Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:18: The impact managers have on staff

00:04:42: Managing in an ever-changing environment

00:06:08: Five areas in which to be a good manager

00:11:50: Ideas for action…

00:12:06: … 1: align the contributor with the contribution

00:16:49: Allocating time to talk and updating job descriptions

00:19:17: Mismatch in expectations

00:21:29: … 2: say what people don't see

00:25:53: Examples of sharing failure

00:27:24: Examples of dealing with confidence gremlins

00:29:36: … 3: show your working

00:34:36: Summary of ideas for action

00:35:20: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hello everyone and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And we are your hosts.  We are here every week, talking about all things careers, giving you some ideas for actions and tools to try out, to help you take a little bit more control of your career development and have a bit of confidence in doing it too.  

Squiggly Careers are always full of ups and downs, and we want to be your support behind the scenes to help you. Today, we're going to talk about how to be a good manager.  You might not be a manager, but maybe you can pick up some tips that you can talk to your manager about!

Sarah Ellis: Imagine that, imagine if everyone listening just goes to their manager and says, "I think you should listen to this".  That would be feedback, wouldn't it!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, maybe think about how you might approach that conversation!  But maybe you do want to be a manager in the future, or there might be some other ideas for action that you could think about, that you could take away and put into your teams. 

But I think one of the things that Sarah and I recognise is that our careers are so dependent on the people that we work for, and anything we can do to create environments where managers can be at their best helps us to be at our best too.  So, I do think it is definitely worth listening to this if you are a manager.  But also, it helps us to have a bit more understanding of how we might be able to help managers too, if you are not a manager yet.

Sarah Ellis: So, one of the scary stats, and I think it is a scary stat, I think that's how it should be branded, particularly if you are a manager, when you hear this stat, I just remember always thinking, it puts even more pressure on -- well, you were already probably feeling quite pressured; but most research does say that roughly around 70% of the variants in employee engagements, so how much people are enjoying the work that they do, depends directly on the person they are working for.

Helen Tupper: I can hear the discomfort in your voice when you say that quote and that stat.

Sarah Ellis: Well partly, that stat is a little bit old now, but I still think I have read quite a lot of stuff more recently that reinforces that that is probably true roughly, as in managers do have a really big impact on our day-to-day, how we feel, how successful we are in our Squiggly Careers; they are really important people.

So on one hand, I think, if you're listening to this as a manager, almost the sense of pride and accountability that you should feel, because you have the opportunity to have such a positive impact on people, and I have loads of managers, and we've had some of them on the podcast, who have managed brilliantly and they have been the best thing about my day, so I think you have that chance as well to be, even if you're not loving your job, or maybe you're thinking, "I'm not sure this is 100% right for me", and I've had that loads of times; I've thought, "It's worth sticking around, because I'm really enjoying working for this person and I'm learning loads from them. But I think it probably also is true, you know when people say, "You join an organisation, but you leave a boss"; do you think that's true; have you had that experience, Helen?

Helen Tupper: Yes!  Sarah says it, basically knowing the ins and outs of my career for the last 20 years.  Yes, Sarah, you may be surprised to know that I have once left an organisation because of a manager!  But yeah, I have been in that, and we were also having a bit of a conversation behind the scenes of like, "Oh gosh, what if somebody ever left our team or our organisation because of us as a manager?" and I wanted to move on from that point, because I'm a bit scared of the answer!  I hope it's not true.

Sarah Ellis: Well, between us though, we've managed probably quite a lot of people in terms of the different teams that we've both managed, and I guess inevitably at some point, you weren’t at your best, or perhaps you didn't build the relationship you wanted to with someone, although it did give me nightmares of like, "Are we going to get some Squiggly exposé of like someone comes out and writes --", you know like, "They recorded this podcast about how to be a good manager.  Let me tell you what it was like to work for Helen [or] work for Sarah", but I thought I'd use your name instead, because I like, "Oh my God, that would literally keep me awake at night!"

Helen Tupper: Squiggly Careers exposé!  Great, I can't wait to read that in whatever publication really wants to print it!

