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 am a little bit under the weather today. I'm a little bit congested, a little bit low energy. So our episode is going to be short and sweet. But I did want to pop in and share a couple of things with you. One is I have been seeing this
comic. It's from The New Yorker, and I've been seeing it on the social media, and it was so spot on. And what it is, is it's this illustration of a guy behind a desk and he is facing a woman in a chair. They're in a meeting in an office setting. And the caption says, at this point in your career, your only possible promotion is to management where you will stop doing the work you love and use a skill set you don't have and we don't teach. And it really, it really hits right.
Like, it's so interesting seeing all of the comments on this comic is it's recognized as so familiar and it, you know, it really speaks to the frustration that so many folks have in the course of their career. You know, you reach this one stage and now the next level is to be promoted. And it's a different skill set and your work is not going to
teach it to you. What I like to remember is that just because it's the default meaning, it's very, very common, which which is why it's funny, which is why people recognize it as, oh, yeah, I I recognize that. I know that just because it's the default, it does not make it a requirement. Another way to think about this is this is not the end. It really is the beginning.
Once you realize, Oh yeah, this is what will happen if I just go by the momentum of what's around me, then you can begin to take a new approach and to make some different choices. You can choose, You know what, just because that's what's being offered, that's not the way I want to do my career. That's not the way I want to do my work.
I don't want to rely on my organization to help me get better at the skills that I'm going to use every day that will help me to be both better in my work, but will also help me sleep better at night and enjoy the rest of my life because it will make my work go more easily.
So in light of all of that, I wanted to share with you 7 like a list of seven things that I think are really important and fundamental for when you are a manager, when you're growing as a leader, and when you're asking yourself, you know, what are the skills that I need and what is it that I want to get better at so that I can feel more effective, feel more confident, feel more capable in the workplace.
And here are the seven things. Number one, you want to ask yourself what makes a good manager? So many times we neglect to ask and reflect on this really fundamental question, and instead we go into the place of uncertainty and the place of anxiety. That sounds like I don't know if I'm doing a good job. I feel like I'm failing. My team isn't happy with me. I'm feeling blocked or frustrated by my manager. I feel like I don't have the resources or the time that I
need in order to do a good job. But what gets missed when we're focused on that side of it is we're not even asking the question, what makes a good manager? What are you going for? What's your specific vision of what it means to be a good manager? Because there are lots of different ways to define that. And if you haven't defined that for yourself, then you're going to be kind of chasing this impossible goal because you've never clarified in your own mind what that goal is.
So that's number one. What makes a good manager #2 what makes communication effective? This one is really important that you ask this for yourself. What makes communication effective because we live within a context, professional context and organizational context, cultural context. And so the way that you specifically are effective in communicating is going to be influenced by all of these other factors.
This is why you want to develop your own North star in terms of how are you effective in communicating and not simply trying to mimic someone else's style or approach. This is where we get curious about, you know, what is the thought behind the thought when you're communicating? How are you making decisions about what you want to say, how you want to say it, when and to whom?
And it's the kind of thing where you've you've been successfully doing this in some degree throughout the course of your life. And I know this because you've lived to be an adult, and if in order to succeed in surviving, we have to learn how to communicate. But there's this additional dimension of understanding when you're wanting to be effective in the workplace and you're communicating in order to get things done or in order to focus people in the direction you want them to go.
How are you going to do that? We want to be intentional and design full and mindful and understanding what is it that makes communication effective and then what makes you specifically as a human and effective communicator #3 better meanings and one on ones. This is an area that is so often just run by default. And by that I mean people tend to either do meetings in one on ones the way they have had their
managers done. They essentially just replicate what they've experienced in the workplace or they mirror what they're seeing in the workplace. They look around, they say well, this is how this person does it. I guess that's how I will do it too. And so you know that that's OK. That's a good starting point. But if you want them to be better, we need to be intentional and we need to
design them. We need to think through how are we going to do this and why, and what are the other circumstances you want to be paying attention to in order to make a really great use of your time and your team's time #4 effective feedback. There are three pieces to this you want to think about. How are you effective in giving feedback? How are you effective in receiving feedback, even if it's unsolicited and even or especially if you're not sure you agree with it?
