Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink

08 - I Feel Isolated

• Leah Fink • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Ever felt isolated in your leadership journey, trying to balance being in a 'power sandwich', and finding it difficult to connect with anyone?  Let's talk about navigating the often lonely road of leadership,  discussing vulnerability and invulnerability in leadership roles. How do you strike a balance without overburdening your employees?  How do you get support for yourself when you are feeling alone?

If you are feeling isolated as a leader, join us as we remind all the leaders out there - you're not alone, and we're here to help navigate these challenges.

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 5:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Speaker 1:

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.

Speaker 2:

Today we're going to switch topics for a little bit. For the last couple weeks we've been talking about feedback and now we're going to shift to this idea more of different levels of leadership and how isolating it can sometimes feel when you are a leader. So let's start by looking at NL's experience. So NL wrote in to ask right now I'm feeling like leadership is a silo. In my most recent leadership roles I felt very isolated from other professionals. Sometimes I don't have a lot of direct oversight and I've been the only employee working with volunteers, or I'm the only permanent employee working with seasonal employees. When things go wrong in those situations or something fails, I have a hard time separating the organizational issues from my leadership skills. So I have a couple questions what are some good habits for healthy leadership if you're isolated from other professionals, and how does someone engage in all of this without burning out? So thank you for sharing your story and some of your struggles, nl. It sounds like you've been in some complicated or complex leadership positions, and what I really appreciate in what you shared is this balance of trying to understand managing, taking care of yourself and your team and also trying to understand accountability as a leader and how that fits into all of that. So nice complicated questions, and we will definitely start diving into them.

Speaker 2:

So, just to start, if you didn't know this already, a lot of leaders feel isolated. A quick Google search will very quickly show you tons of results coming up talking about this, because it is a very, very common issue, and there's a couple reasons why things can feel so siloed. The first is not having others in your peer group and that sounds a lot, maybe like NL's positions have specifically accentuated this and really in a lot of companies, especially smaller organizations, there may be no one else with the same role, power, that you have, no other positional authority. You have people above you and you have people below you on the hierarchy. Even when you do have peers, they might be in such different positions or with such different outcomes that they don't fully understand your role, you don't fully understand their role, and you're also left feeling like you have no one to bounce ideas off, of, no one who understands what's going on. You're the one making all the decisions and ultimately, you might be the one responsible and held accountable by leadership all by yourself.

Speaker 2:

Now, that can all be challenging, of course, so let's start to break this down a little bit and, as I often like to do, let's start by talking a little bit about power in this situation. So, as a leader let's use the example like NL, who has no peers you really only have two categories of people then that you work with. You work with people who have less power in their positions than you do and more power in their positions, and each of those groups are hard to talk to, obviously for different reasons. So, with your direct reports, these are going to be people who have less positional power than you. In that situation, you're their boss. You have some sort of say over what's happening in the workplace.

Speaker 2:

Now, one of the things that can be really hard, especially if you are feeling isolated, is you want to make this group of people your peer group, because maybe you used to be peers with them or in their position and so you associate with that. Maybe you are just feeling really alone and you're looking for someone to support you. But this can be hard for a number of reasons and we really want to be careful with this. You want to be real as a leader, for sure. You want to be vulnerable. You want to show up. You want to show them it's safe to show up as themselves in the workplace, and we've been seeing more and more of this more recently, which is great.

Speaker 2:

And if we talk about some of the spectrums of behavior we've talked about before on this show, one of them that you could look at is this idea of vulnerability and invulnerability, and Once again, you can place yourself on this spectrum. I mean, do I tend to be more vulnerable at work? Do I tend to be more invulnerable? And, and when you think about that, like any other spectrum, we want to be able to move, and Previously, if you look back to the workforce decades ago, there would be a lot of focus on this side of invulnerability. Right, you leave your stuff at home, you come to work, you're an employee and then you go home at the end of the day and you can. You can be a human again. And more recently, we have this shift to being much more vulnerable in the office, which I actually think is very healthy because, again, we want to be able to move along the spectrum as is appropriate.

Speaker 2:

The challenge which I would really warn people against, or ask leaders specifically to be very aware of is, of course, you can be too vulnerable and you can put the emotional burden of your needs, your worries, onto staff and that, unfortunately, is a misuse of power, and I've actually, unfortunately, worked with organizations where they've talked about people doing training and vulnerability and learning more about vulnerability and Then unfortunately misusing it in this way to try to get staff on their side or to tell them about their problems and have staff Emotionally validate them. So we do want to be careful, when we're feeling Isolated in these roles, that we're not bringing our problems to the staff hoping that they'll solve them. Not that they might be good people to bounce an idea off of or Support you in a decision you're making, but they shouldn't have that level of accountability to you and your needs. So I wanted to talk about that first of all. So that means that this isn't necessarily the best peer group for you to go to if you're feeling alone as a leader, because you can't dump your worries on them and they're going to have different perspectives because they don't have all the information you have as a leader and so they can help you some, but ultimately they're probably not going to help you feel that Unisolated. They're not going to help you feel that connected. They might also, of course be, or some of that fear and vulnerability with them, and so they might not be wanting to engage with you as much on a personal level, and that's also very understandable.

