Secret must-haves to manage well

"Safety is the treatment." Bonnie Badenoch

In typical management courses you will learn ideas about strategy, creating value for stakeholders, mission, performance measures and some tips about how to prioritize and stay on top of industry trends.

You may also pick up a few tips on team accountability, time management, meeting KPIs, and a few things about communicating when you are in a position of authority.

These are all excellent topics, and you will be glad you put in the effort to learn them. But there is something else you need to develop the ability to manage increasingly difficult situations while getting the jobs done on budget and on time. And it isn’t about ideas at the head level.

Picture this…

You are trying to keep your own job tasks done on time for your boss as you deal with multiple interruptions, meetings you wish you didn’t have to attend, and team members with complex personal problems. The workforce has varied skill levels, and the desire for excellence is unevenly distributed. Some team members need hand holding and patience, others are trying to influence the team against you, and a few more stop working as soon as you turn around. You may have a boss who is difficult to read, or you have to report to more than one boss.

You feel stressed, frustrated, and trapped. With all this going on, you may snap at people or not be able to focus. At home it is hard to be present to your family, it may be difficult to unwind or to sleep.

Unfortunately, what you learned earlier is not helping with the day-to-day cumulative stress. In fact, your ability to respond appropriately to management problems may be diminishing instead of increasing. What’s the problem?

Awareness of self and safety

In my experience, what’s missing from the foundation of management learning is deeper than theories and scripted responses. A good manager must develop personal awareness, and that starts with knowing how to bring a sense of safety to your own nervous system.

If you don’t know how to bring yourself to inner safety, you can’t calm down. You won’t be able to discharge your own stress or re-direct triggers that make you see red. It will be difficult to focus and to prioritize because your own inner system is overloaded. By way of example, try getting an overheated machine to do anything other than make steam and loud noises, and you will see what I mean. People can’t function when they are overheated either. Managers in an overheated state can be even more dangerous.

Setting up your environment for safety

This is why starting with your own feeling of inner safety is the most effective route to anchoring all other managerial knowhow.

If you know what you personally need to feel safe in new situations, you are more likely to ask for and set it up at the beginning of the job. Personally, to feel safe to take charge in a new situation, I need to: ?

• Walk through my physical environment and know where things are
• Make sure all my technology is running properly
• Ensure I know who I am working with, a bit about their lives and what they are interested in or concerned about
• Know who to go to when I have questions
• Figure out what channels to follow to get various answers and results
• Know what is expected of me and of those I’m working with
• Find out any background information that would help me understand the culture?

Because I know what I need, I ask for it and nine times out of ten, I get it. Once those initial “safety” parameters are in place, I can focus on the people I’m working with and the task(s) at hand. Knowing yourself and what you need to feel safe, helps you ask for the conditions you require to create that environment more easily for others.

Finding your place of inner safety

Although setting up your environment for success this way is very important, it is even more important to know how to regulate your own inner environment in a stressful situation.

When an interpersonal situation arises that I’m not sure how to handle, the first question I ask myself is “What do I need to feel safe?”

The answer is usually to slow down my breathing and consciously centre. Then to look around to my surroundings, to move a bit and take a few steps. This allows my brain to consider possibilities instead of shutting down, panicking, or getting mad.

Tuning in to other's need for inner safety

Once my breathing is slowed and emotions less intense, and I will have established my own inner safety, it is much easier to ask myself “What could be feeling unsafe for this person I’m dealing with right now?” Or “What feels threatening to this group right now?” Often they fear losing face, their jobs, their credibility or control but you will only see this if you yourself are regulated.

This process of calming down and tuning in to the people and situation at hand has been called “don’t get furious, get curious”. Curiosity can start to grow when your nervous system feels safe enough to explore. If you think about a kitten, it only starts to move away from the mother cat when it has a bearing on its surroundings and a stomach full of milk. Our nervous systems are the same. They need reassurance to have a solid foundation for approaching other people and situations. If that reassurance isn’t there, any reactions we might have to the situation will inevitably be inappropriate because we will just be dumping our own triggers onto the unsuspecting people around us.

In conclusion, as a manager it is critical to give yourself the gift of inner safety so you can provide a safe environment for others. Everything else falls into place much more easily when you have created this inner state. Your ability to self-calm even in highly stressful situations helps create an environment of safety for your team so that the ability to be curious and effectively solve the problems at hand become possible. Although it took some reflection to write this in an article, the actual process can happen in less than a second, once you know how.

If you want to learn techniques for how to manage from the inside out and more, consider registering for my upcoming two-day boot camp “Effective Management In A Changing World”.

About the Author

Dr. Marie Gervais is the author of?“The Spirit of Work: Timeless Wisdom, Current Realities”. She holds a PhD in Culture and Learning in the Workplace and is a Certified Conscious EFT Practitioner and Certified Emotional Success Coach. Her leadership training for industry has been used successfully with 500+ managers. Her transformational coaching has launched over 100 managers and business owners to career and business success. Dr. Gervais hosts the Culture and Leadership Connections podcast, which features interviews with diverse leaders in a variety of professions. Her publications span industry and academic journals on topics including the future of work, workplace communication, productivity and psychological safety in the workplace. Her online courses and products are used by managers and career developers around the world.?