In this episode I talk about making the transition into our first leadership role, share some leadership paradigms that have been effective for me and point out some pitfalls that may hold us back or catch us out.
And here's a little teaser: it involves a transformative encounter with a group of children that reshaped my approach to leadership.
Thank you to our sponsors:
Email: hello@askeconsulting.co.uk
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk
Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror
If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.
Episode recorded on 11 August 2023.
In this episode I talk about making the transition into our first leadership role, share some leadership paradigms that have been effective for me and point out some pitfalls that may hold us back or catch us out.
And here's a little teaser: it involves a transformative encounter with a group of children that reshaped my approach to leadership.
Thank you to our sponsors:
Email: hello@askeconsulting.co.uk
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk
Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror
If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.
Episode recorded on 11 August 2023.
I am sitting in lovely Siesta Key, florida. I'm coming from Bangkok in Thailand, prague in the Czech Republic, cairo in Egypt, auckland, new Zealand, london, england. Welcome to Career View Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, showing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy Follows. Hello listeners, and welcome to this side mirror episode of Career View Mirror. If you're a regular listener, thank you and welcome back. You'll be aware that most of our episodes feature interviews with people with a link to the automotive industry who kindly share their life and career journeys with us. We celebrate their careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. From time to time we also publish these side mirror episodes, which introduce concepts and tools that feature in our signature towards fulfilling performance development program. Please feel free to share any of our episodes with people you lead, parent or mentor. For more details of our Towards Fulfilling Performance program, you can contact us at CVM@aquilae. co. uk. You'll find that email address in the show notes to this episode.
Andy Follows:When I was 19 years old, during my vacation from university in the UK, I took a job with an organisation that organised English language safaris for French children aged around 10 to 14. For three weeks of the summer we took over a boarding school in the Surrey countryside. We spent the mornings in the classrooms teaching the children English and in the afternoons we took them out on excursions. One of those excursions was simply a walk through the local countryside. I'd point out a beautiful English country home surrounded by Parkland, and say that's George Michael's house, and the message would get passed down the line c'est le maison de George Michael. Some would take pictures and I'd feel a little bit guilty. I have no idea whose house it actually was, but it kept them interested in the walk for a few minutes. One problem with this walk, apart from the lack of genuine interesting landmarks for youngsters, was that we had to cross a busy dual carriageway. I'd make sure I reached it first, and then I'd turn into a mother hen with all my chicks trying to get them safely across the four lane highway. They would continue talking with each other, generally messing about, and entrust to me the whole operation of getting them safely to the other side. On one occasion something else must have taken my attention and as the group came to the road I found myself right at the back. I can't remember my exact feelings when I realised what I'd allowed to happen, but what happened next has stayed with me to this day and I credit it with significantly influencing my approach to leadership and parenting.
Andy Follows:Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting, who are experts in executive search, resourcing solutions and talent management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I've known them for almost 20 years and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for Career-View Mirror. They're the business we go to at Aquilae when we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew McMillan, whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies. All ASKE consultants have extensive client side experience, which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was back in 2004, when he helped me hire regional managers for my leasing sales team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business, ASKE Consulting was alongside us, helping us to develop our people strategy and to identify and bring on board suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ask have had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long-term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a two-year performance guarantee, which means they have skin in the game when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew and the team at hello@ askeconsulting. co. uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at www. askeconsulting. co. uk. ASKE is spelled A-S-K-E. You'll find these contact details in the show notes for this episode.
Andy Follows:Ok, let's get back to our episode. When they reached the road without me up front, the kids stopped walking, stopped talking, started looking both ways very intentionally and focused on getting themselves and each other safely across it. From then on, I always made a point of hanging back and letting the group in my care take responsibility for getting themselves across the road. And, dear listener, in case you're wondering, I'm proud to say I didn't lose a single child on that road and I was invited back to facilitate the programme the following year. The lesson those children taught me that afternoon shifted my paradigm about how to go about executing my role as a leader and a parent.
Andy Follows:In this episode I want to talk about making the transition into our first leadership role, share some leadership paradigms that have been effective for me and point out some pitfalls that may hold us back or catch us out. When we make the transition from being an individual contributor in an organisation to being a supervisor or team leader, the nature of our role changes significantly. The supervisor, team leader or manager title is not just a badge of honour or reward for being a good contributor or for length of service. It indicates that our role has changed. To put it very simply, from doing stuff to getting stuff done through others. Like most changes we experience, the challenging aspect of this is as much about letting go of the old as it is about embracing the new. We have to stop doing this stuff we know well, a good at and feel comfortable delivering, and start doing other stuff that's new to us, we're not yet good at and feels uncomfortable. Sometimes the transition is made harder because we're asked to continue doing some of our old role at the same time as stepping into our new position. Whatever the exact circumstances, when we're appointed to one of these positions, we're made responsible for some of our colleagues and expected to lead them to contribute effectively towards the goals of our department and wider organisation.
