Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello. I hope you're having an amazing day and you know what? If you're not, that's okay too, because some days are just like that. So, welcome. And today I want to share with you, the support and Authority map. It's a framework that I use to really organize all of the different soft skills that you need as a Leader and specifically, as a manager.
Once you move into that role where you're now managing humans, you need both a combination of self-awareness of communication. We talked about that in an earlier episode because that's what gives you the ability to build the most effective relationships with the people that you work with. It's both the combination of your own self awareness, as well, as how do. You relate with and communicate to other people. So that work gets done in the most easeful and most productive
and effective way. So the support and Authority map, most of the time when I teach this and if you've been in my class you've seen I have this really nice grid with boxes and colors but since this is a podcast, I will just do my best to describe to you what this is. All right? So Have two elements, we have support, and we have authority. And if you create a map with these two elements, you end up with four boxes support from low to high and Authority from low
to high and I want to clarify. Also that when I talk about Authority, what I mean is the quality that you have of Setting the tone of declaring, this is what is happening, or this is what the deadline is, or this is what is required in the same way that you author or are authentic. This sense of the one who is creating the clarity around something. So when I use Authority, it's not from a sense of overpowering or being a bully or trying to
exert your will against people. So if that's what you're thinking, I want you to have a different perspective. So think of authority in terms of author, authenticity, the sense of bringing Clarity and direction to whatever it is that you're engaging with, or presented with and then we have support. So, in one cot, quadrant we have high support, low Authority, in another.
We have low support, low Authority, Then we have low support, High Authority, and finally High support High Authority. And it's important to understand that these four areas are places. It's more about where you are. These are not two types. So this is not who you are. It really is a place that you can be, and depending on what's going on in your day or in your
life. Or with your team, you can visit any one of these Trent's, you can visit any one of these places, it will just depend on the day. So let me explain what. Each one of these places are the different qualities and characteristics of being in each place. And then I'll tell you about how this works, when you're engaging, with other people and
how this shows up at work. So let's start with high support low Authority. This looks like the person who has a high priority on keeping the The piece being friends with everyone. This is where we go when we're avoiding confrontation and also hard decisions and we tend to have difficulty standing up for our team but also standing up
for our self. So we're so focused on making sure everyone's feeling okay and everyone's feeling good and if you're a person who growing up in your world if that's the way that you tended to deal. Stress. Or when you're under pressure, you were the Peacekeeper or the one who wanted to just. I'll be really nice and I'll deescalate things and make sure everybody gets along. Then that might be the place where you tend to go. So that's high, support, low Authority.
Next, we have low support, low Authority, and that's where we are, when we're distant or distracted. This engaged when we are in avoidance, or we overextend ourselves and become unavailable. And that's also where we don't give any guidance or mentoring. And sometimes I've seen this come up in class when when one of my students will say I was promoted to this. Cereal. Roll and I keep going to my boss for guidance and mentoring and they just don't have any for me.
They just say, I trust you go do it. And I feel like I'm thrown in the deep end and I'd really like a little bit more mentoring here. And so what can happen when it shows up is it can either be, you know, a vote of confidence. Like yeah I trust you go figure this out and meanwhile, you're thinking I'm in AI.
Feel like I'm in a little over my head and I would I would be better off with a little Little bit more guidance here or it's the person who has so many other things going on and they're so
distracted. And so busy, this might be when if you've ever had a boss or a person you work with and they continually continually rescheduled your one-on-ones and maybe you're supposed to meet every week or every other week and you think look it's been six weeks and you keep pushing off this meeting and so you're feeling adrift your Saying like you don't have any guidance, you feel like the you know, the least important person on this person's to do list and you're
thinking like, you know, how am I supposed to move things forward or learn more about what's going on? If I can't you know sit down and have this conversation with you. So that's low support low Authority and typically if we're in that space, it's because we also have learned that when things get a little hectic or things, get kind of tense.
The best thing to do is just get out of town, make yourself busy doing something else, and things will sort themselves out, and then you can come back when things are more steady and then just do your thing. So, for some of us, that is the most familiar way to deal with high stress, high pressure situations and especially with a high-stress relationships as
well. Now we have low support, High Authority. And that's where we put a high priority on the work and we forget about the humans doing the work, that's where we get really controlling and inflexible. And that's also where micromanaging shows up and very often, you know, when we go here, it's because we have a familiarity that when things get Intense, when I feel pressure, or when I feel stress.
