Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hi and welcome sometimes. I feel like there is it's just I have so much that I want to share with you and it's so hard for me to organize my thoughts and get my ideas out of my mouth in one in one stream. But I do it for you because it matters so much that you care about being good at managing people. It matters so much that you're being thoughtful and reflective and curious about what does it mean to be a great manager?
How do I do this? Well, it matters more than you ever know because every action we take every conversation. We're a part of everything that we do ripples out. Facts. Beyond what you we can ever see. So, thank you for being here and I want to give a special shout-out to one of my listeners, Maxwell who had shared a note with me on LinkedIn, he found me and wrote to me and said I'm a new manager starting tomorrow, really enjoyed your podcast. Thanks for helping me, get my
head in the right place. And yeah I have to see that feels so good. It is so nice to know that this is being helpful and I also want to offer that I teach a class at General Assembly once or twice a month and you can come and meet with other people who are asking these questions and share what you're noticing, share? What your challenges are.
And also share what has worked for you, and what you've observed and It is unbelievably valuable to have a space where you can be in conversation with people who are not in your industry, not even in your company who are working in different sized organizations because some of the things are
going to be exactly the same. Because humans we tend to have the same kinds of challenges but what's great is because everyone's coming at this from a different perspective, a different Background a different industry, a different company culture, the way that you perceive. And the way that you understand and experience things will be a
little bit different. And so the opportunity to learn is incredible because you're not trying to solve in the vacuum of your own mind or within the small, you know, group of people that you already know you tap into a really expansive. Of collective perspective, if you will.
And that's one of the things I like a lot about teaching, this class, that's available to the public, is that everyone really can come from wherever they are in the world, and from whatever kind of organization they are in, and just to remind you, you don't have to be an actual people manager to come and to contribute and to To gain something valuable from it, honestly, I truly believe that anyone who works with humans, you have to start developing some skills around how to manage
people, because it's all comes down to your communication, your self-awareness, the way you build relationships, okay? So go to my website or go to General Assembly.com and look up my classes and come. And we'll talk about this all live now. You today's episode, I want to talk about your Value Story and I want to talk about this as an idea that has both an expansive element and a very granular, very narrow, small element and also a measurable aspect and an
immeasurable aspect. So let's start with the Expansive, what I mean by that is as you think about, what is the value that you bring how you know, you're doing a good job. What, you know what the value is of your work? As a new manager, we tend to begin by thinking and relatively narrow terms and sometimes those are driven by the organization where a part of so you might have kpis like key performance.
Yours. And you might have specific numeric goals related to billable hours or like the amount of time spent resolving customer service issues, or with respect to deal flow or sales numbers or story points. Or there are different kinds of things that you and your manager probably set an agreement around at the beginning of the year and it's what you'll be evaluated against and this measurable and
sort of defined value metric. I want to invite you to think more expansively to think beyond that. And one of the reasons why is as you're growing, there are going to be things that you learn to do and abilities that you develop that 100%, add a lot of value. But they might not be on the list of things that are Officially considered valuable. So for example, your ability to deescalate friction between people on your team that is
really valuable. It might not end up, you know, on the list of performance indicators. But is it valuable? Yeah, completely your ability to prioritize. That is super valuable. Will it be measured against some kind of quarterly? Number probably not your ability to develop highly functional teams or your ability to create trust with new clients.
All of these things are really valuable but they might not be obvious because they are, they're sort of less measurable, they're a little bit more ephemeral. I see And we'll think of these as invisible because you can't see them. But you really know when there's an absence of them. Like, it's hard to measure trust for example, but you know, when it's not there because things just don't work as well, and there's friction and fighting, and confusion. We all know what that's like.
So think expansively number one, as you think about? What is the value that? I'm bringing? Yeah, especially this year. So I'm recording this at the end of November as we wrap the end of Here you might be moving into end of your performance reviews. Now I feel 100% certain that when you set your year goals at the beginning of 2020, it was without anticipating all of the different challenges and changes and unpredictable miss that this year had.