Andy Follows:In the story I just shared, my position shifted literally from leading from the front and hoping to bring them all on the journey with me to explaining where we wanted to go and then following it an appropriate distance and being ready to lend a hand only when needed. You can insert your own Andy Follows joke here. A paradigm that I carried into parenting was that whatever we do for our children that they could do for themselves whilst in the safe environment of our care is robbing them of an opportunity to practice. I feel the same way about leading people. After all, when we try new things and achieve them, it builds confidence, and confidence is a great multiplier across everything else we do, so it's well worth building it when we can. A paradigm that helps me in leadership is that I should do the work that only I can do, whether that's by virtue of my role or experience. If I'm doing something that, following some effective delegation, could be done by someone in my team, I'm robbing them of an opportunity and most likely costing the business more than is necessary.
Andy Follows:Sometimes we do things for our kids not because we don't think they can do them, but because we don't want to let go of being a parent and the sense of purpose and fulfilment that parenting brings. Sometimes we do things as managers, not because we don't think our people can do them, but because we don't want to let go of the type of work we used to do that we'd become good at. That, maybe got us to where we are today and that makes us feel comfortable. Or maybe we find delegating difficult because we suffer from perfectionism. One of my guests described perfectionism as the haute couture of fear. We might admit to suffering from perfectionist tendencies with a certain amount of pride, when it's nothing more than the fear of the consequences of delivering anything less than our version of perfect. Or maybe we lack an understanding of what our role really is and we seek comfort in the busyness of doing the team's work when really we should be treating leadership as our job and when we've created the environment for our team to succeed and we've completed the tasks that only we can do, reaching up and asking our boss what more we could do to help them.
Andy Follows:On reflection, I possibly took this approach of leading from the back too far in my earlier years as a sales manager, at least in the eyes of some of my sales team. The piece of the puzzle that I was missing at that time was that people don't know what they don't know. My role was not just to help them become good at their jobs, but also to wade in and bring some of my experience where they didn't have it yet. Except ironically, I didn't have the experience to know that. At the time, I was working hard at stepping away from being an individual contributor and had embraced my role as a leader. On occasion, I stepped too far away from getting involved and contributing when it would have been helpful to them.
Andy Follows:You may have heard me use the expression trust, intent, manage, competence. I've always found it easy to trust people. I believe most people come to work to do a good job, and if they do make a mistake, it's usually down to a lack of understanding or poor communication and not deliberate ill will or sabotage on their part. What I failed to appreciate until a few years ago was that no amount of good intentions can make up for a lack of competence. When delegating responsibilities, we need to trust people, and we also need to have a good awareness of their current level of competence to accomplish the task, or we're setting ourselves and them up for failure.
Andy Follows:Fortunately, and not surprisingly, the French students in my care all those years ago had already been taught to cross the road. They'd just chosen to abdicate responsibility to me on the previous occasions when I'd been around to accept it. My learning experience with them happened by accident, and I'm grateful that it did. Having shared it with you now, I'm going to be even more intentional about noticing whether I'm leading from in front or behind. I'd like to encourage you to do the same Next time you have an opportunity to lead from behind, when you know that the people involved are sufficiently competent and you can dial down any perfectionism you may suffer from. I encourage you to take it Be clear in describing the outcome you're looking for and that you'll be available to help, and then hang back as far as you can, stay close enough to be supportive and share when they don't know what they don't know, but avoid stepping forward into the zone where they abdicate their responsibility back to you. When that happens, you cease to get any feedback on what they're really capable of, and they lose the opportunity to grow in capability and confidence.
Andy Follows:You've been listening to Career View Mirror with me, Andy Follows. I hope that you've enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, and will take some action as a result. If you enjoy listening to our episodes, please do me a huge favour and share them with someone you lead, parent or mentor or a friend you think will also appreciate them. Thank you to our sponsors for this episode ASKE Consulting and Aquilae and thank you to the Career View Mirror team, without whom we would not be able to share our guest's life and career stories. Above all, thank you to you for listening.
Andy Follows:You know, at the end of the day, you're steering your own destiny. So if it's not happening for you, you're not seeing what you want out there, then go out there and connect. Don't rely on others. You have to do it yourself. You have to take control. If you've got an idea, if you've got a thought about something that might be successful, if you've got a passion to do something yourself but you just haven't quite got there, do it. Take a risk, take a chance, stick your neck out. What's the worst that can happen when you fall down. Okay, you pick yourself up and you try again.