[00:02.0]
Hello and welcome along to Walk into your Next Grade. I'm Fiona, your host and resident professional development coach. And this is a bit of a different episode today because I'm announcing a renaming of the podcast.
[00:17.6]
So that is the last time you'll hear that introduction. The podcast is changing to become Management Matters for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, because I just really do think Management Matters and I think it doesn't get enough air time because so much of you know, professional development that's provided in higher education institutions outside of sort of structurally like structural skills based things like how do you use Adobe or whatever systems and sort of IT skills.
[00:58.9]
So much of the rest of professional development is about leadership development and I think management is really underserved. It's an under represented and sort of insufficiently talked about topic because so much of like I think L and D teams often think they're doing.
[01:18.6]
Management based professional development provision. In my experience, though, that provision is most often focused on keeping the institution out of employment tribunals. At its core, you know, you get your, like, management essentials, which is like, don't be a dick.
[01:37.9]
And then you get your EDI kind of tick box. Like, yes, we've done some EDI training, but really those things are about how do you manage in a way that keeps the institution out of trouble. And we're not doing enough to talk to managers about how do you handle when management stuff is difficult?
[01:59.8]
Because it is difficult. People be people in all the time. And that can be really hard when you're the one who needs to hold yourself steady enough to do whatever the management thing is that you're approaching and hold yourself steady enough to deal with whatever the person opposite you is bringing to the conversation or the situation.
[02:23.2]
And I still think this is going to be really relevant for you if you're thinking about career progression, because so much of career progression is about managing, it's about people, it's about handling difficult situations and.
[02:39.8]
Debunking that myth, as we've talked about in previous episodes, about how you need to be working at the next level before you can apply for a progression or promotion. And my thesis that that's not about taking on more volume of work, but it's about taking on a different way of thinking and communicating about what it is that you're doing, how you're doing it, what the risks are, are where the risks are, all of that kind of stuff.
[03:10.3]
And that bit is the bit that I'm really interested in from a management perspective. It does also flip across into leadership. I will be talking about some leadership themes, but really I want to do really good service to managers because.
[03:27.1]
Really, if you think about it, within higher education, everybody from the vice chancellor down is a line manager of some degree until you get down the ranks to individual contributors. And so I think, yes, leadership is important.
[03:42.5]
We will talk about that. And management deserves more airtime. And it's just what I really like coaching about. Like, I love it when people bring things to go coaching sessions that are like, oh, I've got this person in my team who's being really annoying. I'm like, great, let's get into it.
[03:58.9]
How can we sort this out? And it almost always comes back to a self belief issue or a self doubt pattern for that manager about who they are and how. Unconsciously how they show up in order to keep themselves safe versus, by the end of the coaching, how are they showing up?
[04:19.5]
That's really keeping them steady and stable and able to do the hard thing that they've been avoiding or fluffing up or doing in slightly random ways that haven't been getting them the results that they want. So that is the direction we'll be moving in.
[04:36.4]
The next few episodes will continue with the, series that I've been covering over the last. I think we're in, like, seven episodes now. Something like that about unpicking those developmental moments that managers and leaders go through, which we've been setting in this in relation to career progression and actually are, so relevant to the management.
[05:03.5]
Matters conversation because. Those are, typically management moments, right? How you're dealing with delegation, how you're dealing with accountability, what happens when stuff goes wrong in teams that are adjacent to you? How do you find time to think as a manager and a leader?
[05:21.4]
All of that stuff is really, really relevant. Coming up next, we've got an episode about how to handle confidential matters, particularly if it's confidential matters that you sort of disagree with. For example, if you have some information about pending restructures and part of you really wants to tell your team about it before the official announcements and things like that.
[05:45.3]
So how do you handle that stuff then? We have got one that's about being the adult in the room. So when you look around and you realise that the people you thought were meant to be doing leadership and management of your area aren't quite managing that, and whether or not you step up to fill that void.
[06:10.1]
And there's another one. I can't think of what it is. Yeah, there's another episode after that coming up in the series and those will then give us our, three acts, as it were, of management and leadership to development, and then we'll carry on the podcast of unpicking from there.
[06:30.9]
All right, it's been so good to be with you today. Take really good care. Get in touch if you want some support with your management skills and practise, and, I will speak to you again in another episode very soon. Bye.
