[00:01.8]
Hello, and welcome along to another episode of Walking to Your Next Grade. This is episode four, I think, in this series where we've been pulling at the threads that go into this knot around management and leadership development as part of your career progression.
[00:21.9]
Or even if you're not thinking about career progression and you're just thinking, how the hell do we make this management thing feel easier? And this episode I want to talk about the dawning realisation that often happens earlyish in somebody's management career where you realise that nobody is coming to save you.
[00:49.6]
Normally it's a, sort of, my manager's not going to step in and save me, or HR are not going to step in and save me. And, the illusion here is this kind of feeling like, so there's an issue going on in your team.
[01:08.0]
It's probably part of that repeating conversation loop we talked about in the second episode of the series. And you kind of hope that HR will tell you what to do, but, or actually first, you often hope that your manager will step in and deal with it, but your manager is most likely because they're also busy and because it's your team and you really need to deal with this.
[01:35.6]
But your manager will probably push you towards the HR policy and procedure and say, well, have a look and see what HR says about performance issues or conduct issues or whatever it is that you're dealing with. Or maybe it's one of those things where it's not even been identified.
[01:52.2]
At a policy and procedure level, there's just some friction, somebody's being annoying and you don't know what to do about it so you hope that your manager will step in and deal with it. In my experience that usually ends badly because the manager will either not come and save you or what they will do is reinforce team level behavioural policy across the whole team.
[02:20.3]
So you might be working in a team of like 12 people, one person is doing something that is creating a capacity issue in the team or a behaviour issue in the team. Everybody kind of knows that person is the one who's doing the thing and then you get an edict from a senior manager that is like, "Hello, yes please can you all remember to do whatever this thing is that you're all supposed to be doing." And it's really annoying for everybody because there's a feeling of contraction, there's a feeling that a policy has been restated as a blanket action, when really this needed to be a one to one conversation with the particular person who's involved in the situation.
[03:07.1]
So that's why we don't really want senior managers to get involved because they often muddy things by applying a blanket policy or training. You know, oh let's do a training that will address this issue. And again, everybody's just sitting there with their arms crossed thinking, well, we don't know why we're all here when it's sp and so who's created the issue.
[03:28.2]
The other thing then is, you know, maybe you haven't got the result that you've wanted from Talking to your manager about this issue. And so you raise it with HR and sort of hope that HR will tell you what to do. However, HR won't tell you what to do with an issue until it reaches what policy and procedure describe as four more stages of proceedings.
[03:53.5]
And so that means in most cases, you will need around three months of evidence to show that you have provided adequate support, advice and guidance for this person, that you have given them proper objectives, that they anytime, whatever the issue is, whether it be behavioural or performance, that when the issue arises, then you've given appropriate feedback that the objectives that you set them were measurable.
[04:24.6]
And you know that will have been going on for three months, and you need to have documented all of that before HR will even consider moving whatever this thing is into a more formal stage of HR policy and procedure.
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And so it causes some friction for managers, like often sort of earlier career managers, who haven't had to do this yet, because you rarely see those conversations happening where, you know, conduct or performance are being discussed.
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You very rarely see them happening in real time because they're confidential conversations and so they happen behind closed doors. And so the manager can feel a real lack of courage and maturity because of lack of role modelling about having those conversations.
[05:20.6]
And so they're sort of hoping and trying to outsource that management to somebody else. But there's this dawning realisation that HR isn't coming and that's really frustrating. Or senior managers might step in, but then that's actually really disempowering and creates a real kind of parent-child dynamic with a manager.
[05:42.9]
So we don't want that, we don't want you outsourcing your management. We want you or I want my clients to be standing firm and being able to find the courage to have these conversations themselves and to be able to manage these issues really effectively so that either they don't have to end up with HR or if they do end up with HR, that you have done all of the required steps in order to get it to the place where it then becomes a formal process and you're approaching that conversation with HR in an adult to adult fashion where you are asking them for partnership rather than advice and guidance.
[06:27.2]
And I think the inner conflict that most managers have on the way to this kind of threshold moment is a real clash of wanting to be liked, really desperately wanting to be liked and often they have got to the point of management that they're at because they've been liked, because they are really good at bringing a team together, they're really good at creating harmony, they are really valued as, somebody who is good at getting the best out of people, but that desire to be liked can go into an over expressed space where actually then you're not dealing with things effectively.
