responsible for their work, to slipping into a space where you are responsible for your work, but also supporting others to be responsible for their work too.
I think there's something about that that felt like the biggest transition for me. You know, you have your week, you have your time that's scheduled, and it's very much, you know, your time is your time. You work out what you need to do for the week, and you're the only person who might deter that.
And I think the biggest kind of thing for me to adapt to is that actually when you step into a management role, the way in which your time and energy and thoughts are going to be split between you and the people that you manage is really different. You have to shake off this whole I've got this to do. When can I get that done? There's just more to it.
Yeah. Well, and I'm also hearing too that the difference in mindset when you're just thinking about the work that is yours to do versus you know, like all of the people and all of the work that you're trying to manage on the the people side of that. Yeah, absolutely. And what was the, there was a the last question that you asked that I really wanted to answer, but I can't remember what it is. What was the last question you asked there?
Oh, I think it was Oh my goodness, I don't remember. It will come to. Me. There was something you said then I was, I really want to touch on, but yeah, it will definitely come up and whatever it is, I'm I would say to that I'm sure will come up in this space. But it's just been a really interesting transition from what you think management is to what it is in reality, even with all the reading and all the listening. That you do. And, you know, I think that's OK.
I think that's so good to hear. You also acknowledge that because I think there's only so much you can do to prepare beforehand and then there's going to be the reality of what it is. And I think there's a lot of what I see is it's important to give ourselves grace for being in that transition, you know, and to not be so hard on ourselves. Like one of the things I see a lot of it, I I don't know if this was your experience, so I'm
curious what you think. But there's often this kind of background thought of, oh, if I'm getting this job as a manager, somebody must think that I know what I'm doing. And I've never done this before, so it can feel like there's this extra pressure of am I supposed to know this already? And it's OK. It's actually like, no. Like, it's OK if you don't know this, 'cause you will learn as
you go and that can be so uncomfortable. 100% And that taps into a lot for me because I, like many of us, do have this kind of underlying perfectionism. You know, you've got this. There's so many things that contribute to that. I know a lot of them are just kind of my schemers, just some of some of the some of the kind of distortions that I carry with me, which is that if you're going to do it, you kind of have to do it the best that you can first time. Some of that is cultural and
kind of how I've been raised. You know, my parents, we're all based in London now. My parents are Jamaican, and they have this really wonderful I was raised by two Jamaican parents who are, you know, who are raising children in England.
So they've got this kind of essence that they've taught us, which is that you have to do something well and you have to do it well because you're in this space and you might, you know, there are, there are so many people that struggle to be in this space and I've always been one of the only black women in the spaces I exist in. So there's this kind of idea that you have to be perfect because you've only just made it into that space in the 1st place.
So I've always been very much like I pride myself on what I can do well. So there's this huge adjustment when you've done something really well for 13 years and then you become in this new space where you're completely relying from learning and getting things wrong and uncertainty and all the rest of it. So it has been a lot of a lot of grace and a lot of self
compassion. And one of the things I really appreciate about your approach and your podcast is your mindfulness and your, you know, your, your different layers of you. And the fact that you have a background in mindfulness and yoga and breath work and this sort of stuff really taps into the language that I speak and this idea of being compassionate and giving yourself grace. It's been so helpful because I do naturally chastise myself, myself, and I'm very aware of it.
And I'm like, of course you can't because you're doing this for the first time. So get a grip and loosen up at the same time. At the same time, do both of those things. Because yeah, you don't know. You won't know until you know. Yeah, and you know, you meant
you named something too. That I think is also so important and often overlooked, which is the different cultural layers that we are operating in. So both in terms of our personal individual experience of our family and our, you know, our heritage and also the context of the industry, different industries have different cultural norms.