Speaker 2:

Now, on the other side, of course, we have the people who are leading us, people who have more positional power because of the role that they're in. Now I think we all know the challenge with maybe coming to a manager with some issues that we're having or looking for some help. The reality is that manager might not be a person who's made it feel safe to do that, that they've created an atmosphere where you can communicate like that, and now you're in that position with less power. You've got a certain vulnerability, so it can, of course, be nerve-racking to go to that manager for support or, like in L's case, you might not have a manager who is very present for you. Sometimes the reality of roles is they can feel quite separated because people aren't interacting very much, they don't have that time, or leadership hasn't made that a priority.

Speaker 2:

So all this coming together to say I'm going to find all the positions where you have direct reports under you and someone who is managing you as middle management up until you get to the C-suite level and it can be. Honestly, I think these are the hardest positions Because you do. You now have the responsibility of taking care of a group of people, your team and everyone hierarchically below them. You're trying to take care of them all while also trying to meet the accountability needs of your management and take care of yourself in that position. It can be a really hard place and this power sandwich is complex, difficult to navigate, so it is really a tough position for people to be in. Now I will be doing definitely some future episodes talking specifically about what to do in middle management roles because of this, and at the end I'll actually talk a little bit about a resource that's coming specifically for middle managers.

Speaker 2:

But just so you know, if you haven't been this position, middle management can always use more support and I encourage you. If you are someone that leads a team of middle managers or an individual person who is in that position, really the best thing you can do is help, reach out and see what they're looking for some support. You can ask for feedback about what's working and not working. You can ask how you could make yourself more available to be this person to bounce ideas off of. You can display by your actions, the ways that you are making it safe for them to bring in some of that vulnerability, some of the things that they could use help with. So if you're listening and you have that kind of support that you can offer someone, please, please, do it, because it's much harder from that middle management position to do that yourself. However, we're answering NL's question and she is in that role, so let's go back to that Now.

Speaker 2:

The big answer I would say is, if you are feeling isolated, we need to look at some different ways of getting support. This could be a group of leaders from a different organization or leaders that are more distantly related to you. Even in a big organization. It could be a mentor, a coach, some sort of other helping professional that could offer support ideas. And so when you do have those spaces where maybe you want to talk through a situation confidentially, of course, if they're outside the organization or you do have a challenge or you're wondering about your own leadership skills, you can bring that to someone, because we all need people in our leadership journey.

Speaker 2:

It is not a good idea to try to go about this alone. So look for those different spaces where you can find people to connect with, and this doesn't just mean you have to have a sit-down group every week. There are Facebook groups and forums online for people to connect. This way, you could have a weekly meeting with someone you care about, like maybe a mentor who's helping you out. You could go to conferences and meet other people in similar positions, and then you can all discuss some of these challenges you're having and support each other, and I encourage you to really think about the support that you specifically need, based on your role, based on your life. What will help you the most when you look for those external supports?

Speaker 2:

And, of course, the other person you can try to get more support from is your leader. Maybe some of those leaders are listening to this now and they're going to reach out and ask about that support. And if you're doing this yourself, though, reaching out to a leader, you really need to decide if this is a person that this is a good idea for. I don't know your leader. Obviously. I don't know who's listening. So think about is this a safe person that would listen to me and want to help me? Is this a person who's not going to listen, who I know is not going to support me, then this is not worth it.

Speaker 2:

A good cue might be if you think your leader is a really nice person, but maybe not a great boss. To me, that would be a person that would suggest it would be good to talk to them. As we've talked about before on the show, most leaders have great intentions, they're really trying to help, they're doing their best, but they may be missing a component of skill that would allow them to align those really good intentions with the impacts they're having on you. So that might be the kind of person to advocate to and say I'm looking for more support in my position. I'm feeling isolated. What would it look like to bounce these ideas off of you, press the waters gently and see if this is a person maybe you could rely on more. And then, in addition to seeking support, another habit I would like to talk about is just, of course, always developing your own leadership skills.

Speaker 2:

Now, unfortunately, you can't change what's happening in the organization always. There's probably going to be systems in place, situations that you, in your position, have no control over, and the best thing you can do is be the best leader that you can. So you know deep inside that you have done your best to serve the people you are trying to help. So, whatever you want to do to train your leadership skills, listen to this podcast, work with a professional, get some support. That way you can keep developing the way that you help the people below you, and there is a really accomplished feeling to that, to knowing that you were actually able to support people.

