 So, the first thing that I want to say tonight is to just give you all a really big round of applause because I've been working in management and leadership development for a really long time now and I have to say that anyone who will take time out of their personal schedule to come along and listen to somebody talk about how you might become a better manager is probably already better than your average manager. So, let's start off. Big round of applause for yourselves. Yay! So, I was actually thinking about it today. I left the university. I was a lecturer in the management department about 15 years ago and I went off into the real world and got a real job and worked with real leaders and real managers. And so, what I'm going to present to you tonight is not a series of theoretical frameworks. So, I'm going to present to you the kind of insights from my own experience working with first-time managers and I hope that you will find it useful. I'm going to talk for about an hour and then there will be time for questions. So, do ask what it is that you want to know. What we're going to cover, thank you to those who filled in the survey. I'm going to kind of reflect some of what you told me back to you so you know who is in the room with you. I'm going to talk a little bit about what managers actually do because I know that there are a number of people here who are not yet managers who might be a bit curious to know what that job actually involves. I'm going to talk about this major transition that we make when we become managers and being an individual contributor to actually managing people and some of the challenges that that transition can actually throw up. I'm going to talk about three common challenges for first-time managers that I have observed some of which came through in the survey. And I'm going to give you three frameworks that you can try out. The reason I'm giving you different ways of looking at this is that not everybody, well everybody is different. So everybody's approach to how they develop themselves as a manager will be different. So I want to give you some options in terms of thinking about your development as a manager. And when we send round the sheets for tonight there will be a couple of extra slides at the end of the presentation which if you want to go through in more detail one of the frameworks that I'm going to present to you it gives you some questions that kind of guide you through a little bit of deeper thinking on that. Okay, is that clear? Awesome. Oh and audience participation is required. You know, to manage it's a verb, it's a doing word, so you have to do something. Okay, who are you and why are you here? So one thing that I thought was kind of interesting is that we actually have lots of newbies, people who are relatively new to management, about just over a third of you. We have a few of you who aren't managers and a couple of HR managers who don't manage people but have come along to kind of learn what you guys actually go through when you work into that role. So I'm not a manager, 30% of you including two. So we've got very inexperienced people and then we've got less than two years so the most experienced of you are here as well. So we've kind of got both ends of the spectrum. What I find interesting about that and I guess this is the first insight I want to share is you never really feel like you're doing a good job. It doesn't matter if you've been doing it for two months or two years, you'll still be thinking, I can get better at this. So if you're thinking, you know, I don't know what I'm doing, don't worry, that never goes away, you just get better at being okay with that. So how many people do you directly manage? So most people around about one or two or three or four, 10% of you, 9 or 10 people in your first management gig. Now that's tough. I don't know which company is doing that to you. You might need to have a word with your HR manager. Do you also manage people as part of short-term projects? So that's in addition to your line manager responsibility, you also manage people in projects just over half of you. Now why I ask that question is that that's the future of management, that's the future of leadership. As organisations evolve, we're moving more and more to being project-based organisations, which means that you have to lead manager team of people that don't report to you, that you have no authority over. So some of the frameworks, the techniques I'm going to talk to you about today, they go across the spectrum. So whether or not you have any authority over the people you're managing, or whether you just need to influence them, some of the tips I'm going to give you apply to both. Two-thirds of you internally promoted into the role. So that has its pluses and its minuses. And then 60% of you now manage people who were previously your peers. And again, that can be a bonus or it can be a real challenge. So your three, your top three. Number one, getting things done through other people instead of doing it yourself. Now that's a bit counter-intuitive, isn't it? You kind of think you've got all these people, or at least one or two that can do things for you. That should be a good thing. But it's difficult. Balancing the different needs of your direct reports and then letting your direct reports do things the way that they want to instead of how they would do it. So what I'd really like to just have a spend a few minutes on now is hearing from you and hearing why these things are difficult. Who'd like to kind of, you know, give a bit of an example about why, for example, it's tough to get things done through other people instead of doing it yourself. OK, so lots and lots of reasons that these three things might be challenging. And one thing that comes through is different people might find them challenging, but for different reasons. So what do managers actually do? Now I've shown my age, but, you know, if you're