And then how are you going to request feedback? You want to be thinking about this over the course of the year, and especially when we're coming into performance review season. You want to be thinking about this way before you find yourself in a formal performance review conversation #5 speaking up advocacy boundaries. This is often a skill that people neglect until they are exhausted at a breaking point, or just very frustrated with
everything. And if, especially if you're a very hard worker and you're the kind of person who's like, I don't need help, I'll just do it myself, then you especially probably have undeveloped this muscle. And you want to be aware of that because as you continue in your career, it really will hamper you and get in your way.
There comes a time when the the way that you are successful is not by doing the most it's actually about being effective and speaking up, advocating for needs, your own and your team, as well as knowing how to establish effective boundaries. Otherwise, the work you do will not be sustainable. You'll start to build a resentment and that has an adverse effect not just for you personally and in your life, but also in your organization and with your team.
Number six, we need to understand specifically performance review conversations. How do you effectively facilitate change and have tough conversations? This area is one that becomes increasingly important when you are in a leadership and manager
role. It's one that you can sometimes avoid when you are an individual contributor, you know, and if you're the kind of person who has been successful in getting things done by keeping a low profile and just adapting to others and accommodating others and not speaking up, not facilitating change, not having a tough conversation. There's a, there's a place where that strategy stops working.
And so you want to be prepared to develop the skills of having those tough conversations of thinking about how am I going to effectively facilitate change through my team and how am I going to do the performance reviews. Like, that becomes a very important skill to have a strategy and a plan around and #7 managing up, that is a skill that is often overlooked and kind of avoided because there are all of these other skills that tend to get the attention
1st. And so it's important to recognize, oh, managing up is a legitimate skill. It is valuable. And the sooner that you develop your thinking around it and include that as part of your work plan, the better off you'll be. And I know that these topics we've covered a kind of a lot. Each one of these I've talked at length about on the show. But the reason I'm bringing them up now is because this is the set of communication skills that I'm going to be doing a deeper
dive and teaching on this fall. I'm teaching a course on communication strategies for managers, and this is exactly the outline that I'm going to use in that course. If this is something that you want to get better at, then you've got to sign up. I'll be there teaching live. You will also get access to the recordings, so if you're not able to join a class live, you'll be able to watch it.
And we'll also be on a platform where you can chat and communicate with me asynchronously, which is also great because, you know, I'm in California. You might be someplace else. Time zones are real. And I wanted to do this in a way that would, you know, kind of facilitate you being able to join with the least amount of friction. So these seven things, they're things that you're already, you know, working with, whether you've thought of it intentionally or not.
My invitation to you is let's work on this in a little bit more of a focused and structured way so that we can really equip you for the months to come, for the end of the year, and then really set you up for the beginning of next year. Just kind of crazy. It's already coming so fast, but here we are. So that's what I wanted to kind of raise into your awareness right now.
You know, as humans in the workplace, we do a lot of things by default because that's how it was role modelled to us or that's how it's worked in the past. But when it's time to update your skills and to take a more intentional and kind of design oriented approach, then it's time to step out of the workplace and step into a place where you're going to be able to learn.
And that's what I'm offering you and would love to have you come and join me. It's helpful to realize too that the solutions that worked for you in the past, they might not be as effective in this new situation. A new situation sometimes needs new solutions. And just because, you know, it worked really well for the earlier part of your career, maybe it's time to update that. One of the ones that I see a lot is I have folks who have had to work really hard to prove themselves.
And then they forget to update that part of their mind or they realize, oh, actually, no, I have proven that I don't have to keep saying yes to everything or I don't have to try to prove that I deserve to be here. There's more of that confidence that comes in when they realize, Oh no, I actually am very capable. And even though I'm facing something new, I don't need to say yes to everything in order to prove how committed or loyal I am. It's a really interesting mindset shift.
So that's what I wanted to point out to you. I'm going to put a link in the show notes so you can find the course page to register. We start on September 17th, which I am looking forward to. And I know that you are going to get a ton out of it. And I'm I'm excited that we're going to be doing this together. So go into the show notes, sign up so we can get you set up. And I hope you have a great week and I hope that I feel better too.
All right, thanks for listening. I'll 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 kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.