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. I want today's episode to be an appreciation episode, and the reason why is because a couple of days ago I was a guest speaker at UC Davis. They had invited me to speak about the podcast, about my coaching practice, and this was all part of the coach certification program that I actually took like five years ago.
So it felt really good to be invited back as an alumni of the program and to share about the podcast and why I do it and how that fits into the bigger work that I'm doing. And one of the things that came out in the course of the conversation is this question of how people find the show, how people find it and listen to it. And it really clarified for me that you really need to give yourself some credit because I don't know how you found this show.
I don't promote it. It's grown entirely organically over the last couple of years either. My guess is you were searching for something in your favorite podcast listening app, something for new managers, or something that would help you at work, and somehow you found it and then you chose to listen. Like you chose that. You chose to find it, you chose to listen to it. Maybe someone that you know shared it with you, or maybe you've also shared it with somebody who's listening now.
But I think that's important to highlight for a couple of reasons. Number one, give yourself some recognition for what it means. The fact that you have taken the effort and time to care about your own professional development and how you are able to show up at work and address whatever challenges or changes or uncertainties you're facing.
Because not everybody does that. Like, the easiest thing to do when things are hard at work is to simply complain about it or to, you know, talk with someone who is going to say, yeah, yeah, no, that sounds so, that sounds so tough, that sounds so hard, but not actually do something about it.
And the fact that you have found this show that you're listening to it and that you're able to then take something from it that will help you in a very practical, meaningful way at work is so meaningful and so important. And I would even say that if you haven't, you know, included that in part of your performance review, if you if you haven't said, yeah, you know, like I really care about doing a great
job here. And so of my own accord and my own volition, I found this great podcast and it's given me lots to think about and some practical ideas for ways that help me be better at work. I mean, claim credit for that. And the reason I want to highlight this is for a couple of things. One is there are sometimes things that you will do that you don't give yourself credit for because in your mind it just seems normal.
It just seems obvious. And so you put in the effort and you create some kind of positive results from that. And then you don't recognize it. You don't give yourself credit and you don't give yourself the visibility. You don't let other people know. And I, you know, sometimes we want to do things on the down low just for ourselves, for our own personal private reasons, which is fine.
But I want to kind of shine a light on this alternative, which is to give yourself the recognition and credit and then make that visible to others, both in the course of your own professional development and performance review conversations, as well as this sense of being someone who is resourceful and then sharing those resources with other people in your organization or your industry.
And one of the things that I see this as important is because on the learning and development side, well, actually let me back up a little bit. So most organizations do not have dedicated learning and development people. Some organizations do like they'll hire people whose only job is to help the staff and the employees develop their skills, work Better Together, They actually hire people and that's their full time job. Most of the time.
From what I've seen throughout my career is that responsibility will often fall to the people who work in HR, but HR is a really big job. There are a lot of things that the HR person and the, or the HR team is in charge of. They're in charge of hiring. They're in charge of, you know, compensation. They're in charge of performance reviews. They're also in charge of addressing like problems and challenges with personnel. And they have a lot of things on their plate.
And usually learning and development is a very, very small part of that. So of course, they don't give a ton of attention to it. And there's always this question of, you know, how do we know if the learning is working? And so, you know, to kind of spin it back a little bit and give it even an another perspective. I had the experience of working on an internal learning and development team a couple of years ago, and it was for a company that's known to have a really great culture.
They really care about their employee development, which is why they had a dedicated L&D team. I think at the time I was there, the entire learning and development team was probably around 11:50 people or so. So that sounds like a lot, right? Like 10 to 12 people whose only job is to focus on the learning and development of the staff and employees. That sounds pretty good, right? But I mean, this was a company of thousands of people located all around the world.
And so when you are one person or a small team and you're trying to meet the needs of the organization by assessing across thousands of people, what are the skills that are needed and how can we best support and develop those skills? The kind of problem you're trying to solve is a little bit weird. Like it's a little bit like it's really hard to dial in and specifically address the problem of someone who is having a specific challenge with an employee or or their staff in that moment.
