Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:21: How managers impact us at work
00:01:06: Four weekly ideas for actions...
00:01:19: ... 1: channel your inner anthropologist
00:02:29: ... 2: play the detective
00:04:20: ... 3: Guess What?
00:05:16: ... 4: safety in numbers
00:06:02: Turning awareness into action
00:07:44: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And this is a Squiggly Career Short, a five-minute summary of the topic that we've talked about on the podcast this week.  It could be just a useful reminder, or maybe something that you could use as a team to learn together.  And today's short is on why understanding your manager will make you better at your job. 

Helen Tupper: So, why is this a topic for you to focus on or talk about together in a team?  Well, managers make a big difference to our development and also how engaged we are at work, so effort understanding them pays back in lots of ways.  But very often, our relationships are defined by what gets called the parent-child dynamic, so we can fall into a bit of a pattern or a bit of a trap of talking to our managers like they're our parents, where we are looking to them for direction and approval.  And actually, what we really want to do is use insight so that we can almost talk to them a bit more like peers, so we get away from the idea of the organisational hierarchy holding the relationship back.  You don't need to be best friends with your managers, that's not what this is about, this is about understanding what is important to them and using that to inform how you work better with them. 

Sarah Ellis: And so, what we've designed for this is sort of a one-month deep dive into understanding your manager, which sounds a bit manipulative, but we promise we think it's just a way of being smart about how you get your work done.  So, week one, you're going to channel your inner anthropologist.  And if you think about what an anthropologist does, they observe, they notice, they almost have a bit of distance from a situation.  They're watching or watchful, which again does sound a bit like, "Oh!"

Helen Tupper: Just sat there watching!

Sarah Ellis: And what we're looking for here though, is people do have relatively predictable patterns of behaviour.  So, very practically, most people ask similar kinds of questions.  So, if you're observing me for a week, you probably hear quite a few 'why' style of questions, quite zoomed-out questions.  If you observe Helen, you hear more 'whats' and 'how' do we make that happen.  You might start to notice when do managers look like they're getting a bit frustrated or maybe losing focus?  I was saying I saw Helen, at one point this week, put not her head in her hands, but her eyes in her hands!

Helen Tupper: Which is just a weird visual!

Sarah Ellis: But you'll also notice when your manager has loads of energy, when do they really light up?  What do they seem really motivated by?  So, we're just starting with that awareness, and you might just want to jot a few things down so you remember what you're learning without looking too intense, like starting to make copious notes on your manager. 

Helen Tupper: So, week two, we're turning you into a detective, because we want you to start to profile your manager.  Now, you may actually have access to some profiles already because maybe you've done things like, I don't know, Strengths Finder or you've done Myers-Briggs profiles, or something like that, so that will give you a head start for week two.  But there's lots of other information you've got that you can use.  So, things like the way people might write emails or voice notes, for example, you could get the transcript of a voice note.  And we want you to take whatever data you can from the communications that you've had with your manager, put it into some kind of closed ChatGPT tool, so that might be Copilot, if you've got that, or you might have a closed version of ChatGPT that you could use, and ask that some questions.  So, "These are all the communications that I have with my manager.  Can you generate three words that describe them as a person?  Can you give me three recommendations for how I should interact with them?"

So, you can ask them questions based on the insight and it'll create you a little personal profile.  We don't want to use this to box somebody in, they are more than just the emails that they send you, but it is just sort of additive for the insight that you're accumulating during this week. 

Sarah Ellis: And Helen did this to me without telling me, which is fine.  And what was quite interesting --

Helen Tupper: In service of Squiggly.

Sarah Ellis: Everything we do is in service of Squiggly.  What was interesting is it did spot that at times, I deep dive into some projects and at other moments, I have lots of space.  And so actually, somebody in our team, say, understanding that is really useful, because otherwise it could just feel confusing, "Oh, well why is Sarah really in this one, but then over here she seems to just give loads of autonomy and freedom?"  And so, actually just noticing that and spotting that, already you think, "Oh, I can be smarter about how I approach working with Sarah, because maybe I just ask her".  Maybe we just get a bit more explicit, maybe we ask more than we assume. 

So, week three, so you've channelled your inner anthropologist, you've played the detective, we're now going to do a bit of a spin on that kind of classic game, Guess Who?  But we're going to do Guess What?  So, from what you know so far, have a go at writing down what do you think are your manager's top three priorities and top three problems, maybe for the next month or quarter.  So, we think it's probably more useful to keep this quite short term, because problems and priorities change all the time.  So, here you're doing a bit of a test of, from what you know so far, what have you learned?  Like, can you come up with the answers even to those questions?  They're not super-easy questions, it means you do have to walk in your manager's shoes a bit, see the world through their eyes.  

Then, ask them.  So, do that bit of well, how accurate were my assumptions around what matters?  Even if they were completely wrong, better to know than to not know.  Whatever, from this process, you will learn something. 

Helen Tupper: I like this one.  I also think you can do this one in a team, which links to week four's activity, which is about safety in numbers.  So, you might feel, by week three, you might feel like you've been quite focused on your manager with all these activities.  Week four is about doing something together as a team.  So, we've got lots of tools that you can use here.  We've got a Podcast, for example, on talking about values in teams; we've got the More About Me thing that's on our website; you could use something like 16Personalities.  But it's a team-based exercise where you're learning more about what's important to everybody and what everybody wants from their work, those sorts of exercises, but you learn indirectly about your manager, because they're having to share at the same time.  And by that point, you will have done a lot of learning about what is important to your manager, and we can turn that insight into understanding to help you in your work.

Sarah Ellis: So, what now?  I guess you've got a lot of awareness, but we always want to turn awareness into action.  So, we were thinking about what might you already do that you might then choose to do differently as a result of these insights.  So, you might do your one-to-ones differently.  Any conversation you have with your manager, you might prepare differently or structure them in a new way.  You might think about keywords.  What are your manager's three or four top keywords? 

Helen Tupper: I love that.

Sarah Ellis: So, I think if you're working with Helen, for example, one of the keywords might be something to do with 'now' or 'fast' or 'this week'. 

Helen Tupper: The opposite of my keywords would be like 'slow', 'stop'.  You'd probably see me twitching!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's when your eyes might go back in your hands again!  And so, what those keywords might be.  You might also want to think a bit about, do you adapt any of your communications.  So, if you're if you naturally send really long emails, but your manager is somebody who sends three bullet points in return, it might be smart to adapt enough.  You never want to change that who you are too much so it feels uncomfortable, but I think, again, this is all being smart in terms of you doing your job better.  And then, you might think a little bit about involvement in the projects you're doing, talking to your manager about, like, what would be helpful for them?  What would be useful?  Because sometimes, I think we forget to just almost pause for thought, not for very long, but just to understand, what does our manager need from us?  And we might guess at it, but we don't actually just ask outright like, "With this project, what will you need to know?"  And someone might say, "Well, actually, I've got to do these updates to the board once a week".  And you say, "Well, in which case, on a Thursday afternoon, do you need three bullets of where we've got to?" and actually, suddenly you've made your manager's life so much easier. 

Helen Tupper: So, we hope that has given you a bit of a quick summary into the topic that we talked about this week.  If you want to dive deeper, you can always listen to the full episode, or download the PodSheet, which has got all those ideas for action and some coaching questions to help you think about it too.

Sarah Ellis: So, that's everything for this Squiggly Career Short.  We hope you're finding them useful.  If you have any feedback, we're just helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  We'll see you again soon.