The Leadership Programme.

If you want to be a better leader you’re in the right place, welcome!

Delivered every Friday and is a minestrone soup of tips, techniques, learnings and thoughts, & the odd disaster, based on my 25+ years of managing teams and delivering 1000,000,000 in sales.

Read time: 3.78937WQ7 minutes

Ambitious? want to take your career to the next level but feel stuck? Let’s have a chat. New coaching packages are available. Link here.

I’m back! After a wonderful, wedding-filled couple of weeks. Let’s dive in.

My first management job was a Department of 80.

Not a cute, cosy warm introduction to a team of 5.

Baptism of 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Here’s 5 things I learned the hardest way:

🔥 You can’t do it all yourself. Ask for help or you’ll drown and it will feel like a tsunami of 💩

This means learning to delegate properly, not throwing around the tasks you hate.

🔥 Managing a department is managing people and we know all people are different. What is easy to miss, is that you need to communicate differently too.

Effective communication is an exquisite art. Improve it, especially when you think you’ve got it nailed.

🔥 Most don’t think like you. I had no problem with difficult conversations. Others did. Conflict avoiders swerve them nicely.

They struggle with performance management and want to be liked.
(It’s nice to be nice, but that’s not why you’re paid. I’ve still never seen a job description with it on).

Learn the skillset for tackling them.

🔥 Pressure comes from all directions. But mostly from within.
I was my own worst enemy. The biggest lever to help get out of it, is getting support. I resisted that for a long time, as I thought I’d look like I couldn’t cope.

A friend, peer or trusted colleague is a great sounding board. An objective someone with nothing to gain.

You are human, and it’s OK to show it.

🔥 The fifth one feels particularly personal, as it feels like enormous failure.

I learned lots, and lots and lots in that first management job:

💡 What stress is, and I mean REALLY is.

💡 How hard it can be to prioritise when things are flying at you from all over the place

 💡Why we should set boundaries

💡Why we should ask for help.

💡Why telling someone to ‘breath deeply’ won’t cut it ( how I grit my teeth when I read those!😂).

My manager at the time, was admitted to hospital with a stress-related mental breakdown.

I did suffer from stress, and there was a benefit.

It made me hyper-aware of telltale signs in others, and how crippling it can be.

But this post isn’t about stress, the signs or managing it. It’s about the biggest lesson I learned about me. In this, and subsequent roles.

It took a long time.

I was dealing with a lot going on in my personal life. I thought, if I can do it, and manage, why the hell can’t you?

I realised this about myself: I am strong, and I can cope with a lot.

Like the saying goes, “You don’t know how strong you are until you have no choice”.

But I was unsympathetic and lacked empathy. It blinded me to how others handle difficult situations.

We all cope differently, and that’s how it should be. We all have our own strengths.

My weakness was ignorance of others’ difficulties.

How did it show up? I was very direct (nothing wrong with that) and blunt (nothing necessarily wrong with that).
It also lead to knee-jerk reactions.

It stopped me from considering the impact of my actions on others, thoroughly.

That changed when I had to deal with difficult personal circumstances:

My husband was in intensive care, and I thought he would die.

I saw how it impacted everyone.
Like flipping a switch, it made me realise, everyone isn’t me.

It also lead me through a whole journey of personal development.
Study.

One I’m still on, and have chosen not to get off.

It’s just one of the reasons I now coach. I can relate, understand, and not judge. I also give the uncomfortable truths clients don’t want to hear but need to hear.

I’ve always been a learner, how about you?

Please don’t hesitate to forward this, to help others learn.

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Action for the week!

Want to have a practice?
I’m not going to throw EQ at you. This post isn’t about that. But it is about flagging up, everyone isn’t you.
No one thinks just like you, or responds just like you. That’s why you are brilliant, special and unique.

✔️ This coming week, catch yourself when talking to a team member or colleague. Intentionally place yourself in their shoes. How does it feel.?

✔️ An odd response by someone at work? Think through, what could be the reasons they are responding in that way. How does it feel?

Extra resources

Additional resources you may want to check out.

The best resources around this topic if you want to know more, are in EQ, and empathy. Suggestions below!

An interesting 2-minute article on how to develop empathy here.

This book by Maya Davidson is a straightforward practical guide. I know you can order on-line, but why not get it ordered from your local bookshop? May not be as quick, but a better soul-feeding activity.

Music to get you ready for the weekend!

A mega playlist of supersonic tracks, to get you in the mood for the weekend,

Jump around to this after a few beers. An excellent new post-punk track.
(And in keeping with my loved up wedding theme)

Other ways I can help:

1. 1:1 coaching to help you develop the leadership skills you need to take your career to the next level. Let’s have a chat. New coaching packages are available. Calendly link here.
   

2. FREE RESOURCES Interview Mastery training: to master confidence at that BIG event. It could be an interview, public speaking, or that pitch. Make sure that the very best version of you shows up to that interview. Link here.