Chapter 27. Evolving from manager to leader
Dear Tricia of 2000,
This year seemed like the logical choice to select. Professionally, you’ve successfully managed several small projects and have received numerous recognitions.
Personally, you got engaged and, most importantly, Michigan State University won the national basketball title! So your awesome mood coupled with your next assignment, managing your first 30-person team, should make you fairly receptive to this message.
I know well how much you pride yourself on being highly dependable. Yet, I also know that, as a manager, you struggle with feeling out of control. Your solution is to engage in hands-on risk mitigation. You convince yourself this is in everyone’s best interest, as the task needs to get done and you’re simply setting an example, coaching others on how to avoid problems.
The flaw in this logic will be missed for years because you’ll have good success both in customer delivery and group dynamics. I can already hear you asking, “Exactly where’s the problem?”
Are you really okay with results that are merely good, or do you want awesome results for yourself and your teams? That’s what I thought; humor me, and keep reading.
Being a manager will produce good results, but evolving into a leader who’s also capable as a manager will produce empowered teams that achieve awesome results. No, don’t argue with me; not only are you not a leader today, you won’t be able to change immediately and become a leader tomorrow.
Your evolution from a manager to a leader will be primarily based on a combination of two assets:
- Your ability to adapt and handle any risk or issue. Your high dependability isn’t a result of problems never occurring, but how you’re able to effectively minimize impacts and use opportunities appropriately.
- Your passion and skill for coaching and mentoring. You’ve already experienced that people appreciate it when you invest in helping them grow.
You’re lucky—adapting and the desire to help others come naturally to you, but there’s a catch; to be aware and possess these assets won’t be enough. Until now, you’ve often relied on other core traits that have prevented teams from being empowered.
Perfection vs. learning
Specifically, you need to dampen your desires for being the go-to expert and for perfection. For example, you’ve already learned that responding to a problem on the team with, “I should fix that myself,” won’t scale.
But you’ve only adjusted the response to, “What didn’t I teach them to avoid this problem?” which means that you expected your team to excel through your help.
Now don’t go over-analyzing with a thousand examples of why they could’ve avoided a problem. There absolutely is a time and a place for coaching—this relates to the important aspect of being a capable manager. The leader mindset, which requires a response of, “How can I help them learn and adapt from this?” needs to be your first impulse. Your focus has to be on creating an environment that’s dedicated to helping teams and individuals become adaptive, learning-focused, and cohesive.
Trust
There’s no sugar coating how much work it takes to become a leader. You must maintain the skills necessary to effectively manage. At the same time, begin with work that builds trust both ways to empower people. This will be the easier part, given that your integrity and intentions are pretty visible, and you have no problem interacting with people.
The trick is to remember that numerous situations are usually required before you’ll trust that they can adapt and, more importantly, that they fully believe you trust them to adapt.
Failure
Tackle the challenging work that drives you crazy; embrace failure as a learning opportunity despite knowing it can be prevented. You must always keep in mind that your perspective should be on the team, what’s best for their growth even when you and/or they might look bad in the process.
Results
I realize the devil’s advocate in you probably wonders whether all of this work is worth the difference in results. Without any hesitation, the answer is yes! You’ll experience team results that exceed your highest expectations. You’ll find yourself more engaged at work with the challenges you now face.
Satisfaction
The factor that makes the answer obvious is the satisfaction you get from helping others. The recognition you receive today pales in comparison to that which you’ll experience as a leader. I still smile when I think about the time my team surprised me with an appreciation award. People stood up and made these types of statements: “I appreciate the way she pushes me out of my comfort zone in a way that makes me feel supported,” to “I appreciate how she calls me out on my BS,” all the way to “I appreciate her helping to pick out gifts for my wife.” I couldn’t help but walk out of that conference room proud of my team, and, consequently, proud of myself too, because I helped create an environment that I want to work and play hard in every day. That’s worth everything!
—From your future self, Tricia of 2016
Roy’s analysis
This note comes from a highly experienced manager and leader, and it discusses a subtlety I’ve barely touched on in this book: what is coaching in the context of elastic leadership?
Tricia used to think coaching meant teaching teams the right techniques to avoid future mistakes, with the goal of making mistakes ultimately (hopefully) disappear.
The lesson she gradually learned is that growing a team means a learning process has to happen, and learning happens when you tackle things out of your comfort zone, where the chance of making mistakes is higher, not lower.
The paradox here is that by only teaching the team techniques to avoid failure, Tricia denied the team true learning and growth opportunities. Yes, they know how to do something, but do they know what to do when things go wrong? When things don’t work? Who do they turn to when that happens? Do they turn to themselves and have the skills to deal without knowing what to do next? Or do they need Tricia, who’s now the bus factor of “I’m stuck” situations?
When I teach my kids to ride a bicycle, I expect them to fall. I don’t expect to teach them so perfectly that they won’t fall at the beginning. Once they can ride in the most basic way, I expect (and fear) they’ll start exploring what they can do with a bicycle. Can they jump over obstacles? Can they go up ramps? Can they ride backwards? They’ll experiment and find their own way.
I can’t teach my kids how to be ultimately successful with people. I can give them some initial tools, but I expect them to experiment and fail and learn what it’s like to live among other humans. I also expect misery and sadness and joy and happiness, and it’d be terrible of me to keep them in a safe bubble where everyone they ever meet always behaves the way my kids expect them to behave.
Coaching isn’t only the act of holding a hand; it’s the act of letting go, even briefly. It’s the acting of helping when they fail and asking, “What can you learn from this?” Sometimes leadership isn’t about being there, but about removing yourself from the equation, albeit temporarily.
In the context of team modes and leadership styles, survival mode calls for hand-holding, learning mode calls for alternating between hand-holding and letting go, and self-organization calls for letting go and watching from a safe distance—not so far that you can’t help out if the team reverts to one of the other modes.
TRICIA BRODERICK is one of the directors of development at TechSmith. Tricia is responsible for creating and maintaining an engaging and empowering environment for software engineering teams to deliver high-quality products. With 16 years of experience, the last 6 of which focused on agile principles, her passion for mentoring and coaching has been essential in successfully transitioning from a manager to an agile leader. Recently, her team summarized her leadership by highlighting that she knows when to honestly challenge someone out of their comfort zone while consistently providing support and encouragement.