Episodes
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Who knew that talking about pessimism could be so much fun... even if most of the laughter is self-deprecating. In today's episode, hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about what happens when we let our "inner pessimist" come through.
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The new series on Manager Mindsets starts with a discussion of comparison.
Comparison is unavoidable, especially in the age of social media. It can feed difficult and unpleasant emotions like doubt, jealousy and imposter syndrome. Indeed, someone once said âComparison is the thief of joyâ. And if we arenât careful comparison can even tempt us into mindlessly copying others, which takes us away from our own unique path.
But in many aspects comparison can be helpful. It can be wonderfully motivating. It can show us what can be improved and help us understand what we value. It can even expand our concept of what is possible.
The challenge for managers is how to have a healthy relationship with comparison and what can we do to combat itâs less helpful manifestationsâŠ
02:30 Tim describes how he struggles with comparison, especially the contrast between his own struggles versus the dazzling successes that his peers post online.
3:45 Pilar and Tim share strategies for how they manage comparison and envy.
6:15 Itâs important to view otherâs achievements in context. We often underestimate the other personâs effort or how their circumstances are different to ours.
8:00 Comparison is somewhat unavoidable and can also be very healthy.
13:15 We should avoid using comparison as in order to mindlessly copy what others are doing? Can we avoid putting ourselves above or below what weâre comparing against? Can we use comparison as a helpful tool for curiosity and learning?
13:50 It can take quite a lot of mental effort to let go of comparison and feel comfortable that your journey is the best pathway for you.
15:00 In the era of social media and LinkedIn, itâs very hard to avoid comparison because it gets pushed at you.
16:40 Comparison can fuel competitiveness.
17:30 If we can detach our judgement from comparison then it can teach us things that we want but donât have. And it can help us work out if we want to change.
10:00 Pilar shares an excellent story from her theatre days of how comparison without awareness can threaten our individuality.
19:00 As managers, we can really help our team when we see them struggling with comparison. Helping somebody explore why theyâre comparing and finding out whatâs helpful or unhelpful to them about those comparisons can be huge.
20:45 Tim shares how comparison had positive impacts on his development. There have been individuals, managers and companies that he admired and wanted to emulate. Comparison was helpful in showing a desired end state and also what needed to change in order to get there.
21:45 There can also be a danger of complacency or arrogance when we compare ourselves against others who we think are below our level.
23:45 Our hosts end the episode excited about their next topic for discussion⊠pessimism!
What about you, dear listener? Do you find comparison mostly helpful or harmful in your management practice? Weâd love to hear from you!
Compare your stories to ours: get in touch through www.managementcafepodcast.com/contact -
Episodes manquant?
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As co-hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti wrap up the Manager Emotions series, they explain why they're moving onto mindset, and how this is different from cognitivie tendencies (and why they might well be mixing the two up!). Plus, some feedback on our episode on Emotional Contagion, and Pilar shares an episode from Workplace Geeks where one of her connections talks about living with long-covid and how this affects her work life. https://www.audiem.io/podcasts/work-life-and-long-covid
Get in touch with Pilar and Tim through the https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Our hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about the many times they've been confused, the difficulties in feeling the emotion as individual and manager, and what happens when a team member becomes confused.
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For the sixth episode of our series on manager emotions, Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Compassion.
Good leaders don't just remove obstacles and show their people the way forward. People also need to know that their leaders will support them in the hard times. And importantly, they need leaders to demonstrate compassion when they are in difficulty. This is distinct from sympathy - where the leader might acknowledge someone is suffering but not do anything to help or even really align with their emotions. Empathy is closer - it helps when leaders can demonstrate that they understand and relate to their employee's feelings. But compassion is, in effect, a more active form of empathy. It requires the further step of wanting to reduce the other person's suffering.
This can be very nuanced for managers. It does not necessarily require them to solve the problem, support can manifest in many different forms. It might be stepping in and solving the problem. Or coaching the person through it. Or even just offering companionship.
Compassion is not just something for managers to demonstrate to others. It's also important to be compassionate to ourselves.
The Management Café often talks of the isolation that manager's experience. Our hosts are grateful that their management journey was made easier by the support and care of compassionate people within their teams.
01:30 mins We open with a definition of Compassion from Greater Good:
"Compassion literally means 'to suffer together.' Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related.
While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. Altruism, in turn, is the kind, selfless behaviour often prompted by feelings of compassion, though one can feel compassion without acting on it, and altruism isnât always motivated by compassion."2:30 Sympathy expresses caring for the other person but it also maintains some separation from the person and their emotion. Empathy means we share the other person's emotion. Compassion means we see from the person's perspective but also adds another element, we want to help them. Compassion and sympathy are tied to the other person's suffering or discomfort, whereas empathy is not.
4:00 Compassion is an important attribute for leaders who want to build trust. People want to know that their leader will support and help them during hard times.
5:30 Compassion is not offering solution after solution. It is saying "This is hard. I know how you are feeling. What do you need? How can I help? I'm here for you."
7:00 This requires a high level of self-awareness and knowledge of our team members so that attempted compassion doesn't backfire and lead to helplessness.
7:30 If a solution is offered without empathy it can actually just demonstrate how little the manager understands about the situation and the other person's emotions.
8:00 We also need to be careful that we're solving their problem instead of our problem - where we offer help just so we don't have to deal with their suffering anymore.
8:45 Tim experiences this often, especially early in his leadership journey, where he gets into problem solving mode and tries to fix issues as quickly as possible. Often before the person has really had a chance to share their experience and needs. When he doesn't act with compassion and jumps to solutions, the other person becomes defensive and closes down. Tim is not creating the sort of safe space the other person needs in order to open up and receive support.
9:50 When managers demonstrate compassion it helps people to be honest about what's happening and how they are feeling and what they need. And this environment of psychological safety encourages better performance.
10:45 Empathy is companionship without support. Compassion is companionship with support.
11:00 We need to also show compassion to ourselves. If we are compassionate to ourselves it helps us be compassionate to others and also to receive compassion from others. How can we expect people to be compassionate towards us if we're not even compassionate to ourselves?
12:15 It is important how we talk to ourselves and how we frame our internal dialogue. If we have a compassionate mindset internally it will naturally extend into our way of being and how we express ourselves.
13:30 Management can be lonely. But having a compassionate team around you can be an enormous benefit. Compassion doesn't require them to take on your problem or even experience the exact emotional state that you're in. But it does mean that they care and they try to help. Tim and Pilar have been blessed to work with some very compassionate people and it helped enormously.
What about you, dear listener? Do you think compassion is an important attribute for good leadership? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Welcome to the fifth episode of our series on manager emotions, where hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Pride.
We want to see good work, both in ourselves as managers and also in the teams that we lead. Pride creates a virtuous cycle that rewards and encourages healthy achievement.
Do a good thing -> share this achievement with others -> receive recognition -> feel proud -> do more good things.
But pride can be a tricky emotion in the workplace. Excessive displays of pride can turn people off. Pride can also clash with other attributes, most notably humility. Humility is a much valued characteristic which dictates that we don't draw attention to our own achievements.
Pride can even become arrogance if we use our achievements to assert superiority over others. And to make it even more complex, we must be conscious that people might misinterpret or devalue our emotions. Many of us have had the jarring experience of expressing pride only to have our accomplishment criticised or be accused of self-importance.
How then do we navigate pride at work? As leaders when can we express pride in a safe and helpful way? And how do we encourage this in those we manage? Join Pilar and Tim for coffee in the Management Café...