So as you begin to reflect on what have been your strengths, what is the value that you've brought? I Want you to expand your perspective and really start to capture and identify a name. Some of those immeasurable things, some of those, you know, not on the set list of what is recognized value. But to think really expansively, how have you brought value to your team to your organization?
So that's one that's expansive. And then granular is to think in specific examples and stories about what that is. So if you say, well, I brought a lot of empathy this year to my workplace, then I want you to get granular and think specifically. How did you do that? What did that look like you bringing more empathy? What did that look like? Because you want to practice articulating and telling the story of that.
So that when you then have your conversation with your manager, this is a little bit, you know, around managing up. But when you are in your conversation with your manager and you're talking about what you have accomplished where your goals are, what has you know, what has been the value that you brought this year? I want you to have some specific examples of these expansive qualities.
So that your values Story, number one is something that you really own and are writing and creating you're not limited or confined by The value story that's sort of just, you know, like in the line item has completed these tasks has, you know, build all of these hours. So that's expansive and granular. Let me give you an example of that. I have worked with quite a
number of lawyers. I used to be a lawyer and in law, there is the billable hour that is the unit of measurement that really shapes so much of what lawyers do, it's all about. How many billable hours do you have you track your time, very precisely every day and you have Certain goals or certain expectations or your bonus at the end of the year. Will depend upon how many hours you build or how many extra
hours you build? And because of that, there tends to be this hyper focus on billable hours as the most significant Value Story, the most significant value add The problem that can arise if you only value like if your value story as a lawyer is limited to the number of your billable hours. Number one, it becomes exhausting because truly there are only so many billable hours that you can ever do just like humanly possible.
So you kind of get this upper limit problem where you can really only get so many it becomes quite exhausting. It neglects all these other things, like your ability to deescalate conflict with a client, like, your ability to
build trust with a client. Like your ability to help support and on Burr on Bird on board and and create greater efficiency with newer Associates like your ability to Really highly functioning work relationships with other partners or other attorneys within your firm so that you can collaborate really well. And it's the difference between kind of building. This reputation, like reputation is often built around the value story and you become a little
bit and closed. If you build a value story, that is I am such a strong Workhorse. I will just build flowers all day until like until I'm dead, right? It's an extreme example. But like that's not a really awesome value story and it also ends up really limiting you. Because if that's the only thing, you're known to be good at then that only goes so far, but if you start to build this Value Story of, yeah, I'm a really hard worker, but I also am really great at Business Development.
Everybody loves working with me. Because I help support people. I'm super collaborative, I maintain fantastic client relationships and so clients love working with me. They love working with this firm and because I've developed, really great client relationships, I know how to manage our time. Well, so if a client says, hey, we need this, I'll say crate, do you need this immediately? Or is it okay if if I wait, you know, 48 hours and they say, oh
yeah, 48 hours is fine. I'm so now all of a sudden you're being less reactive because you're being less grass. Be about getting all of the hours and you're creating a
more. I want to see like a diversified value story so that your value is recognized not a long one single metric but is actually more expansive now with those immeasurable things like having a great relationship having the ability to collaborate with With others, having the ability to prioritize or delegate or push back in a way that actually builds trust and makes life easier for everybody.
That is an art, by the way, but it's definitely worth practicing doing it. Otherwise, we become so bound to all of the demands around us and that becomes exhausting and soul-sucking. It would just, it's not sustainable. So so, Whatever this looks like for you. So, there are the measurable things, that would be like the billable hours.
And then we have the immeasurable things and we know that the immeasurables do end up like relate like they relate to that, which is measurable, but it's just a little bit, you know, sort of difficult to like pinned down like in the same way. So for my software developers in the same way that technical debt, I hope I'm saying that right Tech, debt technical debt when we don't clean that up, it accrues and it ends up, slowing everything down. And so it's not fun to go back and fix things.
It's not fun too. Then the time to unravel and improve process efficiencies and it is so valuable being a person who can do that effectively and efficiently even though maybe it's not creating new features or new whatever's.
That's not my language. Even though you're not necessarily creating something new that you can sell because you're not building out a new Thing by going back and cleaning that up, you are ensuring that as you build and grow things won't break, you are making sure that things will continue to work and to be alive and it's important to identify it, both for yourself and now. Okay? So let me pause for a second. I want to make sure that we're still we're still like Together on this.