It's really hard to meet people right where they are because the scale of what you're trying to do is so big. And because you're often trying to address things on an organizational level, like if you're hiring a trainer or someone from outside, you're trying to address something on it on a big organizational level rather than on like a supportive
individual career level. That's usually where coaching comes in where they'll say, OK, this specific leader has specific challenges and skills they'd like to develop. So we're going to pair them with a coach and just give them that highly personalized individual one-on-one resource.
That's often why that resource is reserved for for folks at the higher level because it tends to be more expensive, because it costs more, because you have, you know, one person, a coach giving support and working with only one employee.
As opposed to some of these other resources where they'll say, OK, we're going to bring in an outside trainer or we're going to partner with some kind of like content learning provider and we're going to be able to have like asynchronous on demand learning for, you know, all of these people. And then we have to do assessments and we have to measure the result. We have to measure the outcome.
And this is one of the really tricky things because if you remember to a couple of episodes ago and I shared that quote from this VP who said the most, you know, the most measurable things of my job, the way I'm able to do those are through unmeasurable things like trust and emotional intelligence and being able to say the hard thing without pissing people off and being able to recognize when, you know, my team says everything's OK, but I can tell there's not all of these
unmeasurable skills is what allows you to create the measurable performance. And this is true like within organizations, but it's also true on a personal level, right? Like I think about from what I've heard through the clients and the students that I've worked with and the kinds of things that they are able to identify to know, is this working? And by this I mean, is the coaching working or is the class or the course working?
How do you measure if those was a good investment of your time or energy? Well, the things people tell me from their own individual experience are things like, I'm not getting sick at the end of the year. I've had clients say I, you know, I use, I would work really, really hard and it was very stressful. And I'd be OK until the end of the year. And right around the holidays, my body would just kind of collapse and I would, I would just always get sick.
And then I learned how to do things differently, how to not take things personally, how to communicate in a way that didn't stressed me out so much, and I wasn't getting sick anymore. So that was one of those measurable things. People will say I'm not exhausted at the end of the day. I'm not impatient with my spouse or my kids. That is the kind of measurable result that I think so matters
as an organization. There are usually numbers that they're trying to measure like did this turn into more money? Did this turn into, you know, higher quality output? Did this turn into like reduced attrition, right. Like maybe maybe there was, you know, people were leaving and then they got trainer, a trainer or coaching for this one leader and then people stopped quitting.
You know, there are there are different ways that in an organization they're trying to turn a measurement into numbers. What are those numbers? But on a more human level, the things that tend to matter most that then, you know, become what allow you to perform and hit those outside numbers are things like, you know, I'm not so stressed, which means when I come home at the end of the day, I'm less exhausted. And because I'm less exhausted, I have more patience.
I can really be present with my family. I feel more, you know, engaged and like, they like hanging out with me more because I'm not so stressed or worried. That is a measure that matters, even if it doesn't fit neatly into an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, and then one of the other ones that that often comes up, it's the, oh, I'm not waking up at 3:00 in the morning thinking about work.
When we're measuring the ROI of your professional development, we're usually not asking, oh, you know, how are you sleeping at night? But when we're stressed or we're worried, and especially when we care a lot and so we really take our responsibilities seriously, that metric of how well are you sleeping can be very revealing. It can be very important. And so you might not share that with the HR partner who wants to measure the effectiveness of, you know, the program.
But I mentioned it because you want to be mindful of that. You want to be mindful for you, what is your measure of success? What are your measures of this is working, this is worth it? This was something that I'm glad I did because it's going to help me. That's something that you want to keep track of for your career, not just this particular moment in this particular job. And so I think, you know, when I asked myself like, why is it so common that managers don't get
support when they need it? Why is it so common when surveys go out and they say how many new managers get training or coaching or support? Why is that number so low? Why is it that like 60% of people surveyed say, no, I had nothing given to me? Why is that? And I think it really comes down to it's a hard thing to solve for at an organizational level. The organization will try to do something, but from a place of compassion, we can say, you know what, the HR people have a lot going on.
Your manager has a lot going on. If you're lucky, there will be someone that you work with who also cares about professional development and will support and encourage you to do that. This is also one of those disconnects. If an organization says we want you to improve your skills and get more, you know, like emotionally resilient and more become more of a creative problem solver.