00:45 mins Pride is the feeling that you've done something good which you want to share with others and receive recognition. It can sometimes be confused with arrogance, but arrogance is about dominance. Arrogance says "I know more" or "I did better" and that makes me superior to you. It's the difference between wanting to share vs wanting to dominate.
1:45 When someone wants to "Blow their own trumpet" are they trying to share beautiful music or blast their horn in our ears?
2:45 Claude AI shared this definition of pride: "Pride is a complex emotion that can be defined as a feeling of deep pleasure, satisfaction, or self-respect derived from one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions, or those of someone with whom one is closely associated. Pride is often accompanied by a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and self-worth."
3:30 Tim used to deflect or downplay on the odd occasion people said something nice to him. But to receive recognition and feel proud... it feels amazing. It is very motivating. So he's tried to become more comfortable accepting compliments. But perhaps you, dear reader, could help him practice by sending a little love to https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ ?
4:30 Pride is a sharing emotion. And it tells others what we value.
5:30 We can be proud and not share it. There is a difference between feeling proud and expressing our pride to others, they don't have to be done together. And this distinction is especially important in the workplace.
7:00 It is generally safe for managers to express pride in the achievements of their team or the individuals that they manage. This means those individuals don't have to go seeking recognition and their manager is giving them license to be proud of themselves.
8:30 When a manager feels proud in their own work how do they express it? Tim thinks this is better to do amongst peers or up the organisational chart.
10:00 It is good to role model healthy pride to those we manage.
11:30 Humility is generally a more socially acceptable emotion than pride. When we feel pride but express humility there is a disconnect.
13:20 Praising others gives them license to express pride in their work. Similarly we are safer to express pride with people that have given us praise.
14:20 Expressing pride to the wrong audience can be risky. Tim shares a time when he was left totally deflated by someone's response.
16:20 Pilar poses the question: what to do when someone is proud of something that wasn't actually that good? Tim proposes serving up the much maligned feedback sandwich.
18:30 Pilar points out that we can acknowledge their pride now and give the feedback about some aspects of the work later. It's critical that we don't squash their pride in the moment. Their pride comes with vulnerability because they are showing what they care about and they are seeking validation or affirmation. We should also be mindful of the fact that when someone shares their pride with us. they are signalling that they view us as a person who will treat their pride appropriately.
What about you, dear listener? How do you feel and express pride at work? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
For the fourth episode of our series on manager emotions we talk about Emotional Contagion, as it's something that keeps coming up.
Emotional Contagion describes how one person's emotions can induce similar emotions in others. This is often happening at an unconscious level, for example, we mimic someone's facial expression and start to feel the same emotion.
Managers should be especially mindful of this phenomenon and its potential impacts. When a leader gets angry or happy or sad, everyone around them also feels a bit of that same emotion. Leaders are a focal point of interaction meaning they are more susceptible to emotional contagion than followers.
This brings both challenges and opportunities. Whilst emotional contagion often operates at a subconscious level, leaders can take deliberate steps to guide the emotional state of themselves and those around them.
00:20 mins Emotional contagion is an important concept for managers to understand - that your emotions impact those around you and vice versa.
1:20 Tim shares an example (possibly an urban myth): your co-workers become less happy if your partner has a bad boss. Even though the workplaces are separate, the bad boss means your partner is less happy. And this means you are less happy. And this unhappiness spreads to your co-workers.
2:00 As per the example above, the effects of emotional contagion spread beyond the workplace. Tim became conscious of this when running Shield GEO where many of the employees worked from home. What are the emotions and influences that a digital workplace brings into the sanctity of someone's home?
4:00 Pilar references a 2002 study by Sigal G. Barsade of the University of Pennsylvania titled "The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior". It talks about emotional contagion as the transfer of emotion between individuals.
5:20 Tim shares an embarrassing story of grumbling about his workplace being negative, only for a co-worker to point out that maybe it was Tim's own negativity that was infecting the workplace! This valuable feedback helped him better understand his role in creating the work environment that he wanted.
6:50 Sometimes emotional contagion happens unconsciously. But other times we can deliberately spread an certain emotion. Going back to the Barsade paper it talks about moods as compared to emotions, making the point that these are easily influenced transient states. Our emotions change with time and different environmental stimuli.
8:45 If we are mindful of emotional contagion when going through challenging events like layoffs, it can change our behaviour. e.g. Perhaps we take steps to reduce anxiety.
9:40 Pilar points out that we don't just influence a group's emotions by interacting directly with the whole group. We can also work at a one-to-one level with individual members who will spread those emotions back through the group.
10:20 Emotional contagion gives a powerful argument for managers to moderate their emotional responses. When managers express emotions like anger it doesn't just impact the people they interact directly with. The effects ripple out. This also means there are wonderful opportunities for the manager to model helpful emotional behaviour and reactions.
11:55 Barsade's research showed that the spread starts with mimicking. People spontaneously mimicking each other's facial expressions, body language, speech patterns and verbal tones. And the mimicking triggers people to feel the emotions. Perhaps an argument for cameras off on some video calls?
13:30 Pilar shares that people who have had Botox injections in their face are perceived as less empathetic because they don't mimic, and so, their body doesn't prompt them to feel others' emotions.
15:00 There is also a conscious level of emotional contagion where we compare our mood to those around us and adjust accordingly. Am I the only one who is angry or happy in this group?
16:30 Tim found the ripple effect of emotions to be a helpful guide. When you treat someone with kindness or care, it doesn't end there. They carry that with them and spread it further.
17:45 Pilar points out that this is a good reminder that even small actions have an impact. And even if we don't see an immediate impact our efforts will be making some difference.
18:45 Interestingly the research found that negative emotions don't spread any faster than positive emotions. And in fact sometimes strong positive emotions can be too much. Tim speculates that this is a British attitude but alas, he's quite wrong, the paper came from the University of Pennsylvania.
20:40 Perhaps negative emotions are more inward focussed and therefore less likely to spread. But positive emotions are generally outward focussed.
22:30 The paper showed that most people were unaware of emotional contagion. Both unaware they were impacted by other's emotions and unaware they were impacting other's emotions.
23:15 Our hosts speculate on what to do when they see emotional contagion at work. It starts with awareness and bringing it into the open. Most of us have experienced the opposite - environments where certain emotions, generally "negative" ones, were not able to be expressed. And it can just lead to these forbidden emotions thriving and spreading behind the scenes.
25:00 Leaders also can't be the only ones responsible for the emotional state of the group. Some research has suggested that leaders are actually more susceptible to emotional contagion than "followers".
26:00 Pilar shares that some of her work in the pandemic left her soaking up the emotions of the group.
27:00 Tim has a shocking realisation. When he sold Shield GEO he tried to talk to all the employees about the transition. These 70 odd conversations left him exhausted, which he thought was due to many of the people feeling anxious and afraid. But he now wonders if he was actually the person spreading anxiety and fear through the group...
28:00 Pilar, as always, reframes this learning into a positive light.
29:30 Emotional contagion isn't just a face to face, real-time experience. All our behaviour is underpinned by emotion. So even in a distributed, primarily digital workplace emotions are still spreading.
30:30 We need self awareness about the impacts of our behaviour, both individually and in groups.
What about you, dear listener? Do you think about emotional contagion and how you are impacted by the feelings of those around you? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Many thanks to Catherine Nicholson from Virtual Training Team for sharing her thoughts on emotions at work and anger, after listening to the first episode of the manager emotions series.
We share her comments directly from her LinkedIn posts, and expand on them.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pilarorti_we-kick-off-our-series-on-management-emotions-activity-7211065541115953152-75df
If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you!
https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
00:30 mins Our hosts discuss the most popular episode of the âmanager emotionsâ series: episode #81 on Anger. They speculate on why it resonated.
