The Manager’s Field Guide - Episode 3 - Invest in People

Welcome to the Achieve Workplace Culture Podcast. I'm Wendy Lowen, and I am joined here by Daniel Dirksen and Chris Downey, authors of the book You Can Manage, A Practical Guide to Becoming the Manager Everybody Wants. In our last episode, we were looking inward at the values that you as a manager bring and how important that is to closing the intent impact gap. And today we are turning our gaze outwards.

And we're looking at the second essential, invest in people, as it is talked about in the book. But we want to hear from you today. What does it mean to invest in people? Yeah, I'm excited about this one.

When we define manager, there really are kind of two main components. it's the work and people. And it's, you know, you can guess which side of the equation most managers struggle with. It's like, I know how to do the work.

That's what I was trained in. I've got so much experience. I was an individual contributor. I've got technical expertise.

I know how to do the work and I know what it means to do the work well. But it's like, but it's all this other stuff. It's the hard conversations, the needing to give feedback, the like relational dynamics between people, conflict. The HR stuff.

Yeah, it's the people stuff that we really just struggle with. And I think what I love about this is it puts it right near the beginning of the framework that this is at the core of management. This is a relational role, right? Leadership is baked into the idea of being a manager.

If you do not have a relationship with the people that you lead, if that's not positive and healthy, you can't do your job. And they're not going to do their job well, right? And so that relationship really is the foundation for everything you want to do together as a team. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think one of the things just to add to that is, Dan's right. In most situations, people move into management roles because they were great individual contributors, whether that was, you know, they're the best on the manufacturing floor or the top salesperson or whatever the case might be. And so they move in very competent in the work.

and that almost becomes easy for them. And then what we hear often is, ah, it's the people stuff. And it doesn't get the attention that the default always goes to the work when the reality is as a manager, the people stuff is the work. And it's a perspective that needs to be shifted, that one is not more important than the other.

It's actually the balance of the two. And so, yeah, this is why we're so quick to get to this idea of investing in people as early on in the essentials. And I think you're both so right that oftentimes when people move into a management position, they're very focused on the doing aspect. Right.

And the relational element is seen as an imposition or a distraction from the actual work. And what I'm hearing you say is that, no, this actually is part of the role. This is the work. It's not an extra.

It is the role. Well, I mean, there is a school of thought out there, and I've heard this from quite a few managers in different contexts, that say, I can't be friends with my people. I really have to make sure that I don't get too close. Right.

Right. And it's this idea that how am I supposed to do my job? Meaning how am I supposed to fire people, have really hard conversations if we're too buddy, buddy, if we're too close to each other. Right.

And I just want to flip that around and say all of those hard things you need to do get so much harder when you don't have a relationship. Right. You need a strong enough relational bridge to handle the weight of those hard moments. Yeah.

If you try to do it without the relationship. Yeah. That's going to fall apart. Right.

And so it's, you know, how close should you be to your people close enough that you know them and they trust you? You know, their strengths, you know how to communicate with them. I mean, you know, the response to that question of how close should I be? It's like, well, how good a manager do you want to be?

I don't know. Don't be afraid to get close. Right. We need some of this actual emotional engagement with people in order to lead well and to manage.

Yeah, I agree. Just as you're saying that, I think back to so many catchphrases and things I've heard over the years. I don't need people to like me. I need them to respect me.

And it's like, well, I don't know about you, but how many people do you respect that you don't like fundamentally? So it's important. The relationship matters. This isn't, as Dan's mentioning, this isn't optional.

How good do you want to be at your job? How good are the relationships with the people that you're responsible for? That's a direct relationship. And that's already just such a transformational concept for some people.

I remember working with one CEO. Of course, they were, you know, long story short, they were having trouble on their team. And one of their team members told me, on day one, this new CEO came in and she was trying you know this team member was trying to start on a very relational like hey I should get to know my new boss And the boss had said she had said a quote she like at some point you come to hate me. Right?

