[00:00.2]
Hello, and welcome to Management Matters. My name is Fiona, and I am your resident professional development coach. And this episode has a bit of a leadershipy side to it, but I think it is an issue that affects a lot of managers and certainly those people who might identify as middle managers.
[00:23.1]
So where you have a team below you, you might be managing managers yourself. Then someone relatively senior is your manager, like director or, PVC of something. And the issue here is that moment when you look around you and go, why isn't anybody else leading here?
[00:45.3]
I shouldn't have to be the adult in the room. So this is kind of opening up Act 3 of our management, and leadership development conversation that we've been having for the last bunch of episodes.
[01:02.3]
And it's really. The final movement in the framework where we're thinking about how managers become leaders in more identity frame. So how is it that you start to feel like a leader and also in terms of roles and what you're doing and how you're thinking about stuff.
[01:23.3]
So the first act was about getting your house in order. So delegating and thinking about accountability and responsibility and having those difficult conversations and setting boundaries and all that good, really typical management based stuff.
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Part two was about navigating the wider system. So thinking about what to do in terms of managing upwards to your boss and to senior leaders and to stakeholders, and then also thinking about what happens when things go wrong sideways into other teams.
[01:58.4]
So this is a leadership aspect where we're thinking about evolving and stepping up into those leadership vacuums that so often occur. So what I'm seeing, and clients come to me in coaching with is this moment where you, as somebody who's relatively senior but still feeling very much in the middle, so maybe you're a senior manager or Associate Director, that kind of stuff, looking around and realising that nobody else is quite stepping in to do the leadership thinking that needs to happen now, so there might be a big project happening.
[02:37.2]
A lot of clients are coming to me in the middle of restructures and especially after a restructure where, the on paper, change has happened and the team needs to be stabilised and new ways of working need to be adopted.
[02:56.9]
And you're sort of looking to the Director or Exec Director even, and your peers thinking, okay, well, what are we doing here? And not getting any answers back and realising that actually it might be for you to do.
[03:13.3]
And sometimes it shows up as decisions kind of being deferred to you without you realising it. So this might be where you're asked to put some thoughts down on paper and then it turns out that those thoughts on paper turn into The Paper, or, you know, the committee paper that actually goes for approval, becomes a business case or something like that.
[03:37.8]
And so your tentative thinking, put on paper as a contribution for a collaborative process, then becomes, oh, this is great, let's just go with that. And all of a sudden the thing that you tentatively were sort of putting out there, expecting that some people would come back with some critique or some, thoughts or additional contributions just get adopted as the thing.
[04:00.0]
And you're going, wait, no. So your rough thinking is travelling up through the committee structure and becoming the basis of major institutional decisions and the internal experience of surprise or even alarm.
[04:15.3]
And that sort of going, what? No, no, that was just meant to be some thoughts on a page, not the official paper. Why are we making financial decisions based on this? Or whatever nature of decisions it is? And it's interesting because the clients who bring this kind of context to me, they're not naive about the impact of the work.
[04:39.5]
I think it's that maybe they haven't given themselves permission to be the one who's leading in this way because they've always experienced that someone else will be doing that bit of leadership, or they're really expecting their peers to contribute in a more collaborative and probably constructive, feedbacky sort of way that, they're looking for people to have an equal contribution.
[05:07.8]
But actually those colleagues just going, oh, yeah, that looks great, thanks very much. Let's, let's do that. In the most recent examples I've had of this, and I can think of a few different clients where they've had this experience. A part of that is because they.
[05:23.6]
So the client is the one who's quite established in their role and at, their grade, working alongside peers who have been recently promoted to that same grade, who they're looking to as pure peers, level to level.
[05:42.6]
But actually the other person who's been promoted into that grade has some development work to do to come up to that same level. And so there's this moment where my clients, or, you, if you're recognising this, might need to realise that actually you are more senior.
[05:59.6]
Even though you've got the same job title and the same grade, your thinking and your communication are more developed. And so there is some space for you here to claim. And, you know, it might involve a conversation with that peer about the fact that this is like you're stepping in, you're taking this forward, you don't want to step on their toes, but also you can see that they are still developing into this role and that you will work with them as time goes on to equalise this contribution.
[06:33.3]
But for now, you need to get this thing moving. And I really, you know, kind of spend a lot of time when I have these client conversations afterwards, I'll be unpicking in my mind, sort of mulling it over and thinking, well, what is really happening here?
[06:49.3]
And I think with this one, it's that the person's leadership identity hasn't caught up with their leadership reality. So they're already trusted, they're already influential, they're already shaping the institutional direction and the team direction, but internally still operating from an earlier self concept that's formed in an environment where being capable and visible felt dangerous in some way, where being too busy or too bossy carried some sort of a cost.
[07:26.2]
And so they've learned that it's not safe for them to do that. There's a persistent gap between how they are perceived and how they experience themselves. It's like people see them as the leader, but they see themselves as the manager and still developing in this space.
[07:47.6]
And that there's a kind of. There is a gap. I think this is part of the. This is part of what Imposter syndrome describes, isn't it? It's like, well, actually, other people are already seeing you as more developed than you are letting yourself be see.
