Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome, I'm glad you're here. I hope you're doing well. And today I want to start with the celebration last week. This podcast crossed over 50,000 listens. That is so exciting to me. When I started this podcast, I created it for the students that were in my A 90-minute class in San Francisco. I wanted them to have something that would support their learning even after class had ended. And it really began to grow.
But at the very beginning and you know, this, because I am certain there have been times that you have created something or had an idea for something and put it out into the world. In the beginning, there is nobody listening and often. That's what we tell ourselves to keep us stuck. Will say, nobody's listening who would want to hear this.
And so you hold yourself back from creating work and from releasing it. And I want to normalize that that stage of the creative and creation process is just a Right of the process. It's just one stage of it. And the thing is is you don't want to stay there.
You don't want to get stuck there and so you can choose to create something because you love it because, you know, it will help one person and release it into the world and then be surprised and delighted and celebrate as it goes out and meets the people and needs to hell. Help. So even though I'm at 50,000 downloads now and there are hundreds of listeners from all around the world and I love it when you write to me.
So, definitely feel free to send me a note or leave a review, but it starts at it starts with an idea, it starts with your belief in what you're doing, even when in the beginning, it seems like nobody else is Watching or listening and you might use that to question what you're doing. And instead, knowing that, that's just a normal stage and you can continue with the creative work and the process of getting it out there. So thank you for being a listener.
And for helping me with that, exciting number, you're part of that celebration to I wouldn't be celebrating if you weren't listening. So we're in this together. And it ties in a little bit with what I wanted to share with you today, which is the idea of purpose over Perfection. And I think what happens is in the context of work and in the context of managing people is that when we are an individual contributor and we have a specific task that is ours to do
or a specific problem. That is yours to solve. We can focus on how Can I solve this in the most perfect way? How can I be precise and comprehensive? And we can really know narrow our focus into the one specific task or the thing that is ours to do. And then when we start managing people, one of two things will happen either. You then expect others on your team to have that same level of focus and perfection.
That you do. So you think they should do things, the way you do things and that will create pressure and frustration or you will feel frustrated because you can't be as Hands-On as you were before. And the thing that you got really good at which was managing a specific task or problem in a very perfect way. Now that your man And people you're not doing the work directly, you're managing and helping the work to get done through the efforts of others.
That's really a different job and you might not realize that at first because you'll just assume. You know, the way that you do things is how other people do things and so there can be a sense of Disconnect. And then what happens is we over emphasize. The idea of perfection we can forget about The humans that are doing the work and so we can then become micromanaging. We can exert a lot of pressure and we lose sight of what really
matters. And I think this gets reinforced for a lot of us through our childhood and through our education, because we're often rewarded and celebrated for doing things in accordance to someone else's standard of perfection. And for some of us, we have Our own internal standard of perfection and we like to be very meticulous with those things and that's just normal for us. And we don't always understand why other people are not that way.
We forget that people very so how this can show up and a couple of stories I want to share with you, so, in some contexts, well, actually, let me back up. So, the reason why this Matter is we want to pay attention to the purpose. The reason why the relationship of outcomes, the desired goal we want to spend more time being curious about that and giving attention to that purpose rather than Perfection by itself. And there are times when the idea of perfection is really important.
For example, my brother used to work in manufacturing working with these really big machines and he was managing the people who worked on these machines and he was responsible for some of the training of the people. And also knowing when different parts of the machines would need to be replaced and that became really important. Both the training aspect how We were trained to use this equipment and also understanding how often a certain part in a machine needed to be replaced.
That became really important to know, in order to keep people safe, because if people used the equipment wrong, they could become seriously hurt or if a part in the machine wore out and it was not expected. Then again the machine could malfunction and people could get hurt and of course that creates disruption and slow down on the production line. So in that sense it's important to to have a level of, you know Perfection and how you trade in how you use the equipment.
