200: Leading through fear- why "gritty hope" is the new must-have for managers

We are in a moment right now where people are scared. Employees are scared about what's my future? Is there gonna be a reorg? Am I gonna be replaced by a robot? Am I gonna be laid off? Our leaders and our companies are scared about where the competition is going. What's the geopolitical situation? Where's the economy going? And us as managers, we might be the most scared of all because we are sitting in the middle of these two pressures asked by both our higher ups and our team members. What is going on? What is next for me? What do I do? And we don't have all the answers. And that is what we're gonna talk about today. This is episode 200 of the New Manager Playbook podcast. And I'm on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job. And it certainly is not easy with all the fears out there. And that's why I'm so excited to be co-hosting my 200 episode with Megan Karsh, my partner in developing the New Manager Playbook digital program, which you've heard a little about. We'll talk about later in the show. So definitely stay till the end. But we wanted to talk about this fear because this is something that is showing up in every level of the workplace. So as all of you know, I do a lot of work with managers, with teams. Megan does a ton of work with senior leaders from Fortune 500, say government agencies, to nonprofits, all the way, all over the world, senior leaders, and we're seeing it everywhere. And so we wanted to talk about how this is showing up. What are some of the patterns? But not just that, no one's here only about the fear. How we find hope in the situation. Because that's all we can do. And we don't want to talk about idealistic hope. We're going to talk about a new frame of hope because this has really been the point of the show all along. Formally managing made simple, now the New Manager Playbook. I wanted to give you tools to make the fears, the hard stuff, feel a little bit easier. Because with that sense of hope, with that sense of guidance, like, OK, I've got something. I know what to say in the hard situations. I know what to do. I know how to give a feedback. I know how to have a hard conversation. With that hope allows you to actually find what is most rewarding out of being a manager. Because the truth is, when you look at what gives people a sense of purpose, it's doing things that are bigger than themselves. We're never going to find a sense of purpose, honestly, if we're not doing something bigger than ourselves. So you're in the right place. But when it's hard, and you're in the 52% plus manager that are feeling burned out, in the 77+ that haven't been trained, well, of course, it's going to be terrible, right? So, Megan, welcome to the show. Welcome to episode 200. Let's dive into this intersection between fear and hope, what folks are dealing with right now, and how to come out the other side. We are so excited to be here. Thanks for having me back. And I'll actually-- I don't know if this is helpful to the viewers. I'll just give a quick little acronym or framework that's helpful for thinking about these conditions that are causing so much fear. So, like Leah mentioned, I do a lot of work with intergovernmental institutions, governmental institutions, primarily, with the United Nations. So I work a lot with senior leaders who are operating in incredibly complex environments where the stakes are really, really high. And we talk about WUCA conditions. So that's an acronym, B-U-C-A, Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. It's a term that comes out of the American War College. And first, it was used just geopolitically, but really early on, actually, as soon as the term was coined, basically, in the late '80s, people started applying it to the corporate world. It has only become more relevant, obviously, in the corporate world in the last couple of years. So maybe some of you managers have heard it before, but if you haven't, it's just a useful way to think about what it is, these larger conditions we're operating in. And like Leah said, one of the biggest things that leaders have to just own and is the premise is like, OK, there's going to be kind of this gearing towards kind of fear. It's human nature, right? We're afraid of what we don't understand. We tend to want to try to control it. We tend to get more reactive than strategically responsible. So this is where all those foundational leadership things become so important. Do I have the self-awareness to understand what's going on in me? And do I have the ability to sort of overcome it with certain mindsets and strategies and skills? And those are the ones I know you want to talk about today, especially two mindsets of sort of courage, in spite of, or in addition to being afraid, not thinking that you're just courageous and not fearful. But then also, how do you find this hope and a really like a meaningful hope that actually drives action? Yeah, absolutely. And before we dive into that, I think, why is this important, right? It's not just important because it's uncomfortable to feel the fear of dealing with our employees. When we, as managers, are in this state and we haven't dealt with it and we haven't figured it out, we haven't leaned into the tools and we haven't gotten support. What starts to happen, Megan said, we start micromanaging. We start getting in the details. We're reactive. We're snippy. We bring all this stress back home to our families, our friends, our partners, our kids. We don't delegate. We start really hanging on to stuff because we're worried, like, well, what if that person gets credit and I need to be relevant? We start showing up the worst possible way we can. And then what happens to your team? They don't trust you. They don't respect you. They're thrashing you when you step away, right? You become like, ugh. Like they, and the high performers, they quit, right? Because no high performer wants to be in that situation. So then what happens? It gets worse. Your job gets harder because your high performers have left and you're left with the lower performers that are clinging to their