Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello, and welcome. I'm glad that you're here. I hope you're doing well today. I want to talk with you about strategic thinking and feedback. If you did not listen, yet to my episode, on the Strategic thinking, one episode prior. Definitely listen to that. It'll give you a lot more context around, what I mean when I say strategic. Gang and how to do it.
But for now, the way I want to share it with you, is that the fastest way to identify how you're thinking strategically is with two questions. What am I doing? And why? When you answer those questions that will reveal to you. What is your current strategic, thinking about a situation? What are you doing? And why? And when you're immersed, Just in your own strategy. It will seem obvious. Obviously. I'm doing this for these reasons. And it's helpful to remember
that we see things differently. We have developed different strategies for navigating the world for navigating Human Relationships for dealing with all of the things that come our way. And we've all learned different strategies for being successful in the midst of all of it. So understanding for yourself. What am I doing?
And why and remembering that what seems Yes, to you may not be evident or obvious to others and two other pieces that I wanted to share with you, especially with respect to feedback. And when we're thinking strategically, is that very often our personal strategies are values-based and identity-based and you can think
of it like this. You might think I really value Harmony in. Chips and therefore, the reason why I do things is because I'm seeking to create or preserve Harmony in collaboration in relationships in accomplishing things. I'm always seeking to do that in the most harmonious way because I value Harmony its efficient. It is enjoyable. It's what one of the things I value and so I will always seek To find and Implement strategies that are in alignment with that value.
And that's the kind of thing that may not be happening on a conscious level. It just feels like, obviously we do things in this way because I value this value. So that's one piece to keep in mind. The other is around identity. And as a coach, I saw this. A lot when I was doing Communications coaching because so many of my clients would say, well, I really am an introvert or I really am not good at public speaking.
And I would notice how strongly folks would identify with this sense of I, am I am this therefore, I have to do things this way. Therefore I can I cannot do things that way and a lot of the work was helping people to reframe that a bit so they could be. Yeah, both be an introvert and understand that there are skills. You can that are still available to you and just because you're not comfortable with this particular, skillset yet. That doesn't mean that for the
rest of your life. You don't you don't improve or you don't find your own way of Using the skills in a way that still fills available in familiar to you. I think we often mistake familiarity with identity. We say, I am just this way, but really, maybe it were just saying this is most familiar to me. And so I continued to do this because it feels familiar. It feels safe. It's worked this far. So, when we think about your Career and your life, and who
you are as a person. There's this really interesting overlap between you in the workplace and what it means for you to grow, as a leader to grow as a more skillful and a more effective manager. And this underlying sense of what you value of, how you think of yourself in the world. And what is the Effect that has on your strategy and then on the decisions that you make another place. I see this come up, a lot is folks that say well, I, you
know, I'm a helpful person. I'm a team player, this dovetails beautifully with their sense of values, right? The sense of I value being a team player. I value collaboration. I want to be helpful because that's who I am. And that's part of what. High value in relationships, but that can play out in a really not great way. If that means that you're then becoming so available to everybody that you're no longer setting boundaries, you're taking on work.
That isn't yours. You don't know how to say, no, you don't know how to ask for help and you end up. Burning yourself out or just becoming overwhelmed and Be and resentful. And even though the underlying value the underlying identity that is shaping these decisions. You can still feel, you can still feel good about those. You can still keep those but you want to be aware of how does this affect your strategic thinking? And what are the choices you're making and why?
And then what effect does that have? So, with that in mind now? Let's turn to feedback and what your strategic thinking means, for the way that you deliver feedback. I once had a student in my class who said with great pride. I give comprehensive feedback to my team. I give very thorough and comprehensive like line item feedback of all of the things that I see they could be doing well. And I asked him like, what is your reasoning behind that?
Why do you do that? And he said like, oh, I really value being thorough and I want to be open and transparent and so all of his reasoning behind that was coming from a really good place, but the effect of that on the other side, turns into people, feeling overwhelmed people, not knowing what to focus on, not knowing what to prioritize. People feeling nitpicked like you can't find anything. I'm doing, right? You're only finding the things that I'm doing wrong. It can create a feeling of
discouragement. Like nothing I ever do is good enough. I never get recognized for the things I do. Well, I only get noticed for the things that I don't do. Well, it can undermine trust feeling like, oh, my manager doesn't appreciate me. And so when you are in The role of being a manager and part of your job is about giving feedback, then it's so important. To reflect on what is the Strategic thinking that you currently have. And how is that affecting the way that you give feedback?
So, let me offer a few different ways that you can start to think about this when you're asking yourself, why? Am I doing this? Like, what am I doing? And why what feedback are you giving? And why you can answer that question in so many ways. Are you giving feedback based on their goals? Did your person tell you in a one-on-one that their goal is to get promoted to, you know, some role and you know that in order to do that, they're going to have to develop certain skills,
or maybe this person. And said, I'm so uncomfortable, speaking in front of groups. So I'm going to make a goal of developing my public speaking skills. And so you're giving them feedback specifically related to something. They have said that they care about. So are you giving feedback that's related to their goals? Are you giving feedback because you want to control them and you want to be right? It's helpful to just be honest. If this is true, it's not a bad
thing. It is a human thing because you have an idea of how things should be and as a human we like to be right. It feels good to our brains, but you want to be honest. Are you giving this feedback because you're trying to control the way they're doing things. Because you just think that your way is better. That's how you've always done it. And you want to be right in this situation. It might be, are you giving this feedback because you want to see
a behavior change. Is there something specific in this person's behavior? That is not working or that is not effective or that could be different or that could be better. And so, are you giving feedback to kind of like lift awareness and also let them Know, if they're on track, or if they're off track. Is it about a behavior change? Are you giving feedback because this is how you're going to boost morale and build trust giving feedback as not always about.
