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. As you might be able to tell, I have a cold. My voice is a little off because my body is a little off. I have been dealing with a cold for about a week now and it's slowly getting better, but it's still has me feeling a little bit deflated and a little bit congested.
I do have to give big, big hugs and so much appreciation to my partner Warren, who made me chicken soup from scratch and brought it to me. We don't live together. And actually when I'm sick or when he's sick, it actually works out great because you know, he's got a big talk coming up and I didn't want him to get sick for his talk. So I haven't seen him other than a very brief chicken soup handoff that he was so sweet to bring me and to come over.
And, you know, one of the things he said is he's like, it's very hard to care for you because you're, you're very self-sufficient and you're very independent. And it's a true thing. And so, you know, if you are a person who also tends to be very self reliant, this is a reminder to let people care for you and to be open to receiving support even when you think, you know, you can just do everything by
yourself. I think there's a lesson in there too, for the workplace and being a manager and how it can be so easy to think that it's your job to do all of it, to do all of everything and to forget that actually, you know, what I've observed is as you go higher in your in your career and in your advancement, like so much of the job changes from you doing everything to actually you delegating to you hiring, to you being able to communicate and kind of distribute the workload
effectively and realizing what are the different strengths and qualities that you have on the team. And as a team, what strengths and qualities might we be missing? What might we want to develop that we maybe don't have right now or didn't need and now we need them. And so actually developing the ability to be open to receiving support, to be open and willing to asking or advocating for support becomes an important skill that we often forget is a skill that you need to develop.
Because so early in our careers, especially when we're coming in as individual contributors, our job is to really focus on the tasks that are assigned to us and to execute them well, to do the thing and to do it at a high level and to do it to completion. And I remember when I was early in my career and I reached out and asked for help for something. What the guy, what the guy said, he's like, wow, you gave you gave up early.
And I was like, what? Like I thought I was doing something right by saving time by asking someone for help, But I feel like I'm being criticized. Like, in his view, I somehow was not demonstrating sufficient determination or something like that. It was a very weird moment, but it really kind of gave me pause. And I think as a result, I overcorrected. And then for, you know, quite a long time, it was like asking for help was my last resort. It was the thing I would do when
I was really at my end. And one of the things I've learned, you know, still learning in my own life, as evidenced by my my partner and his comment, it can be a tricky thing to learn how to receive support, to ask for or advocate for support and to see that as a positive quality, as a positive trait and definitely in your leadership journey.
It's something that I want you to be aware of sooner than I was aware of it because there is a thing, you know, where the rules can kind of change when you're an individual contributor versus when you start being a manager. And if you're wearing both hats, you know, for a lot of folks, there are times when you're sometimes wearing the manager hat, but you still have individual contributor responsibilities. And so it can be hard to know kind of how to, you know, work
with that dynamic. So that's just something I wanted to put on your radar. And maybe a thing to think about is where in your work could you be asking for help? Where in your work could you be engaging support or delegating something to someone else? And so much of the mindset to around delegation is, is shifting from the thought of, oh, I'm just like dumping work on someone or I'm just offloading because I have the power to do so.
And so I want to, you know, get this off my plate and give it to somebody else to do. It's not like that. But you can think of it more in terms of, OK, what is our overall goal and what are the different, you know, skills and qualities that we have on the team? Who else on the team is equipped or positioned to do this? And why might it be a good idea for them to do that? Or who on the team needs to develop the skills and ability
to do this? And so even though it would be faster if I did it, it actually is a really good learning moment. This is the best way for them to learn how to do this is to assign it to them and let them work with it and then bring it to me. And then we can work together on, you know, either how to improve it or change it like it will. It will help me learn where they're at if I delegate it to them and see how they work with it.
So you can really start to think in a more holistic and more strategic way about who is doing what. And as a manager, definitely part of your job is making decisions about who is doing what. How is work distributed? What are the priorities if the people on your team are getting mixed messages about what they should be working on? Because you know, sometimes there's another director or another person in a position of power who is asking of your team their time and their effort and
work. Then they will look to you to either clarify or kind of stand up for them and say, Oh no, like the priority is this. And this is what we're working on. For these reasons, here's what we can do. Here's and, and here's why and here's what we can't do. And here's some perhaps other alternatives or let's talk about or negotiate how how we want to address this. So thinking of of it in those terms is I think a a learned perspective, a learned skill.
And you know, you can feel so much pressure to get it right. And I want to offer you this thought of, you know, it's not necessarily about like getting it right, like it it being it's right or it's not right, but it's more like a very dynamic living thing, like things might change. So part of your role is to be mindful of, OK, like what if anything is changing right now? What might we need to adjust? Like how can I respond to the moment?
How might I be able to anticipate changes that might come like as we come into the holiday season and I can anticipate some folks being away on vacation or some folks getting sick and not being available. There are all of these different kinds of questions that you're going to be asking when you're in that manager role, when you're thinking about the work and your team and who's doing what. So that's what I would like to
leave you with today. If you are also interested in my course on communication strategies for managers, the next cohort starts in January. We're going to start right in the first full week of January, so you can enroll now. For some of you that will actually be great because you can use 2024 budget legit to, you know, apply to 2025
learning. So hopefully that works out like end of year can be a such a great time to ask your work to sponsor you to see if your work will cover the cost of this professional development so that you can be more effective in your job and you know better at what you're doing and help your team even more. And your work might be delighted because as we come into the end of the year, there might be extra budget available and they might say, oh, what a great idea. Thank you for raising it.
Thank you for finding this learning opportunity for yourself. That's so great that you're taking the initiative to do that. So I'm going to put a link to my course in the show notes. You can also find it on my website, kimnickel.com. And if you want to work privately with me on coaching, you can also find information in the show notes about that too. All right, I'm out. I'm going to go blow my nose, going to take a little sip of water and maybe take a nap.
I hope you have a great and very, very healthy rest of your week and 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, kimnicolcom and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.