laughing at this, you're showing your age too. If you're going, who the eff is that guy? Google him. So what do managers actually do? So part of the job that managers actually do, which first-time managers sometimes don't realise, is that there's a lot of managing up. So this is to do with communicating to your direct manager, sometimes communicating further up the organisation, some of the stuff that you might be doing around performance reviews or developmental discussions that you're having with people, that is being fed into things further up in the organisation. So this is important information for, you know, making decisions about who's getting a bonus or who might be, you know, tagged as a high potential or a talent. If your customer facing, if your team is customer facing, you might be a really important channel of information going up to the organisation so that they can make decisions. And you may be, depending on the size and the complexity of your organisation, contributing to strategic discussions. So at the same time as you're having to manage your day-to-day operational responsibilities, you're also having to kind of have that big picture of you and actually be having some of these discussions around what's the organisation actually trying to do and not just what your team is trying to do. So in the same way that your individual team member may not understand what your entire team is responsible for, your team might not have the view of what's actually going on at the organisational level. So managers often have this kind of, you know, almost split personality where they have to be down in the detail, understanding, you know, kind of the day-to-day operations, but at the same time thinking about that in a strategic context if part of their role is to actually contribute to those discussions. Everybody's favourite compliance and reporting. So, you know, if you've got budget responsibility, you actually have to do something about that and fill in lots of forms. There's usually lots of HR forms as well that you have to fill in and you may have some operational metrics. Depending on the organisation that you work for, you might have lots of admin to do. You're in a start-up, you know, blessed start-ups you probably don't have very much, but as your organisation grows and becomes more successful, you've got all that to look forward to. And then you may be representing your organisation. So at least, you know, if you're leading a team and you're interfacing with clients, you start to have more responsibility, you know, you're not just representing yourself now, you're sort of seen as someone from that organisation within the industry sector, possibly within the recruitment process. So, you know, in that way, you can sometimes become part of the employer brand as well. So there's kind of a lot that you do that you may not be aware of in your capacity as a manager that you may not have done prior to that. And then there's the kind of managing down. And this is really what I'm going to focus on tonight because I think a lot of first-time managers, this is where they sort of struggle a bit more. So things like cascading strategy to your team. So when we talk about, you know, my team member doesn't understand the big picture, part of your responsibility is to cascade that strategy. It's to help them understand the big picture, operationalising the strategy through your team. So that's around helping them understand what is really important and should have a lot of time spent on it versus, you know, what isn't perhaps so important because it actually doesn't contribute to the strategic goals at all. They don't know that. They have no way of determining that if you haven't helped them understand that. So that can be a kind of real challenge to first-time managers to realise that they are the only channel through which that information gets to their direct reports. Communicating down particularly around change, there is an assumption at senior levels that managers are part of management and that means they will assume that you will be on the side of the decision-makers when it comes to a change. So there will be an expectation that you will kind of implement whatever decisions have been made. And that can be a real challenge at any level of management if you haven't contributed to the discussion or if you don't agree with it. Hiring new employees, you know, the first time you have to hire someone that can be a bit scary. Evaluating people, particularly if those people were your peers, you know, a couple of months ago, that can be a bit scary. And then developing people. So both in terms of the skills and knowledge that they need to do the job in terms of understanding what their aspirations are and where they'd like to go with their career and supporting them to do that. And then understanding what the organisational's goals are around developing the people who work there. Because organisations also have a set of behaviours or skills or knowledge that they want to build in the organisation to build capability. And since you're the person who understands your team members the best, they're going to look to you to be really instrumental in doing that. And you guys really matter. You know, in terms of why people stay or leave with an organisation, not liking their manager is the number one reason. So you can have the best CEO in the world. They can be wandering around, having visions, inspiring everyone. But if your team member goes to work and is a day-in, day-out, bad experience with their direct manager, they will be out the door. So you guys really, really matter. More than them. But don't say how long I told you that. So individual contributor to manager. An individual contributor. Now this is HR speak, but I hope it kind of makes sense. So an individual contributor is somebody in an organisation who just does a job. They have no responsibility for anybody