I call them leadership skills. A lot of people call them power skills, whatever. Things like communication, relationship building, dot connecting, these kinds of skills were seen as less valuable. Now, the paradigm has shifted quite a bit. And if you don't have these skills or you don't have comfort, having conversations, giving feedback, things like that, then you do need to be engaging in training and development.
And when you're opting out saying, nah, I'm good. I got everything I need, you're really doing a disservice to yourself as a manager and certainly to your team.
Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast. Where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager.
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Welcome back to the show. Today we're gonna talk about a real juicy topic. Three mistakes, seasoned managers. Now I qualified this with seasoned managers because it's important to remember that even if you have been managing for a long time, even if you've been doing this for years, even if you feel like a lot of stuff's working for you, there comes a time when engagement starts to go down, motivation starts to decline.
Maybe people start to leave your team, and it's really important to be able to recognize, well, what are the things that I might be doing that are getting in my way to leading my team as best that I can be doing? And I also wanna say that oftentimes it's those seasoned managers, it's those people that have been doing it for a long time that have.
Some of the most disengagement from their team because they didn't realize that they are making these mistakes. Now, this in no way is a knock on seasoned managers. In fact, the reason I know all of these mistakes is because I have made them myself. But in my trainings and development and work I do with managers, seeing these things come up again and again, I said, Hey.
we gotta talk about these things. We gotta figure out what to do instead so we can best support our teams. So here we go. Right now we're, we're gonna share what these are. And for newer managers tuning in now you can avoid making these mistakes later in your career. The first mistake is not getting the training they need.
And what I see so often is managers that have been doing it for a long time, when a manager training comes up or some kind of conversation about manager development, they opt. They say, I don't need this. Okay, I'm good. And to be honest, I'm gonna just call it like it is. Usually the manager that opt out are the ones that need the most help because the ones that are opting in and ones that are like wanna be up to speed on latest skills and trends and be in the conversation.
They're the ones who actually care. So if you are finding yourself thinking, yeah, I don't really need this, I'm opting out, there might be more going on with your team and it might be an really important opportunity to look in the mirror and say, Hey, is this something I should be making time for? And the answer is, yes, you should be making more time for learning and development.
And what are the kinds of things that come up in trainings? Things like building skills around coaching. I think a long time ago, right? Or maybe not even that long ago, but more technical skills really job super, super on the job. Specific technical skills were valued way over what's deemed as softer skills.
I call them leadership skills. A lot of people call them power skills, whatever. Things like communication, relationship building, dot connecting, these kinds of skills were seen as less valuable. Now, the paradigm has shifted quite. And if you don't have these skills or you don't have comfort, having conversations, giving feedback, things like that, then you do need to be engaging in training and development.
And when you're opting out saying, nah, I'm good. I got everything I need, you're really doing a disservice to yourself as a manager and certainly to your team. So that is the first mistake, is not getting the training that you need opting out. And so instead, it's really important to be soliciting feedback from your team on a continual basis.
And from your peers and coworkers and from your managers, really getting that 360 view so that you know what kinds of things to be developing and focusing on, and then engaging in either training or coaching or or whatever skill building on a regular basis. That's how you solve that one, and don't fall into that.
Mistake number two. The second biggest mistake seasoned managers make is not delegating or trying to do everything the. Now, this kind of mistake often comes up when you're really good at the thing you're doing. You can do it with your eyes closed. You can do it basically sleeping. And so you feel like, well, it's easier if you just do it.
It's faster if you just do it. But the problem is, and why this is a mistake, is it doesn't allow you to let your team members step up as owners. It often demonstrates to your team members that you don't trust them, even if that's not your in. because when you're holding onto everything, people feel like, well, if they trusted me, they would let go of a little bit, right?
They wouldn't be so tight with everything. This kind of mistake often results in managers feeling burned out and our team members feeling like disempowered, and so there's really no win out of not delegating. Or trying to do everything yourself. This mistake came up for me when I had to hire someone to support me to run a program that I had built from the ground up.
And because I had built it, I knew what worked. I knew what was getting people on board with it. I knew what didn't work, and it was really hard for me to figure out what pieces to let go of and not want to have the person do everything my way. But a course, there was a number of problems with this. First, I wasn't letting the other person put their unique mark.
So I was believing that my way was the only way that was gonna work. Instead, remembering that I had hired this awesome person because of their skills and the unique perspective they brought. When I started to take a step back and say, Hey, how would you solve this problem? What do you think here? I started to see that there were so many ideas that I hadn't thought of that ended up making the program so much better.