So we have the value story. This is the story of what it is that you bring that contributes in a really positive way to the health of your organization and to the well-being of your people and your team, I really believe that companies do well when people do well, because the company is a collection of people. So we have thinking expansively, so beyond what the kpi's are beyond the specific metrics. Thank you. Expansively what is the value?
You bring a lot of times. Those are going to be the immeasurable things, like trust like, quality relationships like Clarity versus confusion, and then we have getting granular. So get specific about how you do that. This becomes really valuable now that we're moving towards the end of the year, but also I want you to think about it in terms of, I mean, really, you can start to bring this Value Story to your manager during your one-on-ones throughout the year.
So you want to begin to let your manager know and understand what it is that you're doing. That is creating this positive contribution. Especially When it is expansive and immeasurable, when you are doing things that create that create trust, where you're bringing empathy, where you are helping to reduce conflict, or to bring Clarity or to give direction. When you're doing those things, you want to be able to make that visible. Because your manager might not know.
Especially now everyone is so work from home. It can be harder to have visibility on what everybody is doing and you can bring that story to your manager by saying. Yeah, I feel really great about this one conversation. I had this week and it seemed like it really helped this person feel more clear about what they're doing or they were confused and working on this thing and I set a priority and
had them work on this instead. Begin to think in those terms and begin to include that in some of your communication so that it becomes available to them. Like available in mind when they're thinking about evaluating you, when they're thinking about performance reviews, when they're thinking about, what is your next step? Or what is your future going to be? We always want to be aware of no number one.
What it is that we're being measured against and number two how is it that we hold our own sense of the value that we bring and how we are growing. And what it is that we want to do with ourselves with our careers with the People that we work with and it really is up to you to bring that Value Story and to shape it because others might not recognize it obviously, especially with the like invisible and measurables those are the ones that we can sort of take for granted unless
they're absent. And when it's absent, then we have something to really complain about. And if you're a human, you probably know How seductive it is to complain about people not productive but very seductive, we all do it. Let's be honest. But now instead we want to focus on drawing attention to recreating reshaping expanding your value story, as we move to the end of the year. I would encourage you to, like, take time to reflect make a list.
So that when you are going into your end of your conversations with your manager, you are really helping to shape that conversation and let them know these are all the things this year. That I really did. Well, maybe it's a strength or a skill. You didn't fully realize you had until You had to use it and then you realized. Wow, I actually I'm really great at helping people stay focused even when everyone is frustrated or tired, whatever that is for you.
So make that list and with your team, if you are a direct manager, this is a great conversation to also introduce to your team members. So yes, begin to notice. And of course, you have whatever it is that they're being measured against like The measurable and sort of specific in place metrics, but also begin to notice and maybe even ask them to start thinking, more expansively about what else that they bring, what else? What other strengths do they
have. And maybe I mean, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who realized this year that there are strengths that I didn't realize are really valuable. Like the ability to stay present to be, flexible to be resilient the ability to check in and connect with people. Because when I do that, good things happen, people feel cared for they show up, like, whatever that is for you. But take the time to do that. Otherwise it won't get done.
And they'll be all of this, like, treasure through your own life and experience that you've missed. So those are my thoughts for today. I hope they have been Helpful to you. And, you know, it's only one small thing that makes a really big difference. I should say this more often because I keep remembering it after the fact, but it's also a great message to share with you right now. One small thing can make a really big difference. One small idea. One small question.
One small, pause. Can create a bigger. Change and more positive contribution than you realize. So thank you so much for being part of our community. And for listening today, I hope this serves you well, and that you get to use it in some wonderful ways in your work life and your team. And, as always, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can join one of my upcoming classes at General Assembly or reach out and find out how I can work with you one-on-one and help you to be a better.
Manager. Do you want personal confidential help with your situation at work? I offer one-on-one coaching and can help you overcome challenges reach your goals and become a more effective leader to schedule a consult. Go to my website, Kim nickel.com coaching and we'll schedule time to talk about what's going on with you and how I can help talk to you soon.