So she already like set the stage that it's like, you know, this is good right now, but this isn't going to be a good relationship because I'm going to have to like be super direct and hard. And it's like, and of course, you know, wind the clock forward a year and the relationship wasn't tatters. Turnovers, probably increasing, all that stuff. Wow.

Let's just say the stage right away, this is going to be difficult. At least you can thank that leader and say, thank you for helping me make my decision on whether or not I want to stay here or not. But yeah. Well, in the book, you talk a lot about trust.

What role does trust play, if it's not respect and fear, what role does trust play in engagement, in productivity, in wellness? those three components that you identified right at the start of this series? Well, I think one of the things that we've mentioned in an earlier episode here, but I'll just repeat it. One of the things we'll often take people through is, talk about your best management experience ever.

When someone you worked for a great leader, someone you thought had a major influence on you, and people always tell these amazing stories. And if you follow that up and say, on a scale of one to 10, where would you rate your level of trust with that individual? It's always an eight or higher when you hear that. Sometimes it's an 11 on a scale of one to 10.

Never have I come across someone that said, this is my best manager ever, and I did not trust them at all. It's the foundation of the relationship that it's there. Any relationship, if it's not rooted in trust, it's compromised. If I don't trust you and you don't trust me, we're going to be holding things back from each other.

I always like to use the term stutter stepping and wondering, should I say something? I don't know. When you really trust someone, the stutter stepping actually gets eliminated. Now we can really, really talk.

So it is everything. Yeah. I mean, we know that anecdotally just from experience. A few years ago, ADP did some research to say how does trust connect to engagement?

And again, engagement being this idea of how committed and enthusiastic are we in our work, which is directly linked to performance, productivity, and all those things. They found that if someone says they trust their manager, they are 12 times more likely to be highly engaged at work. 12 times. 12 times.

12 times. 12x, right? So really what they're saying is you can't have one without the other. That's right.

They're intricately linked. Like how could you be engaged at work over the long term if day in and day out the person who has influence over your career and your job context, you don't trust them and you don't believe they have your best interests at heart. If that relationship is sour, it's really hard for the work experience to be positive. That's the most important relationship to feel positive and healthy.

And while we know it's the most important aspect, trust is a result. Trust isn't something that you do. There are behaviors, you demonstrate things that you do that build trust in the relationship. So we know it's really important, but the reality is trust is an output of the behaviors you exhibit.

Right. So you're not going into work as a manager and saying, today I'm going to work on Chris, getting Chris to trust me. I do. Well, you might be working on it, but you don't do trust.

You don't do trust. There are things that you do that build trust. So let's explore that. What are the things that the managers who are listening, what are the things that they can focus on in terms of here, what I can do to build trust?

Yeah, that's great. So, I mean, we've got a model in our book. There's lots of models out there. We call it the trust compass.

There's four C's. And Chris, you can jump in on a couple of these. I'll just go through them. It's clarity, consistency, competency, and care.

Care, yeah. Right? And so those are the four. And let me jump on that last one because I honestly think it's the most important one, at the core of trust is care.

So in our survey work of cultural health, trust and care are the most highly correlated, right? So we trust people that we believe care about us, right? So do your people actually believe that you care about them, their interests, and their experience? And I'll say that's a critical distinction.

It's not as a manager, do you care about your people? Because almost every manager would say yes. The question is, do your people feel cared for by you? That might be a different answer.

But it's so, if that's absent, I actually don't think any of the other C's can make up for it. If care is absent, trust is absent. Right, there's a gap. Yeah.

It's not everything, but it's a big one. Yeah. So can we drill into that? If that of the compass, care, is a real focused area that managers should be paying attention to, how do we demonstrate?