jobs because they know they don't have other options. So, like, it's a big deal. Like, I just want to paint it for you because I think the reason we are talking with this is not like, hey, like, rah, rah, we got to make sure people are, like, you know, getting a pat on the back. No, this is serious business impact because you're high performers, which we need delivering. We need them resilient. We need them pulling the weight of folks that really are struggling right now. We need those people, like, in, right? So that's why we got to be doing this. Yeah, and the other, it's such a great point. And the other reason why we need to be doing it is, like, things do need to evolve. Like, things that need to work are not working. We are in this time of unprecedented change, volatility, a lot of uncertainty because the old has, like, in some ways ceased working, but the new has not been developed or isn't clear yet. We're in this, like, liminal space, right? And one of the most important things for people who are leaders, like, including managers right now, is to be contributing to, like, this thought about, like, what is the future? And, like, what are better ways of doing this? The problem is, when you're afraid in that sort of reactive way of operating, it's often what you focus on then is just, like, these incredibly immediate tactical solutions, you know? It's harder to do that, like, big picture, systemic, reflective, strategic thinking. And so what I'm seeing right now when I go into companies is it's like, we're just seeing this constellation of reactive sort of narrow decisions rather than everyone being in sync from the executive level to the senior leader level to the manager level trying to think about, okay, what's the way the system sort of needs to evolve here? And everyone's paying the price. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, you think in a tactical sense, like, the... It's, of course, natural to want to hang on to what you can control. But again, I think what we're missing is that the reason why we have a team is so we can scale ourselves, right? So, like, when you grab on more tightly, I mean, I'm thinking about an example in the beginning of COVID, I had a man... I was, you know, working in corporate, I was a high performer. I was always on the higher end of things. And I only say that to say that, like, when I was micromanaged, it was like, it wasn't because of my performance, right? I'm not saying that to my own horn, but it was my manager's fears around all the stuff we're talking about. And at the beginning of COVID, I had a manager who... That was the situation. There was so much uncertainty. You know, there was a lot of change within our team. You know, no one was happening. We had some reorgs. And she just held on as tight as possible. She would be in every single meeting. She had to double check every email that was sent. Would always be asking everyone on the team if they remembered to do this, something that had already been done. And everybody on the team was like, what the hell is going on with this person? Like, everything was fine like a week ago. And it actually chipped away at her own credibility as a leader, right? Her marks went down on the company survey. People started looking for other teams to be on because it just killed morale. It did not increase the performance of the team. And high performers like myself felt like, what am I doing here? Like, I don't need to be treated like, I don't know what I'm doing when obviously I'm someone that's pulling a lot of the weight for this team. But that's the point is like, that was her in the way that she did not deal with change by thinking about how am I showing up right now? How am I managing my stress? Right, so a lot of management is about thinking in advance, like what happens to me when I don't have all the answers? What happens to me when I'm scared? What are these behaviors? And so like, that is a big piece of it too. Did you know that I do team workshops on all of the stuff that I talk about on this show with large companies like Google and also with startups and small businesses like marketing agencies, law firms and men's spas? Whether it's making those feedback conversations a little less awkward, how to support your team through all of the change and uncertainty making us all, well, a little on edge right now, or delegating to empower your team to step up as owners. I come into your teams and give you the tools you need to wrestle with all this tough stuff and feel like you've got it handled. Reach out at [email protected] or pass my info along to the decision maker in your company. And let's make all this team stuff easier and a lot more fun. - This is kind of a silly metaphor, but what I often talk about when I'm working with leaders and we're talking about leading through uncertainty is a bus, right? I'm like, I'm at your employees or like a team and your team members are on the bus. What do they want of the bus driver in that situation, right? And it's like, what they just need to know is that the person who is driving the bus has their best interest at heart, is making every effort they can to find the way, even though right now there isn't a clear map, right? They wanna hear it. They wanna know that that person cares, is taking their responsibility seriously, is doing their best to figure out what the route is. While right now, let's say the route is totally shrouded in fog and their phone is offline and they don't have access to GPS. I mean, I'm killing the metaphor here, but it's like what instead happens is people don't realize that that in and of itself sort of is the job. If you're that far, what are you communicating back to them? How are you managing yourself in the seat? Like how are you holding your seat? How are you giving them confidence that it is gonna be okay even though right now the fog is keeping you from seeing exactly where you're going? And I think managers end up feeling sometimes like that's not enough. They think that just the way that they're being is not enough. So they start focusing on, all right, "Well, these are the concrete things I can do." And often it