Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. If you are new to this podcast, my name is Kim nickel. I'm a coach, and I know that I've had a lot of new people listening in, because I can see that the numbers of downloads on my podcast have been growing and I can also see that you are listening in from around the world. Old, you might not know this but I am in San Francisco, but you
might be in all kinds of places. I know I have a lot of listeners across the us but also Canada. So hello to you. Also in the United Kingdom. So I'm waving to you all. I've got a lot of listeners calling in and listening from Australia, which I love and also the Philippines which is a very special to me in my heart. Because my mom is from the Philippines. I have a lot of relatives and
just a lot of history there. So I really just want to start today's episode by giving a bit of a, shout out to you to my community of listeners from wherever you are listening from.
And this is an interesting thing to just to offer as a reflection, which is no matter where in the world you are no matter what kind of organization you work for whether it's in health, Care or in technology or in a law firm or in philanthropy or for the government but I have clients that work in all these different Industries. But so interesting is that many of the challenges that come up in the course of managing humans and working with humans at work, they will show up in every part
of the world in every industry because you know where humans are not always. He's really good at learning how to work with each other. So, here we are. Learning some new ways of thinking about it and some new approaches to try out yourself in your workplace. Ultimately my goal and my desire is for you to feel more, he's to feel less burdened to feel more capable and confident in how you deal with all of. The humans at work and all of the human stuff. So that brings us into today's
episode. Oh, and I also wanted to share a celebration that also connects into my topic today. One of my clients was we were talking about all of the things that she has learned and accomplished over the last several months of us working together. She said something really interesting. She said my boyfriend has noticed a change and I asked her, like, what does that mean? What I have, what has he said?
And she said that her boyfriend commented that she doesn't talk about work as much as she used to and that she's a happier person and I love that so much because I think sometimes we don't even realize how our work experience effects all these other areas of our life. And so she wanted to work on work-life balance and she wanted to Learn how to set better boundaries at work and how to communicate more directly.
And as we were working on that, one of the effects is that she has been able to achieve better work-life balance and so she's feeling less overwhelmed. She has more time for other things and hobbies and things that she cares about and she's generally feeling happier in her life. Which means that when she's spending time with her boyfriend, she's like Less interested in talking about work. I mean partly because she gets to bring that conversation to me.
Like she has time on her calendar, where she knows she's going to talk about work. We're going to coach on what she's being challenged with and really help her to develop her skill set and her mindset so that she can be the kind of leader. She wants to be at work and then when she's with her boyfriend, she just gets to enjoy. Being with him and doing things together. So I love that and I wanted to share that with you.
So today's episode, I wanted to speak to you about the emotional labor of managing people and what that can also bring with?
It is a sense of isolation or a feeling of loneliness because what happens is and you know, initially before we manage people, one of the ways that we connect with and bond with our Colleagues is by complaining about management and I don't mean this in a in a deeply negative way but in the same way where we look to connect with others through shared experience through empathy and talking about, oh yeah this is kind of
frustrating or yeah. I don't really know what management or what leadership is thinking. I don't know why they're doing that. It's often one of the easiest things to connect with.
Colleagues about is commiserating to share in the frustrations that you encounter when you're working with people, but then what happens when you are managing people number one, you start to feel a bit more pressure to maintain kind of like a peaceful tone, so you certainly would not want to complain to your team about the challenges that you're facing
with. The people that are, you know, in higher up in the organization, but you also will probably feel more guarded about voicing your concerns to your peers and colleagues. Because now it starts to seem a little bit less like a little bit less okay to do that. And there's more of this sense I've noticed with my clients of feeling like that's not how you want to. Build relationships at work and needing to be a bit more guarded with what you talk about and how you talk about it.
You're being a bit more strategic a bit, more thoughtful and this sense to like it was okay to connect with people through that kind of commiserating when you were an individual contributor but now is a team lead, the message that you want to be sending is different and the other thing that happens is that the higher up you go and the more More responsibilities. You get that starts to feel like more pressure, right? I've talked about that before this feeling that there's more pressure.
Now, there's more at stake and as this is happening very often. Your manager is now even busier than before. So has less time available, and they might simply have less energy to do any emotional labor for checking in with you. Even if They are really well intentioned and they really want to support you. They are already just busy and overwhelmed and may not be able to provide that level or frequency of support so that can happen.
And so what, you know, we tend to do when we start to feel more pressure and a little bit more guarded and a little bit more overwhelmed. And if you're facing new kinds of challenges, so when we are managing people, there's a lot of emotional labor in the sense that you are now not simply managing tasks and work getting completed. Now, you are managing different personalities, both the people on your team as well as managing up your also.
Now, managing expectations in a new way you are managing confidential information. You might have information that Will affect your team and it might be around layoffs or it might be around planning. You might have access to information that you know, will affect your team. And yet you are not allowed to share that until like you get the go-ahead or there's some other event that needs to
happen. So you will also have access to more behind-the-scenes information that now you have to hold in confidence and can't talk about that with your team and the people that you see most often. One of the things that, you know, when I asked people to tell me what are the signs of a great manager, you know how like what are the things that a great manager does. A common thing that comes up is people will say oh my manager really Shields me from all this other noise or from all these
other demands. So I can really focus on the work that I need to do. Well, That's great. But then, when you're in the role of needing to Shield people, that becomes part of the emotional labor that you're now doing to help your team to focus and to keep all of the, you know, negotiation or pressure or concerns that you have perspective on. Now, you're now keeping that away from your team. So if you find that Becoming a manager and stepping into this higher level of leadership
leaves. You feeling a bit more isolated a bit more lonely because you don't feel like you have folks that you can talk with about that and also feeling somewhat drained because now there's all this other work around the emotional management that you didn't you didn't fully realize coming into it. What would that entail?
