How to lead when you are already stretched thin

This past weekend, I did a HIROX competition, which is essentially an endurance race. You do a mix of running and different exercises, alternating eight runs and eight exercises. And essentially, it is really to test kind of physical endurance. And I had never done anything like this. So I have never done even a 5k, let alone something like this. And when I was in the race, it just kept coming back to me, how freaking glad I was that I had trained for this.

Now, obviously, when you’re doing any sort of competition, even if you’re going in just for completion, which I really just wanted to get the lay of the land, you know, obviously, you know that you should train for it. But why don’t we bring this same mentality into when we’re trying to get our teams to accomplish some goal, right? When we’re trying to, you know, level up someone into being a leader, into a manager. When we’re facing all of the unknowns that we are today, why do we know it’s common sense that we should train for a HIROX or a marathon or an Ironman or whatever it is?

But like, you become a manager, your job totally changes, like, man, just figure it out. This is insanity, my friends. And that is what I want to talk about today. I’m Leah Garvin, and this is the New Manager Playbook, where I’m on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job. Before I dive into this, I also want to say this is not a podcast for new or first-time managers only. You know, this is beneficial for new and first-time managers, but we’re all new managers right now.

The truth is, in this moment where everything is, you know, we’re facing, like, truly, and it sounds cliche, but we’re in unprecedented times, there is uncertainty at every turn. I’ve already talked about on the show, uncertainty is the norm. This is where we’re at for the indefinite future. We’re all facing new challenges. This podcast is how we bring a new mindset to the challenges, how we bring a new set of skills, how we show up in a new way to be able to overcome the fear, the overwhelm, all of the, like, oh, do I want to do this?

Because for however long we’re in our roles or running our businesses or doing what we’re doing, we are being called to lead. So the new manager playbook is a new framework for tackling this new moment we’re in. All right. I just wanted to say that because if you’re thinking, like, well, you know, is this just for first-time managers? Absolutely not. Okay. This is for all of us who are like, well, how am I dealing with this?

Now, kind of even paralleling this to the high rocks, I’m not new to exercising. I’ve been running and working out since like middle school, right? But I’m facing a new challenge. So I have to bring a new set of skills to the table. And this is something that we, I just think we can’t, we can’t diminish, we can’t downplay when it is, when it comes to our teams. We are asking folks to step into a new version of themselves.

When someone becomes a manager, their job is completely different. I had a manager once that said, Hey, you know, think of yourself, even though you’re on the same team, you have the same email address, there’s like kind of on the surface, stuff’s the same. Think of it as like you’ve left a job and you’ve started a new job. I loved that framing because it was totally true. So there were some things that I had to hand off.

I had to wind down the previous things and actually onboard, onboard, like literally into the new, new role. And I talk about this in the new manager playbook book around shifting into being a manager actually does require onboarding, right? What are the set of skills expectations? You know, how do you, what does success look like in this new role where you’re overseeing people? Like it is a new job. And when we’re facing anything new, why the freaking hell we would think we don’t need to need training is bananas.

Now I know a lot of listeners to the show are overseeing leaders or overseeing people that you want to be taking a leadership role. So I know a lot of my small business owner and entrepreneurs listeners have maybe an ops manager or someone that’s running, you know, office managers, someone that’s, you’re really trying to, you know, have be overseeing a lot of the work. I know a lot of my corporate managers are potentially trying to build up managing their team.

I know my HR listeners are thinking, okay, well, how do I figure out both managers, managing managers and new managers? My executive listeners are thinking, well, how do I level up my entire manager base? All of this requires training. And again, to think that we could just like jump out there onto the field, into the arena and be like, okay, I got it. Like, I’m just going to figure it out as I go. It’s ridiculous. Now when training for Hyrox, I did a number of things.

Okay. First I had to build up physical strength, right? So that I could do things, you know, a lot of it is, is, is power in your legs, right? So you’re doing things like, you know, squats and, you know, deadlifts and all these things so that you can really hold that power. And then running was a big piece of it too. So you have to run and practice that. But because running was in between each of the exercises, you had to do what’s called compromised running.

So you couldn’t just run whenever, like you wake up Saturday morning, you’re like, yeah, I’m feeling great and run. Then you had to practice running when you were tired, when you were over it, when you felt like your legs were jelly, when you didn’t want to do it. That is the kind of training we’ve got to be getting people ready for. How are we training for the moments that are terrible that we don’t want to be in when our team members are disagreeing and defensive.

And when they get upset, when we give them feedback and tell us, well, I don’t like how you give feedback and all this stuff that we’re terrified of. How do we train for feeling compromised? Because we’re all compromised right now. All of our best skills, all of our best day stuff, like this isn’t, this is the thing that we have to be training for. We’re not at our best. We’re tired. It’s the end of the year.

We’re exhausted. Maybe we didn’t hit our numbers. Maybe we did. And now we feel extra pressure for next year. Maybe there’s not more resources. Maybe we got to be hiring a lot. I don’t know whatever you’re dealing with. Right. But I know it’s something stressful because we are in a moment where stress is the norm and uncertainty is the norm. Right. So when you have stress, just like on your body, on your mind, on yourself, on your team, how are we training so that we can uplevel the baseline?