goes over the line then into micromanagement. - Totally, totally. I think also, and I've been doing a little bit of content on this lately, it's like, I think we start to make these wild assumptions that like nobody else cares as much as we do. Like, how do I even know that? You know what I mean? And hey, my business owners listening, like your team members don't care as much as you do. So I'll acknowledge that. But like if people miss something or make a mistake or like don't deliver something on time, I think when we're at this heightened stress with being like, nobody cares and I'm the only one doing anything and we get in this like extreme like, blah, and I'm just saying this 'cause that's how I get. I know I get that way like when I'm managing, you know, and it was really, really present, especially after, you know, when I was managing operations and programs on software teams where like we had really, really demanding deadlines and a lot of different things happening at once. I would feel like, why am I the only one that's saying this or the only one that's caring about this? So like, why is no one worried about this? And we get into this like absolute sort of like, victim like murder thing. And that doesn't help you either as a leader. And I'm saying it because like if you're, if you've been there, I've been there too. It's like a default. - So you're making a call out to me. I need to make a call. If Jenny Holligan in Scotland is listening to this name that like, I'm so sorry. That was definitely the way I had some of the chaos when we were working together in Cambodia. But yeah, I've got, I used to be big on the murder complex for sure. - 'Cause it's hard, right? And it can feel like that, but I think control, it's another way to try, it's, you're right. Like identity gets very uncertain. - Yeah. - When you feel like you can't fix everything for everyone. So then to sit there and sort of like, assume it all yourself and be like, it's trying to give yourself a sense that you could actually control it by being the only one that cares and I'm the one leaning hard into this. You're trying to tell yourself almost that like, it's like you could, if it's on you and you could fix it. And 'cause the reality is the thing is way bigger than you, bigger than any individual. And that's very hard for our like ego and our like, you know, nervous system almost to handle. - Exactly. - Let me know, I think this is a perfect like segue into, okay, we know how bad this is and why it's a problem. Like what, what is the other side of it? And honestly, this is why we came together and why we created the new Manager Playbook program because we heard every single day in our respective areas, not even working together, you all over the world, me all over the Fortune 500s with small businesses beyond, we heard middle managers especially, but all kinds of leaders, like to be honest, are really struggling and the current tools, the old tools, air quotes, aren't working. And we said, we gotta make something new. And that's why when we talk about the new Manager Playbook, whether it's the book, the podcast, the program, it's not something for new managers, it's all managers in new situations because that is where we are all at right now. We're facing these new things, yeah. - Yes, and it's also just a new type of playbook. It's a new way of approaching manager training. So just quickly for the listeners, I come out of academia. So I've always sort of bridged academia and practice. And so I have a background in curriculum design and learning and design and training and how adults meaningfully learn and change behavior and develop new skills. And when I first started dabbling in corporate training and getting outside of academia, I was pretty shocked by what I found 'cause I was like, we know better than this. We actually know how people learn and none of this is aligning with it. It would be these like very static trainings that would just be super knowledge heavy. It would be a bunch of like theory and stats about managing on the screen. And I was like, managers don't need the what of management. They need the how. And what we know about adults too is they learn the how by doing. Adults are experiential learners by and large. Like, yeah, they need to get the information and you need to give them enough like knowledge and guidance that they can like then, you know, what they're doing, putting it in practice. But yeah, adults retain like 40% more when they have a chance to try to do a thing than the 10% when they're just being told stuff. But I started seeing these corporate trainings and it would just be like... You know, like talking at people for 30 minutes with like a super old-school crappy like... - Yeah, it's fast. - Like a whole, you know, program or something. And I just was like, wow, like these companies are throwing good money after bad. This isn't gonna move the needle at all. What people need is they need information given to them in the way that they organically want to consume information. So really dynamic different ways. Like listen to a podcast, watch a video, practice an exercise, go do it with your team, come back, reflect on it. You know, it needs to be really dynamic and it needs to be focused on those mindsets and skills much more than like the knowledge statistics. - Totally. And the thing too, and we both do a ton of live facilitation. We love, we travel all the way around the world. It's not always feasible for teams. And so I want to say that too, because as we started talking about why we created a digital solution is because we have an analog solution. We were asked for a digital solution because it scales. And especially with distributed teams, global teams, hiring quickly, you've got to have a solution for training, retraining, upscaling at scale. Like it doesn't make sense to have one offsite once a year when you're bringing more folks on and the rest of the people are like missing out. You have everybody at all different levels. It doesn't make sense to have one event where, let's be honest, the worst managers, they always opt out. Like this is one of the biggest challenges that