What is somebody not doing. Well, a lot of time. It's going to be about, hey, I saw that you did this really well, and I just wanted to acknowledge and tell you that, hey, I really appreciate the way you did. X Y & Z. Hey, I just wanted to let you know, you bring this one particular strength to our team and it really means a lot like really.
Add value to the team here. Maybe the reason you're giving feedback is because you're thinking strategically, I need to give my team a little bit of a morale boost and I need to do some work to build trust. I need to show them that I also see value and appreciate the work that they're doing. Are you giving feedback because you're trying to present trying to prevent disaster or a year-end ambush?
And this is for my listeners who are very conflict avoidant and will say everything is going fine all year long and then at the end of the year, you'll say well, here are all of the ways that you fell short of expectations. I understand why people do this and it is not helpful and it feels terrible. If you've ever been on the other side of that, if you are surprised.
Just about feedback. You get how you're not meeting expectations or how your work is falling below, a certain standard and nobody told you what that was. And your manager didn't say. Hey, we need to talk about this because I like we can fix it. Let's start working on it. Now, to get you to where you need to be. So that when you have your formal performance review, it doesn't feel like a surprise or an ambush. Bush or things are so far off track. It's going to be really hard to recover.
Maybe that's why you're deciding to give this feedback. And maybe the reason you're giving feedback is because you are avoiding confrontation. And so you only give them the nice feedback because you don't want to hurt their feelings and you feel really bad about having to tell them that things are not great. And you keep hoping, maybe they'll figure it out. Surely. They see that this is not working and they'll just fix it.
They must know. But I don't want to have to have a conversation with them because it will feel uncomfortable. So when you begin to ask yourself specifically, with respect to giving feedback to the folks on your team, what am I doing? And why, what am I not doing, and why you begin to exercise the part of your brain that does strategic thinking, and you can be really Dynamic, really intentional, and very process. Oriented, with respect to how
you're going to do that. I'll tell you that the first time That I was in a formal performance review cycle for my team. I had been on the individual contributor side, of course, for you know, many many rounds, but when I flipped into the manager role and I didn't understand until we were already in the cycle, the level of detail and
information. I would have to put into the system like we had this internal system for or scoring people and giving people qualitative feedback that was captured and documented and then of you know, we would have a conversation about it. I had to do that for over a dozen people, it took a long time.
It was my least favorite part of the entire year and I thought, oh my gosh, if I had just gone back and I had planned for this, if I had thought strategically, and if I had thought, okay, you know in November December. We'll have to go into this system and score and give specific feedback about what people did. Well, like I could be gathering information and building a record all along the way.
So, by the time, the holidays come, I'm not having to remember and think back to what did we do this year? Because you will forget I promise you. There's so much will happen in the course of a year a month a quarter. It's really hard to remember. All of that, so instead of relying upon memory or sort of like how you're feeling in that moment about that person. When you start to think strategically, you begin to put
things into place. Now, that will benefit you, that will benefit your team members like so much later, but the first time you go through, it can be tricky because, you know, you haven't done it before you don't, you know, maybe nobody will tell you because Is they haven't thought to tell you, you know, it's one of those goofy things. Congratulations. You're a manager. Go figure it out yourself. And, you know, also, just to remind you. It's not because like, this is
my belief. I don't believe people are purposefully negligent about Not Giving guidance for how to manage people. I think it's just a lot to take on quite frankly and the folks who are above you like your manager, Your Man. Jurors manager, they're just really busy. And they probably haven't thought about this in depth either, or, you know, who knows? They have could have so much going on in their lives as well.
They just don't have the time, so it helps tremendously to think about feedback to think strategically about it. What are you doing? And why? What is the outcome you're trying to create? What is the result that you're To create to notice what your current choices are. And then to begin to question and even start to create a strategic plan for the year, the half the quarter, the month, even dialing it into the week. You can start to build it all around your one-on-ones and team
meetings as well. But to have a sense in your mind of, how will I do feedback? What and you know, what are the values and the self identifications that you'll want to be aware of like if you know, That you tend to be very harmoniously oriented and you do not feel comfortable in any kind of a confrontation. You want to be aware of that for yourself, because that will get in the way unless you're able to intentionally, make a plan to move through it and that's part
of growth. So don't feel bad. Like I don't think anybody knows how to be a manager. We all learn as we go, the difference is, when you're being intentional about it. It. You can really establish some specific clear ways to develop to grow which benefits, not just you and your day-to-day but your entire team, your entire organization and you know, it's really amazing how one small shift can create a really big
effect. So that is what I want to offer you today, strategic thinking plus feedback. Bigger picture as I'm recording this. It is still early February, which means you've got the whole year laid out in front of you. And so, the time is now to think about how are you practicing feedback with the folks on your team? I think it's often overlooked as sort of a boring necessity or something uncomfortable to be avoided, but it really is a valuable touch.
A point if you choose to see it that way, so that's what I've got for you. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you have an amazing week and I will talk to you next time. Hey, before you go. If you like this podcast leave a review. Tell me why you listen and what has helped you. Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.