1:45 Pilar shares some great feedback that came in from Catherine Nicholson of Virtual Training Team. She shares that emotional regulation has been a recurring theme in her recent manager workshops.
2:15 Catherine poses the question, is it ok to show frustration at work? And talks about the âdelicate connection between having an emotion, recognizing that emotion and then knowing what to do with it.â
3:35 She also talks about the balance between anger and passion. Tim reflects that it took him a long time to understand that sometimes people show frustration when itâs something they care deeply about.
4:30 Tim (badly) paraphrases Stephen M R Coveyâs famous quote from The Speed of Trust ââŠwe judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviorâŠâ.
5:15 Pilar points out that it is more acceptable to show passion than anger. Someone once tried (incorrectly) to reframe her anger as passion.
6:15 Pilar also thanks the wonderful Theresa Sigillito Hollema for recommending the Management Cafe to the listeners of the 21st Century Work Life podcast. And also a shoutout to Pilarâs mum who enjoyed the episode on anger!
What about you, dear listener? Do you have any feedback or thoughts youâd like to share? Weâd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
We continue with our Manager Emotions series.
So much of our work culture is about productivity. Traits like productivity, positivity, drive and a strong work ethic are idolised. We are often expected to overcome obstacles through pure hard work or "grit". This doesn't leave much space for hopelessness!
Hopelessness is a difficult emotion for us to experience directly or be exposed to. It's a draining, demotivating state that can spread quickly. This is especially difficult for managers who are limited in how, when and where they can safely express their own feelings of despair at work.
It's also tough to manage someone who feels hopeless. We should acknowledge people's feelings and be supportive. Within the context of work we can help people shift perspective or even guide them back to a sense of control. But there are limits to what we can do. Managers are not therapists.
01:20 mins We open with a gentle reminder that there are limits to what managers can deal with in a work context, some things are best dealt with by a mental health professional. In this conversation we'll stay within the context of what can be done at work.2:00 With the help of Claude AI we define hopelessness as "a state of mind characterised by a lack of hope, optimism or belief that one's situation can improve. It is often accompanied by feelings of despair, helplessness, and a sense that the future holds no positive prospects. When experiencing hopelessness, an individual may feel overwhelmed by their circumstances, believing that their efforts to change or improve their situation are futile. This mindset can lead to a loss of motivation, decreased problem-solving abilities, and a general sense of negativity."
2:45 Even talking about hopelessness causes Tim to tense up and try to wriggle away. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. Pilar reminds us that our "body is a barometer" - bodily sensations can help us understand our emotional state.
3:40 Hopelessness can be pernicious, sneaking up on us and becoming all-consuming.
4:00 So much of our work culture is about doing and being productive. The feeling of hopelessness is not something we're meant to feel at work. It can be discombobulating. And it's a very difficult emotion to express in the workplace.
4:30 Managers in particular are expected to be in control. But hopelessness shows things are out of our control. And what about emotional contagion? Hopelessness is a particularly troubling emotion for a manager to spread to the people they are managing!
6:00 Going back to part of the definition of hopelessness, that a person might believe "their efforts to change or improve their situation are futile", this can be a real risk in hierarchical organisational structures. Individual contributors and middle managers might not have the power, authority or influence to change their circumstances.
7:00 Tim shares a story about a large group of IT workers at a British bank who had a deep sense of despair about their work.
9:00 One way we can limit or shift our experience of hopelessness is by shifting our perspective. Looking at things from a different perspective, changing our priorities or even moving towards other tasks.
10:25 Back in episode #65 we talked about building a support network outside of work. And this is a great example of when that external support can be really important. It can give us a way to get perspective and discuss our feelings of hopelessness outside our immediate work context.
11:00 Tim views hopelessness as an emotion that must be kept under control at work. He needs to limit where, when and how it shows up for him.
11:50 The manager potentially has greater exposure to hopelessness. Firstly they have two lenses, what is happening for them as an individual and what is happening with their team. Secondly their role requires them, to an extent, to plan for bad outcomes (as well as good).
12:30 Tim definitely felt overwhelmed by the challenges of running Shield GEO. But he found it to be a temporary reaction to adversity that diminished over time.
14:30 Tim talks about the setbacks he experienced whilst building a technology platform and how he felt unable to solve the problem. As Pilar points out, we can sometimes make bad decisions just to avoid this feeling of overwhelm.
18:00 When we feel hopeless we lose access to our creative problem-solving abilities. Which in turn heightens the sense of hopelessness and makes it harder to get back on track.
18:30 Warning signs for managers to look out for include negativity and the inability to see a positive future outcome. It is difficult to watch the people we manage suffer in this way.
19:45 Managers can help by finding out what is getting in the way. Perhaps giving the person more context or reframing their perspective can help them get unstuck.
20:30 Tim digs himself into a hole whilst giving an analogy about people in a hole.
21:50 We shouldn't deny people's feelings or experience. But we can set boundaries around how much hopelessness people express in a work context.
24:30 Tim shares how one of his friends sets boundaries with her husband.
25:30 Pilar reminds us that we can have a valuable role in guiding people out of their hopelessness. They need to climb out of their hole, but we can help them see the way out. This can give the person their sense of control back.
27:30 Pilar remembers a regular situation in where actors feel like they can't control their destiny, but a slight change in mindset can reveal that they can.
29:20 Sometimes a person feels hopelessness from their circumstances outside work and this comes into their work. But this is not really something that a manager can affect at work - it requires outside help.
What about you, dear listener? What is your experience of hopelessness at work and in your management practice? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
We continue with our Manager Emotions series. Todayâs episode is all about joy. We remind ourselves of what it feels like, but we also wonder whether itâs always ok to express it.
Join Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti for coffee - or tea!
In our last coffee we talked about how anger can signal that something is wrong. Joy, on the other hand, signals that something is very right and motivates us to celebrate this feeling with those around us. For managers these can be milestone moments where all the hard work and difficulty can be forgotten for a moment of pure positivity and happiness.
But joy is not a simple emotion. It carries some risk and can require bravery to be vulnerable. Expressing joy can expose us to hurt if others don't share in our joy. There is also the concept of foreboding joy which limits our experience of joy in the present in order to protect us from disappointments in the future. Lastly, maybe not all joy comes from a good place, for example schadenfreude, the joy that comes from the pain of others. Is that still joy or something else?
There are many benefits for managers and their teams that can experience joy at work. Joy is very energising and these celebrations can reinforce when and how the team gets to good outcomes. In fact counter to the notion of foreboding joy, it might be that healthy experience of joy and the resulting memories are better suited to carry people through inevitable hard times and disappointment.
01:00 mins Joy is a very pleasurable emotion, generally more intense and temporary than happiness. Joy motivates us to connect with others and celebrate something wonderful. It brings us a heightened sense of energy, enthusiasm and optimism.
3:00 Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Jesuit priest, said that "It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful."
4:00 Tim wants people to "save a mental record" when they feel joy so they can recreate some of that state in the future.
5:00 Pilar tends to remember bad moments more than joyful moments. And this is a common trait, we are wired to remember things that protect us and warn us. But it's also good to remember good experiences.
5:45 Dr Brené Brown talks about foreboding joy in her audio series "The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage". We have a fear that just when things are good, they will be snatched away from us. And so we try protect ourselves from disappointment by not letting ourselves feel too much joy.
7:00 Joy can hinder us in a few ways. Firstly it can be euphoric and disconnect us from day to day reality. But it can also hinder us if we don't allow ourselves to properly experience it. And it can lead us unawares into a sense of fearlessness, which can be tricky.