happens in every, the ones, 'cause I ran manager development in a team I was on at Google and it actually crossed several teams. I knew all the people and I was like, huh, this person decided they were good, they didn't need to. I'm great, I'm good, I'm gonna skip this. It's the worst managers. They opt out. So I think that's also something that we're solving for, right? Is that you have something you can drag attendance, you know, you can give them another nudge. It only takes a few hours to complete so that you make sure you have baseline to everyone the same. Because I'll tell you, like the stuff that we talk about in the program, giving feedback, setting expectations, navigating conflict, dealing with change, coaching, these are things that both your new and seasoned managers, we're all struggling with it. Okay, so like even if you're listening and you're like, I've been a leader for 15 years, it's really, really hard. But I don't know if I'm like, am I right? Yeah, you are because all of us could use a refresher at all these things. It's hard, you know, like it's so hard right now. And I think also with the new, with new generations and workforce, new tensions, like we've said, all these things that we've learned, we need to like relearn them for the now. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's a little tough 'cause I know the audience here is mostly managers and in a way, we're speaking more to the senior leadership and to HR right now, the people who are responsible for promoting people to managers and making sure those people are set up to be managers. So for those of you listening, like, yes, we hope this training is for you, but it's like, I really want the message to be to HR and to executive leadership teams, like a lot of times you are paying to bring me in to like advise on, speaking of throwing good money after bad to advise on issues where I'm like, if you had just run your managers through like a very simple, like foundational training, you would not be dealing with like this crisis right now, which is a very clear consequence of the fact that you never even told them what being a manager actually means. You never told them a breakdown of what the responsibilities were and you never made sure they knew how to do things like give constructive feedback, like manage a conflict between two employees on their team. So everything's getting escalated or everything's becoming a crisis. And then you're paying some, you know, consultants that come in, like, why? Why put everyone through that? And why not just make sure that people have the foundation that they deserve that managers are set up for success? - Yeah, I mean, it's so true. You know, we've been speaking in an HR conference as well and it's the same thing, right? HR managers, HR directors are inundated with complaints. The things that like, I don't know what my job is. I don't know if I have a future here. Like, that's called career conversations one-on-ones. Like it's fundamental things that I think when we don't have manager training, it falls into HR. Like who is supposed to deal with it, right? But a lot of it is, it truly is the responsibility of the manager. And so we're actually, we're trying to create relief across all of these different audiences, right? The senior leaders for things that are escalating, HR from having these complaints that are not in their court, managers from not feeling like, oh my God, like how do I deal with this? And business owners as well. Like I think so many of us, we are, we start a business because we're great at this skill. We're great at this thing. We have this awesome idea. And then we need to scale ourselves. So we bring on team members. We don't realize we are now a manager, like newsflash. We're a manager and we aren't given any of these, any of these foundational skills. And it breaks my heart because a lot of business owners come to me and say, I don't want to be a bad leader. I don't want to let people down. But I don't, I didn't get any of this training. And, and you're like very, very established. You've crushed it in your business. You're making millions of dollars, but you don't have the foundational skills. That's not your fault. It's because like we don't get taught that in school. Like we actually need a place to go. And that's why, you know, we have all of these different kinds of resources because it's, it's like, both of us are just so passionate about making it accessible because it's, it shouldn't be the way. Cause now to kind of bring us home around, around hope, it's whether you bring in a consultant, whether you bring in a coach, whether you bring in the new manager playbook, digital program, read the book, listen to this podcast. It is truly your responsibility as a leader to do something to upskill yourself so you can handle with the handle Vuka and all the stuff we're talking about. Because if you're not going to deal with that, no one's going to stick around. You're going to have a terrible experience in manager. You're going to burn out. And it's just like, you know, it's one of the reasons however many percentage of small businesses close, right? It's the reason startups fail. Like cause the, it's all the people stuff that gets us. So let's talk like how, with this, let's say we got that foundation. We're starting to get the skills. Where do we kind of find that hope in all of this? - Well, first, I mean, yeah, on a couple levels, I think a lot of what you do, Lea, and what I do too is to give people hope, right? Like I think hope comes, I think it's easier to feel hopeful when you feel like you have the resources and the capacity to meet the moment, right? So that's this whole idea of distress versus youth stress. Youth stress being like a good form of stress. Yeah, so youth stress is this idea of like, we don't actually want a life of no stress. Like, you want some dynamicism. You want to sort of feel sometimes like motivated kind of towards change, but that's a good form of stress. Youth stress is when you feel like you have the capability to sort of meet the challenge and the environment. And so then it's motivating, right? To have sort of all