Speaker 2:

Now, this being said, this is not fair. The reality is there should be more accountability from the top levels of the organization to support each level of employee so they are not getting the say poop that rolls downhill and that they're getting more support from their management. And that's not a reality, and so it is not fair. I will say this straight up that you have to defend your people from whatever is happening and do your very best, even though your leadership might not be doing what is very best for you. And you have the choice, of course, to just, you know, throw your hands up and say I'm not doing this anymore, I can't do this because you know I should have had this support. This is your choice as a leader to still take accountability for what you can change and choose to help those who are below you.

Speaker 2:

But that brings us to NL's last question, which is how do you engage in this without burning out and that is hard. Middlemangers burn out a lot because of all these challenges we've talked about in these positions. If you're working so hard to protect your team without having the support that you're needing, how are you not going to burn out? Right, some of the things we can do. We can look for that external support that we talked about. You can advocate to your manager. If those things aren't working or it's not enough, then you might burn out.

Speaker 2:

The hard part, the catch-22 of leadership is you cannot ethically be a good leader if you don't have good self-care, if you can't keep yourself emotionally regulated. That's an ethical problem, because you can't be the best leader that you want If you are not caring for yourself and you're able to be there with your team and regulate and support them in that way. On the other hand, of course, you're trying to do this so hard because you're not getting that support. It's a bit of a catch-22. You really do need to make sure that you're balancing how much you are able and willing to advocate for your team and fight the good fight and how much you might need to withdraw to take care of yourself.

Speaker 2:

I can speak to this out of personal experience. I unfortunately had a position in middle management where for a couple of years I was given a bit of an impossible situation to manage. I wish, looking back, that I had chosen to leave a little bit earlier, because I know now, of course, with hindsight looking back, I was doing my absolute best to try to help the people that were part of the organization, that were my team. Also, by staying as long as I did, I knew I wasn't doing the best I could and I probably did cause some problems due to that. I do want to put it out there that if you are in a position where you're not getting the support you can't get that support and you're having a really hard time after supporting your team, it might be time to look at leaving the organization from an ethical place of you want to do your best as a leader and looking at something else. I really encourage people to look at that for what they need and feel free to make that choice if that is something that is not feeling in alignment with you. So this all comes together.

Speaker 2:

I know NL now spoke to this piece, too, about asking so all of this complicated situation, my taking care of myself, do I have the leadership skills? What's happening with the organization? You're left with this question of what am I, as a leader, accountable to, and especially when things go wrong, and what is the organizational accountable to? This is a very, very hard question to answer. One of the reasons I work with groups, especially management at the top of the organization, is when we work together we can change some of the systems that do cause these problems, because there are systems and situations inherent in the work we do. Like I said, you can't always control, but with the whole team looking at that system, we can actually work to improve it, make it better, not cause problems, instead of starting to look at our employees as the problem, because I've also heard from higher levels of management that their middle managers are not doing their job correctly. Is it that the middle managers are not doing their job or do they not have some of the supports that they need to take on this very difficult task? So, looking at this balance of, there's going to be systems and situations you can't change.

Speaker 2:

Look at your own leadership. What skills do you have and not have? Take some time, reflect and see what's happening, where you're seeing these gaps, and a really great way to maybe differentiate some of these pieces would be to talk to the people you're leading, ask for a little bit of feedback what's working for them, what's not working for them, are there things that you could do differently? That would help. When you hear about things that are more on that organizational side, maybe the most you can do is continue to help advocate towards higher levels of leadership so they can hopefully change some of those systems and situations which will help you and your staff team out, and you might not know the answer. So make sure you are being kind to yourself, taking care of yourself and deciding what you can be accountable to in a healthy way. Keep leveling up your leadership skills, keep working towards this and really focus on the impact that you want to have and how you're making sure that is happening, as the point of this whole show is, we want to make sure the ripples that we are having, that ripple impact is a good one and not one just based on good intentions but poor leadership skills.

Speaker 2:

Now, this was a big topic. This was a big question from NL. Thank you so much for sharing it again. We're going to be continuing our conversation on that as a reminder to everyone.

Speaker 2:

If you do choose to share a story or question with us, I will follow up with you and we'll make sure we get the question answered and dive a little bit more in depth into that, because these struggles for middle management, especially these, aren't new, as I mentioned. I also want to share one more resource, because I've heard about this so much. I've seen it in so many workplaces that I've been in and have helped. I actually am co-creating an extra resource specifically for middle managers right now to solve some of these problems. So if you would like to know more information about that, we're going to be doing a beta launch fairly soon.

Speaker 2:

Just reach out and I'm happy to share some more about that. If you would like to join the show live to ask your questions, make comments, please do. The link for that is also in the description below. Also in the description below is that link if you want to share your story or question. I want to thank you so much for listening today, engaging in this conversation. Hopefully it supported you if you are feeling a bit isolated in this leadership position and do feel free to reach out for support if that is something that you are feeling right now. Take care and have a great week.

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.