All I just want to name this to normalize it and I'm so that you can see it and start to think about it in a new kind of way rather than simply being reactive to it or feeling like you have to keep your head above water. Instead I want you to just realize oh it makes perfect sense. Of course, there are all of these new things that are being asked of me in this job and I didn't fully Realize it. And that's why I'm feeling that
sense of being drained, right? Or that sense of being isolated. So there are three maybe four things. It was debating on. And if this is like three things or four things, but I think it's kind of like four things and the framework I'm going to share with you is something that I shared very recently with a team. I was facilitating a session for them, they were having a
week-long team. Off-site and they brought me in on the first day to do two hours to facilitate some conversations that they were wanting to have with each other. And here is the framework that I offer to them. That I want to offer to you because it will help you to both become aware of all of the emotional labor part and also I find it a very helpful framework that you can keep with you. Like it's very lightweight, it's not complicated. Added and it can give you that moment of perspective.
It can help you learn to think strategically and give you a little bit more space so that you know what to do next. If you've ever felt like what like what do I do next? This might really help you with that. So the first thing is to Simply pause and this is what keeps you from being Active taking a moment to pause, gives you a little bit of time to gather your thoughts and get a fresh
perspective. And in the session that I facilitated last week, one of the people on the team, had such a great contribution in the conversation and she said, oh oh, oh this is what this is what I needed.
You know, earlier in the month, she said that she had been responding to emails, very Very quickly and she thought about it. Now she thought, if I had just paused then I would have reduced the confusion because she was responding very quickly to her emails, but she wasn't giving herself time to pause and reflect gather, all the information, and the perspective she needed.
And so she was acting quickly, but it was increasing the amount of confusion, which Increase the amount of work and increased. The amount of emails that were moving between like everybody on the team. And so the pause is really important because that is what will save you time and it will save you energy and by extension, it will save time of everyone else and it will help use everyone else's energy better as well. So, taking a moment to pause.
Pause and then three things to follow and this is a framework. I want you to think about how you can use this in your own work, Day celebration observation, and iteration celebration is when you pause and you ask yourself what's working? What are we doing? Well, what is going surprisingly? Well, what did we not expect to go this? Well you want to celebrate it for a couple of reasons.
One is there's a lot you can learn from the things that are working and we very often can skip that because we think everything's working there. Great, let's move on. But you actually want to pause and get more Curious to understand what's working. And why is there anything we can learn? From the celebration that will help us with this new challenge. Also celebration feels good.
People want to feel acknowledged I want to feel recognized and appreciated and celebrations, do that, even if it's something small, we don't want to wait for the big stuff to celebrate, we want to celebrate each little step along the way because that is what helps us continue to keep going, especially if we're facing other kinds of challenges.
The second piece is observation. This is where mindfulness becomes really helpful because mindfulness is the Of being observant without judgment or story with observation. You want to pause and ask yourself. What am I noticing right now? You want to look for behaviors rather than judgments or stories? This is what will help you to also uncover any assumptions that might not be serving you. That might be getting in the way, so that pause and be observant.
Just notice, what am I noticing In This Moment? It'll also help to bring you. You kind of out of the chaos of overwhelm and ride into the present, which gives us a little more space, a little more calm. So you can be more resourceful and bring more of your own insight and perspective into the moment. This also reminds me of the
story. I shared a few episodes ago where one of my clients had this realization where you know what got her out of imposter syndrome was when she stopped asking, am I? Enough is my background good enough compared to all these people. And instead she started to ask, what can I contribute to help this team be successful and by changing that perspective by taking a moment to notice to notice and be observant and ask, what can I contribute that will help make this team be
successful? Completely changed her approach. Got her out of the Imposter syndrome and actually got her too. A place of feeling confident and what she had to offer and to engage with her team in a completely different way. And then, the last one is iteration and that simply acknowledges that you are in a dynamic relationship with your work. And with all of the people that you work with, it is not static.
That means the goal is not to perfectly plan, how things will go. The goal is to recognize, this is a dynamic situation, things are changing. Sure, we can make a plan but the purpose of the plan is to help me. Think through all of these things, it is not to cling to the plan. It is not to wait until I have a perfect plan. Iteration acknowledges. We learn by doing and iteration leaves room for Change and room to experiment. It leaves room to try different things and this is so helpful.
If you are a perfectionist If you are a really hard on yourself, when things don't go to plan, or if you are really hard on yourself because you feel like you don't quite meet the level of perfection that you hold for yourself. Then remember, you know, Perfection is not the point iteration being actively present and engaged and dynamic and learning like Fast learning is so valuable. So these four elements first, we And then we can bring that pause into. How are you celebrating?
What are you observing and thinking iteratively it when we think to also about these different elements I find it helps us stay connected to compassion and to Grace and you
need both. I mean as a human generally you absolutely need some self-compassion and some Grace but especially Really, when you are in a position of leadership, when people are looking to you, with questions, when people are looking to you for guidance, and people are looking to you to set the tone that self-compassion and that sense of Grace will help you be better because it will help to unhook and eliminate you from all of the pressure and the overwhelm and
it will get you out of that isolation and that kind of lonely feeling. So that is what I wanted to share with you today and please do take this implement this. Try this out for yourself. If you wish to work with me, one-on-one, I am taking new clients. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can sign up for a
consult. And we can make a road map for what will work on and how its part of the work that I love the most is being able to support you one-on-one through the challenges that you face and then being able to celebrate with you as you start to grow and really like just experienced a better work and life experience. So that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening for wherever you are in the world and I will talk to you next time.
Hey, before you go, if you like this podcast, please leave a review. Tell me why you Ian and what has helped you. Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.