But the purpose behind, it is about ensuring a safe working environment. It is about Ensuring a smooth and consistent and predictable process and production line in that context, that's the reason why we care about perfection in contrast to someone that worked with years ago. And she came to me, feeling frustrated, because she had gotten a performance review and her manager had given her all of this list. Of things that she didn't do
perfectly. And some of them were very nitpicky, very small little things and this person was feeling discouraged like she couldn't do anything, right? Her manager, noticed, all of these things she did wrong according to her and I asked her, I said, well, did your manager tell you anything, you did. Well, did your manager highlight any of your strengths? Or accomplishments or celebrate anything about you. And the way that you work and this person said no, she didn't.
And I thought about it for a moment and I asked what was this manager doing before they were your manager was their job? And she thought about it and she said, oh she worked in management consulting for one of the big consulting firms and that was the AHA. And I said, you know, I said, so what you're telling me is that before this person became your manager, their job was to go into other companies.
Find all the things that weren't working perfectly and then deliver that as a report, like that was the measure of success is how many things can we find that are not working? Well that could be better. Like the her job was to optimize processes and other companies and she said oh Yes.
And we realized then that the manager was probably bringing that same attitude that same idea of being successful means that I look very closely at all the potential things that are going wrong and I surface all of them. And I don't notice the things that are going well and it's not that the manager was trying to be demoralizing.
It was Plea, that she had lost sight of purpose because she was moving towards her version of perfection, which was let me give you comprehensive negative feedback, even though it doesn't actually help. And you can listen to more of the episodes in the, in the stack here on feedback. Because that's something I talked about quite a lot. But it's just very interesting to know, right? Like what Is the purpose and in this case it seems like that manager had lost sight one other story.
I want to share, I was talking with a friend of mine recently who was also having some friction with her manager and my friend described herself as really, no, really creative and she likes, you know, she's like, I'm kind of like a jazz musician. I like to improvise, I like to figure this out as I go. I'm really creative and expansive in my thinking. And she was having some friction with her manager who really wanted a level of perfection and precision that didn't make sense to her.
And she was also getting some negative feedback as a result of these different styles. Well, she learned later that before her manager was her manager, she had a background in software development for aircraft. Like the level of perfection required to make sure that the software running a plane is functioning is really important. We want it to be perfect otherwise people could get hurt a plane might fall out of the sky people could die.
So it makes a lot of sense when we look at the balance between purpose and Perfection, and what is the background that shapes your relationship to that? And write, what is the background that informs how you evaluate or how much emphasis you put on the Perfection piece the way that you want things to
be and is that really required? Is that useful in this current context and maybe it is and maybe it isn't but you want to be be aware of why you're driving towards Perfection and I say this, as if you're the one who is moving, you know, driving in that direction but it's also helpful if you're thinking about the people that you work with, whether it's your manager or other people on other teams and understanding, why some folks get really obsessed about precision and Perfection and
some folks, don't They have perhaps a different priority and it doesn't mean that one person is, right? And one person is wrong. One person is careful. When person is careless, it doesn't have to mean that at all. It can really be about what is the underlying purpose and the overall context, that is shaping, the sense of reward and the sense of success. So consider consider all of that. And when you are, Are in the role of manager.
Then your awareness of purpose over Perfection becomes really valuable because people also want to understand why when there is a request or when you delegate work to them. Or when you say I know you want to work on this but right now I need you to work on this other thing.
Instead people want to know why and part of your role as the manager is that you have a broader perspective, Is you have a better understanding of how different things fit together and the more that you can articulate the purpose, the reason why people are being asked to do work, or the reason why a certain deadline is important and a certain level of perfection is or isn't important.
The more that you can explain that and convey the relationship to folks the easier it is for people to To understand and get behind it and have less friction in that relationship. It also builds trust when people feel like decisions are not simply arbitrary but they are grounded in thoughtful thinking. So notice for yourself. What is your relationship to purpose to Perfection and consider the context that you're working in now and choose the most useful approach?
Maybe it's Perfection but often I find, we get a little overexcited about that when maybe it doesn't matter as much as we think, always. Convective, purpose, purpose over Perfection tends to be a more useful. Adaptive, and responsive point with which, to consider the work that you're doing. Ask yourself, what is useful here? What is needed here? And let that be the guide. All right, thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time.
Hey, before you go, if you like this podcast, please leave a review. Tell me why you listen and what has helped you? Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.