If an organization is telling you that, but they're not providing any measurable support for that, like it will interfere with your KPIs or if it will somehow not be recognized in your performance review, then we're going to have this disconnect, right? And like if the, the sounds, this is so businessy, but it, you know, it's like, if the incentives don't align, then you won't see that happen. You'll continue to have this disconnect.
And so I think that it's important if you if you do work in an organization that is supportive of your learning and growth, amazing, make the most of it. If you work in an organization where that's just not available, we don't have to feel angry or mad about that. We just want to be really clear and accepting. OK, that's probably not going to become available to me there.
But what can I do anyways? Because it's of benefit to you personally, both in your personal life and in your career life to find something that will help you and my in my imagination, you know, like that's why we're here right now. That's why my voice is in your ear, because you are a person who sought something out because you knew that it could help you. And that's the kind of person you are. Like you are a creative problem solver.
You are a resourceful person. You are someone who can evaluate the landscape and say, OK, that's not going to be available over there, but what else can I do? And so I really just wanted to acknowledge and celebrate you for that because that is a big deal. I think all of our organizations benefit from that mindset. And also just everything that you do that also supports your
well-being over time. Even when you leave this organization or you leave this role and go into another role, it all adds up. It all matters. So I wanted to leave you with that. I think one of the questions that you might take from this is the question of, you know, why is this happening? Anytime we're facing some kind of complex challenge, it can be easy to kind of get into the weeds.
But if we take a step back and say, why is this happening For me, for this episode, I was thinking like, why is this happening? Why is it happening that new managers are overlooked and underserved? Why is it happening that people will say people don't quit jobs, they quit managers? Like that Seems every time, every time I mention that to somebody, they say, Oh yeah, I've heard that people don't quit jobs, they quit managers.
And at the same exact time, managers are not getting coaching or leadership training or support and learning how to do that job. And then how that job is different than being an individual contributor. Why is it true? Like why is this happening that we know the relationship you have with your direct manager has as significant an effect on your mental health and well-being as your relationship with your partner or spouse.
You spend so much time in relationship with your direct manager, it has a massive influence on your health and well-being. We know that managers affect the well-being of the individuals that they work with. And again, why are managers not receiving more support? So when I ask myself this question, why is this happening, I come to see this perspective of, well, it's really hard to do. Incentives are not always aligned, resources are not always there.
And so in light of that, what can we do to address this instead? How can we get creative? So here we are like I am here creating this for you. You are here because you are someone who cares and you are learning and you are going to be able to show up a little more resourced when you go into work the next day. So I hope you appreciate that for yourself. Give yourself a little pat on the back and make sure that you
get credit for that. Like include that in your own sort of sense of identity, of being resourceful and creative, of taking initiative. And if it feels right, maybe even bring that up at work in your next performance review or in your next one-on-one with your manager and make sure that they know that you're doing this work outside and of your own
volition. And my hope is that this is the kind of resource that helps you feel more confident and more relaxed so that you feel healthy, that you're enjoying your life more, that you have more energy at the end of your work day and at the end of your work week, so that you can enjoy parts of your life that have nothing to do with work.
My hope is that this is the kind of resource that allows you to enjoy your family more and your friends more so that you can really be present for them and with them. And that this is the kind of resource that will help you to sleep better at night. Because I'd like for you to feel well rested. Sleep is really, really important. I don't think we're going to be able to effectively address the complex challenges facing us in the world unless we are well rested.
So that's what I wanted to share with you today. Quick announcements, I am teaching a new class, I'm calling it leadership orientation. It's on June 18th. So go into the show notes to learn about that or go to my website, kimnickel.com to learn about that class. That one is just going to be two hours and you're going to uncover your leadership values, you're going to learn more about your leadership style and it's going to be a lot of fun. So sign up for that.
And then coming up in July, I'm offering again my six week course on communication strategies for managers. Now with both of these courses, if you sign up with a colleague or a friend, you will save 20% off the price. So hopefully your work will be excited to support you and cover the cost of that. But even if they don't still consider coming because it's going to benefit you directly. And you know, that's what we're here for.
We need to be a little selfish, you know, when it comes to your learning and development, you need to care about that. So information about that is in the show notes or on my website. If you like the show, leave a review and a rating. And I hope you have a really great week. Thank you so much for listening, 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, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.