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Hello and welcome back to Management Matters. My name is Fiona, I'm your host and resident professional development coach. And this episode is all about quiet communication. So this is for those of you who have ever thought, how am I meant to get my voice heard among all these charismatic, extroverted, quick thinking people?
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And I think some of my favourite clients have had this pattern. And interestingly those clients have often been quite senior. So you know, deputy director, associate director, senior managers, people who have reached sort of senior leadership team level where they're surrounded by peers who are really quick witted, quite extroverted, quite politically savvy.
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And people who come to me with this pattern are like, but how, how Fiona, am I meant to get myself heard and have the kind of impact that I want to, but I don't want to have to be one of those loud people. So that's what we're talking about today.
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I'm recording on the allotment today, so it's still a walking podcast even though I've changed the name. So yeah, I brought my coffee up to the allotment. It is raining a little, so hopefully you don't get too much rustling from my raincoat on the audio.
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Anyway, let's dive in. So like I said, the pattern for this one is people who have progressed probably from, they probably progressed quite well by being somebody who's very reliable, capable, you know, in line with the other episodes that we've done recently.
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It's the same type of people who arrive at coaching. They're really thoughtful, they're well prepared, they've done their work, they're diligent, they're capable, people trust them really importantly. And they come to me because either they know of themselves that they have a challenge here, maybe they are feeling really frustrated with, feeling like they're not being heard.
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Maybe like I said, I've been doing a lot of 360 feedback reviews lately, so they might have received feedback from somebody saying you really need to have some more conviction in your communication and speak up more. Or maybe they're thinking about going for roles at the next level and feeling worried that this is going to be be an obstacle for them.
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So they come to coaching and it's really interesting because usually as we start talking about it we discover this kind of binary setup that they have in their thinking. It's a kind of black and white thinking of I'm either invisible or I need to perform extroversion in the same way that my colleagues who are louder than me do and that turns their stomach.
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They're like, I don't want to have to do that. It's not me. Feels like playing political games. It just is gross. I'd rather not progress than have to do that. And I think that's the really important part, is that, like, I'm not doing that.
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Therefore, I'll be over here being invisible. Not that they necessarily are invisible, but there's a sense of being invisible. And so I think this pattern persists with them for a number of reasons.
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Like, maybe they've always been somebody who was quite quiet. Maybe they've been like the youngest sibling. And it's like, yes, yes, be quiet. Being be in your lane. Maybe it's that they have had kind of support type of roles.
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So maybe they've come up the hierarchy in support type of roles. And I know for myself, when I was about 20, maybe I saw the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. If you've ever seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
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If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. So it's obviously quite old now, so like 20 years ago. It's a movie starring, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, where they are two side characters from the play Hamlet.
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And they play a sort of passing role in Hamlet and the movie follows their story, where they're sort of trying to figure out what to do about Hamlet and stuff. Anyway, I digress. In the movie, they don't know which one of them is Rosencrantz and which one of them is Stern.
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And so it's just these two kind of slightly ambiguous characters, kind of bumbling along, having these kind of philosophical discussions. And at one point, one of them says, well, I'm only good in support.
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And I think that's kind of what happens with some of the people who show up to coaching with this pattern. They have. Hold this belief that they're only good in support. And, For a long time I held that same belief and then it's only as I've kind of progressed in my own personal development as well as professional development that I've unpicked some of that and realised that support is really necessary and you can lead from a supporting type of approach and actually those kind of leaders we need more of them I think the people who slightly understated but really significant in an organisation. So when people come to me with this patterning coaching what we do is I'll often get them to put this behaviour on a spectrum and I think we've done this in talked about this in previous episodes but this one's really significant. So I'll get them to put it on a spectrum, where one is totally passive so you don't speak up, you don't have your own opinions, you just let people talk over you, maybe you're not even they're not even talking over you because you're not trying to speak and you know it's a very passive, quiet, docile kind of position.
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10 out of 10 is usually when we unpack it, they're like, well, that would be aggressive and arrogant. People who talk over you. People who fight for the fun of fighting rather than because they have a real opinion. People who share opinions about my area of expertise, even though it's not their area of expertise, and they don't really know what they're talking about.
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You know, all of that stuff, which I don't know about you, but I think is pretty common in academic institutions. And I'm sorry to say this out loud, but I've experienced that most in Russell Group universities, where sometimes the academics, you know, there's a kind of subtext around the institution that the academics are over there, and they're in their ivory tower, and we really shouldn't disturb them.