I think, if only I can exert, my will, if only, I can control what is happening and control these people, I can make things be okay. That's the also, the perspective of I am, the person who has the most experience. You need to do things my way, or I am the one who sees the correct solution or path, your job is to get in line and do it. I'm telling you to do. Do sometimes to that shows up when people are feeling insecure if they're worried that, oh my
gosh. If I don't, if I don't, you know, if my team doesn't get this right, I'm afraid it will look badly on me and so I'm going to push into the team. Here's what needs to happen and it has to happen in exactly this way without regard for the human element without regard for communicating the bigger picture or we're you're presenting what? Required from a place of feeling secretly scared. The sense of. I really hope I don't blow this. This is super important. It has to go this certain way.
And again, none of these places are bad places to be. None of these styles of relating with people are bad things in and of themselves. They're just very human and very familiar. And what we tend to do is humans, is we tend to bring, you know, hey, this worked for me in the past, I'll bring this with me. Me into this new situation or into the future. So, when you start to see and notice where are you, where do you tend to go? What, what is your pattern when
you feel under stress? Do you try to control everything and everyone do you tend to disengage and get avoidant and just wait for things to cool off. Do you tend to think? Oh, if I can just be really, really nice to everybody and make sure everybody is happy. Then things will be. Okay? Notice for you, what your tendency is because that will then help you to learn. Okay? So I need to bring up more of this other aspect.
If you're a person who tends to be high support low Authority, then your growth area and your challenge is going to be around. How can I bring more Authority into the way that I communicate and Lead my team? How can I be more? Decisive, how can I have challenging or difficult or uncomfortable conversations, how can I protect my teen, how can I stand up for them? How can I ask for what I need or what the team needs in order to succeed?
Those will be the kinds of questions that you'll ask on the opposite end of the spectrum. If you're a low support High Authority than your challenge and your growth area will be around the question of how can I be more supportive? How can I bring more human perspective to my team? And I'll tell you that one gets very tricky if you're working with a lot of people and especially if you are working
very remotely. If you don't have a lot of in person contact and your only communicating through video, through messaging, through the written word, it can be harder to feel a real human connection. Ian and one example that I want to share from a student who had taken this when we talked about low support High Authority, she said, oh my gosh, that's me. And I said, like, tell me more. What how do you mean?
And she said well I right now and based in San Francisco, but I'm managing this project and we're doing this work force training in Manila and I only get out to the Philippines. Maybe once a quarter to meet with the people with everybody in person, And there are 50 people in our office in Manila, that I'm trying to train up and get them on up to speed on this
new workflow. And I'm so focused on the task and the deadlines and what needs to happen when and there are so many of them and they're so far away. And we've got time zone challenges. She said, I don't know how to connect with them as humans. I think of them as like work units. Need to execute on certain tasks within a certain time. And so for her it really brought up this question of. Okay, so what does this look like? How can I acknowledge that? Yeah they are humans too.
Some of this is probably stressful and uncomfortable for them to how can I bring more support? Because just being focused from the authoritative spot isn't going to be the most effective way to manage. And to lead. Now the last place that we have to talk about is high support and high Authority. And what I found is that most of us and most of the students that come to my class, we don't exist in that in that Dimension
without a little bit of effort. Because most of us have one of those first three spaces that we feel most comfortable in that we feel most familiar in, and we have to do a little bit of work, too. In ourselves into a place of high support and high Authority. So here's what that looks like.
When we are in the place of high support and high Authority, that's when we can be clear kind and direct with others, we are being skillful in giving direction and corrective feedback and that's where we can effectively advocate for our team. And for our self and this tends to build trust because it's really the least secretly manipulative style of the others because you're being direct.
But you're doing it from a place of kindness and being clear and that doesn't mean you have to have all the answers or know everything that also means that if you don't know or if something seems like it's not going well you're not trying to hide it either with niceness or with blame or with frustration. And that you simply say, okay, this isn't working and we need to find a way to fix this. I don't have all the answers, but help me understand what's going on.