9:00 Tim talks about times when he's been in a state of joy and gone to share it with his manager, who has not shared his enthusiasm. This can be extremely deflating and it highlights how vulnerability is linked to joy, because when we share joy we run the risk of being hurt.
10:30 Pilar introduces the concept of schadenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's misfortune. This is something which we might feel at work but be cautious about expressing. It comes from a darker place than pure joy.
12:30 Our hosts have a rare disagreement about whether schadenfreude is really joy or something else.
13:00 We move on to freudenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's happiness. Tim talks about "energy multipliers" as having a natural affinity for this, people who you can go to when you feel joy because you know they will be happy and excited for you.
14:00 It's very important that people are allowed to feel joy at work when good things happen. The positive energy and atmosphere lasts a long time. And it is part of creating that space for people to feel heard and seen. This takes some work because not everyone is comfortable with joy in the workplace.
15:40 Tim reflects on the joy Shield GEO felt when coming together at their company retreat. This shared expression of joy replenished the energy of the whole group for a long time afterwards.
16:30 Managers need to be careful of trying to control joy in the people we manage. There can be a risk of people being carried away by joy and you might wish to keep them focussed on the tasks required. But if you squash someone's joy then you really damage your relationship with them.
17:45 Pilar can't remember any occasions when she experienced joy as a manager. Tim, on the other hand, has many. And for him the high points like joy make the low points more bearable.
19:00 There can be times where the manager cannot share their joy. For example, your team might be going through a difficult time. When Tim sold Shield GEO he could only really celebrate with one person from work, his co-founder Duncan. And there was an element of foreboding to it because he knew that there were difficult times and hard conversations coming up.
21:30 The experience of joy and how we celebrate it can be very contextual. Tim shares another example where he helped someone change their behaviour but couldn't really share it in a work context. Luckily his kids, even without the background, are normally happy to share in their parent's happiness.
23:30 If we, as managers, limit our expression of joy then not only do we miss out on the pleasurable emotions. We are also missing the opportunity to reinforce a positive experience and create the "muscle memory" to lead us to similar experiences in the future.
25:00 Joy is linked to gratitude and being appreciative when we experience something good.
25:50 A little outtake for those who want to go further down the rabbit hole. Can bad people experience joy when they do bad things?
What about you, dear listener? What is your experience of joy at work and in your management practice? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
This marks the first of our series on manager emotions, where we discuss some of feelings we experience at work.
Anger is one of the more complex emotions for a manager to navigate. Anger is about a perceived wrong and our desire to find a resolution. On the one hand, anger can be energising and act as a powerful catalyst for change. It shows us, and others, what is important to us.
But when expressed inappropriately anger can be a destructive force. Many people are uncomfortable being exposed to anger and when we show we're angry at work we can run the risk of reduced connection and collaboration. And so much of this is tied to our own experiences and history and interpretations... one person's "slightly frustrated" might be another person's "rage and fury". Being able to express our difficult emotions in productive ways is one of the hallmarks of psychological safety and a high trust work environment.
To quote Aristotle: "Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right wayâthat is not within everybodyâs power and is not easy."
01:30 mins Definitions of anger and how different authors talk about it. We share definitions of anger from the "Emotion Thesaurus" by Becca Puiglisi & Angela Ackerman, the American Psychological Association and Claude AI. All of which highlight that anger comes from experiencing a perceived wrong or injustice.
3:00 Anger is sometimes a masking emotion disguising someone's true emotional state, for example protecting them from more vulnerable feelings like fear, sadness or shame. Anger can even be a defensive stance - in their book Big Feelings, Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy share a quote from David Kessler that "Anger is pain's bodyguard".
4:50 Anger tells us that there is something we have to pay attention to. It's important to listen to as opposed to being controlled by your anger.
5:30 Many people feel the need to suppress their anger. There can be a lot of judgement about feeling angry or expressing anger. Tim knows people who never express anger, even when he knows that they have experienced injustice. But there are also so many examples of harmful expressions of anger.
6:30 What does anger look and feel like? Some of the ways we can see anger show up in a work context include: irritability, poor listening skills, jumping to conclusions, irrational reactions to inconsequential things, demanding immediate action, impetuosity, taking inappropriate action or risks. And these don't just show we are angry - in many ways they are also affecting how we interact with others.
7:30 Within ourselves we can feel hot, tense, fuzzy, shallow or fast breathing. It can really take hold of us.
8:00 Tim shares an example of when a friend demonstrated anger as a mask for embarrassment or shame.
9:15 Anger exists on a spectrum. It isn't always expressed so strongly that it takes over.
9:50 Anger can be helpful because it helps us understand what is important and it motivates us to take action. It can give us a way to express negative emotions.
11:50 Pilar has had to learn to moderate how she expresses anger, or behaving in ways that might be interpreted as anger, because it makes people uncomfortable. But we also can't bottle it up and then have it all come out. And sometimes to demonstrate that we are upset is more effective than telling people we're upset.
15:15 Tim's experience has been a bit different. He felt better about expressing his anger, but realised it was making other people feel worse. So he has to be careful. He might think he's giving a mild expression of anger but it can be interpreted very differently by someone else.
16:50 Tim talks about a time when just saying that he was feeling angry helped him feel less angry. This served him better in this situation than his customary angry response.
18:50 For Pilar, she needs to find a balance between tailoring her response without controlling everything about her feelings and how they are expressed.
20:15 Tim has another anecdote from a board meeting where one of the participants had experienced an injustice but wasn't allowed to properly express it in the meeting. It lead to a huge frustration and sense of disconnection for them, as Tim discovered when he spoke to the board member afterwards.
22:00 Just to be given the space to be angry and express their feelings can be valuable. This was a takeaway for Pilar in the example she shared at 11:50.
23:30 Managers can take a timeout if their own anger is getting in the way or someone else is expressing their anger in a way that is unproductive. It's important to return to the conversation at a later point. This is kind of what Tim tried to do in his board meeting.
24:30 It can also be helpful to paraphrase what an angry person is saying. This shows their anger is recognised and the injustice is understood.
25:00 It's very easy to skip past anger or frustration in written communication. It can easily escalate in an asynchronous environment.
26:40 We should repair and reconnect if we've expressed our anger in a way that was unproductive. We don't need to apologise for how we felt but rather we apologise for how we interacted. This can show someone that we value them and our connection whilst also staying true to our sense of justice.
28:30 Pilar remembers when a colleague's empathetic reaction helped her identify her emotional state. By choosing to turn towards her in a challenging moment, their connection was deepened.
What about you, dear listener? We are finding it therapeutic to talk about our emotions as managers, does it help you too? We'd love to hear from you!
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Join our hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti.
Most of us are familiar with avoiding a task that we should be doing. But is there more to it? On the one hand we worry that procrastination leads us to being totally unproductive. But is being hyper-efficient realistic? Don't we sometimes need to break the cycle of busywork? Procrastination might actually be telling us something important about the task and ourselves.Managers might find themselves rescheduling a difficult conversation or delaying a decision. It can be helpful to dig into the reasons why. Is it a task that we just don't feel like doing? Has the task become boring through constant repetition? Do we need something more (e.g. context, support, perspective, data, etc) before we are ready to tackle it?
This is a difficult thing to self-analyse because we are so good at hiding things from ourselves. And this is where managers might be uniquely placed to help their teams. If we become curious when we see someone procrastinating, we might help them understand why they are stuck. And help them make better decisions about what to do next.
