MC27 How do We Learn about Management?

careful when you're gesticulating that you're not rubbing in front of the microphone wasn't worrying about it before then i know there's no there's never a good time to say to someone stop doing that if they're going to have to do it because that's it don't think of the pink elephant it's uh anyway anyway anyway listeners uh welcome to management i think we've already learned something about our uh well this is our episode about giving feedback really and how do we when do we start to say directly things that we think people work with us should or shouldn't do when do we uh shake something because what was happening is that um i was just telling tim be careful not to uh rub your sleeves in front of the microphone but of course i want to be free when we're recording so so anyway listen welcome to uh the management cafe we're here to have a coffee with you for another 20 minutes and we will be talking about things that have to do with management and leadership my name is pilar orti and with me is a wonderful team pages hi team what are you drinking today uh i'm uh i'm gonna have a cup of tea because i still haven't quite got the hang of coffee but it allows me about the same amount of time 20 minutes great we will talk about the whole coffee thing at some point when we've earned more banter time with our listeners and so this now we thought we'd talk about um well what was in our mind was uh how do we learn about management from from previous coffees with you tim i've and i've realized that well you're very self-taught on the job uh so how does that so i mean am i right is it a self-taught thing uh i think i think there's a big element of that yeah and so you know how i learned about management you know i had a little bit of uh of experience of being management never very closely i had one broker manager in a role i had just before i started shield in that he believed in me and gave me some some really good feedback at times which which carried me for a long time you know he wasn't doling it out all the time but so when he did give me praise it was really meaningful but once i started to and prior to that you have sort of a level of sort of stuff that you're learning from but you have friends and colleagues and stories that they share are things that went well and you know often things went badly uh but once i started to come into the experience of having to manage people uh then i started looking you know i started looking for information because you know i was finding it challenging so you know i was actively going out and asking people and trying to consume a lot of content for me that typically means you know reading books uh blogs watching conference presentations and going to conferences and then trying to find uh sort of folks i can talk to to sort of help guide me yeah that is something i hadn't thought of um so so when the first thing when you were talking about having had a good manager and there's always like many people that many managers i talk to will say i just want to i want to be equal you know in the team and stuff and that doesn't quite it very rarely does that happen because you are in a position of influence usually formally and even if it's informal you still even more if it's informal you've got even more influence because you've gained it or earned it uh but as a person we are in that position we are in that position of role modeling it's not that everyone wants to then we have a management uh position but they are looking to you to see what behavior is acceptable and everything and you don't know these different ways that you might be influencing someone and it's interesting that that manager you had that worked so well for you they i don't know were they aware that they were influencing you in your future leadership practice uh we talked about afterwards and so i think they became aware then but at the time i'm not i'm not sure so much you know i think that that awareness of the role modeling is not something that i felt intuitively beforehand and it's not something that i've observed a lot in other people who come into management i think a lot of people a lot of people's pathway to management is around seniority you know it's that they were in a role for a certain amount of time and then perhaps they were individually responsible in their tasks and reliable and so then that combination of you've been here for the longest and so you're next in line or you know i know i can count on you therefore if i give you more responsibility then i'm confident that you'll be able to do it it's not necessarily that they have been looked at and said the characteristics that you that you display are what we want in people who lead in this situation whether it's an organization or in any sort of context yeah i'm going to mention something but then i'm going to move on to stay on topic because this for me is the biggest issue it always has been is that the way that people get to a management position sometimes is i just think that the progression in companies the career progression is wrong because it's almost always leading to a management position regardless and this is but however what this means is that sometimes we are in that position and we need to learn because it's a different skill to maybe what we've been doing for a while so you were mentioning some stuff what's the of all the things that you mentioned earlier that you've been seeking and going i'm turning into an interview here what's the most useful i'm curious i know i mean i know you're very active in communities and i know that you've learned a lot from asking people answering stuff but i mean you had to name one thing that i don't know what's the thing that comes to mind most of all of those useful it's a great question i think you know i'm surprised to hear myself say this but i think that the books or it's that it's the person it might not necessarily be reading someone's book but the sort of person who has thought about a topic deeply and widely enough that they you know that they're out there talking about it and that they've written a book about it those have been very influential for me because it it becomes a bit more uh it's a broader vision you know it's not just a story that you hear about somebody in a particular situation who behaves in a certain way although those are very powerful but when they're sort of stitched together in an overall theory about this is why you should uh lead in a certain way or what the outcomes are going to be um you know so things like i remember uh the book uh powerful by padding cord who was the like who was a chief human resource officer at netflix for a period i remember reading that book on a plane and getting goosebumps at times just because what she was saying was touching me so so deeply and i was so um energized by the concepts that she was laying out so those have been particularly meaningful i think i also get a lot from books but i want to ask you you talk about the emotional impact that reading something that either is really resonating or making your mind open or whatever there's an emotional connection you said it gave you goosebumps what do you then do with the information because of course we know that learning is not just about gaining information we've got to do something with it what do you then do do you think about the concepts do you i'll tell you what i do i'm always it makes me more alert to situations where what i've learned i can try something different that's what reading a book does to me how about you interesting no so for me it's a conversation right so the way i think i've been listening to david white today the poet and so i'm the conversation he talks about all the time so maybe i'm doing it but you know in effect when you're reading a book when you're consuming it it's a conversation right it's between the concept and then you're trying to come to terms with it you're trying to understand it and so then i will take that into conversation with myself you know and i'm trying to wrestle with it and you know maybe adapt it a little bit and then i'll take it to people uh so you know i think i'm at times quite an