Sarah Ellis: But then equally, as we were preparing for today, I don't think I always got all the things that we're going to talk about right, and I still don't think I get them right.  So, I think this idea of, you've got to let go, I think, as a manager of going, "I'm going to be able to do all of this really well all of the time", because I think that's almost an impossible task.  I think what you can do is first of all, know about these areas and care; and also, do your best for your team. I think fundamentally, if that's your attitude, and your mindset as a manager is, "I want to be a brilliant manager, I want to be the best I can be, and I want to keep improving and keep learning", I think that mindset, I think I'm just hoping basically now, I hope that that mindset that I had helped me, even when I perhaps wasn't doing some of the things that we're going to talk about today absolutely excellently, day in, day out.

Helen Tupper: I think as well, there are a few things that do make it even harder.  To be a good manager right now means that managers are having to motivate people and help them navigate through a Squiggly Career, so everyone's developing in different directions, and that looks different in terms of the conversations people want to have with their manager, and I think that creates a bit of career complexity for them, in terms of how they support people. 

There aren't these tick-box templates that we can just say, "Just do this and you'll be fine".  They have to take a coaching approach, and they have to find the time and develop a skill that they might not have yet. They've also got hybrid working context, so not only are people developing in different directions, they're working in different ways in different places, and no one quite knows what that's going to look like.  We're constantly changing how we are working because of what's happened in the environment over the last couple of years.  And then on top of that, they've got all the demands of their day-to-day, and I think that's just hard. We're saying, "Go be a good manager", in the context of all this stuff that's happening at the same time, and so I think we want to give, in this podcast, some really simple but significant ideas for action.  The last thing we want to do is overcomplicate your days with 101 things you need to do differently.  So, we wanted to take this idea of management in the context of Squiggly Careers and everything that's going on, and share some really clear, specific ideas for action that are very implementable.

Sarah Ellis: And so, what we've got are five ways of almost describing what being a good manager looks and feels like, so these are things that, I suppose, this is the job to be done, this is what we're aspiring and aiming for.  So, we're going to describe those five pretty quickly, and then we have tried to think about what ideas for action -- so just three ideas for action to keep it really simple -- could you take that we think will help you do at least one or more of these capabilities that we're going to describe. So, here are the five, and perhaps as I go through the five, think about which one of these do you already do well, because let's not beat ourselves up as managers, you will already do, I'm sure, at least one or two of these really well, probably while you're doing the job that you're doing; and what would your one "even better if" be, so which is the one area of the five that you think you've either neglected, or is just not your natural strength, or perhaps you've just not prioritised it or thought about it until now. So, here are the five areas, and we're taking these from some research that Gallup have done:

(1) motivate people to take action,

(2) drive outcomes and overcome adversity,

(3) create a culture of accountability,

(4) build relationships based on trust,

(5) make decisions based on what's best for the business. 

I think then, when you go through that list you're like, "No wonder it's hard!"

Helen Tupper: I know.  That sounds like some uber, amazing manager!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you're like, "Okay, I've got to motivate everyone to take action, overcome adversity, accountability, trust"!  And even as we were writing these, I was thinking they are such big topics and areas in their own right, I think we've done a podcast, almost a whole, entire podcast often on things like building brilliant relationships, high-trust teams, accountability, motivation.  These are all, even though we've listed them quite quickly, one to five, I think we don't want to lose sight of, these are really big things to do well.

Helen Tupper: There are experts in every area on this as well.  It's making me think, maybe in addition to this podcast, I should do some kind of Squiggly Career compendium of the people that we've talked to -- you know that that is now a thing -- the people that we've talked to, that could actually have a further conversation on each of those five areas.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, absolutely.  So Helen, when you're thinking about those five, which is the one that you'd pick as, "That's the one I feel good about, that's me as my best as a manager", and which is your one "even better if"?

Helen Tupper: Gulp, our team are going to be listening to this!

Sarah Ellis: I know!

Helen Tupper: So, Vivi, who creates all of our PodSheets, which actually if you don't know about PodSheets, there's a summary of the podcast that you can listen to, and it will help you reflect on some things we've talked about; but she'll be listening to this and thinking, "You're not very good at that", I don't know!  I would say, although I should probably get some feedback, that the thing that I do well of those five areas is driving outcomes and overcoming adversity, particularly if I think about the last six months and some of the things we've had to achieve. 