The country that you're in, or even within the country, the whether you're in a very rural place or a very metropolitan place, there are so many cultural layers that are always in play that can influence both, I think the individual's experience, like your experience of being a new manager, but also can really affect the workplace in ways that I think we're not always mindful of. And I'm really curious because I know you've got this incredible background and intersectionality
of all these different dimensions. And in your experience as a manager who has that perspective, is there anything that you've noticed or that has helped you or that you've just observed as a huge kind of oversight in, you know, like like training or advising like as people are moving into leadership roles? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a brilliant question. So you touched on intersectionality, and I do so much work, both research wise and in mental health, on
intersectionality. And I think that there's something about looking at the different layers of people's identities that are intersecting and are going to, no matter what, influence how someone presents and how they perceive things. I think just having that as a lens from the outset in all support and conversations and inducting into new roles and into new levels is helpful because it helps us to remember that there isn't A1 size fits all view of what a manager should look like.
Because this idea of representation and how much it matters works the other way. Because when all of the managers that you've seen and what leadership and authority looks like is very homogeneous, then straightaway you have a warped view of what does that look like for me. Then what's my leadership style when all the managers that I've seen kind of both popular culture and in real life have looked nothing like me and we don't have any layers of intersecting identity in in in common.
I think there's something about keeping that lens at the centre and and reminding through training and conversations and transparency that as you are stepping into your leadership and working out and growing through it, remember that what looks right on other people might look different to you because you've got all these wonderful layers of identity coming into it. And that can only help if you harness it, rather than feeling like this is the bit I need to
get rid of so that I can step into this very samely version of what Angela's like. Yeah, that really resonates with me and also with what a lot of the conversations I have with my clients also bring up what you talked about in terms of the perfection part and this also this question of belonging. So the sense of when you kind of step into the room of leadership and you're kind of looking around to figure out how am I supposed to conduct myself here or what does success look like
here? If you only have one kind of example or kind of a limited set of examples in front of you, it can be really easy to then discount your own perspective, which might be different because you've had a different life experience and so you see things in a different way. And so sometimes, like a lot of the work is learning how to trust that who you are is valuable just because of who you are. And so the way that you lead and
manage might be different. And that can be such a value to the organization and the team and it can be so scary to also learn to you know, is it safe enough to trust my own perspective and judgement here as I'm doing something new and I'm noticing that it might be different and how it's, you know, kind of being role modeled for me like that takes, I feel like that's something that I don't know. I I feel like that's in that that is often not acknowledged,
but is very present in the room. Could not agree more. I think. I think that lesson is brand new for me. It might be in the last couple of months. I think that I'm finally, you know, you kind of go all around the houses just to get to the point where you're like I think the answer is here. I don't think it's out here because I have always had quite a strong sense of self where again because of my wonderful, wonderful parents who are really you have to have a strong sense
of self, right. There's something that comes really naturally to those who are living in a country they weren't raised in, that's just ultra robust and wonderful and multi layered already. So I've got that from them and it I think it took me a while to settle into this new dynamic and now I'm like, OK, your instinct is probably the thing that will lead the way. Still, I think I need, I need to work that out and and hone that and make sure I know what I'm
doing. But that makes complete sense to me and really resonates this idea of trust and trusting yourself. Yeah, I am also curious, I'm looking at some of the comments that you shared with me when you you first reached out and I'm so excited 'cause you're but you're the first listener that I'm getting to talk to and and I have to just share like just as context. So you know, like I very rarely have guests. I'm starting to think differently about that.
But I started thinking about, you know, my listeners, right. And I was thinking, I know, I know that my listeners are resourceful and I know from. I've heard from some of them, it's so interesting. Very few of my listeners leave reviews, but many of them will just find me on LinkedIn and send me a message saying, oh your. Your episode really helped me. This has been so helpful.
So it's very interesting, but it just occurred to me it would be really nice to have some conversations with folks because I know that your listening and I've heard people say like oh I listen on the bus and then I, you know, implement something at work. And so I was so curious to hear more about how the show has helped you and what is different now that you're, you know, kind of implementing things.
Like what is different? Because I know also other people are listening and you have wisdom and insight that might also help people think about, right? Like, especially if your organization doesn't give you support, which a lot of organizations are just not set up to do. So it's like we find our own, our own resources because we're resourceful people. So I'm really delighted that, like you were one of the first people who said yes, I will talk, Let's have a conversation.
I jumped at it as soon as I saw the e-mail. I was like count me in to whatever this is 100%. Oh my gosh, that is so awesome. OK, what are your thoughts about like, now that you've been a year plus ish in your manager journey, your leadership role, What advice would you want to give if you could go back to yourself, you know, a year and a half ago? What would you want to tell yourself? Yes, OK.
