Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey everyone, welcome to the episode. So ask a Ram flips the script one step beyond podcast. Guests and listeners submit their questions and ask a Ram anything. Questions can be music, life stories, business, leadership, advice, how to make the best vegan omelette, you name it. Aram will unpack your questions and leave you with info you can apply. Before we get to it, please rate, review and subscribe. I was recently hired to manage an established team. What can I do to build trust and earn respect as their new leader?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Listen, get their feedback, get the legacy from the team, like their historical perspective from the team and plan with them.
When a team is a legacy team, so they've been together for a while, they've had a previous manager, they could have had a great manager, they could have had a terrible manager. They could have had someone who's neutral.
So it's really important to go in, listen, ask a bunch of questions, and of course you want to get to know people and hear about who they are. All that. Of course that matters. But when I say listen, it's really more about listen for the legacy of the team. Try and understand the team as a group and then also as individuals. Then when you get into the planning, like what's next? What are we going to do? Bring them into that process, get their opinion. It doesn't mean that you need to do everything they say, but you definitely want to give them the space to talk and to give their opinion and to give their expertise. And this isn't just like, oh, you know, like saying like, be nice upfront and then take control afterwards.
Teams know themselves better than someone who's just coming into it. And I would say for that first three to six months, it should just be listening, getting to know the team, planning with them until you have then become a part of the team and you can go from there.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: How do I find a mentor? I'm dedicated to my career and would love additional guidance from someone more experienced.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: It's as simple as asking. A lot of companies have mentoring programs that you can go to. You can ask for a mentor. Other companies don't have that and you can just simply ask people to mentor you. The thing about being mentored is for what reason? Is it that you're trying to be at your inner role right now and you're trying to improve and grow in that role or are you trying to move into a next thing or find a next thing? If you're going to ask for mentorship, you should really understand, well, what is the thing that I'm trying to do and what kind of mentorship, because not all mentors are going to be able to address all parts of your career. So you really want to understand, okay, what is the thing that I'm looking for? Write down some very specific points that you're working for and then go and look for that explicitly. It's as easy as asking, though, how.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Do you draw from your background in therapy when working with people through challenging times?
[00:03:09] Speaker B: My background in therapy has helped me focus on three things. What the individual needs, what the situation calls for, and the environment they're working in. So when I was a therapist, I did addiction and mental health work. And you really are trying to focus on making a lot of impact in short periods of time, because in that specific field of therapy, you don't know how long you're going to be seeing people. It could be for a very, very short amount of time or it could be a long time, but you really want to create a lot of gains, gains that make a make a difference to them. So you want to be thinking about doing that quickly. So I came from a perspective of cognitive behavioral therapy. So all of it was really about saying, like, I'm only going to able to be with this person for a short amount of time.
How do we get enough insights and create enough change so that there will be enough momentum to keep going? I bring that into coaching because usually when I'm coaching with someone, it's around six months to a year. Now, there's a lot of people I've worked with for many, many years. I think the longest person I've worked with has been eight years. And that's been a real journey from being like a mid level manager all the way up to being a CEO. And it has been, like, incredible. Like really, really incredible. But beyond that, I always just assume I'm going to be with someone from six months to a year. And so I'm always thinking, okay, got to get a read on the person. How self reflective are they? Do they have an ability to really push themselves in a healthy way to get to the next space that they're at? Do they take feedback? Well, can I be direct? So I'm always thinking about the person, what do they need for me at this time and how do I make those gains? But the second is I'm always thinking, okay, well, what do they need? Like, what is the situation that's happening right now? Is this someone who has to make a lot of changes because they're shooting for like, a really, really big role? Is it someone who has to make a lot of changes because they got some feedback that's like very difficult for them to digest and they have to accommodate to it. Is this someone looking to have long term career growth? But they need me just for that moment to spark that thing. So you got to think about the situation. And so it's not just what the person needs and what the style is, but what are they shooting for or what's needed from them, from the business and how do you accommodate? The final, though, is the environment.