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I know. Full disclosure. That's not true of everybody. That's a massive, sweeping generalisation. I know. And it is also a stereotype for a reason. It's bounded in some kind of sense of truth. People's lived experience.
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So we put that behaviour on a spectrum. One is completely passive, 10 is arrogant, aggressive, rude. And then I ask them, as a numerical score, where are they right now? And they usually will put themselves around four, maybe three or four, something like that.
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So they're not not speaking. They definitely have opinions, but they feel like they're not speaking up as much as they should or could or would want to, and there's a sense of some work to do. Then we talk about, where do they want to get to?
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As a numerical score, usually that's around seven. So right, well, in that case, what is the gap between 4 and 7? What are the behaviours that would need to change along that line? And this activity just gets them out of that binary, black or white thinking, and helps them to see that actually there are much more achievable and accessible tasks or approaches or activities or options available to them in that range from 4 to 7.
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They don't have to jump all the way to 10. In fact, we don't want them to jump to 10, because the people who are operating at 10 are, as we know, rude, aggressive, abrasive, all of those things. So that's a really helpful way into this.
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And, I think the other thing that we often talk about is what's already working well for them. What's already working well for them. And here we'll find out things like, well, they're really good one to one. They're very persuasive one to one.
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They can usually get what they want in a one to one setting. They're also usually very good in writing. So they love, a paper because it gives them plenty of time to think and consider and what they put to committees in papers are very well considered and thought through.
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The problem they have is then when questions are asked or challenges raised against those papers, and then they're like, I don't know how to answer this quickly enough and robustly enough in the moment. So what I would always encourage them to do is lean into more of the things that they know that they're good at.
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So if they're taking a paper to committee, who can they speak to? Who's going to be in that meeting? That they can persuade to their side in advance of the full group meeting so they know they've got some allies before they even walk in the room. Also, they're often, not always, but often very good at reading a group and so they'll notice patterns.
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For example, I used to work in a team where, in a senior leadership team where one of my colleagues could be relied upon to say no to any proposal that was tabled in the meeting. It was like instinctive.
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No, I think it was a protective mechanism, but you could rely on it. She was going to say no. If she hadn't seen this thing before, if no one had spoken to her about it before the meeting, if this was her first encounter with it, she would say no, just lock it down. And I had another colleague who I knew 9 times out of 10 would agree with whatever that first colleague said.
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And so I was like, oh, she's the unlock. If I can talk to her before the meeting, talk her through whatever the proposal is and get her on side, answer her questions, then in the meeting she'll say yes and then he will say yes. And then that's half the group already on my side.
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And the other two members of that senior leadership team, one of them wasn't too fussed about sort of which direction the area of my work was like. She wasn't too fussed about how that played out. And the other person really trusted me and was just like, yeah, well, if you bring in a recommendation, then it's probably a fair one and we should give it a try at least.
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So it's the same for my clients. They often know, who the relationships, who the key relationships are, that they need to build, and then by working with those people, they can develop those allies. And then the third thing that I think we need to think about along with working the group or the individuals and the relationships, is also feeling free to take up a little bit more space.
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So this is probably the trickiest part for them. But if you are asked a question, even if it's a question that you're meant to know the answer to, but you go totally blank in that meeting, then I'm going to recommend that you ask for some time to think about it or cheque your figures or ask so and so in your team, who you've delegated that to or whatever, just buy yourself a bit of time and then go back to the group, which means then you can come back to the group in writing, which is your preferred method of communication anyway.
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And then, so the fourth bit is once you've become more familiar with those other approaches and you're building your confidence through practising those things, is the fact that in some circumstances you are just going to need to have courage and do the hard thing.
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So you will still have to be speaking up in committees. There will be meetings that you have to go to where you haven't had time to prepare your allies. There will be times where you're robustly challenged about stuff. Often that's because you're forced into a committee or a meeting timeline that is not your preference.
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So give yourself lots of compassion for that. Actually, I would have preferred to bring this in the autumn meeting, but I've been hustled along to bring it to the summer meeting. That sucks and it's crappy. If you literally can't do anything about it, then you might just have to go and have the hard meeting and accept that you might get a bit battered if you haven't had time, adequate time to prepare.
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If you can push back and get into the autumn meeting instead of the summer one. I think the final thing is just massive permission to do it your own way. For example, I'm recording this on my allotment, where loads of things are getting decimated by slugs.