I think, and funnily enough, I'm pretty sure, that what I would tell myself then is probably what I need to tell myself now as well. Which is? But I think that the advice I'd want to give is to really spend time and effort honing the kind of collective collaboration of the team. Really focus on all of us, however many of that is. And my team is tiny.
There's three of us all together, 3 1/2, really spend time honing the collective destination that we're trying to get to and kind of harnessing the language and mindset and community, the kind of unity, type spirit that's required for different people from different backgrounds to all work towards the same goal. I think that again, working as an individual for so long, I have quite an individualistic
mentality. I think that what I'm learning is that kind of being in this role and being in the team that I'm in because again, impacts and communications are such wonderful complementary departments. But ultimately I'm, I'm head of two different departments, right? You've got communications and impact and we're a tiny organization. So both of my team members also sit for some days of the week in another bit of the organization because all of us are doing dual
roles. And so I think because of the fragmentation and the resourcefulness that's required for being such a tiny team, spending that time to ensure that we're all on the same path together, working towards a common goal, it's just a really wonderful use of time and it's worth doing as soon as possible. And as you're thinking about that now too, what does that look like? Like How do you connect more with the team?
Totally, totally. This is so helpful, these questions because I'm just really reflecting on this out loud now. So I spent and spend a lot of time talking 1:00 to 1:00 to each team member working really closely together of course for relationship building in the first in the kind of early days, but also in terms of development and clarity and looking at workloads and things like that. So one to one, conversations are crucial.
I think what I would have done and what I'm trying to do more of now is making sure there are more collective conversations with all of us at the table. Because even when it when we talk about workload, there's there's a joy in trans and transparency and there's a real benefit to transparency of workload. There's an empathy that comes from knowing what the other people are up to.
There's more room for collaboration when talking together so that actually different people can say, ah, that's really interesting because I'm doing this thing on data and I'm wondering how that might connect to this thing you're doing on social media or how you're trying to communicate our organizational vision on LinkedIn.
So I think there's something about collective collaborative conversations, more team spaces for the kind every time there's a one to one conversation kind of questioning, oh, is this something that could be beneficial for us to talk about as a team? And that's not to take away from 1:00 to 1:00 conversations, because I think the relationship you have with each team member is crucial and it builds trust and it builds kind of connectivity.
But I think that there can be fragmentation, fragmentation that happens there. Yeah. By being together. Yeah, I'm really hearing there's that perspective shift and and especially in the sense of what is the one-on-one conversation for like, how do you use that to be effective? And then the thought of, oh, and how do we use a collective conversation and how does that benefit us? And helping to talk about the vision and create the empathy and understanding workloads.
You know, and you mentioned transparency, which I I think is so great. And people I think can sometimes get a little bit lost in knowing you know, like kind of what the guidelines are on that. And the way that I heard you describe, it really is about thinking from the perspective of what will be helpful to know, like who needs to know what and why, right? And that kind of I think perspective can help guide like what you share and when and why. What do you think? Totally.
I think that's that's spot on. And I think having this kind of lens or having this filter, I see it a lot like a a bit of AI. Don't know if funnel is the right metaphor or a bit of a sieve, I guess. And the sieve, the questions and the critical thinking, the kind of going meta. And I guess what I want to do, or what I'd love to do is to really keep this sieve in place so that lots of things are
happening up here. This is where all the work happens, but it's always going through the same questions that just remind me like a bit of a checklist. Like, you should know about this. How could it help? Would this be more helpful or harmful? Will it add to people's clarity? Or will it be more overwhelming to know what everyone else is doing and there feels like what there needs to be? And this is a practice I'd love to do more of, that I'm doing
more of in the past few months. It's just having this in place to help support me with the kind of questions I'm asking, but also make sure it's consistent and that people can start to rely on that process happening because it always happens. Yes. Oh my gosh, that's really good. And I feel like my brain is going in like multiple directions at once and I'm trying to track my thoughts as you share that because it because and you know tell me
your experience. But what I really see a lot of too is that when we become managers, you now have more perspective on what's happening higher up. You're in different meetings, you're in different conversations. So you might get more perspective about what the leadership is trying to
accomplish and how. And so then there's also like you're in this unique position to convey to your team like how they fit into the big picture or how the goals are maybe changing this quarter or you know, just helping them understand like why are, why are we doing this specific thing, you know, in the in the weeds. And it can be sometimes like, oh, right, like sometimes that job is, oh, help, let me help make sense of why we're going in this direction, right?