annoying person to be around uh in that company because i would you know come in on a tuesday morning and suddenly just launch into somebody you know i was reading this thing and uh and then you know i'm trying to sort of uh test the idea with them what do they think about it what's sort of missing are they excited about it how does it sort of develop or change and so you know a lot of conversations for me would then happen with peers when i have on a couple occasions where i've had a good manager so for me uh john post was that guy for for a year or so and you know i would go to him and uh and want to talk it through with him uh and then similarly uh at shield you know either i'll be going to duncan or uh or to the to the folks within my team and then trying to explore those those concepts further and what would that conversation look like like i i saw this thing what you think or yeah like exactly like you know uh but because i think also even and there's probably a bit of a line there but even there were times where i would have people with him for example i had been bad at motivating them okay and you know i knew that they knew that uh what i'd done hadn't necessarily worked and then i would uh read something or listen to something or have a conversation with someone else and then i'd go oh okay there's this new concept and so often i would then take that to the person and say you know i used to do this i don't think it worked for these reasons you know i understand it was probably a great experience for you and they would help me help me understand how it wasn't uh and then you know and then like now i'm starting to understand that maybe this is a better way to operate or this might work and then they would share their thoughts on it and generally that would then expand to them talking about experiences that they had in the past as well or previous managers that had done things that worked well for them so it just becomes a very sort of fertile ground for sort of learning and exploring i think there's so much in that uh i mean there's so many coffees in there i'm hearing also what you're doing it's not just you're not just seeking out information to reinforce or open your mind or solve a problem in some cases but you're then bringing back your digested information as you let it pass through you what does that mean for me and then you're even bringing it to other people in your team or your company and you're even bringing it sometimes to say i i've learned now that this situation specifically or whatever these contexts could have been different does this help uh and i yeah yeah i mean i guess i should be actually that's not an every time i know i'm almost always talking to somebody about it's rare that there would be a situation that i would just keep entirely to myself and go oh i've had this revelation and now i'm going to keep it under my coat and i'm going to now add this to my you know tool of tricks and not tell anybody about it because if i think it's helpful and it's working for me then i want other people that i know and trust and care about to also be able to benefit from if in fact they would and then i'm also wrong so much at the time uh that it's good to you know get a little check whether am i getting a little carried away here is this might this actually be something you know sometimes i would go to somebody and and say something like did you how did you not know this already i'm not concerned for it oh no but no but that is the funny thing is that we discover something this happens all the time i mean i'm gonna make sure i never say that like this happens so much of the time we know something for so long for whatever because we've experienced it thought about it whatever and then someone it's always new for someone else yeah and i find that really funny that you're like yeah yeah so what is there anything else well i'm wondering for you with those experiences that you've had and but you know about the time where you had a board that you said wasn't particularly instructive and you're in a situation where you have the responsibility what would you do when you had a challenge like if you were in a situation you weren't quite sure how to navigate what did you do oh i talk to people definitely if it's for specific problems i i will ask people yeah i'm usually my friends so or peers or whatever i think that that's yeah yeah so yeah but that's really interesting isn't it in that a lot of what happens is actually informal learning yeah and it's not it's not on the job experiential learning of practicing the situation it's uh it's you know it's theoretical exploration with friends and and word of mouth learning that you're then trying to bring into the moment and i think that the the issue with this informal learning and something i was thinking when you were talking about even bringing what you've learned to to someone in the team not just a peer is that it makes us very vulnerable because one it says i don't know that's why i'm seeking something information support confirmation whatever so that is me and then actually i need to be processing and as i'm learning i'm sharing and that's very vulnerable because as you say sometimes we could be wrong in inverted commas or sometimes we can say oh this is great and someone says well did you not know that where you've been all this time so i think that that position of vulnerability so that we can learn i think that's quite interesting as well and that's why it's so tough sometimes yeah well and i think we have a whole uh coffee coming up about syndrome which oh yeah yeah i mean i think that's a big thing with and it's one of the flaws i think with how we often come into leadership positions is it isn't a well-prepared gradually staged you know transition where you sort of slowly feel your way until you feel comfortable and then they take off the training wheels but you know mum's still holding the back of the bike as you're as you're you know weaving your way down the street it's much more uh abrupt in terms of how you get started and there's and you're on the tightrope i mean mixing my analogy so much you know like you're on the tightrope before you know it uh which is terrifying can be terrifying but that's that i think is is why we cling to some of that command and control because in the absence of it it is as you say it can be scary to be vulnerable and to not know and to have that very real risk of making a mistake which is a very visible mistake yeah yeah it's tough to stand out there yeah i'm thinking this podcast is about having those conversations that are difficult that we don't often get to have because in order to have the kind of conversations that you and i are having we need time space you're talking about distance when we're talking in our first episode about the fact that well neither of us really are managing a team at the moment and that creates a distance with the practice that leaves us so free to not just have the conversation but for the brain to also make all these connections true true but it's very interesting to me you know like i would love if there are people listening to this who who were able to have that some part of that experience we're talking about where there's a concept around management or an issue that you want to try and explore and if if our talking about it is in some way able to sort of help them think through and how they might explore it and and you know shift their thinking or help it progress that would be terrific and if there are any topics in particular people want to discuss i'd love if they email us at managementcafepodcast.gmail.com i love that i love that listeners i would love i love that i love that invitation too and uh great great coffee today thank you for joining us at the management cafe remember you can subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use to make sure you get your weekly dose of reflection our website is management.caf and on twitter we are at managementcaf that's all for this episode from myself pilar orti and our fellow co-host team burgess thank you for listening thank you for listening thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you