else. They don't manage anybody. They might lead project teams every now and again. But by and large, they come in, they do a job, and they are acknowledged and rewarded for doing that job. If you are the best individual contributor in your team, you may get promoted to manager. Now, even though we know that this is often quite a bad idea and skills required to do your individual contributor job are not the same as required to do the manager job, organisations continue to do this. There's kind of this expectation that just because you're good at one thing, you'll be good at something else. And some organisations do this quite well. They actually support people and they may even make a conscious choice not to promote that person to a management role and promote somebody else who they think actually is a better manager who might not be the best individual contributor. But a lot of them will just kind of go, well, you got the best performance reviews for the last three years, you can have the job and expect that you're just going to continue to shine. So what that can be like if you don't kind of immediately take to management is that you go from a work experience to you are the star performer, you're used to being lavished with praise, you're used to being the smartest person in the room, the person who comes up with the great ideas, you know, who everybody turns to when there's a tricky problem. And then all of a sudden, you can't do you. You have to do other people. You have to get things done through other people. So all those amazing skills and that knowledge that you had when you're doing your individual contributor role, you can't use it because now you have to work with people who maybe you don't see as being as competent as yourself. You have to develop them. You have to be really clear with them about what the expectations are. You have to kind of bite your tongue and sit on your hands while they struggle through because they have to learn how to do that job now because your new job is to manage them. That can be tough. You used to be your own advocate. So, you know, you only really had to look after yourself. So if you were having a discussion with your manager or with somebody, you would only ever be representing your own point of view. So, you know, if you disagreed about the direction that the team was taking or you wanted to do a project in a particular way, you would just go and make your case and then the manager would have to balance the competing views of your team members and come up with some way to try and make you all more or less happy or at least, you know, unhappy but, you know, still productive. You were being... used to being evaluated and developed, you know, you'd go into these conversations, especially if you're a superstar and you'd get your five or whatever, you know, your A+, whatever your evaluation was and then your manager would say, you know, what would you like? What are your aspirations? And you'd tell them and then, you know, they'd kind of find a way to help you get developed. So you felt like somebody took an interest in you and that they really cared about you. But now that's your job. So, you know, these people come in and sometimes you'll think they've got really unrealistic expectations. So, you know, you'll ask them for aspirations and they'll tell... I see some knowing smiles going on. They'll tell you what their dream is and you'll be thinking, oh, my God, never in a million years. But you can't say that at least not in those words. So you have to start, you know, thinking, okay, I need to respect this person's their dream, their vision and I need to think about how I can actually help them to, you know, go along that path. You used to be accountable for your own performance and that, if you're still in that position, that is really gold because it means that you get a lot of flexibility. So, you know, if you're the kind of person who likes to leave everything to the last minute, get the adrenaline rush on and then kind of hit that deadline pulling in all nighter to get something done on time, when it was just you, you could do that because you knew, I'm going to get this done, right? Now you're responsible for your team's performance. So you've got two to ten people who might all be thinking, I've got this, I can get this done. But you don't see any of them doing anything because they're not doing it the way that you would do it, right? So you're kind of like, depending on your own, depending on your own style, they might be kind of bringing them up every five minutes or texting them or saying, have you done this? And they're kind of like, yeah, I'm totally on top of it, but you don't believe them. Or they might be coming to you when you're thinking this is not important, this is not a priority, but it's a priority to them so they're banging on your door every five minutes wanting to get some feedback. So you have to manage them doing the things that they need to do so that your team can deliver the outcomes that it needs to do. And that can be really tough. A lot of people who are individual contributors are specialists. And when you go to become a manager, you become a generalist. And that's not just on the people's side of management, but that's also if you're then having to do budgeting and filling in these kind of forms and learning more about how the business actually operates. And often you won't actually get any training to do that so you're kind of told that you have to do it, but you don't really understand why it's important and you don't really understand how. But you just know that you have to do it because people keep harassing you for it and reminding you of the deadlines. But at the same time, you also need to deliver what it is that your team needs to deliver. And then for some people, there can be a bit of an identity kind of shift. You know, when you're a worker, when you're part of the team, you can have