00:00 mins Tim is less prone to procrastination as a manager than he was as an individual contributor, mostly because he feels guilty. Similarly Pilar will always prioritise work that someone else is dependent on over work that is "just for her".
2:00 Tim admits that he sometimes procrastinates because he doesn't want to be seen to be too responsive.
3:40 Pilar sometimes schedules a delayed email response so that people don't get used to an immediate answer from her. Tim classifies this as getting your computer to do the procrastination for you!
5:00 Procrastination can also happen when we are starting something but haven't yet gotten into the flow of the task.
5:50 Pilar shares a time when a team-mate's procrastination was just the symptom to a bigger issue.
7:15 The paradox of choice (or decision paralysis) is an issue for Tim, most notably shown via his inability to tackle his inbox. But as a manager much more of the work is happening real time - for example in meetings - which forced him to become more efficient.
10:00 It's harder to procrastinate work that has visible impact, like preparing for a meeting, versus tasks like responding to an email which has a lower "procrastination penalty".
11:00 Pilar wrote a book called "The Remote Workers Guide to Time Management" and it has a whole chapter on procrastination. One of the things she realised in writing the book is that she procrastinates by coming up with more work for herself. And this might be because most of her work now is self-directed. Whereas back in the theatre company when there was one production at a time with many people depending on it, she was less prone to distraction.
12:45 In a perfect example of brains telling us only what we want to hear, Tim relates how delaying tasks has often lead to improved outcomes for him.
14:15 There are so many reasons why we delay. In might be discomfort, boredom, overwhelm or a sense of not feeling ready. If we take time to understand why we are procrastinating then it can help us make better choices about how to deal with it.
16:15 We can apply this same curiosity to our team. And this can be a great benefit. Our team struggle to self-analyse just like we do, so as a manager we have an opportunity to gently and safely help people identify when they are procrastinating and if there is a bigger issue behind it.
17:30 Pilar is reminded of the book "Hidden Potential" by Adam Grant which introduced the concept of deliberate play. Taking a different approach to a task so that it gives you a different experience. When Pilar is stuck whilst writing she will sometimes use a generative AI bot to clarify her thoughts or spark a new idea. She's still working on her project but tackling it from a different angle. Tim agrees this is a great approach towards overcoming procrastination.
20:40 A lack of purpose or reward can also lead to procrastination.
21:15 Tim recalls a colleague who was very prone to procrastination but it was never a cause for concern because once this person got started on their task they became fully immersed in it. Whilst another colleague struggled greatly with prioritisation which looked a bit like procrastination - they were constantly working but not always on the highest priority tasks.
24:00 For our hosts, merely delaying the work is not procrastination. Instead its choosing not to do something that you need or want to do.
What about you, dear listener? How do you deal with procrastination in yourself and your team? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
A theme we keep coming back to in the Management Café is the importance of context. In each situation there are many variables that influence what happens. For example the company culture, our manager, our team, the particular task and our own capability.
Sometimes we have to accept that the current context is not good one for us and we're not going to perform at our best. This can be hard to reconcile, many of us have an expectation that we can handle all challenges.
But this realisation, that the context isn't right for us, also brings opportunity. The opportunity to be patient and understanding of ourselves (or others). The opportunity to change the context. Or the opportunity to save ourselves the wasted effort and pain from trying something that will never succeed in that context.
So... how do you identify the context that works for you? And can we make progress even from the situations which don't work? Join hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti for coffee and find out!
00:15 mins In episode #74 Pilar shared a story of how a change of context, in this case working with a different team, improved her performance delivering training.
3:30 Acknowledging that the context isn't right for us can open the door to trying something different.
4:30 Tim had an experience recently with a colleague who decided that the organisational culture wasn't a good match. And so they made the decision to leave. This freed the person, and the organisation, to move forward. Pilar references Laszlo Bock's book "Work Rules" and how he incorporated this into the culture at Google. If someone wasn't performing well, then you could work with them directly but also change the context - maybe a different part of the organisation. Or maybe they were best suited to a different organisation.
6:25 Unfortunately companies and employees can sometimes misrepresent or misinterpret their preferred context during the hiring process. Ideally we'd be aware of what environments work best for us and aim for companies and roles that can accommodate us.
7:45 Things can also be quite different to how they appear on the surface. Pilar talks about a case study of a distributed company with a very flat leadership structure. However this organisation had an unofficial hierarchy and a founder dynamic that meant employees struggled to be heard.
10:00 How to identify the context that works for you? It's a big question, especially early in your career. Tim suggests that even a process of elimination, a trial and error process of identifying what doesn't work, is still good progress.
11:15 This is hard to recognise in the moment. But with hindsight we can make sense of what was or wasn't helpful to us.
12:50 We can save ourselves a lot of pain and wasted effort by understanding what will and won't succeed within our context. Pilar shares an anecdote of someone who tried to apply a productivity initiative within an organisation only to violate a cultural norm. This can be one of the big indicators that a context isn't right, when our vision of change is vastly different to the organisation's. We might need to find a new place to work!
16:20 Tim remembers a time when he badly misread the culture of his workplace because his manager had done such a great job of shielding him. A painful lesson which resulted in him being out of a job within 6 weeks of his manager leaving.
17:30 Nini Fritz of The Work Happiness Project shared something that helps her identify when it's worth applying efforts to bring about organisational change. When we see people share our desire for the outcome but they are struggling with implementation, we have the best chance to improve the context.
What about you, dear listener? Is this something you think about? How can you tell when the context is right or wrong for you? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Step into the Management Café with your hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti.
This conversation was inspired by an article Pilar read in Organizational Dynamics: "How managers can help employees navigate tough decisions without burning out by Andrew Molinsky and Laura Noval. They describe a specific type of burnout, that which arises from having to continuously perform challenging tasks. This is different from the burnout that comes from chronic overwork or being under prolonged stress.And it requires different solutions. An employee might have a low overall workload, might be exercising and getting enough sleep and ticking all the boxes for managing "overwork burnout". Yet these if they are required to perform challenging tasks beyond their capacity to cope... they will burn out. So how can we support employees in this situation? The article's authors propose several ways organisations can help employees prepare, carry out and recover from challenging tasks.
Managers play a key role in guiding employees through difficult work. Firstly in recognising that a particular task is a "necessary evil" and will take a toll on the person who performs it. Then by acknowledging this impact to the employee and supporting them. This can reduce the emotional burden on the employee and help them avoid burnout.
01:45 mins The article talks about the type of burnout that comes when the employee is required to do things that are particularly challenging. The authors call these tasks "necessary evils". To quote directly from the article "Burnout happens when an employee continuously performs tasks that cause emotional, material or physical harm to another person (also known as ânecessary evilsâ). Disciplining others or delivering bad news are examples of necessary evils. It requires an employee to be focused and self-controlled, which at times can cause significant stress and impaired task performance."
4:20 One of the examples of a "necessary evil" task comes from an employee in a drug recovery programme who is required to remove someone from the programme because they violated the rules. This is a tough decision but, in a way, it is the right thing to do. It's easy to see how performing this task would take it's toll on the employee, particularly if the task must be done regularly or without support.
5:00 Pilar shares a story of someone working at an educational institution where their role requires them to tell students that they need to pay for an additional service. And the students can have a big, emotional reaction. If the employee has to deal with this situation repeatedly, it will lead to burnout.
6:30 With this type of burnout you might not have a large overall volume of work, you might be getting enough sleep and doing all the right things. But too much of the necessary evils still leads to burnout.
