(Business Wire August 2020)
In my experience two things;
1. Many of us don’t take enough responsibility for our own happiness and positivity at work.
2. As managers of people we often act as we think we should and not consciously managing ourselves so that we are real and bringing out the best in those around us.
The same August study reports that 84 percent say poorly trained people managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress. But is it about training? The majority of management training I’m still told about is “back to basics” (I really hate that phrase!) Models, frameworks, role plays. Urgh. I do wonder if many of us would be better at this if we hadn’t had this kind of old fashioned “training”!
57 percent then said that managers in their workplace could benefit from training on how to be a better people manager, but only half felt that their own performance would improve if their direct supervisor received additional training in people management. Interesting!
The top five skills people managers could improve were: Communicating effectively (41 percent), developing and training the team (38 percent), managing time and delegating (37 percent), cultivating a positive and inclusive team culture (35 percent), and managing team performance (35 percent).
There is a different path! Be yourself, the best of you. And it’s a much more enjoyable one!
It is almost like we feel like we need to become slightly molded when we lead other people. We worry about getting things wrong and so use control as our strategy. Yet we cannot control everything. This feeling of control, the need to have it must be compensating for something…our fear of not being good enough. It is an exhausting approach too breeding a prove it strategy, politics and hierarchy in the atmosphere.
Discovering who you are at your best, not your skills or experience, the real you is the first step to inspiring naturally. Whether you manage people or not. For as long as we look outside of ourselves for validation and self-confidence, whilst we control seek autonomy and need to be valued and validated, we will lack inner resilience and the freedom on the inside of us to be ourselves, let go and really enjoy our work.
This week we have released a new three minute film on iAM. It has been lovingly created with the intention of helping all of us to understand our iAM. If you have your iAM grab it and look at the wonder of you. Be you. Work at it consciously, replacing your work personas and needs to be a professional stereotype (sorry!) to impress. People in your world love you for who you are, so bring that you to work and those there will have the chance to really love being with you too.
Be you.