The thing about high rocks, the race is that you train so that when you’re doing these runs in between things like the rower, the ski, or you’re doing burpees, or you’re throwing a medicine ball at a target, or you’re doing lunges, stuff like that. Like you’re running between the run is supposed to be the rest, the recovery. If you’re not good at running, then it doesn’t work that way. Right. So it’s in the same kind of drawing that same parallel.

We have to train so that the baseline of like, just kind of like kind of hard, like we’re at every day feels okay. So that we don’t get rocked and drop out of the race on the first five minutes because we’re like, well, I can’t handle any of this. How are we training when we’re already compromised? This is the question I encourage you to think about. I know it’s the end of the year. So this could be a question you bring into January.

I really encourage you to have this be a topic of goal setting and planning and getting your teams really pumped up and on the same page around priorities and what they’re facing for next year. Because the fact is folks are compromised. So if you’re not thinking about it in that terms, we’re planning for a baseline that we’re not at. And so what would it look like to set goals when you’re already a little bit behind or the productivity is a little bit lower, or you feel like you’re going to have to hit a higher revenue target or profitability because you’re on the back foot?

What would it look like then? Or you’re planning for people to be more taking sick days or off, or maybe there’s leaves of absences. What does it look like to be training and trying to come up from behind? A lot of times in for, for competitions or sports folks train with a heavier weight than they’re going to use or wear a weighted vest, or they’re, they’re actually sort of showing they’re, they’re putting a heavier load than they’re going to be utilizing on game day because then it feels like, Oh good.

I have a little bit of a leg up. How are we doing that? Right? How are we sort of thinking, where can we really make sure we are getting all of our ducks in a row and figuring out, well, if we can do this here, then we can do this anywhere. This is truly what I was thinking about in the, maybe not in the worst part of the race, but definitely through the runs. Like, wow, I’m so glad this feels like a bit of a rest, a recovery.

And afterwards I was talking to, I was like, Holy, you know, swear words. This sounds, this is the same thing as being a leader, training one compromise, getting your team to really be able to step up and really show up. Even, even when they don’t feel like it, even when they’re already depleted and it doesn’t mean burning them out because that is one of those things. And you’re right now, the workplace is like an endurance race.

Let’s just call it. So you can’t burn out too quickly or you literally will not make it. So there’s a pacing, but there’s also an understanding of we have to be keeping momentum and we don’t want to fizzle out even later in the game. So that’s what training’s about. How do we have hard conversations? How are we giving feedback? How are we doing the most important thing of all delegating as a leader? Because that’s, what’s keeping us stuck in the weeds.

That’s, what’s keeping our team members from taking accountability. That’s, what’s keeping people from raising their hand for more opportunities. They’re like, well, they’re just doing it. This is what we have to train ourselves for, our leaders for, our team members for. And when we train, when it’s hard, when we train compromise and we train for these sort of worst case scenarios, right? That’s where we figure out what we are made of. That’s where we figure out we can do this.

So it’s, if it was all easy, right? Everybody would want to be a manager. Why do only three in 10 people want to be managers right now? Because it sucks a lot of the time. But when you train for how to give hard news and be empathetic, how to have a productive conversation when someone is completely defensive, how to let go of work that you really loved doing and handing it off to a team member and watching them maybe stumble a little bit at first.

How do you load balance and motivate people when they are over it and they don’t care anymore? When you’re training for these things, now you see, gosh, when it’s easy, now you’re sprinting, now you’re flying. And you can get so much further because you’re not like, whoa, I just trained for like the basics. I didn’t know like this conversation go badly. I want to say one more thing before I wrap. People are very, very, I don’t want to say sensitive.

I don’t want to like downplay. People are like, they’re charged right now. Let’s just say that. Nervous systems are charged. People are a little bit on edge because of all the stress and the fear around AI automation uncertainty. So if people are a little bit like things like flat raises or bonuses, things like difficult feedback, things like not getting that job opportunity, that project they want, those things that can quickly turn into a bigger deal. Something that you feel like, well, shouldn’t be this big thing.

Know that as a leader, know that the charge is high. And some things that you may think aren’t a big deal may come across as a bigger deal. So this is a training compromise situation. How do you enter a conversation with a little bit more empathy, a little bit more understanding? It doesn’t mean you’re getting walked all over. It doesn’t mean you’re giving out money you don’t have, but how do you have a conversation knowing that?

Knowing that, hey, there is a chance someone does leave or someone does get upset or someone does lose motivation if X, Y, Z happens, if they don’t get that thing. Now, again, it doesn’t mean you give them out the thing because they, just because they wanted it. It’s knowing, hey, things may not be easy for me right now. The hard things are going to be harder. That’s what training is about. How do I keep going when it’s harder?

And we bring that empathy. That’s part of it. When we bring that understanding and we show up anyway, we lead anyway, even when we are burned out, even when we’re crawling to the finish line, that is what it really is about. That’s why we’re here. And this is not, you see that this is not a, oh, first day managing sort of thing. This is an everybody managing thing. This is what I’m calling the most senior folks in the most top companies to be doing.

And someone that is just figuring out, do I even want to be a leader? Everybody is being called right now to train, compromise, to do it anyway, and to get back out there. All right. Happy holidays, happy new year, and see you next time.