7:00 The article lists two types of challenging tasks. A competence challenge is a task which is technically challenging - requiring the employee to work at or beyond their capability. A character challenge conflicts with their sense of who they are as a person. Tim would add a third element of capacity. An employee might be able to have one challenging conversation each day, but not have the capacity to do ten of those conversations. And Pilar adds another dimension of expectation: sometimes we can get overloaded even when the volume is not that high, but our expectations turn it into overwhelm.
8:15 It can be good to go into a competency or capacity challenge as long as it isn't for a sustained period. Tim shares a story about challenging work at Shield GEO. They asked a simple question at the end of each day to a team that was under stress:
"Could you do another day like this tomorrow?"
Asking this simple question was much less intrusive than a time and motion study. People's answers helped identify what tasks were causing overload - but they also helped people understand that they weren't in a constant state of stress. The hard days didn't happen forever.
10:30 Pilar likes the question "could you do another day tomorrow like you had today?". It helps the manager see how sustainable people's work is and gives the employee an opportunity to reflect on whether their own situation is sustainable. Is a hard day a challenge? Or is it unbearable?
11:30 The article talks about managing the psychological experience in three phases. What to do before, what to do during and what to do after.
12:30 The first phase can be training or preparation. Maybe writing a script. Or mentally preparing by rationalising why the task is important. Even to take a box of tissues into a meeting.
13:45 One way that Tim prepares himself for challenging tasks, especially if it is an interaction with another person, is to prepare emotionally. He thinks through what the other person (or he) might feel, how he wants them to feel and how he doesn't want them to feel. If the interaction becomes emotionally fraught, he's prepared for that possibility and also helps him guide the emotional tone of the conversation.
16:00 Tim refers back to episode #74 and the story of how Mikhail Gorbachev was able to change the course of a critical conversation with Margaret Thatcher. As part of this he took stock of both of their emotional states and then redirected in a more productive direction.
17:30 Part of preparation might be assigning extra resources to the employee to help them. So one of the solutions proposed in the article is to pair people up during challenging tasks, especially during a competence challenge. e.g. line managers taking an experienced HR person into discussions with employees about severance.
19:50 Another part of preparation can be scheduling down time for the employee before and after the task. It might be rest, it might be an outlet like exercise or even just some alone time to cry. This is important on several levels. Firstly it helps the employee release their stress and recover. Secondly the organisation is acknowledging it's a hard task and making appropriate concessions to the employee, and that acknowledgement matters. And thirdly the organisation is making that recovery part of work itself - as opposed to expecting the employee to recover from workplace stress during their personal time.
21:00 Pilar avoids scheduling draining tasks on a Mondays because they interfere with her Sundays.
23:00 Reflecting back on the task is also helpful. Are there learnings which can help if the task comes up again in the future?
24:00 Pilar appreciates that the article talks about emotional regulation, which suggests understanding and managing or decreasing our emotions in the moment, but not eliminating them. It's ok and healthy for us to have an emotional response to difficult tasks. Reflecting back to episode ##76 on Manager Regrets, being conscious of the weight of our actions and the impact of them upon people is an important element of perform our work mindfully.
What about you, dear listener? How do you help your team members through challenging tasks? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
A short bonus episode to let you know what's brewing in the Management Café.
In about a month, we'll be starting a new series, on manager emotions.In each episode, we'll dive into a specific emotion, discussing what it feels like, its purpose, and how it can help or hinder us as managers.
Our recent episode on regret resonated with listeners, and we both enjoyed it very much! It highlighted the importance of discussing emotions as a manager and how they shape our management practices. So we've decided to cover some other feelings and emotions.
Throughout the series, we'll share our own experiences and those shared with us by others. We'll explore not only the manager's experience of each emotion but also their experience of employees who are going through those emotions. When you think about emotional contagion and the impact of being around someone experiencing a particular emotional reaction, you can see how there will be plenty to get our teeth into.
Some of the emotions we plan to cover include:
- Overwhelm
- Disconnection
- Hopelessness
- Anger
- Confusion
- Joy
- CompassionWe'd love to hear from you, listeners!
If you have any stories, thoughts, or insights related to these emotions or any other emotions you think would make for an interesting episode, please share them with us. You can reach out via email at managementcafepodcast[at]gmail.com or through the contact form on our website, managementcafepodcast.com.Additionally, if you come across any books, articles, or resources that you believe would contribute to the series, please let us know.
Look out for the Manager Emotion Series, where we'll take a deeper look at the human side of management and explore how emotions shape our experiences as managers and leaders.
Until then, coffee's over for us, now it's over to you! -
Our hosts in the Management Café believe that everyone has the potential to be better at something. And for them, as for many of us, helping someone grow is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a manager. Similarly for employees it's a wonderful feeling to have a manager who believes in us, gives us opportunities to improve and offers their support.
However it's important for managers to recognise that not everyone wants to get better right now. Perhaps they are finding their self-actualisation outside of work. Perhaps they don't currently have the bandwidth for growth because they have too much going on inside or outside of work.
As always context is important. The person needs to be open to growth (Pro Tip - ask them!!). And it helps if the role or organisation provides appropriate opportunities for growth. But even outside their immediate role we can often find meaningful ways to help someone if we take a broad enough view of the person and their goals.
00:30 mins In his book Work Rules, Laszlo Bock talks about acknowledging that sometimes people aren't in the right context to fulfil their potential. And in that situation, the organisation might best help the person by putting them into a different context. That might be working with a different team or role. Or even moving to a job at another company.
3:40 Our hosts believe that everyone has the potential to do better at something.
4:20 Pilar shares her mixed experiences of offering people the chance to take on different roles within her theatre company. Some people were not ready to take on a new opportunity.
5:30 For Tim there is a thrill that comes from watching people get better at something, even if he is only marginally involved. And giving people the opportunity to develop in a role is something that he has, at times, prioritised over the needs of the team or the business. He doesn't regret many of these decisions.
7:10 We might also choose to develop a person because we don't want to have to find someone else to do it. So is it about developing them? Or is it about you?
8:30 One of the ways Tim has rationalised his approach is that even when investing in someone's development has not shown the desired result, there is still some benefit from showing other employees that the company values giving staff the chance to develop.
9:15 Managers can position these as bets or experiments. Tim has had some difficulties with this. As the manager it was easy for him to view it as a bet. But for the person taking the opportunity it was difficult to manage their expectations.
11:00 Pilar views this as a great attitude of a learning culture. Managers will give people opportunities even when the outcome is uncertain. People are willing to go out of their comfort zone to try something. And even if the person fails on their attempt it doesn't mean that all their other contributions are erased or that they are out of a job.
12:35 Tim had a period at Shield GEO where he hired mostly early career folks and enjoyed watching them flourish. Later when the business started hiring more experienced people who wanted stability in their role and career, Tim struggled to adjust. He couldn't quite kick the urge to grow people.
14:45 Tim found the Russ Laraway 3 Career Conversations model to be very helpful. By understanding the person's past and their dreams for the future, you are better able to help them in the present.
16:40 On the 21st Century Work Life podcast Pilar recently interviewed a large creative agency who built a solution to help companies better understand people's potential and interests. This software gives people a space to talk about their skills and interests outside their direct job role.
18:00 This is similar to the experience Tim had with Bree Caggiati. Bree's role as a journalist at Shield GEO was predominantly creating written content but Tim was aware Bree had done some podcasting with a friend. When the chance came for Pilar and Tim's companies to collaborate on the 21st Century Work Life podcast special series about Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams, Bree took the opportunity and excelled.
19:50 There are two different types of potential discussed here. One is the potential to excel in their current role and the other is potential to do things outside their current role.