a lot of kind of camaraderie and get along really well with people, talk about your lives outside of work. And when you become part of management, especially if you've been promoted ahead of your peers, sometimes you can feel that as a loss. So it depends a little bit on the relationships, but sometimes a trust that was previously there may get a little bit kind of shaken because you have been promoted. So people might just start to watch what they say around you. You might have to start to watch what you say around them because sometimes you will have information that you can't share. And so it can just be a little bit uncomfortable until you figure out how you're actually going to manage that. So three of the common challenges that I've observed that first-time managers really struggle with. The first is around having to bathe in reflected glory. So this is you, by the way, or the shadow. This is the new superstar individual contributor on your team because if you are a really, really good manager and you get things done through other people, your team will shine. Now, you'll get the credit, but it's not the same as being in the spotlight. Some people really struggle with that. And I've actually got a couple of people that I went through university with who were always the smartest person in the room, always the smartest person in the room. And as we've stayed in touch, we've stayed friends, and as they've gone on in their career, the biggest challenge for them has been when they've actually got promoted and moved into these management roles is all of a sudden they can't be the smartest person in the room. You know, they actually have to keep their mouth shut, keep their opinions to themselves, and let other people shine. And that's a real challenge, especially if you've had 10 or 15 years of being that person and then all of a sudden, you know, you're not that person anymore. This one, being the meat in the sandwich, this can be a real challenge where you've got, you know, the pressure coming down from the top. You have to do this, you have to deliver that. You know, this is your priority, and then you've got your team kind of coming at you from the other side. I want this, I want that. This person's not doing what they're supposed to. And you just feel like, leave me alone, but, you know, they won't. So somehow you have to kind of manage that. It can also feel a little bit like that if you are in a team where the team members are not getting along with each other or they're kind of having some issues. And you can see everybody's point of view, but somehow they expect you to resolve it. They can't quite figure out how to do it on their own. And then there are having difficult conversations. Now, what's a difficult conversation for one person may not be a difficult conversation for another person. But where I've noticed most people will say they have some difficulty around performance conversations. So how do you actually evaluate somebody? And then how do you actually give that feedback to them in a way that it's constructive and they actually value it? Motivating people. Some people will find that quite challenging. We tend to attribute a lot to people's motivation. So often we judge people's behaviour based on what we look like when we're motivated and how we behave. So if somebody isn't demonstrating that same behaviour, we might think that they're not motivated and we might want to talk to them, but we don't really know how. Development conversations. Now, you would think these would be the easy ones, right? Because these are the positive ones, these are all about where are you going in your career, how can I kind of help you? But there can be difficult for a couple of reasons. One is you may not know how to help them. So sometimes it might be about accessing training, but more often than not it's actually about how can you provide some on-the-job experience that will help that person develop. How might you be able to kind of coach them or mentor them? And then there's the part that people don't always talk about and that's the part that I see a lot of because I often work with high potentials, the people that we want to develop into future leadership roles. And they're often, you know, the brightest, the best person in that team. And the reason that the managers don't want to talk to them about it is because they don't want to lose them. So you can actually be in this really difficult situation where you've got a bit of a conflict of interest. Got this amazing person in their team, fantastic skills, they're really ambitious. You know, they want to kind of grow and stretch their wings and they don't want to help them but you don't really want to lose them because then you've got a big problem, you've got a hole to fill. So actually balancing your own interests against their interests can be a real challenge. And then I had one more which I will have to go and look up. It's a carrot member. Oh, delegation. How can I forget delegation? So actually deciding what it is that you want people to do and communicating that in such a way that they are really clear on what you want, when you want it, what good looks like. But in such a way that you don't come across as some kind of control freak micromanager. So delegating is really quite tricky for a lot of people. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to present you three different frameworks and we might do a bit of interaction. I've been told you don't like to interact, but... So the first framework I've called start with yourself. And the key takeaway is to remember that half of management is self-management. The situations you find yourself in aren't necessarily a problem. It's how you actually respond to them that makes you feel like they're a problem or not. So one thing that's really important, particularly when you're starting out, is to really start to understand yourself and how you're responding to situations. And one way to start to do this is to identify your triggers. So I want you all to think back to the last time you had a bit of a wobble in your management role. And I want you to think about what happened and how did you feel in that situation. And you can talk to the person next to you. I know, scary, right? Talking about feelings to strangers. So sometimes we actually get really freaked out. And that's one of the reasons I called this session and you're kind of freaking out. Because what happens when we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations is that it actually triggers a part of the brain that's responsible for the stress response. So who's had a situation whereby you've been doing a piece of work and you've totally been on fire. You've come up with some great idea and your brain's just been firing on all cylinders and you think, I'm going to share this with the team and they're going to think I'm the best manager ever. And you go in and you present your idea and there's like a stony silence or they immediately start pulling it apart. So what tends to happen in that situation is that the part of the brain that was really awesome in terms of doing this piece of work goes to lunch. And the part of the brain that I call the baby brain, some people call it the reptilian brain is where the amygdala is. And that's responsible for triggering the stress response. And that part of the brain is really bad at understanding what you're actually dealing with. So it can't distinguish between someone making a helpful suggestion and delivering you a piece of constructive criticism and a threat to your life. So what happens, yeah, how brains aren't that smart. So what can often happen is that when you're in these uncomfortable or new situations is that you are genuinely freaking out. So your brain is going, oh my god, I'm under threat. I don't know how to deal with this. And so you deal with it through either fight which is the stress response. So some people in that situation, they come out fighting, right? I see a few nods, right? Somebody challenges me, well, back up, I'm going to challenge you back. So the team member says, have you thought of this? And you're like, well of course I've thought of this and who are you to speak to me like that and blah blah blah, right? You come down on them like a ton of bricks. Other people, they go the flight route. They come in as a manager and they don't hold their ground. They kind of freak out and they kind of go, okay, well we'll pick this up next week and then they never speak of it again. Neither of these responses are terribly functional. So one of the things that is really important when you find yourself in these situations and it's not just going to be with your direct report, this is going to be with anyone you work with is that you recognise when you get triggered. So which of these kind of challenging situations really triggers you and try to think about why? Now usually it'll be some sense that you're being threatened. Now if you are already feeling a little bit insecure about your position and somebody questions you, you might immediately start to think that they're threatening you, that they don't think that you deserve the job, you're not legitimate. You can see how this would happen, especially if you've been in a situation you've been promoted ahead of your peers. But they're probably not actually threatening you. They're just asking you a question. So one of the key skills that you can learn is to recognise when you've been triggered and come up with some strategies for how you might actually respond in that situation. So some stock phrases are really helpful. You know, if you're in a meeting, where people are questioning you, rather than responding, you just say, okay, you know, thanks for your feedback, I'll take that on board. It's enough. You've acknowledged what's been said and then you can kind of go away and have a think about it. So that's kind of step one. Identify what really kind of freaks you out in this role and try and get to why, what's actually going on here. The second one that's really important is to focus on what you can control or influence. So if you have a team member, for example, who just drives you nuts because they're always focusing on something that you don't think is important, maybe have a think about whether they actually understand what's important because you might actually be able to influence them by spending a bit more time with them. Now, I see this happen a lot actually and I see this happen at the very senior levels as well. So if this is a skill that you can master now, you will find leadership through the levels a lot easier. So don't waste time on things that you can't control. So if a decision comes down the line and you can't change it, just accept it, right? You have to communicate perhaps imperfect information, perhaps you don't really understand what's going on. So you can't do anything about that. The team members might be asking you, give me more information, tell me what's going to happen here. You can't control that, but what you can control is how you respond in that situation. So you can say, I don't have all the information, but I will let you know as soon as I do, rather than trying to make stuff up or try to avoid the conversation or putting them off until you think that you'll have the information, which is often what people do, because they feel like they're responsible for not having this information, even though it isn't actually their fault. So really focus in on what you can control. So the first thing you can control is your own response. So think about if there's a pattern of situations where you always behave in the same way and it's not really working for you, and think about some different ways that you might behave. And then think about what you can actually influence. So with other people, particularly with direct reports, think about what it is that they're doing that you would like them to change and have those conversations. Usually it's around clarity. Usually people behave in ways that we don't expect because they're not really clear on what we expect from them. So investing that time can be really important. And then, you know, just don't worry too much about it. Treat every situation as an opportunity to learn. Now, this is one of my favourite quotes. Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. So every time you hear about, you know, a really experienced manager, just think how many times that person didn't get what they wanted. That's how you get experience. You have to learn. But to learn, you have to reflect. So if something happens and things didn't go the way that you wanted to, actually have a think about why. And, you know, this may be something that you can discuss with your own manager. It may be something that you could discuss with a mentor or even just with your peers. Sometimes, if you're really brave, you could even discuss it with the person, the other person that was involved in it. And I've seen some real breakthroughs in manager-direct reports from doing just that. Situations occurred. You both know it hasn't gone well, but rather than actually just kind of ignoring it and trying to sweep it under the rug, you actually say, look, you know, what's happening there? How can we be better in the future? And if you come at it like, let's learn from this, rather than you were wrong and I was right or being really critical, you can actually kind of chalk it up to experience and you move on. Has anyone got any questions about this approach? So the second framework is... It's actually originally a framework of understanding motivation, understanding what motivates people, but I think that it applies really well in terms of understanding what people need in order to feel motivated at work. And where I really like this is that if you apply it to yourself, you can also start to understand why you might not be enjoying your job as much as you thought you would. So I'll talk you through each of the components and then we'll apply them to a team member and we'll apply them to yourself. So the first thing that we all need in order to feel good about ourselves is autonomy. And what that means is we need a sense that we have choices and that we can act. So your team members need to feel that they have some autonomy. So who can tell me the best way to take away someone's sense of autonomy? Sorry? Yes, micromanage. Autonomy is really, really important and it relates to a person's sense of agency and particularly if you're working with creative types, people who are knowledge workers, professionals, people who are really proud of their skills and knowledge and you start telling them exactly how to do something and you start telling them exactly how to do it the way you would do it, what you're essentially doing is taking away their autonomy. So if they do it, they will resent it and if they don't do it, you then suddenly find yourself in a bit of an issue. You might have a battle of wills. So one of the things that's really important with your team members is to be clear on what you need to be clear on and what you need to be clear on is what is expected. So what do they need to deliver by when, how will you know it's good enough and you need to invest the time in having those conversations because they need to be able to ask questions, they need to be able to agree time frames, you need to be able to answer specific questions and if you if you're constantly having the experience whereby more than one of your team members is delivering what you weren't expecting, this might be an area where you need to work to be really, you know, devote a bit more time to really being clear on things. But don't tell them how to do it. You know, don't say. So I need you to deliver this report by Friday at three o'clock and I think you should use this and do that and go and see this and go and do this and then the rest of it. Now if you can't help yourself stock phrase, you know and a good stock phrase is to communicate the information to be clear and say is there anything that you need from me? That gives them an opportunity to say have you got any suggestions about where I might find this information or who I might talk to and then you get to tell them what to do because they've asked you. So you're helping, you're not micromanaging. So if you're the kind of person who likes to be really specific and give really detailed instructions and it's not helping then just turn it around and put it as a question to your team member if there's anything that I can help you with is there anything that you need from me? Then they get to ask so they retain their sense of autonomy. Now of course when we apply it to ourselves as a manager we also understand why being a manager might not be that much fun because when you go from being an individual contributor where you're able to control your own workflow and do things the way that you want to becoming a manager when you're much more at the beck and call people above you or the people below you a lot of your own autonomy can go and interestingly as you rise even further up the ranks you can lose a lot of autonomy even over simple things like how you spend your day if you get an executive assistant and they start scheduling your appointments and you really have no idea what you're doing at 230 that can actually be a bit of a a mind shift as well so autonomy we need to make sure that our team members feel that they have agency, that they're in control of their work and of their lives but we also have to recognise where our own insecurity might be coming from a sense that we're kind of losing control of our own situation and if that is an issue thinking about how can we retain some sense of autonomy in a way that's different to where we used to