What are the tangible behaviors that a manager should be thinking about in terms of demonstrating care Well I think part of it is starting with just checking in on people seeing how they doing whether that related to the work or not One of the things I like to say if you don know your employees children names you probably aren't putting enough work into the relationship. I'll use that as an example, but I mean, and not every employee has children, that's fine, but making sure you understand who they are, what's important to them, right?

Not just the work itself. And there's lots that we can talk about on those other seats, but who are they as individuals? What's most important to them? What do they need?

So it would be checking in, learn as much as you can about them would be one key piece. But not just learn, I think, Dan, you mentioned before, not just extract that so we can leverage that for good, but it's to make sure that this is something we're constantly coming back to. Make sure we understand where they're at and how they're doing. Feel free to.

Yeah, I mean, I think you basically touched on, to me, the most critical practice, if there's one thing I would tell a manager to make sure they spend time on, it's the one-on-one. Right. Right? People look at what you spend time on as a manager, and that's how they determine what you value.

Right? So what they see you spending time on, that's what's important to you. Right. If you're never on that list, well, we can connect the dots, right?

If the only way I talk to you is if I knock on your door or I interrupt you, and sure, you've got an open-door policy, but I always feel like I'm interrupting. If I'm not on your calendar and you don't guard that time carefully, I mean, we get the message, right? And so it's just honestly the fact that you've carved out time weekly and monthly and quarterly, whatever the rhythm is, you know, yes, you got to touch on the work and the hurdles that they're facing and how can you support them.

But you want to make sure there's some moment in time where you're also asking about what's your experience at work? How are you doing? What do you need? Do you feel like you're growing?

What would you, where are you going in this role? What are your career aspirations? I mean, for a manager to ask that question is not, is like, oh, you don't just care about can I meet this deliverable this week? You actually care about whether or not my experience at work is helping me get to where I want to go in life and in my career, right?

I mean, that just speaks volumes. That was one of the things I really appreciated about the chapter on invest in people was this idea of recognizing who people are as a human being and caring for them, but also caring for their future self. Where do they want to go? How do they want to develop?

What are the things that they are enjoying about their work that they would like to continue and dig into? Yeah, and this is where these things are very interconnected. So this compass that Dan talked about, they're not these completely independent things. This is where clarity comes in.

We can demonstrate care by getting clear on what we need to do and even clear on who you are and how you want to show up. So clarity comes in as well to this, right? So we can demonstrate care by providing clarity. Right.

I mean, I'm wondering about investing in people and caring for them. Where does, and this is maybe what you're touching in on, where does feedback or difficult conversations, does that factor into this conversation? It's all about the clarity piece. So I will tell you in my own journey, I would be surprised.

I've done a lot of check-ins with past employees to kind of validate what kind of leader I was. And I've had some pretty honest conversations with some staff, which has been helpful. I don't think anyone would say Chris didn't care. But what I know I was really not good at was the clarity piece.

And here is the thing. because I couldn't provide the clarity at the time that people needed. And that included making sure they got the feedback that they needed. I really wasn't demonstrating care.

I was being a nice manager, but I wasn't being a kind manager. Now, I'm going easy on myself because I just didn't have the skills at that time. But when I reflect back early in my career, the caring was there, but I wasn't kind because I wasn't really providing. Yeah, the caring was there, but the clarity was not there.

So it's actually the two feed each other. And as Dan mentioned, we need to be committed to these things, and we need to build up some confidence in all of them. So these Cs are very, very interconnected, but it all comes back to demonstrating caring. I mean, fundamentally, if you don't care, which we have not yet met a manager that doesn't, but truly, if you just don't care, probably leading people and managing people are probably not the position for you.

No, the two go hand in hand. I mean, we're creating relationships, but I like how you put it. Our goal is not to be the nice manager. That's not what care is.

If you think of any of the most caring relationships in your life, if you care enough about someone, you're going to have the hard conversation and you're going to help them figure out, hey, I noticed this about you and it having a negative impact It the people I don care about that I don give feedback to I let that go Whatever I don like your behavior I don like what you said but I let you like whatever you do you It's the people that are important to me that it's like, no, I have to say something.

