Managing people is not about management, it’s about people.

If you don’t like or understand people (even yourself), you aren’t going to ‘get it’. You will likely not succeed and make the leap to being a high-level leader. You can learn all the management skills: metrics, coaching, goal-setting, team-building strategies, and personality assessments to name a few, but if you don’t put the work in to understand your team as separate humans and as a holistic entity, you are only 50% there. You can see and feel the gap when you have the absolute best contributors on your team and they don’t work well together, when you have a successful outcome but the team leaves negative remarks about your management, or when you do everything right but are passed over for recognition. 

What if it just isn’t natural to you? What if this seems like an insurmountable challenge? Guess what? MOST people are not born with the innate talent of relating to and understanding the people around them. This is something you can learn. Lots of very publicly lauded leaders have put the time in to develop those skills. Empathy, radical listening, mentoring, directed observation, building community, cultivating culture; these can all be learned. Like all things that don’t come naturally and effortlessly, you need to put in the work to develop these challenges into opportunities. Once you have this in place, you can truly develop as a leader. Great leaders aren’t the best at every skill that exists in their milieu, they are the people that can identify the most skilled employees, build a team that pushes its members into greatness, and motivate them to coalesce around a vision. 

Perhaps you have found fantastic talents for your project. You got them into a room, and they seem to have understood the goal and are willing to work together to get there. You win, right? Sorry, no. Brilliant people, confident people, they don’t work together easily without a leader who can see what motivates each of them, how they communicate, how they work with others. Most effective groups are created through diversity. Diversity brings difference. And those differences can either be melded into a great working experience and a successful outcome or they can split your amazing group into pieces that are suspicious, opaque, and working at widely different paces with widely different assumptions. Does your team trust you? Do you trust them? If you can’t answer with an unequivocal YES, there is work to do. Once you build trust, transparency entails much less risk. Transparency enables you to get honest feedback in real time on initiatives and helps you pivot much more quickly.

An artist learns how to get red, blue, and yellow to work together to create something astonishing. They are near opposites that can readily work together if you put some time into developing your skills as an artist. Similarly, you can learn to embrace diversity and help your team bloom into more than the sum of its parts. 

Where do you start? 

1.     Clarify your goals. What do you want to be able to do? What does a successful team look like to you? What kind of results do they produce? What does their feedback look like? What do you want them to say about you to other employees or the public? Do you want to be promoted? If so, what seems to be holding you back? When you can distill this into a few statements that are both positive and actionable, you have true growth goals, and this will direct your efforts. Instead of saying that you want to achieve ten separate-sounding goals, you might say something like, “As an upwardly mobile leader in this organization, I can build excellent teams that coalesce around my clearly articulated goals and individually develop and grow through their experience with me.” This encompasses a lot of skills, but it is also a single statement to focus on and it says who you want to be in very unambiguous terms.

2.     Find a coach. Yep, it’s expensive and time-consuming. It has the highest barrier of entry of all these approaches. But finding someone outside of your organization whose only concern is YOUR success and who doesn’t have skin in your organization’s political game, gives you a true advocate and a neutral sounding board. The coaching experience itself is an opportunity. Watch how your coach interacts with you. How are they motivating you to grow? How often do you need to meet to feel successful? How is feedback given? What really works well and what feels incomplete? Coaches are always always growing, always learning new skills, and developing new mindsets. Ask your coach how they are managing that input and how they are allocating time and effort towards this while still running a business. 

Finding the right coach can be tricky. Do you have friends or colleagues who seem to be achieving great things and who are leading satisfied and successful teams? Ask them who inspires them and who they follow on social media. Do they have a coach they can recommend? Watch your LinkedIn for articles or posts from local coaches that really resonate. Maybe they confuse you in a good way. You long to understand the content but you know that there are some steps you are missing. PS: When something confuses you enough that you put in the work to understand, it is good confusion. Google local coaches and do a little research into the tools they use, or the methodologies listed on their site. What sticks with you? Are some of these commonly referred to in your organization? It might be a good idea to learn from someone who has mastered them. Try on a few coaches for size in an introductory session. Do they understand your goals? Do they seem to have a plan to help you reach them that feels authentic and accessible to you? Hire them and commit to the work.