Because you have now access to conversations that your team does not. Totally, totally. And it's a really interesting, I guess the circumstances are interesting because being a small team, there's three of us in the leadership team, which is myself, a colleague and our chief exec. So us three form leadership team and then we have four other team members that form the different kind of departments. So we're actually a really tiny team with very minimal layers, right.
And we all work alongside each other. And it's interesting because my role, my colleagues role, one newly created role from an organization that simply had four or five people. Everyone did everything. And part of our kind of growth and development as an organization was to hire 2 new heads of department, which is how we joined last year. So it means that I'm also sitting within. All of us are sitting within a huge organizational shift. Our team culture is changing.
Even things like how we define and create our work strategy, how that's communicated is really different now. Now in my in my kind of time that I've joined from what it was like for them just before I had joined, which was that we all kind of muck in, just work out what works for us this year and kind of do it, and it served them really, really well. So much had happened in the kind of seven years they existed until this, which is our 8th year. So now we are on 9th year should know.
So now that we have more layers and that we are more kind of formalizing our processes, there's also a lot of support and conversations needed around the new structure and the formalization of processes and kind of getting to know and getting used to this new team that we're working in, whilst also coming to terms with how different it is from before where decisions were discussed and passed down in a much more.
Everyone just knows about it straight away kind of way, whereas now we have formal processes. So that's been quite complex as well for everyone. Yeah, but like the change management part, like helping people understand what change is happening and why, how it will
affect them. And and I don't know for you too, but I in my experience too sometimes even just acknowledging like, yes, things are different now and different folks might have different feelings about that and that's OK. But like, this is how we're going to do it now. That's exactly it.
And that again, we've got these kind of words of grace and compassion and patience and transparency, and these are all the things that I think are going to carry us, have carried us and will carry us through because we're all working towards a common goal, which is the work that we do and the people that we support and us having a wonderful time at work. That's kind of the aim of the game at all times. Yeah, it's just a really patient process.
Yes, OK. I know this new thought also just came in. How do you think about how you measure success, right? Like how do you know when you are doing a good job? How do I this is so big? Because I do think about this often I I keep going back and forth around whether I'm doing a good job or not or not. So this is an interesting one and I don't know if I've got a definitive answer to it, but my thoughts at the moment, a lot of it is gut feeling. So I have this thing around.
I have this internal benchmark, which is the case professionally and personally around contentment. And feeling content and content is a really immeasurable feeling in terms of science, in terms of quantifying it. But I know that feeling content with decisions that are being made that I'm making, feeling content with the way that projects have been carried out or the way that we feel at the end of the quarter. For me, it's like, yes, you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job.
Because I think my instinct is quite strong, which means I can feel really uneasy when things, when I feel like I can recognize where things could have been better or where I could have done something differently or where I tried something and realized afterwards that ah, there might have been a better way to do it. The uneasiness comes straight away and kind of hits me. And I think is this the moment that you can confirm that you're not doing a good job?
So feeling content for me is one of the Bain benchmarks and I'm also really learning how to step into vulnerability as a manager, which is also ultra new for me. OK, tell us about that. Very, very new for me. And that is because having worked in mental health for as long as I have, there is a warmth and empathy and connection that you have with every single person that you meet day-to-day.
