Manager Advice #4 - Don't Take It Personal

Coming off the last one, this one will be a lot less heavy and more just... advice on how to live day to day in your job as a manager. I feel like I titled it very directly, because a good chunk of your work (if you can call it that) now revolves around things that aren't "checkbox" material. Ambiguity flies high, expectations are wild, and once you're in the thick of it, you begin to realize some things.

You may think to yourself - "it's easy not to take things personally." I know I did. Everything changes though when you go from being a worker who only has to think about it once in while, to dealing with it on a daily basis in ways you didn't even know were possible.

Most people and leadership at least understand that people are people. There's times where you will be mistaken, you'll say things you aren't 100% tuned to, and you'll offer things you can't deliver or even speak for someone incorrectly. There will be conflict that you make worse and decisions that will cost other people time, and maybe even money.

Obviously if you make giant honking mistakes that's something completely different. If you make an ill informed decision that costs your company 2 million bucks... well, that might just be a reflective moment.

In these moments and situations, you will panic. You will feel let down. You will feel like you've done a horrible job at being a manager. It might even follow with a period of sadness. That's perfectly okay. We're not robots, we're allowed to feel things.

Don't take it personal though, because it's often the actions of leader after these mistakes that define them. Own them. Work to correct them. Be transparent, don't try to hide it. Especially with the team you manage, let a little emotion through so they know who you are. With your leadership, let them know what happened and your plan to correct it.

A mistake or something going wrong isn't often the problem or defining moment; it's the actual job you're doing and it's being tested.

I am telling you this now; people will absolutely upset you for many reasons. More often than not, those people are your peers and the people above you. Whether it be corporate settings or even in small business, people tend to care more about their image and decisions more than actually solving problems.

If that statement makes you mad, welcome to the party. I would also suggest that it's a good time to reflect and decide whether you want to deal with that or not. It's a legit part of leadership.

There are very common scenarios I've found through being in leadership a handful of times at different companies. Here's a few short examples.

• People will come into conversations that are supposed to be "idea" and "solution" oriented where they've already silently made a decision. You'll quickly realize that you aren't actually pitching anything, you're fighting other people's ideas.
• A good chunk of people believe they're smarter and more capable than they are, and you'll have to go along with it, or face the consequences.
• Folks often ask for things... without actually giving you what they're asking for. You'll spend a bunch of time trying to deliver something and get told over and over again that it's not right and you're in the wrong, because they can't articulate it right.
• There will be leaders, many of them, who got where they are by being bullish and aggressive, not by actually knowing what they're doing. You'll be on the other side of it.
• Someone wants a specific answer, so they'll repeat the same questions over and over again until you give them what they want to hear, even if it's not true.

As a leader myself, I've learned that it's not the freedom I had hoped for. In fact, it turned out to be quite the opposite - it's less decision making and more about just doing what you are told with the team you have. There are certainly a handful of things within your power, but the bigger things are further out of your reach than it was when you were a worker.

On the other side though, dealing with team ego is a whole other game to play, but it's often directly within your control to manage. Ego shows up in your team in a few very distinct ways;

• The "I am always right" Person - Often they are. Most of the time they just fail at actually executing or communicating properly, and you have to filter that in a way that works.
• "I never do things right" - Don't mistake it. It's still ego, just in the opposite direction. These people are identifying as "less than" in order to evoke pity security or something.
• Those folks who literally can't handle change or work well with others. Again, don't mistake it for personality or something; it's ego.

Each case is different and needs to be handled in different ways.

Leaders waste more time than any other role at the company. It's not even a question. I bet if someone took the actual time to quantify time, you'd find that there's probably a 50-60% gap in difference from workers, contractors, and folks that aren't leaders for "wasted time" than leaders. Why? Well, let's talk about it, and why it's important to not take it personally.

First off, it ties in directly with ego. You'll always here "time is important," and that same leader will have a PM schedule 8 meetings over 3 months to simply start a project. Great time management, bro. They aren't actually saying that time is important, they are saying "I, me, and myself are important." These are the types of folks who spend half of their meeting time asking repetitive questions or emphasizing how important something is. Yeah, that's like 30 mins you'll never get back.

There are so many things disguised as "relationship building" or "collaborating" that just honestly not. It's hard to build a relationship, even a professional one, when the relationship is one sided. Your 1:1's with these folks are pointless. The people they have you talk to are also the same way. Everyone is out for the themselves. People don't know how to run these types of things and treat them like a checkbox.

Also, there's all the paperwork you'll have to do. HR and management meetings. Scheduling out reviews. Writing a bunch of stuff. Dealing with random data. Updating spreadsheets. Then dealing with folks that won't listen to you, won't take your ideas, and ask you to repeat yourself 100 times (yes I am tacking it here too, it creates an itch I can't reach).