I would say most businesses intend to have good work environments. I think there's probably very few businesses that are like, let's have a bad environment, or we don't care at all. And I'm sure there are some that say we don't care at all, but most want to have a good environment, but that doesn't always mean the environment is right for everybody at the time. So it's also the person focusing on the person, the situation, but the environment. And really, how do you help someone achieve something given the environmental pressures? There are environmental pressures all the time. It could be an economic downturn. It could be that a certain industry has a lot of hype on a lot at the time, a lot of excitement. It could be that the organization they're in is struggling with something, with themes of racism or sexism. So it's really, really important to look at those three things. The individual, what they're, the situation they're in, and the environment. And all of that comes from cognitive behavioral therapy. For me to really, like, look at that situation, make a lot of big gain or a lot of meaningful gains for someone so that they can carry that on into the long term.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: My team has expanded significantly as the company I work for has grown. I'm proud of the work we're doing as a company, but I'm struggling to connect with my team. Any tips?
[00:06:31] Speaker B: I have two suggestions. The first is weekly reports and the second is using empathy mapping.
So when a team grows and you're the manager, it's really handy to have Friday reports. And when I say reports, I don't mean like reports that are written out like these big documents. I simply just mean an email that comes in Friday afternoon that updates you on everything that was accomplished from that person that week. It's a really great way for someone to take all the things they've done and that they like. They're also just like, uh, they're trying to map out for the next few weeks as well to get all of that into document for them. It's like a great way to be like, oh, cool, like, here's all the stuff that I got done. And for you, it's a great ability to be like, okay, that's what's happened. I'm staying abreast of the business. And to also be able to give someone, like, heck, yeah, good for you. It creates a dialogue because then you're up to date on what they're doing. And so when you do have time with them, it's very easy to start following up and asking questions and checking in on things. And it has that level of connection where you might not be seeing each other or spending time with each other, but there is a dialogue, even if it's through email, and it's a meaningful dialogue because it's about what's happened. It does not need to be more than just some, like, well thought out bullet points. Uh, usually when people on my team do it, it's just, you know, probably in the area between, uh, five to ten bullet points that they just talk through a little bit, and it's the talking points of their week, which then sets us up for, like, further conversation. So that's the first thing. The second thing is empathy mapping. Um, you know, when people talk about empathy, they talk about in this kind of vague terms, like, oh, you know, I'm empathetic, really. Basically, all empathy is, is data gathering. So when you're empathetic, it means, you know, or you can understand how someone else is feeling. You can understand how someone else is feeling. If you gather data effectively, the effective data gathering is easily to put into, like, four quadrants. So if you just draw out a big plus sign, in the top left, you'd put personal and professional. In the top right, you'd put influences. In the bottom left, you'd put challenges and challenging, and in the bottom right, you'd put interests, hobbies, and passions. I'll just run through those with you. So, personal and professional like. Yes, of course. You want to know how many kids people have, you know, where they've worked before, all of that, but more so, it's like, what makes someone tick? Like, what's important to them in their personal and professional background. As an example, has someone ever moved from one part of the country to another part of the country where they don't have any family or any friends and had to reestablish themselves? I'd want to know that about someone that I worked with. I want to know, like, what was that like for you? Like, how did you build your life how did you get to know people? Like, what did you learn about yourself? So it's those types of questions, again, from personal, professional. I'd want to know if what they're doing now is what they went to school for and what did they actually think that they were going to be doing. I'd want to know if they have degrees that they're. That they might think they're not really using, but they. That they went and got just fun stuff like that. Like, I really want to understand, like, about someone. When I think of influences, I really want to know who influenced someone. Did they ever play sports at any level? So they have a history of getting coached. Do they have a mentor? I want to know who are their cultural icons? And so when I say a cultural icon, it could be from politics, it could be from music, it could be from film, it could be from writing. But I mean, culturally, in general, what are people that they look to as like, wow, I'm really inspired by that person. Or that person's really giving me a lot to think about. When I think of challenges and challenging, I always want to know, what are the challenges in someone's world? And I don't just mean professionally, like, what's going on in their lives? What are the things that they're managing right now? And a challenge doesn't have to be some, like, terrible ongoing thing. It's just, hey, what's challenging for you right now? Or it could be difficult, but challenging. I always want to kind of know what makes someone difficult to