3.     Educate yourself. This is more difficult because you are only accountable to yourself. If you have proven that you can do that in the past, go for it. Revisit your goals and make sure you aren’t wasting time and effort. That will derail you very quickly. There are thousands of articles and books on people skills. They won’t all resonate, and they shouldn’t. Put a bit of thought into why they don’t resonate. Does it seem too vague? Too hooey-wooey? Unrealistic? Note it in your learning log and move on. Follow hashtags like #peopleskills, #softskills, #leadership, #teambuilding and see which ones provide content you cannot wait to consume. Start with the low-hanging fruit of popularity. These folks are popular for a reason and you will encounter their ideas in most workplaces. Simon Sinek, Dale Carnegie, Marshall Rosenberg, and Debra Fine come to mind easily because I have continuously encountered them in my professional life. Look for people to follow and then see who they follow. Take notes. Record what you read. Start to build a toolbox of techniques or mental exercises that are both uncomfortable and memorable. Note what you start to use in your personal and work lives and how others respond. Find what is successful for YOU. 

4.     Ask your organization for training. This requires some preparation. When you ask for training, it seems to inherently indicate something that you think you aren’t successful at or simply lack. Self-awareness is a hallmark of good leaders, so this isn’t necessarily bad, just be cognizant of perception. Take care in how you frame it and create a value proposition around it. Note that you have observed a trend or a negative mindset (gently here) that impacts the organizational goals in X way, and you feel X training will help leadership grow past that because of these reasons. Come in with suggestions of few program options and an idea of cost. Have some idea of what success will look like. You will have to sell both the decision maker and HR on it, assuming they aren’t the same person. This training can benefit everyone at all levels of the organization so be prepared to speak about that. Understand that if you are successful in getting this training to your organization, you will be the first person judged for efficacy so prepare to be invested and transparent. Some organizations might ask you to attend a training and then expect you to train your colleagues. Make sure you know if you are comfortable with that. Do not do this flippantly because it’s easier for you to use work time to develop yourself. This will cost the organization time and money. Make it worth everyone’s time.

5.     Spend time with people. I get it. You don’t want to socialize in your free time. It’s tiring and you like your private time to recharge. If this feels like you, I suggest scheduling intentional time with a set number of hours with people you like and admire in social settings. Who in your circle seems to network effortlessly? Who is well-liked, even popular, but still feels genuine to you? Who can have a conversation with you in which you both lose track of time and don’t feel pressured to perform? These are skills. Trust me, practice makes perfect here. See if these people will go to a cocktail hour or networking event with you. Observe how they start, sustain, and end conversations. Note how many business cards or contacts they obtain. What did they learn about their conversation partners? Are there tips here that you can emulate? Did you miss the how? Ask them. Some people can end a conversation on their own terms and still leave a positive impression. That is a skill and you can learn it. The key is to be genuine. Facades and subterfuge do not serve you well here. You don’t have to be an open book to have a real connection with someone. Practice these kinds of interactions with friends, a coach, a partner. Find your boundaries and practice how to respond when you don’t want to share something. It seems hokey but many people get tongue-tied when put on the spot. Give yourself a chance to relate and to be heard but also protect yourself. My personal tip is to ask people questions and really listen to the answer. Genuine attention makes people feel good. Don’t we all want to be heard and acknowledged? Try out new ideas and see what feels easy and what is a struggle that causes you to lose focus on the interaction itself. 

This article is written for managers, project managers, and anyone who sees a promotion coming and feels woefully unprepared. You will likely see that not all these suggestions are possible for you in your current context. That’s good. Discernment is especially important when you are allocating time, energy, and mental space. Find the best fit for you right now and keep learning. Schedule your work on this and respect your beginning and end times. Finally, don’t assume that because people skills don’t feel natural that you are not capable of learning them and being an outstanding leader. Stay in a positive headspace and direct effort toward growth, not mitigation. You don’t lack anything; you are a human and you have natural talents and talents to develop. You can do this. I believe in you.