don’t give up on people, get into it (so we can get through it).
Q: I recently took over a team that had been managed for like 10 years by one person. He was an old-school type who liked to hear himself talk, a lot. For years, I would hear him refer to the team he led as “his staff” in a possessive patronizing tone that suggested they were his to direct as if his property. It was strange to watch from afar (I reported alongside him). Due to an organizational change, I’m now leading this team and am learning how they worked up close; he decided just about everything, and the team members were (mostly) not expected to be creative or show initiative, or even have an opinion.
So, I thought the team would be relieved, even happy with my style and approach, which I would characterize as creating safe spaces, enabling healthy debate, and wanting everyone’s contributions. I’m a collaborator at heart.
Instead, I’m mostly getting dead-pan responses in Zoom calls, and the equivalent in 1:1’s.
Which is disconcerting to me; I feel like they don’t trust me. But the thing that gets me the most? One employee was being severely underpaid, to the tune of earning 50% of the rest of the team. I think it was mostly because she didn’t ask for a raise. So behind the scenes, I fixed it with HR (who totally agreed but still made me prove it to them), but when I went to present the salary increase to her, she wasn’t happy with the news. She was actually grumpy and seemed to imply I had done something wrong.
I am so confused and also starting to get frustrated enough to want to stop trying to do what I know is useful to teamwork. Last week you wrote about imposter syndrome and how none of us can be a fake when we’re living our own truth, But, I’m wondering if it’s possible that I’m lying about collaboration being a good strategy. Maybe actually that old-school dictatorial style where only one person has an idea is actually better. Anyway, I share all this to say I’m starting to question everything I know about “good” leadership and management.
Dear Collaborator-at-Heart,
In my research for last week’s column, I listened to Viola Davis’ 60-minutes interview. She argues how incredibly beneficial imposter syndrome is. How it pushes her towards excellence.
Your note reminded me of it. And how hard it is to release old beliefs.
Like how it took me until day 3 of a weeklong retreat to finally have the courage to voice a question I was grappling with. As I raised my hand in this 40-person smallish group, I was shaking a bit. I remember asking something like this: “So, [ instructor], I hear you saying that I can just be myself and it’ll be okay; BUT, I like, and even need that critical voice that demands I do better, that tells me how I’m not doing it right, that pushes me to question everything, so I actually do the work [to get it right]”.
My critical, comparative, competitive voice pushes me towards excellence, I argued. (Viola would have so been proud.)
My classmates had laughed. Not at me, but with me. The kind of nervous laugh that says, I so feel this.
And then came the instructor’s answer …
“I hear you. You think you need that voice to be better, to grow, to excel. But …what if I told you…you don’t. You don’t actually need to beat yourself and judge yourself, and compare yourself to grow, learn excel; you can just grow, learn, excel.”
And you know what I felt?
Disbelief.
Like when you’re really hearing something that you kinda want to believe is possible … but you can’t possibly take in because it shakes up your world view? Like when a dog listens, he tilts his head. We humans say words, but all the dog hears is blah, blah blah, as the Gary Larson cartoon once depicted. So, just picture me sitting in that steel folding chair, tilting my head.
Believing better meant giving up coping mechanisms that I’d velcroed myself to.
The notion that I (or Viola) needed a tyrannical voice to do what we wanted to do? It was an old notion, born of pain. Where once it served me to survive, it wasn’t what would lead to thriving. But it takes a certain something to let go of what had worked so far.
Pain pushes until vision pulls.
DON’T THROW YOUR HAND
A blank face can be so disconcerting.
You know your own heart, how much you care and want to do right by these folks. You didn’t need to fix that salary inequity, yet you used your political/social/budget capital to do so.
Yet, you’re not getting clear signals of joy at your many well-intentioned efforts.
So, now you’re starting to question your own vision, before you have any real data to go on.
Maybe the person whose pay you increased is worried you expect even more from her? Like if you pay her twice as much, she needs to work twice as much, and she’s already tapped out?? Maybe the team is just so conditioned to being stone-faced given how much their last boss dominated over them. After all, 10 years is a long time of learned behavior to survive. Or it could be another thing altogether, maybe wondering why they got new leadership?
You don’t know the answers. But you’re starting to tell yourself that you do.
(I wonder what old pain has taught you to do that?)
How other people respond isn’t all about you.
You gotta decide if their early responses are going to change who you are, what you believe in. You say you’re a collaborator-at-heart. That you value and envision creating safe spaces, enabling healthy debate, and wanting everyone’s contributions. But when you don’t get the response that affirms you (right away), you start to question if you’re doing it all wrong.
Dude.
How about, actually, living out the vision of what you say you value?
Live it long enough so others can come to see that who you say you are is who you are.
Live it because you believe in these values.
Live it because this is your onlyness.
EVERYBODY CRIES
Your team’s response reminds me of when I brought home a rescue cat who hid under the bed for days. With their dead-pan response, they are effectively hiding. Until they decide it’s safe.
Your job — every leader’s job — is to do exactly what you already know to be right: to create safety (Amy Edmondson’s body of work is so useful). To show those who have been told to keep their voice small to fit in, that you will not subjugate them. To show those who have made themselves small to survive, it’s gonna be okay. To not act as if you know something they don’t, superior as the ‘leader” but as someone who gets what it is like to have super shitty bosses. Show (don’t tell) how it’s safe to see and be seen as oneself.
How?
Create the space for them to ask that question they’re ponding. When there are good moments to do so, ask what it felt like to be led by Old-School. Ask what they liked, and what they didn’t. Ask and explore what it means as they transition to work with you, yet still within this same organization that let Old-School get away with his dominating behavior. Be willing to be surprised. Be willing to be questioned. Be willing to be stared at with that blank look as they work thru whether it’s okay to reveal themselves. This could be uncomfortable. To name. To notice what is actually going on.
Embracing onlyness means that we must embrace our history, not deny it. This includes both our “dark” and our “light” sides. Within ourselves. And with each other. And in the context where we work.
And this embrace of both the dark and the light is everything. Not to dwell in the past, but so we can see what ideas and assumptions no longer serve. In order to release old beliefs, we have to first see how much we’ve velcroed ourselves to them.
Do what the teacher did for me. Not by telling me I was wrong but by saying, you know that idea you’re holding onto with dear life? It’s not the only option.
She named it so I could notice it. It’s what I do for you. And you need to do it for your team.
AS WE ARE
Imposter syndrome is a form of self-judgment, not self-compassion, not self-acceptance. That’s why it’s so unhelpful; and the recommended antidote of “fake it” blocks learning because it blocks out reality. As long as we’re pretending that we are not both light and dark, works in progress, we’re not being ourselves. Or becoming who we are becoming.
Some eleven years ago, I thought that I needed that tyrant to do my best work. Now, I’ve come to see how we humans actually want to grow, be known, and express one’s own truth… because it’s in our fundamental nature. We each have ideas, ways of adding value to the world. The question of manifesting onlyness is not a question of anyone trying any harder. Rather, how and whether we have the social spaces to see and be seen in the world.
As we value ourselves as we are, we can be valued. As we are valued, we can create value.
So, Collaborative-At-Heart, don’t give up on them. Or yourself for that matter.