We can figure this out together. I don't have all the answers, but I can start to talk to other people and figure out what we're going to need to do. I can listen, I can learn. I'm here to help you. Let's figure this out so high support and high Authority is a fantastic place to go. Go because it does build trust, but you have to have both that measure of self awareness and communication and play.
When you have those two things and are continuing to develop that, it makes it a lot easier to step into high support, High Authority. Okay. Now, the great thing is that when you begin to understand for yourself, where you tend to go, most often, Where you tend to go. Most often again, it's not like who you are as a person. It's where you tend to go.
It's built on your habits. Your patterns, the things that have worked in the past, you learn, where you tend to go as a person and then you realize, oh, yes everyone. I work with also has a place on the map. That is most familiar to them where they tend to go. So different people on Team different people at work will also respond differently because they'll need different kinds of communication and they'll need something slightly different
from you. So some of your team will need more Authority, they'll want more clarity. They'll think you look, I don't need to be your friend. I just want clarity about what it is that I need to do. And what's expected of me, and I want to be acknowledged for when I do that. They want maybe more Authority
from you. Some people will Really want to feel support they'll want to feel cared for as a human that want to feel recognized that they're dealing with challenges and that you know they'll want that emotional connection to what they're doing. They'll want maybe the high level Vision to understand why this feels so important or if they're struggling they'll want a feeling of of perhaps empathy like I get it. I know this is hard and here's
how we're going to move forward. So depending And who you're working with? It will help you to learn. How can you be flexible and adapt so that you can get your team. What they need in order to perform their best. And one of the other pieces to this is you really will need great listening skills. So again, coming back to communication and self awareness, self awareness and listening come into play when you realize. Okay, there there is more here
than I understand. And I want, Understand more and it's okay that I don't know everything. I'm not supposed to know everything and the communication comes in when you realize that a huge part of communication is listening, Can you listen in a way that builds trust? Can you listen in a way that invites your team or someone that you work with, to open up and say, okay, this is really what's getting in the way right now.
The way that you listen can help everything and can really make you more effective in working with the other humans that you have. At work. So that is the support and Authority map and I know there's a lot more to talk about with respect to this and some of it too will depend a lot on the particular situation that you're facing. So if you're not officially managing people but you really need to manage more by
influence. And this might be, I've had students and they say, well, I manage our volunteers and so I'm not their boss. But I essentially have to manage their work and make sure that they show up and make sure that
they do it in this correct way. You know, that will look a little bit different than if you are directly managing a handful of people or you maybe even just one person who is in your office and you see them everyday and you you can build a different kind of relationship with someone that you are under the same roof with, but I want you to start thinking about for yourself which of these Places feels most familiar to you.
Hi, support low Authority, low support, low Authority or low support High Authority. And then, what does it look like to cultivate and bring up whatever it is. That'll get you into a high support, High Authority place, and it might be related to specific people. There might be certain people, you work with, and they just create a response in you that She wanted to be very controlling or make you become very appeasing or make you want to check out. So be aware in your own world.
Who are the people? What are the situations like what is the map look like in your world? And then also begin to consider. Okay. What is it? That other people need to work best and if you don't know, ask In your one-on-ones or in your conversations with the people that you work with you can ask and say hey I would love to know. Maybe I've never asked this before but how do you best like
to work? Tell me about the best manager you ever had what was great about that person and again you know you're not promising that you can be that best person. But you want to listen and understand and be open to getting a better sense of what is it that this person needs to work well. Because we're different, you know, we're human and, you know, it can change. So maybe what worked best last year or last month is a little bit different than what they need.
In this particular situation, it's more important to be present and fluid and adaptable than to be absolutely rigid and unchanging and feel like you have to know everything. So hopefully that comes as a relief and a little bit of good news. So that is the support and Authority map. I hope that has been helpful. If you have questions about it, please let me know.
If you're listening through anchor you can leave me a message or you can always just reach me through my website or through Linkedin. Thanks so much for listening. If you know it's time to level less but you feel your perfectionism Self Doubt and uncertainty getting in the way then come work with me. We'll have six months of one-on-one coaching and it all starts by going to my website. Kim nickel.com coaching and joining my waitlist talk to you soon.