And in the context of some of the challenges along the way, I think that has been a strength in my management style. But I think my "even better if" would be creating a culture of accountability.  I think a lot of the time, I just assume it's going to get done.  And if it doesn't, I've moved on to the next thing before I've reflected on why.  I don't think that that's what creating a culture of accountability is really all about.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  I think mine would be slightly different.  I think I'm good as a manager at building relationships based on trust.  So, I think this often comes down a little bit as well to your natural coaching style and approach, knowing you're a bit more of a thinker or doer, because I think I was listening to you and I was like, "As a doer, you're really good at driving outcomes", so that's probably your natural make-it-happen-ness that you have. I'm more of a thinker, so I probably dive a bit deeper with people and get to know people well, and I think I have high-trust relationships where, certainly I hope people have felt that they have been able to talk to me about things, whether things feel hard or difficult, or if they've got stuck, and I can think of examples. 

So, I was trying to back this up with a bit of evidence!  I was thinking for the teams that I've led in organisations, if I think about the range of conversations I've had with people, I think it at least suggests that I've built some relationships based on trust, so I felt good about that one. My "even better if", was partly the one that you're good at, so I was like, "That's helpful, because Helen's good at that", driving outcomes and overcoming adversity.  And I think I can be gritty at times, almost individually, but I'm not sure I'm always as good at driving outcomes with and for other people; because, this is about managers, this is not about managing yourself, it's about managing other people, and I don't think I'm always as clear about how do I help other people drive outcomes, and I almost go in my own little world.  I'm good at driving my own outcomes and overcoming adversity, but that is different to helping other people to do the same thing, and I think that's a different thing. So, when I read that one I initially thought I was really good, and then I was like, "Actually, no, this is not about me". 

So, you need to let go of, this is about your ability to help other people to do this thing, so definitely that one.  And I agree with you, I think the culture of accountability one is hard.  I think generally, that is a hard one, and it's why so many of the people that we talk to, and managers that I talk to, they will often talk about this idea of accountability like, "How do I help someone be accountable?  How do we all be accountable?  But also, you don't want to overwork people, how do you help people prioritise?" I think this accountability area is a really interesting one, and not one where I think anyone I've ever talked to has gone, "I've completely cracked it.  Everyone has 100% accountability, and it feels like that all of the time"!  Even the word "culture", as soon as you put culture before a word, you know it's going to be hard to do, I just think.

Helen Tupper: Well, let's go there first then.  We've got three ideas for action, and let's go with one that's going to help with the accountability, but also with some of the areas, like the driving outcomes and helping people take action as well.  So, we wanted to have these quite simple things that you could do, that could have quite a big benefit. So, the first idea for action is all around aligning the contributor, the person doing the work, with the contribution, the work that needs to get done.  So, I guess the thing to reflect on here is that it's very easy for a manager to set the objectives and then assign that to people to deliver upon them.  But what happens there is people might not be bought in to what they might need to go, they're not particularly connected to it, because they've not come up with what needs to be done, or the way it needs to be done.  So, you might not have somebody who's really committed to that contribution.

Whereas, when you can create a better sense of connection between the person doing the job, the contributor, and the work to be done, the contribution, you can actually find ways to increase the accountability.  So, when you think about contribution, that could show up in a few different ways.  We use OKRs in our organisation, other people might use objectives or key performance indicators.  However that is described in your organisation, the first thing to think about is, "Is that contributor first?"  If it was, it would look like that individual in your team going away, thinking about what they should deliver this year, what the objectives should be, how it could be measured, and then coming with that information to you to talk about, rather than you saying, "This is the job to be done.  Go away and do it and let's see how you deliver upon it". So, you want to think about who is starting that conversation, who is pulling that first draft together.  Ideally, that should be the person who's going to be doing the delivery, because then they'll feel more connected and committed to what they're going to be delivering.

Sarah Ellis: I guess it links to some of the work that Dan Cable has done at London Business School around, you have a different level of engagement with your job if you've come up with your own job title.  And I know lots of us can't come up with our own job title and that might not feel realistic, but I think it's interesting; because if your jobs to be done and your objectives come from your manager, which I think typically they often still do, it still feels very command and control.  Someone else is more in control of your job than you are, if you really step back from it, and that feels quite uncomfortable then.  But I think it's just the way that lots of us work. Whereas actually, if you said you've got clear roles and responsibilities, you're in control of what you think that should deliver and how you might do that, I don't think it then goes from -- I was thinking initially, are we talking here about going from top-down to bottom-up; but I think the problem with that is, that just reinforces hierarchy.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I agree.