work with, including myself, and then finally, interests, hobbies and passions, or what are the things that people are interested in? What are the things that are hobbies for them and what are they passionate about? Like, we have other info on that out on our podcast, so I encourage you to take a look on it. I won't go into too much of a deep dive. So when you're using empathy mapping, it's that if you don't have a ton of time with people, but you want to just kind of stay abreast and keep that connection, you know, try and ask them a question from each one of those quadrants once a week or once every two weeks. So especially if your team has scaled up and it's gotten quite a bit bigger, get a few minutes with someone, like, ask them some questions and try and pick a question from each one of those. Now, it doesn't mean that you, you know, you haven't seen someone in two weeks and you sit down in the first 30 seconds, you're like, so what's painful in your life right now? Tell me what. What horrible thing is going on? But what you can check in and with is like, hey, last time we spoke, you talked about relocating your parents out here. How's that going be in the space with people where they can tell you about their life to the degree they're comfortable with and just do some gentle question asking each one of those things? Trust me, the more you do this, the more that people will very happily share these things. And if you do that around every ish two weeks with people, you are going to stay in touch with people, because it's not just like saying hello and what projects you're working on, because that's what's going to come in through those emails. Instead, it's about how are you doing? What's going on for you? Like, what's going on in your life? That combination of weekly reports and empathy mapping and just asking a question from each one of those quadrants every couple of weeks should get you there.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: What advice do you have for leaders in new, unusual, or emerging fields?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: I'm going to hit this two ways. One, if you are a leader of the business itself and either you're a solo practitioner or you're building a business. And the other is if you're a person within the business and you're leading people. So if you are a solo practitioner or you're building up a business where you're the head, what I deeply encourage you to do is pay 0% attention to your competition. If you're in an emerging field, you have to 100% believe in your own vision. You cannot be looking left and right and kind of seeing what the company over here is doing or the companies over there. Now, some people might disagree with that, like, well, I mean, how do you stay ahead of the competition? For me, I think all you're doing there is you're measuring yourself against someone else and just making little incremental changes to try and. To try and keep up or slightly get ahead. If you're in an immersion field, take a humongous leap and solely, literally focus on what you're doing, and that's it. And if anyone is. So if you're also building out a business and other people want to look around, I'd be like, do not look around. Focus only on what we're doing and making that thing the absolute greatest thing that we could do. It doesn't mean that you'd look to other businesses and I mean completely outside our businesses and. And look for best practices of how to build a business, how to market your ideas. But don't look at your direct competitors. Because looking at your direct competitors, I think it's just a downward spiral of just kind of like inching it along. Take huge, scary leaps, stick yourself out there, and only look to other businesses that aren't within your area. If you are a leader within a business, so you're not like the head boss, but you're a leader within the business, and then you're leading a team, a ton of it is making sure that you are paying a lot of attention to what's going on with the leaders at the top. When you're in an emerging field, it's really easy to get stuck just in your team and to kind of like, um, almost make your team like your, its own little world. Because there's so much uncertainty. You're in a world that's like, we don't know what we're doing, we don't know this field. We're just kind of figuring it out. And it's really easy just to kind of create a little, little click in there. And I ultra 100%. It's like, be super, super tight with the senior leaders and then anyone else that's at a peer level getting too stuck in a small, little world of just your team. And again, in an emerging field, it is really easy just to have just like this teeny, teeny little click because you become so close, because you're figuring this thing out together, you can lose the force for the trees very, very easily. So be super close with your peer level people. Lots of curiosity, what are you doing? What's working your team, what's not working with your team, but also be really tight with the senior leadership. Like, what are they thinking? What's next, where they're going, what keeps them up at night? Like, how are they figuring things out? The whole goal here is the whole team. The whole company becomes like its own little clique or its own little group, not the individual teams in there. And it's really, really important to not fall into that when you're in an emerging field.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: What's on your death playlist? Whether it's for your memorial, to ponder your mortality, or to send a message to those you leave behind from beyond.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: The grave, I would have a playlist that consisted only of don't fear the reaper over and over and over again.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: We want to hear from you, our audience, to submit your questions, send us a message, drop us a DM or comment on our social channels.