[08:07.5]
Letting yourself see and acknowledge for yourself. And I think it makes particular sense where... Oh, and part of that gap is then sort of waiting for permission to lead. You don't need it, you've already got it, you've got the job.
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You're already the associate director or whatever your job title is. So go forth and do. I think there is a particular HE culture piece that we need to recognise here, which is that deference to academic authority and flat structures can obscure hierarchy sometimes and collaborative process that has often valued decisive leadership.
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And so there can be a kind of weird bit where it feels presumptuous. I think that's the thing, like, for these clients, they're like, well, I don't want to step on anyone's toes.
[09:13.0]
It feels presumptuous of me to step in and lead. And what if they tell me that I'm getting too big for my boots and all of that stuff, but actually everyone around you is already like, no, you're the leader, come on, what should we do? You tell us will do it. So I think that's quite an interesting aspect, where Professional Services leaders in particular, or managers in particular don't want to seem too presumptuous and the pattern persists because of this sort of conditioning for self diminishment.
[09:43.7]
Like I said, humility of like, no, no, this is just some thoughts or ideas instead of owning the fact that actually you have the ideas because you have got that experience, you've got credibility, you've done this before, you know, it's not your first time around this situation or this type of situation.
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And like, it would actually serve you better if instead of putting rough thinking out there for feedback that feels collaborative, you know, it's actually managing your own risk of being taken seriously.
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And the roughness that you put those thoughts out in is a protective mechanism. And if it's tentative, it can be retracted. But the problem is that the people around you have already decided to take you seriously. So take yourself seriously. Like, let's, let's catch you up with what everybody else already thinks about you.
[10:45.4]
For some of us, I think that, go. It has really, really deep roots. So I know I'm just said not just take yourself more seriously, but actually there are a lot of storys from our past about being the funny one or being the youngest sibling or, you know, things where we've taken a position in social situations that, are less authoritative and so that becomes the norm.
[11:16.4]
But actually serious conviction is Not something that you need to shy away from. You can step in with more conviction, but it might just take you a longer time to practise that if you're not used to it, if you've always been the funny one or if you've always been the younger sibling and everyone sort of traditionally in the family context dismissed you and your expertise or your contribution.
[11:43.0]
Because what would you know, you're just the youngest kid. Well, now you're a 40 something leader and so that's not the same. And. But you need to practise feeling safe where it is okay. For your ideas to stand on their own merit.
[11:58.9]
At the heart of it, then I think there's a, giving yourself permission to lead, practising what that actually feels like, taking your own thinking as seriously as others do and presenting ideas as considered positions rather than tentative contributions, appreciating that your words carry weight and giving yourself the time and space to prepare accordingly.
[12:26.8]
So we're going right back to the first, threshold about having time to think. It's really key that you're doing the work of creating that space for yourself to think and to do this work properly. At the heart of it is the thing I always say, confidence is an outcome, not an input.
[12:46.5]
So you're going to need to practise this. Like think about how you got confident as a driver or as a, as a cook or in a sport. Like anything that you currently feel really confident in. You didn't just one day show up and go, right, I'm a confident driver, let's go.
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It's like that doesn't, that's not how it works. You have lessons and you practise and you do a theory test and then you take the actual test. You still probably don't feel confident after you've passed your test. So then you're going to do a load more practise. Then eventually you get to the point where you're driving to work and you can't even remember if you stopped and looked at that roundabout that you always go around.
[13:26.2]
It's the same with this process, of giving yourself the credibility that everybody else has already given you. We need to practise it and do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And remember that sometimes it's like figuring out how to park in a.
[13:46.4]
Like do a parallel park or whatever. The skill is where, you know, you need to figure out the moves that are going to make this thinking land. Like, do you need to have conversations with people before the committee meets? Or do you need. You need to get your director to go off and have various conversations on your behalf to warm up the audience, or whatever those moves are.
[14:07.9]
You're going to learn it in stages, with all of the relevant pieces in the same way that you do, learning the different skills of driving so that in due course, you just do it without thinking. Then what happens next when you pass this threshold or when you absorb this, part of your identity is you become more settled in your leadership presence and the surprise stops.
[14:34.3]
You stop being surprised when people take you seriously because you're taking yourself seriously already and you anticipate influence rather than being startled by it. So you don't go to coaching and go, oh, I said a thing and everyone took me seriously.
[14:50.6]
You just like, yeah, I said a thing, and now we're doing it, full stop, full of conviction. Oh, I love that. And you're preparing your thinking with the awareness that it may be taken seriously and that it may receive lots of critique.
[15:06.3]
Because at this level, you're going to be presenting at committees that are, for example, full of academics who will fight with you just for the sake of having the fight, rather than because they actually know anything about what it is that's being discussed. So be prepared for that.
[15:22.7]
Be prepared to take yourself seriously and have conviction in your own ideas. And that process of preparing and speaking and being, ready for the challenge produces better thinking because you will anticipate the questions that you're going to be asked in advance, and the gap between your internal experience and the external reality will close.
[15:49.1]
All right, that's it for today. Take yourself more seriously. You deserve it. You've worked really freaking hard to get here. So now step up. Own that space. It's there for the taking. Everybody else already knows it. You just need to let your own reality catch up with where you already are.
[16:09.7]
God, love this work. All right, take good care, and I will see you next time. Bye.