Sarah Ellis: Whereas actually, if you think it's much more about who starts; I think the person who starts is really important, so it's the person starting, not the managers.  And then it's much more about something that you collaborate on and that you co-create, because of course this is a conversation.  I can't imagine someone being able to do this and it not needing some ideas, and who wouldn't want some input from their manager?  That's part of your role as a manager. So, I think if it can feel co-created or collaborated on, then also it can feel like something that is like a live thing that you're going to keep coming back to.  Because, I think that's often one of the other challenges with this idea of writing down whether it's OKRs, which is Objectives and Key Results, or whether it's key performance indicators, whatever it is that you use, so often we get stuck in that.  They get set at the start of the year and you maybe review them quarterly if you're lucky versus does that become something that you look at as part of your monthly one-to-ones, or even your fortnightly one-to-ones?  Do we keep referring back to it?  Is it a helpful point to think, "Well, something has changed, and therefore my objectives need to change"? So, it feels like a really accurate representation for an individual on what are they spending their time on; the actions that they're taking; what they are accountable for; and, if things change, that changes to. 

And I think that is a really hard thing to get right.  But if you do, you get accountability, actions and outcomes, which are three of the different areas we talked about.  And I don't know whether this feels relatable to everybody else, but I was thinking about it for us, Helen.  So often, it feels hard to make the time to do this really well, and we've definitely experienced that.  You're so busy doing the day job as it is now, this requires everyone to slow down and pause for thought. You know we sometimes talk about, you've got to slow down to speed up?  This to me feels like a classic example of that.  If you don't set your stall out in the right way, then you are always going to be trying to catch up.  And then, if you don't take the time as you go through the year to keep coming back to this, again it then becomes less and less useful as you go through a year.

Helen Tupper: I've had a few thoughts, Sarah, on things that you've just said.  I've had a few thoughts on time and questions and other things that people could do, all triggered by what you just said there.  On the time point, I agree, just tactically I'm finding it quite useful to think about transition time at the moment.  So, to fit these conversations in with people, I'm looking at my diary of when I have another meeting that's much more to do with the day-to-day of work, and I'm trying to find the time around it.  So, I'm already with that person, perhaps in person. So, for example, I was at a book launch with someone in our team last week, Vivi, or I have had other times when I've been in person with someone else, and I've thought that is a great moment to have a conversation about someone's development.  So, I've transitioned the time, I suppose; I've looked around where I'm already meeting someone and thought, "That's a great moment to add this in".  So, I don't know if that will help anybody. The other thing I was thinking about was when you talked then about regularly reflecting on the objectives that someone has set for themselves, again I think the questions that you ask someone are really important to reinforce accountability at that point.  So it's not, "This is how I think you're performing, Sarah", it's much more, "How do you think it's going?  What do you think is working well?"  So, we don't want to shift from giving someone accountability over --

Sarah Ellis: Then take it all away!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, then taking it away.  You want to stay in that accountable mode, which means you are asking them for their opinions and their perspectives.  It doesn't mean that yours isn't valuable but again, it's that person first.  And the only other thing that I was prompted when you were talking was, as well as designing your own deliverables, which is what we're saying here with these objectives, I think regularly, and when I say regularly it's like maybe once a year, asking someone what it would look like if they redesigned their role description. So, because our job descriptions change all the time, the job that someone applies for is very unlikely to reflect the day-to-day of what someone is doing.  And if someone said to me, when I was working in marketing at Microsoft after a year, "Helen, if you were going to redesign your job description based on the work that you're actually doing and you think the work that you could be doing to create value for the business, what would that look like?" and then, I might not have it exactly right. 

But just that feeling of accountability to define the job that needs to be done, not just the things that need to be delivered but the broader job, I think that would give me a much greater connection to the role at a bigger level, than just what I was delivering on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Sarah Ellis: And I think one of the challenges that I imagine might be running through quite a few managers' minds right now is, there can be instances or examples of a mismatch in expectations.  So, you're my manager, if I was following this through, and someone's listening to this and I've come up with my own, what I think my objectives and my key results are, and I come and talk to you as my manager and you think, "Wow, I'd got quite a different perspective, I've got quite a different starting point on what I thought that should look like, and what I think Sarah needs to do to support our business".