When we don't delegate, it creates a whole slew of problems. Disengagement. You are burning out, you're not training people in, you know how to do the job effectively. You're probably not setting clear expectations, maybe haven't painted a picture of what success looks. When you're trying to do everything yourself, it's really a recipe for a disaster on your team and everybody loses.
I've already said that and I say it again because this is something that is one of the biggest signals of micromanaging when you're trying to do everything yourself, because you sort of become really, really deep in the weeds. Maybe you become a helicopter manager, really detailed, and then you're gone because you have other things to do and then you come back and you're wanting an update right away immediately.
And that's really jarring for a team. So instead we wanna be delegating, we wanna be making sure we are aware of what are those high impact tasks that we can offload to a team member, that we can get other people to step up and step. And making sure people see that the things that we're delegating are things that are meaningful, that help them achieve their own career goals.
And last, like I shared in my example, delegating and not doing everything ourselves allows us to learn as managers. And that's why this is important for seasoned managers to remember. We don't have all the answers. We don't know all the perfect ways to solve a problem, and this was a tough lesson for me to learn, but it ended up making my work so much better by trusting in my team member and how they would solve the problem.
All right. We have covered two of the three mistakes, and if you are sitting here thinking, yep, that's me. I need a little bit more support, then my manager development program, micro to macro is for you. . In this program I cover three critical areas of manager development, building a relationship with our teams to inspire trust and build psychological safety, how to deliver feedback effectively.
So here I cover things like recognition and praise, along with talking about difficult feedback and how to delegate to empower. So I go really, really deep into that last topic we just talked about, and especially for you seasoned managers, this helps you really reset on some of those core skills that you can inspire your teams drive higher motivation.
in set up your teams for success to be able to do more with less, which is such a big theme right now. To learn more and sign up, reach out at [email protected] or hop onto my at liagarvin.com. Now the third mistake that season managers make is not developing a strong bench. So a strong bench is having, you know, a team of leads and direct reports that could replace you one day.
Great leaders are working every day to build their bench so that they can work themselves out of a job and up onto the next thing. And a big mistake that leaders can make is holding onto tightly to that control and not really offloading, kind of using information as currency. And not offloading enough to their team members, so none of their team members can really step into that.
And the consequence of that is, again, it, it leads to a lot of micromanagement because everyone's coming to you for all the information. It's a bottleneck with decision making because again, you are really the only decider. People are not empowered to make calls. It feels like, well, you know, if you don't have a strong bench, no one really can make the call because you have all the information, you have all the oversight.
So instead of being that single point of failure, you wanna make sure you are pushing decision making down your chain, that you are empowering your whole leadership team with the ability to make decisions, to step in for you when you're out, when you're on leave to ta offload some of those approvals, maybe run a whole kind of piece of the.
For example, if you have a series of product reviews or business reviews or or strategy reviews, maybe you delegate to one of your leaders to take on one of those areas so that they're fully owning that, and that's what's gonna build your bench up. And as you build your bench, you start to see you have more retention because people feel like owners like, okay, I got this.
I am really seen here as a leader. And you then start to feel less overloaded, and then you can look at what's next for. Another big consequence of of not having your strong benches. You are only looking downward, but you can be looking up and out and what's next and what's next for your team, and how do you collaborate across the company, and how do you forge new ideas when you aren't so deep into the weeds.
This is, again, it's a win-win, just like delegating. This is a win-win for you and your team members. Is to develop a strong bench, to be offloading responsibilities, to believe in your team, to be hiring people who are better at this thing than you are, because that doesn't make you look bad. It makes you look like a better leader.
Again, these are the three mistakes seasoned managers make, not getting the training they need, not delegating and not developing a strong bench. And the flip side of this, When we are well trained in leadership skills and giving feedback and communication and understanding generational differences, that's something we gotta figure out, right?
We have a new generation entering the workforce, Gen Z, and we have to understand how to communicate effectively. This is new for a lot of us. When we're able to delegate and empower and, and offload responsibilities and have people see, you know, oh, okay, I'm able to volunteer for things and I can, you know, really offload for my manager.
This starts to make us feel like we're trusted, that we're valuable, gives us a higher sense of meaning. Again, retention, and then developing that strong bench that allows you to grow in your career, to explore what's next for you. To be really leaning into that leadership role that you really, really wanna own and be and see in yourself.
That's what we can do when we avoid these three. See you next time. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn.
See you next time.
