Welcome to the New Manager Podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nicoll. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. If you're new to the show, my name is Kim Nicoll. I am a coach and I'm here to help you be more effective at work, to be a better manager, to be more confident in taking a very human centered approach to leadership and basically working with other humans at work. Today I want to invite you to
consider what's working. It's so easy to focus on the problems or on the things that are not working as well as you want them to be, especially when you are really good at problem solving. It's kind of like you will inadvertently scan for all the potential problems. And the problem with that is, if you're only looking at the problems, the challenges, the difficulties, then you will neglect to notice and appreciate the things that are working
well. And this is important because there's a lot you can learn from things that are functional, from people that are bringing strengths and great qualities into the workplace, including yourself.
If you're a person who has a pretty loud internal critic, then the odds are you will overlook and then diminish your strengths, your excellent qualities, the things that come easefully for you, but might not realize that not everyone can do those things easefully or not everyone has that perspective. And so when we think about what's working, we're not trying to ignore the problems. We're not trying to ignore the
challenges. We're actually wanting to develop a more accurate and complete perspective of the situation, the environment, and the people. The brain has a negativity bias that just means that the problems the pain points will tend to be more vivid in your mind and in the minds of other humans.
We tend to remember bad experiences more vividly than we tend to remember good experiences because, you know, kind of subconsciously we're trying to protect against future bad experiences, or trying to avoid future disappointments, future failures. So we tend to have a little bit more stickiness around those negative experiences. This isn't a problem to solve, it's just something that is helpful to know about how a lot of brains tend to work.
So if you know that the brain tends to hold on to and have more vivid these challenges and problems, then of course you can remember. Oh right. I need to also make sure that I have an accurate picture of the whole situation, which means spending more time becoming more vivid and clear about what's working. What strengths am I using? What strengths do I see my team using? What qualities are working well in our relationships with other teams, with our customers, with
your manager? When you start to think in that way, it will help you to both balance out the the heaviness that sometimes problem solving can have. And when you start noticing where things are going well, we can start to ask other kinds of questions, like why is this working so well? What's happening over here that this is working beautifully or that this is like working so well, you might not even notice it.
What are the factors or the environmental components or what is the process or the tools or the personalities? What is it that's happening that's making this work? Well, you want to understand what those things are.
You also want to ask yourself, is there anything that I can learn from what's working and use that over here with this other situation where maybe things are not working so well, We can learn and gain so much knowledge and perspective and value by looking at what is working by bringing that lens of appreciation to looking at the things that are functional and going smoothly. We don't want to take those for granted. We actually want to identify,
acknowledge and amplify them. The other thing, if you tend to be a very good problem solver and then you tend to focus more on the problems, is that you can over index or kind of over prioritize solving the problems when the truth is not every problem needs to be solved. And it's funny that I'm saying this as just now a siren went by the by my apartment, you'll probably hear that in the background. That wasn't something to solve. That was just something that was
happening in the moment. And if I had spent any energy trying to solve for that external noise, it would not have done any good. Some problems are actually not solvable. They're not to be solved. They're just to acknowledge, OK, yeah, that's what's happening now. And how can I focus attention on something more useful, something that will be more effective? So as you go into the week, my invitation, my encouragement for you is to take a step back. Ask yourself first for yourself,
what's working? What's working in your life? What's working in your day? What's working in your personal relationship with your team, with your manager, with your inner world, with your outer world? What are the things that are working well? And then begin to imagine that you're extending like a bubble outwards and start looking for very intentionally what's working a little bit further around you. Then ask again like what's working a little further around
you. So you might start with your immediate team or the colleagues that you work with most regularly, and then start thinking you know, the next level out, the next level out, the next level out. From that, start tuning your attention to notice and identify and appreciate what's working well in your world.
And even when things seem like they're falling apart or things are, you know, just not working well in your inner world or in the bigger world, there's always something you can find that will give a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of sense of, well, you know, at least this thing is working and that can be very powerful just to help us to not feel completely overwhelmed when we faced big, complex challenges. Because you will in the course of your work and your life.
But being able to manage your attention, to remember, you know, can you get a more accurate picture? Can you expand your view or sometimes draw your attention into a different direction to identify and notice and appreciate what is working? Why is this working? How can you begin to draw your attention there as well?
If you're a person who likes to get very operational, I recommend that you document the things that are working in some kind of, you know, some kind of document that you can refer to. Do this for yourself. This will be helpful later when you're having performance review conversations with your manager. You want to be very comfortable identifying and talking about the things that have been working well all year and with your team and the folks that you manage.
It's also really helpful to document so that you remember what are the things that they're doing well, what are the strengths or the, you know, just the things that you're observing. And some of those you want to tell people because, you know, other people have inner critics too. And they might diminish or simply not appreciate the strengths and the positive qualities that they bring. So it means a lot.
It makes a difference to be able to say, to tell to somebody, hey, I just wanted to let you know, I really appreciate the way you, you know, whatever that thing is. It's a way to signal. I see you, I appreciate you. You are valued. I respect you. And that is the kind of activity that builds trust and that builds goodwill over time. And there always comes a time when we're a little bit crunched. You want to have that trust and that goodwill established
beforehand. So those are my notes for you for this week. I hope you have a really great week and come back next week and we'll talk a little bit more. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good one. 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.