21:30 Coming back to the example of Bree, Pilar reminds us that its important to believe in the person's potential and to offer them support. It takes effort from the manager.
22:30 Pilar shares her wonderful approach to constructive feedback - she craves it because it shows her that the person believes in her potential to be better.
25:00 Motivation is very personal. And it's important to ask people what they want and how to support them. Tim wants to get better at this. He's made the mistake of assuming that a person wants to improve and that Tim is the best person to help them with it. Both of which have not always been true.
26:30 Without asking first, managers also run the risk of destabilising someone by pushing or pulling them in a direction they don't want to go right now.
What about you, dear listener? On the topic of asking, is there anything you'd like to share with us? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
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Several times recently in the Management Café our hosts have talked about regrets. Those formative management experiences where they look back and wish they had acted differently. Making mistakes is part of our learning journey but some situations weigh on us more than others. Revisiting them can bring a range of challenging emotions like regret, guilt and shame.
Regret is an uncomfortable feeling, it's something we avoid. The discomfort can be heightened for managers who have a duty of care over their team and the extra weight that comes with an official title and position within the hierarchy.
Yet we can't just ignore it and move on. Regret carries valuable knowledge. It helps us understand what truly matters to us. It makes us aware of what behaviours need to change to in order to match our values. And it doesn't want to let go until we've acknowledged the lesson. This can be a slow and painful but very worthwhile process.
Pilar and Tim share a few of their (many) regrets as managers and talk how these experiences changed them. For our hosts this conversation is, in the words of Hector Santiesteban, restorative and therapeutic.
SHOW NOTES
00:30 mins In episode #74 "Leading in the Flow of Work", Pilar and Tim each talked about how they previously tried to live a life without regrets. But with age and more experiences this changed. Inevitably there are lots of regrets.
2:20 Regret can be a very helpful emotion for managers. It tells us that our actions in a particular situation weren't in line with our values. And it is important that in the future we handle these situations differently. Regret is a guide for our behaviour. When a situation comes up again we can be reminded of our regret. This helps us make better decisions in the moment.
4:15 Regret is uncomfortable but knowing that we can learn from bad experiences can make them a little more bearable. Regret wants us to understand why we feel bad about our actions and to try behaving differently in the future.
5:15 We experience regret because we care about what happened. If we pay attention to our regret and explore why we cared so much about a particular situation, it helps us better understand our values and how we want to live.
6:30 Tim used to tell himself that he'd never regret something if he felt he'd made a good decision based on what he knew then. But he came to realise that a lack of knowledge or awareness didn't necessarily excuse his actions and decisions. He'd still experience regret.
7:15 If we reject our regrets and hide behind phrases like "it's just business" then we are denying ourselves a valuable opportunity to learn.
8:00 Pilar highlights two different learning experiences. The first is regret from doing something we know we shouldn't do. The second is more nuanced - we think we're doing the right thing but we aren't. We are lacking the knowledge or experience to know better. So regret comes in to teach us.
8:50 Tim shares a story of one of his big regrets, when he reacted poorly to one of his team members who was struggling during a difficult period. The way Tim handled this situation nagged away at him for a long time. Looking back he can see he turned away from an opportunity to connect with and support the person. As a result they both suffered more.
12:00 This realisation took a long time to arrive and revealed itself in stages.
14:00 Talking about these situations with others can help us see things differently.
15:30 Pilar has a big regret from her period teaching A level students for Theatre Studies. A situation came up where her natural approach of positive reinforcement didn't work. She can still picture her student's face when it went awry! But for Pilar, the lesson was learnt and she decided to get better at corrective feedback.
20:15 Another of Pilar's regrets came from ignoring her gut instinct when taking on client work. The next time her gut started to tell her "no", she listened!
21:30 If we listen to our regret and act accordingly, at least we shouldn't experience regret over it. But it's hard to change behaviour. It might take a few attempts.
22:15 Regret hurts. Our memories of those situations are so vivid. We have a visceral reaction to the negative impact of our actions. This is part of the process, the pain helps us change our future behaviour. In a sense the deeper the regret, the better the lesson.
25:50 Pilar references The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink which suggests people have more regret over things they haven't done versus things they have done. (Neither host has read the book, neither has regrets). Pilar suggests that talking about regrets over things you've done is harder than regrets over things you didn't do. Because we have a clear understanding of the impact from the things we've actually done.
What about you, dear listener? What is your biggest regret as a manager? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
Let's face it, management has a mixed reputation. It seems like everyone has a story to tell about their manager doing something poorly. But when we break it down, often times it's that we've had a bad experience with a manager. That person might actually be an ok manager overall or even a good manager. But in this instance they did something wrong.Something we keep coming back to in the Management Café is how managers' mistakes impact the humans they manage. And these impacts are not trivial. People's jobs are important to them. They are linked to financial security, to their plans for the future, to their sense of self-worth and wellbeing. Bad experiences and bad managers can affect the employees for a long time afterwards.
There are many reasons why managers make mistakes. Some people just aren't suited to the job. Some aren't a good fit for a particular company or team or individual or situation. Some are still learning. It might not even be in the manager's control - for example bad behaviour might originate from someone more senior or the organisation itself. And of course managers are fallible just like everyone else. Sometimes they just mess up.
Most confusing of all is that these conditions are fluid. And it is about perception. A good manager for employee A might be a bad manager for employee B. The manager might think they did the right thing and their superiors or peers or team members might agree. But the affected employee can still disagree. Any they might all be right! As always, it's a tough job being a manager...
SHOW NOTES
00:00 mins Content warning! Talking about bad management can be triggering.
00:30 Pilar talks about her father, a senior engineer who did not like management.
2:00 People often grumble about management in general, but in reality they are talking about bad managers. There is a big difference.
3:40 It might take just one mistake for an average manager to be viewed as a bad manager. And once they are perceived as a bad manager it can be difficult to shift.
6:00 Nobody comes into management fully formed. We learn as we go and we make mistakes - many of which have an impact on the people we manage. So a person who is learning and growing as a manager will feel regret and guilt. This is not given enough importance by organisations. It's a difficult job and managers should be better supported.
7:20 Some managers take a defensive stance to protect themselves against the human impact of their actions. The phrase "It's not personal, it's just business" comes to mind...
8:15 Context is so important. If we want someone to do their best work, the environment and fit need to be right. This will be different for different people. And it can change with the circumstances. Tim shares an anecdote of managing someone who started off thinking he was a good manager, but ended up thinking he was a bad one.
10:45 When interviewing candidates, Tim could sometimes see the scars left on people through their experiences with bad managers. As Pilar points out, this experiences are carried forward into future interactions. It forms part of the psychological contract that we create with our workplace. (Check out episode #5 for more on this.)
13:40 If an employee has only experienced micromanagement, that becomes their expectation of what management is.
14:00 Manager "readmes" can be helpful for employees and managers to make their expectations and needs more explicit.
15:30 There is often a big disconnection between the people making a decision and the people impacted by that decision. Pilar shares an example from the Harvard Business Review article "Leading in the Flow of Work" (the bulk of this article was discussed in episode #74), where a hospital's administration suddenly introduced a meeting during a critical part of the day for the clinicians and staff required to attend the meeting. This sort of thing happens all the time.
17:30 Take a deep breath as Tim attempts to draw a line from society and more specifically capitalism all the way through to having a bad line manager. Pilar is, as ever, the diplomat.
21:50 Tim climbs down from the ledge but still points to systemic issues often being at the root of bad management.