I was thinking that would feel hard, those conversations will feel hard.  But I think what's useful about this is, when those mismatches of expectations don't get talked about, or are below the surface, I think that creates much more challenge than when at least they're transparent; because if they're transparent, we can both openly acknowledge that, we can take actions together, we can figure out what that might mean.  It doesn't mean something's going to happen overnight, but we can feel like we are together having conversations to figure out, "Well, does that mean actually I'm in the wrong role?" That might be quite a big realisation and it might not be something we can fix overnight, but you've actually had that conversation together, which builds trust, one of our other five, versus I wonder whether sometimes, that is there, that nervousness is almost there of someone wants to do one thing and a manager thinks someone should be doing something different; but because these conversations don't happen, maybe that's why someone might leave and a manager might not understand. 

I then leave and I think, "Well, I want to do something different to what Helen wants me to do", but we've not talked about it in the way that we've described today, "so I am going to leave Helen as my manager, because I want to go and work in this other area", and you might be left feeling a bit bemused, "Oh, but I thought Sarah was enjoying her thing, and she seemed to be delivering what she needed to do". So, I think being really realistic, I have felt that before and I am sure other people have felt that before, where you feel like those things, you think one thing and your manager thinks another, and I think this opens up what might be an uncomfortable conversation.  But I would still hypothesise or argue, better to have talked about it than to have not.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action number two is, say what people don't see, which sounds really counterintuitive!  And probably what people are more familiar with is that phrase, "You can't be what you can't see", which is essentially the importance of role-modelling as a manager.  And when I think back to the brilliant managers that I've had, this is what they were all really good at. 

They role-modelled the behaviours that then they wanted to encourage and support across their team.  And because you saw it and felt it and heard it day-to-day, as part of your experience of being in that team and being managed by that person, you were then more likely to do it yourself.  But also, the relationship you built with that person was very different. The reason we describe this as, "Say what people don't see", is if you want to build really strong relationships, I think sometimes you have to identify those stories or examples of situations which are outside of the day-to-day, that wouldn't come up normally as part of doing your job; but by sharing those examples, you build an extra level, almost, of incremental trust.  So, just to give you a few examples, because Helen and I were thinking about what this might sound like.  So we were thinking, and to be honest, you have to be confident in yourself as a manager to do this, because none of these are good news stories --

Helen Tupper: It's like being proactively vulnerable, this, isn't it?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it is.

Helen Tupper: "I'm going to be vulnerable in order to help you to feel safe", is the premise.

Sarah Ellis: So, it could be failures.  People love a failure.  Honestly, when we share failures in workshops, people lap it up.  We share good news and people are like, "Yeah, yeah, onto the next thing".  And sometimes, there's still that perception of, people in positions of power, and as a manager you are in some sort of position of power usually, "Maybe they don't fail that much" or, "Perhaps they're more perfect than me", and no one is really.  Everyone's always got loads of examples of failure, and there's failure at lots of different scales. Maybe it's about asking for help. 

So, your team hearing you asking for help, and that could sound like, "I'd appreciate your point of view, I've not done this before.  What would your perspective be?  I'm feeling a bit stuck, wondered if we could spend 15 minutes, because I know you're really good at problem-solving"; or, it could be you sharing examples of where you've asked for help in your career and found that really useful, so almost bringing your support system to life for people.  Then our last one, and there's a lot more, but we just thought these were particularly useful, is sharing the gremlins that get in your way. So, everybody has beliefs that hold us back, these confidence gremlins that can loom larger than life, and we've all got to figure out ways to cage them so they don't get in our way during our Squiggly Careers.  And I think people hearing from you that you have still got confidence gremlins, the ones that you've had, but perhaps you have managed to cage, so people feel reassured that it is possible, I think can just feel really reassuring for people.  I think that's how you make people feel, "Okay, so they're not perfect, they have failed, they do need help too, they have gremlins just like the rest of us". I think the key here is to pick your moments, so to figure out how could you share these stories, what might those look like, what might be those useful moments.  And sometimes it could be in a one-to-one conversation, when you can perhaps see someone struggling with one of these things; sometimes, it might be bigger team meetings; or sometimes, it might just be slightly more in an ad hoc, anecdotal way.  I don't think these have to be big, jazz-hands, TED Talk, "Let me tell you about my leadership".

Helen Tupper: "Would you like my PowerPoint presentation on failure?!"