that like adrenaline and cortisol. Diss stress is when it's like, there's this challenge being presented by the environment and you don't feel like you have the capacity and we almost immediately put managers into a diss situation. Day one, here you go. Yeah, you don't feel hopeful when you're in distress, but when you, it's youth stress, which is like, this is a challenge. I'm going to be confronted with an experience before it, but I have the knowledge, mindset, skills and capacity to meet it. You can feel hopeful and optimistic. So that's one source of hope. And I think that's what drives you and me is like, let's give those resources in like one of the most efficient and like easily digestible ways. Another source of hope, I've been having a lot of discussions. Leadership goes over into the world of sort of like self-actualization, right? A lot of leadership is sort of about how do we find meaning? How do we find purpose? How do we live our values? And so I've been having discussions recently about hope and to a lot of leaders being like, where do you find it? And connection and like trying to achieve something bigger, right? And so managers actually have the potential to really focus in on that on their team. How do I explain to people like how this all fits together, where we're going? How do I create that sense of connection and that we're doing something together? And how do I tell, how do I help people be in a state of not distress at like the challenges that faces at a team, but like excited almost to tackle it together? So kind of how you frame the challenges that's facing and sort of saying, this is gonna require us to kind of like get innovative, get gritty, like sort of lean in and we're in this together. The one thing I wanna say about that, I do think right now I'm seeing a lot of leaders, they're trying to give hope in a way that I like very strongly advise against, which is teams are saying, employees are saying to them, oh, I feel kind of hopeless around this or I'm scared around this or how is this gonna work out? And frankly, when I'm seeing borders on gaslighting, they're like, no, it's gonna be totally fine. Or like AI is not gonna impact jobs, nothing's gonna change 'cause of it. Or like, oh no, given that these like, don't worry about another pandemic, we're never gonna face a big challenge like that again. You can't promise that, you can't say that. And what you're not doing that you're not actually, that's not hope, that's just delusion and like gaslighting. What is way better is to say to people like, yes, we are faced with these unprecedented challenges and I'm gonna make sure a team has the resources to meet the moment. - Yeah, exactly. - And like, here's what we're gonna do. And here's how we're gonna like actually grow better as a team and grow better as individuals by like how we face these challenges. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. And actually, spoiler next week on the pod, I talk about the right way and the wrong way to talk about change. I share many of these. - I'm just saying, it's not happening anymore. - So there's more to come on that. - But I love how you coined it. You said the word gritty and I know in our, you know, I think before we started, you used the frame gritty hope, I loved that. Like say more about that, yeah. - Yeah, that's this idea of like how, how are we, how do we remain hopeful in spite of, but not in spite of sounds bad 'cause it sounds almost like you shouldn't be able to be hopeful with, but how do we remain hopeful alongside all the other things we may feel about the challenges? We may feel fearful. We may feel intimidated sometimes. We may feel a bit like exhausted by it. And how do we stay hopeful? And some of it is not denying those feelings. And manager, it's not denying those feelings of your team. It's making space for them and being like, okay, like let's acknowledge where we're at. But then it's like, and what is in our control or what is in our influence to like do what we can with this flinging situation. And then just like I said, the grittiness, I think I mean comes from this thing of like, we're not gonna look perfect. It's not always gonna be pretty. We're just like, we're gonna get in there and we're gonna face it and we're gonna learn what we can from it, right? It's not pretty and it's not necessarily like rainbows and unicorns, right? It's like a very lived sort of like learning kind of by doing and by like trying and by being in it all together. - Yeah, I love that. This is a perfect place to wrap. And we gotta say, we are bursting at the seams to give you a demo of the New Manager Playbook digital program, whether it's for your own team or you know a team that could need it or you're an HR team, whatever. Like if it sounded interesting to you, head to newmanagerplaybook.com to schedule a demo. We also have an awesome ambassador program. So if it's not for your company, but you know folks who could use it to get in touch because same thing, we just really wanna spread the word about it. We cannot wait to support managers at scale. So that's newmanagerplaybook.com and thank you so much, Megan, for joining me. You will become a frequent guest as to talk more about this because I just love your perspective on anything. I mean, I think you really help us look at it from kind of a bigger, more macro way, which I think really helps, especially when you're just stuck in it, like kind of contextualize it. So thank you for all of your insights today. - Now, and thanks for having me, Leah. And speaking of, I mean, I just, you know, the reason why we partnered together is 'cause I love your resources and I love how practical they are. And speaking of hope, I mean, again, I think hope comes from feeling like you have the capacity to meet the moment. And I think between the podcast and the book and now the program and then all of the live facilitation you do, that's what you're doing. You're giving managers hope. And I think that is such a critical contribution. Like in this moment when managers are in a really tough spot. - Thank you so much. Well, happy 200th episode and we will see you next time.