That has to happen without sharing anything about yourself or not sharing too much about yourself, right? So you're spending in an 8 hour day, you might have assessed 6 new people into a community mental health service. You might have spoken to, you know, 20 people in a in a week and formed wonderful connections with them and found out about their history and their mental health history and their biggest
complexities. Right now when you have to have these conversations and create these really beautiful connections by only sharing kind of your personality and your charac and your character and your authenticity, but not much about you personally. Because in a mental health space and in a clinical space, one, it's not appropriate. And two, in that very limited time your focus is on the person
in front of you. And because I am a people person and I really enjoy being around people but I am really good and really well practiced in being able to have that connection without having to share much about myself just because it's it's not appropriate in the in the industry that I've come
from. So to learn, which I did learn in a very surprising, startling way that vulnerability is really important to management and that leadership is is a really like a really key part of leadership is being able to be vulnerable. And I really struggled with that because it wasn't quite a natural language for me. I couldn't quite work out what does that look like. Like I know what this term means
dictionary definition. I know how to do it in every space that I'm able to be, but work has not usually been one of those spaces and that and I and that. I don't need that for connection, so that I didn't need it at the time. I absolutely need it now in this new space that I'm in and this new context I'm in. But I've just had a really tough time trying to work out just simply not knowing. So what? What should I be sharing and what shouldn't I be?
And what are the rules of engagement here? What does vulnerability look like in a way that doesn't feel inappropriate? Yeah, you know, that's there's so many things in what you've just shared it that I think are just so, so great. And one of them was the acknowledgement of part of what's required when you were in a different stage of your career was keeping your personal self really contained and organized, like separate, right.
And then realizing where you are now in your career, you it actually requires you to expand your skill set and your way of thinking and learning how to do that differently and that it can feel disorienting. And you know, like how do I do this and what are the rules of engagement? And so, and I think that's something that happens a lot
with folks, right? Whether it's around the transparency piece or just, you know, with the managers too, sometimes the thing that made them really successful as the individual worker is they're really good at just saying yes to everything and then doing it until it's done. And as a manager, that's actually not your job, right? And that shift can sometimes feel like very jarring.
And so having that self-awareness to acknowledge, OK, the thing that I measured my success by before, I'm going to need to adjust that. And that is a complete learn as you go, right, Because no one tell you what vulnerability looks like for you, only you know that. So this has been completely earned as you go and having all these internal are you doing a good job? Do you feel like you 100% know what you should be doing?
These are the kind of conversations that I would never have felt able to have in my in the early days of this role, that just felt like it was a no go, like to be in this role, What? How could you kind of confess that? I'm even using the word confess because it feels like this illicit secret that I shouldn't be telling any, I shouldn't be telling anyone. Yes, and now we're all going to know because we all listen to the podcast. Welcome to.
My world. Well, and it's still great that you're sharing your world, right, because we often don't get to talk about this with our colleagues. And you know it's a different, it's just a different kind of conversation. So you know, it's like yes, yay to all of that. And when you talked about having an internal sense of success and for you that sense of contentment with your decisions and that internal orientation I think is also so, so important. I'm also a huge advocate of
that. And I think that when we step into a new role, it is important to understand how are you going to measure your sense of success? How will you know if you're doing well or not? Because often if you're a very, you know, if you're used to being good at things, there's a part of your brain that's going to be searching for, am I being good at this? Am I doing a good job? Right.
And especially when you're a really heart centered person and you care about your people and your work, you're going to want to know, am I doing a good job for my team, for my people? And if we don't have, you know, a clear sense of that, number one, it's really easy to feel like you're failing all the time when maybe that's actually not what's happening at all, right? It's like you're not failing. It just feels super weird because you've never been here before, right?
And you're kind of learning something new. So that might be what you're experiencing. And sometimes what happens is we do need to make decisions that maybe people don't agree with or they don't love. Or you arguing something in a bit of a new way and you might be getting a little bit of the raised eyebrow from, you know, the leadership team, like you're oh, you're doing it that way. You know, we haven't done it that way before, but OK right.
Like those are the kinds of things that if we don't know how to like what to do with that feedback, right. It can, it can land in a way that makes us smaller and creates more self doubt. So having a clear sense of OK, like success means that I feel content with my decisions. You know, if if other people are unhappy, that's OK, right. Like, I can see why that would be. And it doesn't mean I'm doing a bad job. Yeah, so I love what you had to share about that too.