I know it'll be hard on the relationship, but I have to say it. And so I always say, if somebody gives you feedback, that in and of itself is a sign that they value their relationship with you and they care about you. So feedback is a signal we send that I care. I care about your growth.

I care about if you succeed in this role and in this organization and where you go. And we provide tools in the book for how do you give feedback in a way where it is received and doesn't trigger defensiveness. I mean, how you say it is important, but you don't want to shy away from the hard stuff. I mean, that's really where that positive relationship comes through in spades.

I mean, think about all the times you've been given hard feedback in your life. Think about the times when it went poorly and when it went well. Almost without exception, when I didn't appreciate feedback, this came from a person where I didn't have a good relationship with and I didn't trust them and they didn't care about me. All of the hard stuff that I actually received and accepted and worked on and helped me grow came from people that had a positive relationship with me.

Right. And so this idea that I can't get close to my people because I have to give them hard feedback. It's like what you're doing is you're setting yourself up for feedback that will not be helpful. It won't land well.

Right. So build a relationship so that you can help them grow in that way. Right. So to me, they're so, so linked.

Yeah. And if you think back to what we're talking about here, this is this compass that you can have about building trust. The people we trust the most are the people that we know are going to be honest with us. They're going to tell us.

I was just working with the leadership team, and this was great. It's like, well, if you stink, someone's got to tell you. Right? And thanks for letting me know.

It's kind of like someone pointing out that your fly is down. I really appreciate that as opposed to leaving me walking around out there. And I think that is the root of how do we build trust. But it's done through the lens of caring.

I think that's the key. If we just go in and provide clarity and feedback, you know, and it's just going to be people often talk about, I'm just going to be radical candor. If it's not rooted in care, you're not building trust. You're probably severing relationships.

That's the balance of those two. So I'm really appreciating the conversation. And for our listeners, can you, Dan, review the trust compass, the four areas? Because what I'm hearing you say is that trust is not built in grand gestures and big events.

There might be a part of that, but they're that ongoing commitment to the four C's that are ultimately going to allow you to navigate and find your way to trust. Yeah. So if we were to summarize, I mean, trust is the word that would stand at the center of how that's the word you want to define your relationship with people. Right.

And so we give you lots of ideas in the book as to how to do that. But you do that through providing clarity. So that's in your communication and where you stand with people, clear as kind. You do that through care.

Again, acting in ways and asking questions and being curious and caring about their interests. Consistency, the way you show up, right? You're not unpredictable and kind of all over the map. They know who they're getting, right?

There's some stability and consistency in who you are and your character. Again, if you've defined your values in that leadership charter from last podcast, that's already laying the groundwork for some of that consistency. And the last one is competency, right? In order for people to trust you, they have to trust that you can do what you need to do as a manager.

So whatever your role is on that team, make sure that you are investing in your skills and kind of honing your craft, not just in the technical work, but in the craft of being a manager. So they actually need you to take your role as a manager seriously and to be growing in it. So competency is a key part of that. So those are the four Cs, building trust, that's ultimately how we build relationships that lead us in positive places in an organization.

Thank you. Last word, one habit, one practice for our listeners to take away as they're heading into work. What would you suggest? What would you offer to them?

Guys, I'm going to go back to what Dan said before, the one-on-one, prioritize the one-on-one. Yeah, I was going to say, if you don't do anything else, schedule a check-in. Yeah. Thank you both, and thank you to our listeners.

This was all about investing in people. Our next episode, we will explore building the team. What does it mean? We've gone through the series.

We've looked at inward, looked at our values. We've looked at how do we build relationship with the people around us. And in our next episode, we will talk about how do you build your team? How do you bring a group of people together?

Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us on this podcast series. If you are looking for additional support and resources, please reach out to us. Check out our website, AchieveCenter.

com.