Unfortunately, a lot of it is pointless. Don't let folks convince you that it's not. You are wasting your time. You have to be okay with it, because if you revolt, you will be seen as a bad leader. Which directly relates to THAT being a lot of wasted time. You'll be in meetings and all sorts of training that are complete trash, or people trying to convince you that something is important when it's not.

Again - don't take it personal. You have to deal with a lot of wasted time as a leader. You can either accept it, or move out of it. It's part of the role.

If you are someone who likes to roll off a checklist, or be able to quantify that you're doing a good job, a leader role isn't the place to get that. Most of what you do is manage people, manage projects, manage timelines and workloads, and manage your own management. None of that has quantity; it's just kind of fed by feedback.

Not only that, but a lot of your job is "follow up on/with X" and that follow up is a conversation, followed by a meeting, followed by more conversation, followed by spreadsheet work, followed by training, followed by more meetings. It's really hard to keep up with a checklist when the checklist itself bends and molds. Trust me, I've tried.

Another thing is meeting and conversation time. Nearly impossible to track, especially if you work remote or in an office. So you may have days FILLED to the brim with this stuff, so 10 hours later, you feel like you did nothing. In reality, you did a lot, but it doesn't come to you as tangible results. You can't spin it in any way that makes sense.

Yet again, ambiguity is added to by not really understanding the time it takes to do something. Someone may tell you "track this thing," so you think that you put it in a spreadsheet, gather the metric, and boom. But then it's wrong. It's not presented right. Now that all that work is done, they decide they don't need it. 20 hours, 5 meetings, and frustration; completely gone. Note here that you don't take it personal or that it reflects your performance because you dumped the time and it failed. You did the thing.

Finally on the ambiguity list is how they actually tell you that your performance is tracked. It's usually "results based" which means that your team does work = you did good work too. I personally don't like this measurement, but I also try not to let it bother me. Yeah it still does, but still. Don't be like me.

Yes, you have a job title and this crazy job description where you're an expert, you do work, you manage a team, you "cross collaborate," and all that fun stuff. What they don't tell you going into management is all the other hats you wear.

Most of my time at work has been in tech, so excuse me if some of these terms may sound like a different language if you aren't there. As a manager, not only do I do management, but I also do scrum, project planning, charts, graphs, pay, and at some other jobs, I did inventory, client management, pre-sales, etc. - your job balloons. Because of people's egos and the ambiguity, you tend to absorb anything the company or your management needs.

What are you to do? Say no? Then you're a bad manager. You are unwilling to cooperate. You are unhelpful. You suddenly get less opportunities and are picked on more than others. I say this not from theory, but from experience... more than once. I love work. I love doing things. When I physically can't, or I can't do it in the timeframes people want, I don't sacrifice my personal time for that. And for that, I've gotten the crap end of the stick.

Multiple hats I've just had to learn is the name of the leader game. I no longer take it personally, I just operate. If I can, I will. If I can't, I will voice my opinion and try. You just have to let it be sometimes. Let it burn, as Usher would say. Speaking of...

This is just advice. Also, it's not a personal thing; and I say that to you and myself. You will watch things happen. You will know the problem and the solution. You will be assigned pointless crap.

Voice your opinion. Don't be silent. That's something you need to get used to. Ask the obvious questions. Have the contrary opinion. If they don't agree, say "alright then" and move on. Just because you can and you might have influence doesn't mean you'll get heard. I repeat and rephrase - just because you have a voice, doesn't mean people listen to it.

In which case, you need to realize the company is not on your shoulders. Only your team. Shield them and protect them, let everything else come crashing down. Offer opinions, often help, and keep stating your opinion. Sometimes the best way to teach someone a lesson or get progress is to let it fail. So let it.

I kind of assumed every time I was basically put into leadership, that there would be a lot more folks like me in leadership. I have been sorely disappointed every single time without fail, nearly immediately. Most of you who want change and genuinely care about people and not your title, you'll feel this pain too unfortunately.

At the end of the day, it's a job. There's many ways to get there and just like being a worker, you're often surrounded by people who just don't care. That doesn't change in leadership. In fact, I'd argue it's worse because your worker buddy just hurt himself. Leaders hurt others. It sucks. It's hard not to take things personal when you care.

Being in leadership though, means you have to let a little bit go; otherwise you'll just be left in misery. I am proof. Don't do it if it doesn't feel right.

Being a manager isn't all doom a gloom though, because you do have the opportunity to help and guide folks. You can set expectations and grow folks. It just takes a certain type of person and way of thinking to do it.

Always consider what your skills are too.