Totally. And it's it's that idea of feeling small. So many of the feelings I've had over the past year or so has often been selfed out because again, if you're not 100% sure that you know what you're meant
to be doing in the first place. In certain things or certain decisions or the way that things are being delivered when it has happened or when you are kind of performing in your role and doing what you need to do, there are going to be moments where you're like this is where the self doubt kicks in. And interestingly, another feeling that I noticed came up a lot for me is guilt. I often feel really guilty because I'm like could this have been done better?
And if it if it could have been, then I kind of consume that as guilt. So I've really had to kind of talk my talk myself around that, talk myself through that to make sure that I'm not carrying guilt. Guilt is such a what is the word unhelpful feeling I feel to to carry just gets in the way of doing what you should be doing, which is working out how it could be, how it could be better, basically. And learning as you go, right? Like it's OK to learn as you go. We're all doing it.
Totally. And I think psychological safety comes in a lot with this because I'm the self doubt that we spoke about and the kind of uncertainty and the ground feeling shaky it doesn't help when it comes to psychological safety and that is very important to me. I need to feel psychologically safe and the team I know especially my team thinking about them particularly. But all teams need to have psychological safety in their
workplace. So that actually there's room to learn as you go and there's room to do something and try it and it not work out and it not be seen as a failure. That kind of has a lesson. None of that will happen if it doesn't feel like a psychologically safe environment. And that's another thing that probably has been one of my biggest lessons over the last year and a half, just really channeling and centering and focusing on how do we improve psychological safety in this space. Yeah.
And that's something too. I really see as a very like that's where we can take the lead on that. We can create that for ourselves by not being a harsh judge or a harsh critic, by seeing learning as learning and and like creating more safety for ourselves internally. And that also then starts to role model and helps us kind of set the tone for others, right, because every organization is
different. And you know, depending on the organization that you're in, you might be a 10 out of 10 on psychological safety or it might be more like a three out of 10 and you're trying to create a little pocket of it, you know, in your team. So that awareness of, yeah, I think #1 awareness that it's a, it's a real thing. It is super valuable and we have the ability to influence that and we can start small within, which is actually a really big
deal. Yeah, I think you're so right about this idea of, you know, it's so funny how many concepts feel like one rule for us and one rule for everyone else. But psychological safety absolutely starts, starts with us. And you're right that me being more compassionate myself and remembering that I'm learning as I go. Is one of the best ways to start creating is to model a psychological, psychologically safe environment rather than making it purely theoretical.
There's something about it, starting with us. Absolutely. And I find there's a lot of relief in that too, because you might be in an organization or facing circumstances that actually makes psychological safety really difficult, but it doesn't make it less important or less valuable. So knowing that even if you can bring a little bit of it, even if it's just in your in your team, it still makes a difference.
I, you know, I think because sometimes you'll, you will have a really toxic environment or a really terrible manager or just a really good person who's very unskillful and so there managing in a way that is just not that effective. And so being, you know, if you're the person who has that manager or is who is trying to lead A-Team within that context, right. It might be harder, but it's no less important. And knowing that, OK, I can bring a little bit of it, you know?
Yeah, couldn't agree more. And I'm really looking forward to continuing to dive into that. Actually, I think working out what that looks like for us and our team, what that looks like for me, yeah, it was really new. I'm kind of looking forward to that. Totally. You know, this is also kind of making me think of what you talked about earlier when we were speaking to intersectionality and just the awareness of different identities, because also so as a manager, we have this for
ourselves, right? Understanding what that means, you know for you individually, but also when you understand that that is a thing, right? And you have people on your team who also have different identities and different layers of how they experience you know the world and how the world experiences them. That also can be a way to create psychological safety just by being aware.
Like everyone on your team is not the same, and they might have different experiences that are not visible to you or that you're not aware of. But they might be there and they might be influencing how this person is performing or you know what is or isn't happening. And even just knowing that that's also in the room I think can be really helpful. What are your thoughts? Completely.
That's we talk a lot. I talk a lot about duality and this idea of us each being more than one thing, and often those things can feel conflicting, but actually it's just a result of us being complex humans. We're just very complex people that are often more than one thing that sit in, that feel like they sit in different spaces. And I think it everyone benefits and everyone wins.