get it when we were individual contributors um relatedness who here is always too busy to talk to their team who always reschedules the one-to-ones and um you know kind of says to people I've just got to finish this and focus is on a task instead of focusing on the relationships okay good one honest, two honest people so here's the thing relatedness is key to trust trust is key to performance it's the most important thing and what's coming out from every kind of leader with their salt I was reading today the head of Deloitte in the US saying always put the people first if somebody needs you you need to invest in the relationship and the task can wait now as a manager that's really really important and I would say it's most important when you first get into the job and that's really tricky because when you first get into the job you're trying to figure out how the stupid SAP system works and um you know why you have to fill in 10 million forms to hire someone and you know and it's really difficult when you've got all these new tasks that you have to do to actually go no you know well I'm not going to do any of that I'm going to invest time and getting to know my people when I say getting to know them I mean really kind of getting to know them so actually understanding you know who they are why they work there what they like about their roles how they like to be managed I found through trial and error that that's a really good question to ask each person when I take over a new team how do you like to be managed and then you can say this is how I like to manage complementary styles you can have a discussion right at the beginning about what issues might come up and how you might manage that relationship going forward if you don't do relatedness then you will not only not have a lot of trust in your team but you will also find that it's very difficult to create the kind of open team culture that you need for people to be really honest and to give feedback because generally speaking we're only honest with people that we trust and we only trust people that we've got a relationship with now it can be a bit awkward and New Zealanders are not great at this sort of stuff but I really do want to encourage you to have a go because it will reap the biggest return when you apply it to the new manager we also see that there's a big loss here you've gone from being part of a team having that camaraderie having people that you can talk to and now you might be on your own and you haven't yet established peer relationships with other managers so you might find yourself feeling a little bit like you don't have anyone that you can actually talk to the people that you might have talked to previously you can't talk to them anymore because they're the people you want to talk about and so you have to you have to go and find some other people and this is where it can be really useful to tap into any networks that might be in your organisation other people at your level or even to just seek out other managers at your level and say do you want to have a coffee or something create that informal support network if you don't have it provided for you and then there's competence so we all need to feel competent we all need to feel like we've got it something but a lot of us weren't trained to focus on people's competence we weren't trained to focus on what they're doing well we were trained to focus on what the problem is or what the issue is or the 5% of something that wasn't perfect not the 95% of something that was so our initial reaction is often to be critical and of course if we do this a lot then people will start to feel like they're not good enough like they're not actually doing a very good job so one way that we can kind of help people feel more competent is to give them constructive praise so always find something and you can always find something that somebody is doing really well or you can acknowledge a behaviour that even if you don't particularly like it you can acknowledge the value of it so if you've got someone who is kind of you think they're a little bit too laid back and relaxed you can acknowledge that that's actually quite helpful sometimes when everyone else is having total freak out and being a little bit irrational that this person might actually bring some balance to the team so I would really encourage you to try and find something in each of your team members that you can praise them for that you can acknowledge as an area in which they are really really competent and then of course if there are other areas that they can develop it's much easier for them to kind of take that feedback because they're not feeling like you're just constantly criticising them and then when we apply this to ourselves as new managers what we find is that a lot of new managers feel like they're failing all the time because the things that they used to be good at they don't get to do the things that they are trying to do now they're struggling with and no one's telling them that they're doing a good job the team their direct reports might just complain all the time if you're lucky they might complain to your face if you're unlucky they might complain to your boss which happened to a woman I'm working with recently and you can start to feel pretty shit about yourself so it's also important to acknowledge that and to recognise where you are on that journey so if no one else is giving you the praise then you need to find something to kind of high five yourself about what have you actually done that was good and it might be a little thing but there will be something that you're doing in your role that you're doing really, really well and you need to acknowledge that for yourself and not beat yourself up about the learning experiences you've been having during that day Any questions about this? The third framework is my kind of when in doubt framework One of the assumptions a lot of people make when