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  To be fair, most people would probably still be quite interested, but I don't think they have to be that.  But I think equally, if you want to create that sense of vulnerability and shared trust, almost the opposite of our first idea for action where you go, "It needs to start with people in the team", I think this has got to start with you, as a manager.  I think it is unfair to ask people to do this if you haven't shown that you're going to do this first, and I don't think everybody has to do this at the same time either. I think you could just, as part of a team meeting, you might want to share something about a confidence gremlin that's got in your way, and how that's been tricky for you over the last month or so, and some things that might have helped you along the way, or someone who might have helped you along the way.  So, Helen, can you think of any examples of when you've done any?  So, we've gone for failure, asking for help, or gremlins that get in your way.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I'll do two with failure.  One that I'm really sorry, because I'm going to bring up the Clapham Junction meltdown moment.  I feel like as the podcasts go by when I don't talk about that --

Sarah Ellis: That meltdown as had so much content time!

Helen Tupper: I know.  But the reason I see it as a failure, one of my failures, is I see it as a failure as a friend.  So basically, in that moment, I missed the moment to support Sarah with something that she was going through.

Sarah Ellis: I feel now, people are listening to us for the first time and they're like, "What is the Clapham Junction meltdown?"  We should know what episode that is, because we refer to it so much.

Helen Tupper: We reference it all the time.  Wasn't it Reflections on 2021, or something like that?

Sarah Ellis: Probably, yeah, I think is, yeah.

Helen Tupper: But yeah, my failure was, I didn't support my friend in the way that they needed to be supported, and I've learnt a lot from that.  But also, forgiving yourself for it as well is quite important!  I learnt a lot about how to support better, but also to forgive myself. I guess a different one that maybe more people could relate to, that I have done as a manager, was where I shared with my team some feedback that I'd had that was quite hard for me to receive. 

I shared it with my team so that they knew what I was working on for my development, and so that they could recognise that actually, we've all got stuff that we need to work on and even when it might look like you're quite successful on the surface, it doesn't mean that you're -- you're working behind the scenes on the areas that you need to develop on too.  So, I was just trying to talk to them about the importance of getting feedback, even when it feels uncomfortable.  And talking about my experience with that, I hope created them a safer space to do it too.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I always used to share with people.  It's only in the bigger teams that I used to lead that I'd find conflict hard, and it was a really annoying gremlin that would get in my way, because I do find it annoying. 

Also, it's quite good to laugh at them, quite good to laugh at those gremlins.  I think it diminishes them a bit, which is good.  But I would also say, I find it really hard when people disagree with me.  I often feel like they don't like me, and get in all sorts of thought spirals. What's so interesting about me sharing that gremlin is, I assumed most people had an inkling about that anyway, and that they'd maybe seen that in action.  But most people were surprised, because we get very good at putting a front or a wall between us and these gremlins, or we really feel them, so we imagine everybody feels them as much as we do, I remember lots of people saying, "I've seen you disagree really positively" or, "You're good in those meetings".  Also, it helped me to think, "Okay, I am okay at this some of the time.  But equally, what they don't know is what's going on inside my head at that time, which is, 'Panic, panic, don't talk, pressure'!" 

So, no one can see that stuff, so that's the whole thing about, what people can't see, it can be really helpful. I recently was doing a programme where part of the programme, in the final session we had together, everybody did a short presentation for three minutes on, "Why should anyone be led by you?" so these were all managers.  And, one of my reflections to the group, who were absolutely brilliant and told some incredible stories and were so vulnerable was, "Just make sure I'm not the only one who's going to hear this", because often they were sharing stories or examples in reflection, to answer that question, that I just think that would be so powerful, because I came away from listening to that thinking I'd want to work for every single one of those people, because they'd shown me vulnerability.  They'd often talked about help or failure, as well as some really good stuff too. So, I think just think about, what are those examples for you, when might you share them, what might that look like, so that not everybody's perception in your team of who you are and what you do is just based on what is visible day in, day out.

Helen Tupper: And embracing your imperfections and sharing the stories that bring them to life for people is part of it.  So, the third idea for action is all about showing your working, and this is to do with the importance of the decision-making point that Sarah raised, when she talked through those five characteristics of good managers from Gallup.  One of them was about making sure people understand your decision-making, that those decisions are seen as being better for the business, not just what's best for you. There'll be lots of decisions you need to make as a manager, about what work gets done and how it gets done and who does it; all of those things will be part of your day-to-day making those decisions.  And sometimes, we're making so many of them so quickly that we don't take time to show our working, like what are some of the insights that have gone into those decisions that we're making. 