23:00 Pilar points out that the bulk of bad management is not the obvious examples like bullying. Most of it is less extreme. For example, managers who don't understand the work or consult with their teams. And this is the sort of behaviour which gives a bad name to management overall. If you don't put the effort in, then you are a bad manager.
24:00 An intriguing premise from Pilar: do people love to hate managers? Do we like having managers? Even, in some sense, like having someone who we can blame?
26:15 We close with a reminder that anyone listening to this podcast (or reading these show notes) is clearly not a bad manager! You are fighting the good fight and we appreciate you.
What about you, dear listener? Why do you think management has a bad name? We'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ -
Tim and Pilar discuss an article featured in the Jan/Feb 2024 edition of the Harvard Business Review: "Leading in the Flow of Work" by Hitendra Wadhwa, Founder of the Mentora Institute.
Hitendra posits that "rather than (being) a trait to be acquired, leadership is a state to be activated" through preparation, self awareness and reflection. By managing our internal state and matching our actions to the context, we will function better and more authentically as leaders.
The article especially focusses on conversations and how leaders can get better outcomes by making conscious choices about what to do. It's an attractive premise, to be able to skilfully navigate the challenges of fluid interactions by pausing and then choosing, in the moment, an appropriate action for the situation.
This model lists five core energies: Purpose (committed to a noble cause), Wisdom (calm and receptive to the truth), Growth (curious and open to learning), Love (connected with those you work with and serve) and Self-realisation (centered in a joyful spirit). This is supported by 25 actions which help activate these core energies.
For our hosts this discussion is bittersweet. There is excitement at the prospect of making better decisions during important interactions. And there is also regret that our past selves didn't have the advantage of our current knowledge. Ironically of course it is that same regret which makes us the older and wiser person we are today...
0:30 mins Pilar appreciated several examples from the article of someone turning a potential confrontation into a better situation via the person shifting their approach.
2:30 Tim had previously associated flow states with sports - quite a different interpretation which is about acting without conscious thought or decision, just using instinct and muscle memory. But within the context of the article the flow state is where we are "calmly aware of our inner and outer conditions and able to adapt our behaviour as needed". Pilar describes this as a split personality between being present and reviewing what's going on. And being able to shift behaviour based on this conscious awareness.
5:25 We can all relate to the feeling of something not going the way we expected. When we unpack it afterwards we gain new insight and realise we should have acted differently. Alas, the moment has passed. Certainly both our hosts have experienced this many times!
6:25 The article shares a compelling example, from Jonathan Aitken's biography of Margaret Thatcher, about a pivotal meeting between Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. At a crucial point Gorbachev was able to change his approach and in the process, change the course of history. He reminded himself of his intention coming into the meeting. He reframes his perception of how Thatcher is acting. And he finds alignment with her on principles.
8:20 Pilar shares that a realisation that has been transformational for her: that people are generally not acting with malice - they are trying to do what they believe is right.
8:50 We can practice and get better at understanding and acting within the moment itself. But it takes a lot of effort. And time.
10:50 Letting go of our everyday habits and ego can free us to choose the best way to act. It also requires the empathy of understanding what is happening for the other person.
12:15 Our hosts wrestle with the regrets that come with learning and evolving. But our experiences make us the person that we are today.
14:15 Leadership is not a static state: "The personality and behaviour of someone will change with the context that the person is in, the thoughts and feelings that individual is experiencing and who else is present". Pilar shares a story about how a change in context made a big difference in her performance.
17:00 This framework reminds us that our habitual behaviours aren't always going to work. If we are able to be aware and present in the moment, we have a better chance of navigating the situation.
19:40 Often conflict comes even though everyone wants the same outcome. There is just something else getting in the way.
21:45 Tim's experience aligns with the model in that he's had better outcomes when he has prepared, put effort into being open and aware, spent time unpacking and reframing interactions.
22:30 The five core energies are intrinsic to our core humanity. There is a close connection to authentic leadership. "Leadership in flow does not work by faking it".
25:00 One last reminder on the value of reframing. When aren't going to get things right every time. Instead of focussing on our failures, the article shares how we can still find pride in our intention and effort.
What about you, dear listener? Does Leadership in Flow resonate with you? Do you wish you could turn back the clock and get a second chance? We'd love to hear from you!
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In 2024 Generative AI is still an a rapidly emerging technology. We know it's going to impact lots of jobs and work behaviour. But it's not yet apparent how that impact will be felt.
There is a big difference between ChatGPT helping you with a task (e.g. summarising your notes or drafting a communication) vs using it to entirely perform the task (e.g. using AI generated output without editing). Managers need to be mindful of how they are using AI, especially as it is increasingly embedded in digital workplace communication tools.
Transparency is also key - people should know why something might sound a little different than your normal style. Ultimately with a technology as prevalent and seductive as Gen AI, it's critical that we use it as an aid. We must not lose ourselves or our human connection to those we manage and work with.
Show notes:02:00 mins Our ability to experiment with new technology is much influenced by our context. Freelancers or those with lots of autonomy have an easier time experimenting with new tech. But those working in large, heavily controlled environments might have to wait a lot longer before they get to play.
3:45 AI is also showing up in software tools for example Helpscout bought an AI company to automatically draft replies to inbound support requests.
4:25 Kona have created an AI powered management coach in Slack. Tim is very uneasy about this - he feels that an authentic response, even if it isn't perfect, is still better than a "best practice" response. But Pilar rightly points out that some managers will just google "five tips for how to..." and then follow that advice. Is AI any worse?
6:15 AI can be even easier to ask than a human, e.g. if you had an external support network like we discussed in #65. AI is always available and quite forgiving. You don't even have to say please or thank you. Pilar has had to guard against becoming lazy because of the help she can get from ChatGPT.
8:10 Tim takes a "get off my lawn" approach that hard things, like writing a performance review, should be hard. Struggling through them makes you better at them and that experience is valuable. He also worries about the message it sends to your employees if they received a performance review written by ChatGPT.
10:00 Pilar outlines a different scenario where someone who has all the skills of a great manager but struggles to produce a well structured written summary. ChatGPT can help that manager draft the document. If the manager should be transparent with the employee that ChatGPT was used in creating the summary, the result can be a good one. After all back in the day a senior manager might have gotten their secretary to write up a performance review for them based on notes provided.
13:45 To get the best outcome the input needs to be detailed and high quality. And the final product must be edited and reviewed by the creator so that it reflects the reality of what they were trying to communicate.
16:15 Mindful use of generative AI takes a bit of work, but it means that you really are using it to represent your own thoughts and ideas.
17:55 The key for Pilar is transparency. Creators should disclose where they have used AI.
19:30 A danger with ChatGPT is it can disincentivise us from getting better at some valuable skills.
20:30 Rapidly emerging technology can create issues between those who are onboard with it and those who are not. People's awareness and tolerance and adoption happen at different paces.
21:30 Tim is concerned that use of AI by managers can damage authenticity and connection. It takes conscious effort to maintain human connection in a digital workplace, technology doesn't provide this by default. And yet AI is increasingly embedded in our communication tools.
23:00 Pilar agrees, but advocates for the benefits of mindful use. For example, someone who isn't very proficient in English could get great benefits from ChatGPT helping them writing email replies.
26:30 It might be that in a world of AI assisted communication, direct communication in your own voice becomes more valuable. Tim shares a story of a teacher who impacted him deeply through a creative personalised school report. And then juxtaposes this against the "copy and pasted" school reports his kids have regularly received.
31:15 Perhaps the safest use is to get AI to help with the mundane or analytical tasks and leave us free to focus ourselves on the people tasks.
What about you, dear listener? Have you experimented with using AI to help you with management tasks? We'd love to hear from you!
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