[07:14.1]
And there's probably on the other side of this push, pull, tug of war a real fear of conflict, real strong fear of conflict. And if you've grown up in a house where there was any shouting or aggression or any of those kind of things, you know, maybe you've had a parent or a sibling who's had a very fiery temper and you've been walking on eggshells, it will make complete sense if you find the idea of confronting somebody about an issue in the team really scary.
[07:50.2]
Really really scary. So I want to have absolutely bags of compassion for yourselves if that's what you're experiencing. Also I want you to know it's really normal because like I said, you probably haven't seen this role modelled very well and yet seems scary.
[08:10.8]
The pattern often persists because there often isn't adequate support to step into an adult dynamic and take responsibility for this kind of stuff in our teams because of that lack of role modelling, because a lot of manager training that's provided by HR teams is in universities is focused on compliance.
[08:37.8]
It's focused on things like managing sickness, absence and reporting policy and process. It's focused on how do you do good recruitment, lots of compliance led, kind of, training, where the real focus, if you get under the surface, is actually keeping the institution out of employment tribunals.
[08:59.5]
It's not really about supporting the line manager to have these really courageous conversations in a way that feels good for them and that keeps the power balance appropriate for the relationships involved in the conversations.
[09:16.0]
And then we lead into the same thing that we talked about last time, where someone might overwork to protect the team, and so you end up in this spot of being over responsible for the tasks of the team, rather than responsible for creating the conditions for the team members to thrive and for the work to get done effectively by the team rather than by you or by the client when I'm speaking to them.
[09:44.3]
So the illusion or that kind of, you know, the hope that HR will, will step in and help you, breaks when HR are unhelpful or when senior manager doesn't step in, and often this can go on for ages where, you know, issues are just rumbling around in the back of the team.
[10:08.3]
But the threshold moment usually comes when a manager takes on a bigger team, when there's a restructure, when something creates additional stress for the manager and the manager's like, oh nuts, I can't actually continue going like this.
[10:26.2]
No one's coming to save me. I'm gonna have to do it myself. And that is like, oh, punch in the guts realisation. And so that's where really good coaching and mentoring can really support, support you to make sure that you feel robust and sturdy as you're managing through these situations so that you can take that responsibility for the team because that's what I really wanted to say.
[10:51.6]
This episode is really closely related to the episode about the repeating conversation loop, but it's essentially different because the point I really want to drive in this episode particularly is that the realisation that I think that I see clients having at this moment of realisation that HR are not coming to save me and I don't want my senior manager to step in because they'll probably make it worse.
[11:23.0]
The realisation is actually, oh, I have to be fully responsible for the team culture here. I have to be responsible for the team culture here. And that is a big shift in the nature of the responsibility that you've been taking because in a lot of ways it is easier to take responsibility for task than it is to take responsibility for team culture.
[11:49.4]
Because team culture requires you to be really on it and to be having those conversations with people early when you spot something being done in a way that you don't want it to be done, when you spot somebody with a pattern of absence around difficult conversations or whatever the thing is, or dynamics between team members where you, as the manager, being completely responsible for team culture, are going to have to step in.
[12:21.0]
And so this is about you finding that courage and solidity inside yourself to kind of take the deep breath, have the hard swallow, go and do the difficult thing, which ultimately will let you be responsible for the team and in doing so release more capacity within the team to do proper, you know, to do really good delegation.
[12:49.1]
So I feel kind of apologetic about this episode. I'm like, I'm really sorry no one's coming to save you. You kind of need to do it yourself. And the offer here is, yes, you have to do it yourself, but you don't have to be alone in it.
[13:07.5]
And so if you don't have good role models around you that you can turn to for support, advice and guidance, if you need that kind of coaching and mentoring that maybe you're not getting inside the institution, maybe you don't have access to good HR management training locally, get in touch, let me know.
[13:29.0]
This is absolutely my wheelhouse. This is what I'm here for. So if you need me, you know where to find me. And I'll put all the links to how to find me and my website and my email address and all of that good stuff in the show notes. All right, so apologies for that one.
[13:46.4]
You do actually have to be responsible for the team. That is probably a bigger part of your responsibility as you get more senior than anybody would really like to acknowledge, because it's easy when things are going well, and it's totally gross when things are not going well, but that's still your responsibility.
[14:06.5]
Alright, take good care and I will see you next time. Bye.