When there is a lack of clarity, sometimes people can make assumptions about what might be going on behind the decisions that you're making, and that can affect the trust that Sarah talked about.  But it can also affect people's buy-in.  If they don't understand why we're doing it in a certain way, or what we're doing, then they might not have that commitment that you need for them to continue that work. So, it's really useful for your team to understand your working, and one of the things that can help there is the anchors that you make your decisions around. 

So for example, in our business, Amazing If, one of our values is usefulness, so we want everything that we do to be useful, the way that we're working, what we put out into the world, the podcast for example; useful is a really big anchor for us, and we always use it as a filter for our decisions. Now, the team now know that, they know how much we prioritise usefulness, so we don't actually have to explain every single decision that we make, because they know that usefulness is such an important anchor for them that they can understand why we're making certain decisions.  So, don't feel like all those decisions that you make, you need to send an email and say, "This is why I did it this way".  Actually think about the anchors that are informing your decisions, and make sure the team understands those, so that broadly they get why you are deciding to do some of the things that you're deciding to do.

But then, you might want to take a slightly different and more specific approach to some of the decisions that might feel like a potential surprise, so something that someone might not have seen coming, or particularly emotional, and those decisions tend to be about people, so let's say you're bringing someone new into the team for example; tend to be about pay, so if there's any changes around pay that could affect things; or structure, like roles and responsibilities.  They tend to be quite emotive decisions and for those ones, you might not want to just rely on the anchors.  So, my assumption that, "Well, people are just going to know that I'm being useful and this is a useful thing for me to do", that one might be one where you want to discuss the decision in a bit more detail, and just talk through how you've got to that outcome.

Sarah Ellis: And, I think you can also encourage people across your team to do the same thing.  So, the expectation on showing your working doesn't just need to be you.  I think people definitely need to see you again role-modelling this, but encouraging other people to do the same thing.  If we want people to take accountability, as we've talked about, people need to be accountable for their own decisions, but accountable for what and to what.

Again, I think when I'm thinking about our team or the teams that I've led before, if you've got these almost agreed anchors, then when people are talking to you and you're their manager, they might say "Well, I would recommend we should do option A, and these are the two reasons why", and you would expect those two reasons to have some sort of link to those anchors.  Or again, as a manager, you'd expect to not be surprised by those. 

Also, it supports everybody to just be more accountable. I think it develops trust as well.  When I think about brilliant people that worked for me, they were really good at this.  They were really good at taking accountability for decisions they thought should happen.  And even if it wasn't quite within their remit, they'd say to me, "This is what I think we should do, and this is why", and it was so clearly explicit and articulated that then, as a manager, you're very on that person's side, and you'll really support them and if at all possible, you'll go, "Brilliant, well you take accountability for that and you don't need me.  I've glad you've shown me your working, because it's created confidence and trust". But the more you do that, because everybody listening who's a manager will also have a manager, because let's face it, we all have a manager as well, I found when I wanted more space and autonomy and accountability from managers, if I showed my workings perhaps a bit more than I might normally do, you then in return, I think, get more freedom and you get more space, because people increase their trust in you, because they think, "Oh, well Sarah's not just doing that because she wants to increase her personal profile, or because she wants to get promoted, it's because she believes it's the right thing to do, and she's putting the business and the team objectives first.  So therefore, I feel like I've got that confidence in what she's doing and why she's doing it".

Helen Tupper: So, let's now just summarise those three ideas for action to help you to be a good manager.  The first one was to align the contributor with the contribution; the second idea for action was to say what they don't see; and the third idea for action was to show your working.  And all those different tips and techniques that we've talked through there will all be in the PodSheet as well.  So, if you've listened and you want to put this stuff into action, then download the PodSheet.  It will be in the description for the show notes, it's also on our website. So, if you go to amazingif.com and the podcast page, you'll see it all there as well.  You can download it, you can use it, it's all there to support you.

Sarah Ellis: And I did, just before we finished, want to say thank you so much to everybody who has bought You Coach You since it came out at the start of the year.  If you have had a chance to read some of it or all of it, we would always love your feedback, and you can message us on LinkedIn or Instagram, and if you feel like you can and you can spare us five minutes, a review on Amazon is always very much appreciated, because it helps us to share the book with more people, and also gives people who are thinking about potentially reading it, a really good understanding of whether it's right for them. 

So, some Amazon reviews would be very much welcome from us, if anyone does have a spare five minutes this week.

Helen Tupper: Until next week's episode, everybody, we will leave it here.  Thanks so much for listening. Sarah Ellis: Thanks for listening, everyone.  Bye for now.