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And last year, I found that entirely crushing. Like, this is awful. It's really sad. I put all this effort into growing all this stuff, and then it just gets eaten by the slugs. It's like I'm just being a shop for the slugs. This year, I'm like, okay, so I'm watching and I'm seeing what the slugs don't like, and I'm going to grow more of that, and I think people who present with this pattern are often in that realm of trying to work on improving things that they feel weakest at.
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What I really encourage you to do is lean into your strengths. Get to know yourself. Trust yourself. Believe in the fact that you bring something different than those louder, faster, more intense colleagues on purpose.
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Whoever gave you this job gave you it for a reason, and it's probably because they were looking around their senior team and thinking, we really need a bit more balance on this team because we've got a load of really loud people. We might need to think about bringing in someone who's a bit slower, a bit more considered to balance it.
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So maybe you're like, maybe they've recruited you into this post on purpose because of those very capacities and capabilities that you have. And also you will find that as long as your information is good. People will know that if you are speaking up, it's because you have something important to say, because they know that you're not one of the blustering people who just like to argue for the sake of arguing or that are just going to repeat whatever the last person said just so that their voice is heard in a meeting.
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In fact, in some cases, they will defer to you. Which lines up with last week's episode about people who suddenly find that team members and colleagues and leaders even are deferring to them unexpectedly. And so there, last week, it was about permission to take the authority you already have.
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This week is about permission to communicate with the authority that you already have, because people will come to you for the considered perspective. Particularly because you're probably the type of person who's like, whoa. Like all of you colleagues who are, in your stress responses right now, who are panicking, going, what can we do to get out of this problem?
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Oh, no, let's do more. Let's do different. Let's do something, you know, faster, harder, more. And you're there going, hold on, can we just slow down a bit and consider the plan? Is there anything we can remove, do less of, do more in a more strategic way instead of in a tactical, panicked way.
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Those people are really key in teams. We can't. Teams that are full of the alpha types don't work very well because nobody's bringing those considered viewpoints. And so if that is you, give yourself more credit for the fact that that is the value that you are bringing or that is part of the value that you are bringing to this team.
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And they need you, they need your considered expertise. They need somebody who can write well. They need somebody who is not in panic mode, who is calm, who brings that stability in times of turmoil.
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And you probably have been told this loads. Oh, you're such a calming presence. Yes, exactly that. You are a calming presence because you're steady and you're sturdy and you're probably a much better leader than you're giving yourself credit for because your variety of leadership it doesn't look loud and fast and reactive.
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It is slower, it is more considered, it is rooted in preparation and deep thinking and analysis and consideration. And all of those are really valuable traits in leadership.
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So please believe in yourself more. We need more of that type of consideration around the sector, especially right now, when I don't know about you, but it seems to me like we have entire institutional leadership teams working in panic mode. We need more people who are thoughtful and sort of more considered and slower in positions of leadership who can really bring that sturdy, grounded, accountable leadership to a sector that's feeling a bit chaotic right now.
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Alright, I think that is all I've got to say on this one. This completes our series, though. Well, having said that, this completes arc 3. So arc 1 of this series was about managing self and team. Arc 2 was managing upwards and outwards, that sort of career bit and that stuff.
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Arc 3, so the last couple of episodes have been about leadership. So manager as leader, rather than manager as doer. Thinking about how you enact your authority. There's one more episode which is actually the very first threshold which I hadn't developed when I started recording this series and then it emerged during recording the series.
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So I'm going to add it as the next episode, which is the new manager threshold and this is the experience of stepping up out of a team that you used to be part of and becoming their manager and how that changes the dynamic that you have and some of the self doubt type of habits that people can get tripped up by in that context.
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So look out for that one next time. The other thing to look out for is over on LinkedIn I'm doing a series called 21 Topics in a Jar. And this is all about delegation, all delegation questions.
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So I've got 21 questions, I've written them down on pieces of paper, popped them in a jar, and every day, every working day for 21 days, I'm going to pull a piece of paper out of the jar at any random order and answer the question. And it's things like, why does it feel so gross to delegate?
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And what if the person I delegate this thing to gets it wrong? And all of that kind of stuff. 21 of them. So if that's of interest, check out my LinkedIn profile, hit the bell icon over there, and then you'll be notified each time I release one of those videos.
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Alright, take good care people. Keep going. If you are one of life's quiet communicators, believe in yourself. We need more people like you in positions of power. So keep up the good work and I will speak to you all soon. Bye.