they move into management is that they have to make all the decisions on their own so we often hear people talk about I need to delegate I need to decide and I need to delegate but that is often contentious it's often quite tricky and particularly if you have a team of people who are not working very well together what that can do is it creates a kind of dynamic where here's you in the middle and then you talk to this person and this person talks to you and you talk to that person and they talk to you but they never talk to each other so you actually don't form as a team and what that means is that you foster an over dependency on you so any little problem they'll come to you to solve if they're having a problem with that person they'll come to you and expect you to solve it so my kind of management hack for that is to always share the problem because a problem shared is a problem halved so whatever it is that your team has to deliver involving team members in the decision making process and the deciding who does what is kind of going to help you start to build that kind of environment in which team members start to feel ownership for what you're doing and they also start to build these relationships with each other so that they won't always come to you which means that you can have time to do some of the other things that you need to be doing while they're actually doing the work so the main reason that managers don't do that often is because they're worried that they'll seem incompetent that it kind of looks like they don't know what they're doing so if they ask everybody else it's kind of like I'm not being professional or I'm not a good manager but it's actually the opposite and what we're seeing particularly in the leadership literature around who are the most effective leaders it's these leaders who practice what's now been called inclusive leadership that get the best results so they don't assume this position of authority they don't assume that they know everything and that they are the best place to kind of dish out the work what they see their role at is this kind of facilitator you've got this pool or team of talented people who are there and you are to work together deliver whatever that team needs to do so your main role is facilitating that process and including people is really key to that sharing when you don't have all the answers is also a really great way to build trust because it also creates this kind of openness and this environment in which people can be really honest so if you say I don't, you know, I'm really open to suggestions I'm not entirely sure how we should do this people cannot only provide their contributions so that they feel like they, you know, they're valuable and have a sense of confidence themselves but it also opens up that conversation so that they will be more likely to tell you when they're struggling a little bit which means that you don't have that situation where somebody's working on a task unbeknownst to you they don't really know what they're doing and so you don't find out until it's kind of too late so it's about kind of, you know building these kind of open relationships and communication within your team reflecting as well is really, really important so sometimes we get really caught up in the day-to-day doing so we're just like running from doing one thing to doing another and we're not actually spending that time reflecting on what went well or what didn't well what didn't go well and that's actually really key and as you start to move higher and higher up the chain carving out that time to reflect on what's actually going on in this situation is going to become more important because if you can start to identify a pattern or start to identify where your behaviour may be contributing to the situation and you can change that you'll actually learn and then that's actually how you grow and develop as a manager and of course, you know, being inclusive it's a leap of face I won't kind of lie about that because sometimes you don't know what you're going to get back and if you are used to being kind of the most competent person in the room opening this up and including people and taking on board these suggestions can be tough but it will build trust and your people even if they don't always like what you do or what you say or the decisions that you make they will trust the process by which you manage them any questions about that one so this is an option if you want to I'll just show you where I have them so there's two slides which will come out when the notes come round tomorrow which you can work through if you want to and what I've suggested is that you can write yourself a memo to just jot down one thing you learned in this workshop about yourself so that's where if you want to kind of work through a few questions on this have a look at those additional slides one thing you could do to create an ARC experience for a team member so if there's someone in your team that you might have been ever so slightly thinking maybe there's a way you can pull back on that and one way you're going to be more inclusive in how you manage your team and then put that into practice because as I said before to manage it's a verb, it's a doing word so until you actually get stuck in and start trying some of these techniques and seeing what works for you reflecting on that experience and if it didn't work don't beat yourself up, remember you're just becoming an experience manager try something else and just keep trying things until you kind of figure out what's your style of management because this is the other kind of golden takeaway there is no one best way to manage you know, you bring your personal characteristics you bring your own experience you bring your preferences and then you interact with other people and you bring all of that as well so it's always a negotiation it's always a navigation and it's always a learning experience