When there's a general assumption that our different identities and different ways of being are going to intersect to lead to a really unique experience for everyone, nothing is going to work for everyone. I think it's just really safe to assume that as a as a default, which means that all points,
everything is person centered. That just feels like a really great rule, blanket rule for me. Nothing is going to work for everyone and it's important that we're really considering the different layers and the kind of duality that each person brings because luckily we're a small enough team. I feel like I have a small enough team to be able to do that and it feels like a a great way to, yeah to to harness the power of visibility I think, and ensuring that each person is
being seen. I think that also what also comes to mind too that I love about this is you know, the remembrance that it's person centered, that the same thing doesn't need to work for everyone. So again, like we're learning as we go and also I even feel the conversation when you were talking about you know, transparency and vulnerability also really rising. The people on your team might also be struggling to know, like how open to be with also what's going on, right?
So 'cause as as the manager too, we don't necessarily need to pry into people's personal lives, but we just want to be aware that they have them and that there might be something happening, you know, outside the workplace that perhaps they don't wish to share. It might be very, very personal, but it can still be affecting kind of what we're experiencing
when we're working together. That makes complete sense and it reminds me. So it's a bit of a parallel example of the approach that we have to reasonable adjustments and supporting those with accessibility needs, which is that some accessibility needs are invisible. So the key is to ensure that accessibility is open to everyone, so those who disclose can benefit from it.
For those who don't disclose either because they don't want to, because they don't feel like they have to, are still benefiting from the more accessible physical space, for example, or the more accessible way of learning that's being provided. So it kind of feels like that that was like a very parallel example to me. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
This has been such a rich and valuable conversation and it's been wonderful to meet you and hear about your experience and all of your insights and learnings. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to be
sure you get to share? I guess there's something, one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot, we've touched on it a little bit, but is the idea of stepping into a new manager role with a small team and what that feels like in comparison to stepping into a new manager role with a huge
team. I this has been my only management role when I found it really interesting what has come up in terms of kind of people management and change management and relationship building and just some of the dynamics that have come up in a really tiny team of what that feels like. It still feels like it takes up so much time and it's so energy
filling. And I guess the the one of the conclusions that I've made in the past couple of months is that whilst I think it's been really helpful for me to start really small and have this small team, it feels like there is no less work to come round to learning how to be a leader or to develop your leadership with a tiny team versus a big team. It's no less work, it's no less energy. There is no respite that comes from having a tiny team.
The learning is just as big, I imagine as it would be with a huge team. And that has been huge for me. I did. At the start I thought, I'm sure it's 2 1/2, have a great time, it's going to be good. And all the lessons just came flowing out day and a half. And I thought, OK, no, that's. A really important reminder. I'm really glad you said that. So just because you're managing a team of like 2 1/2 people, it doesn't mean that the learning is smaller or easier. It's still you know.
And just on a on a perfectionist note, you don't want to feel like you can't ask for help, that you shouldn't be struggling to learn just because it's a tiny team. Like your challenges are just as valid. There are going to be people that are managing teams of 20 and 30, but you are no less worthy of working out what on earth you're doing just because your team is tiny. Oh my gosh, 100% yeah. Like, watch out for the thought, which is, I should be able to do this on my own, because XY and
Z, right? Ask for help. Help is available. Find it. It's it's OK. Totally, totally. Yeah. Well, I just thank you so much for being here and for sharing. And yeah, I'm really glad that you got to come on today. Me too. I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. I enjoyed all of your podcast episodes, but it's just been
really wonderful to chat to you. And even in our conversation, there were lots of things that I probably would have scribbled down if I was listening to this in my head. So I probably will. Yeah, listen that because it's, you know, it's different when you're in the conversation versus when you're listening to it and be like, oh, that was really good. The thing that I said that I don't remember so. I think it's more of a thing
that you've said. But yeah, I'll keep, I'll keep my eyes open and see what comes out. But totally, one of the things I've just really appreciated about you is that your multidisciplinary lens, There's something about the fact that it comes from a place of mindfulness and meditation and breath work. That is the holistic approach that I need, especially with my career background. But just me as a person, I need that lens to be able to receive info. So it's been. Yeah, it's really.
Helpful. Oh, I'm so, so glad. Thank you so much. Thank. You lovely to meet you. 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 kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.