Plights of the middle manager - being a leader
I believe it was a Dilbert cartoon that said that “Everyone gets promoted to their level of incompetence.” As a manager, you probably showed great gifts: initiative, a positive attitude, effectiveness, efficiency. But you had all these great gifts as you did the job. Now you’re responsible for supporting your team to do the job. Now, you’ve been promoted (YAY! Seriously, if that’s you, CONGRATULATIONS!), but you don’t feel like you have the skill-set to go from just doing the job, to leading other people to do the job.
Furthermore, you’re probably still expected to accomplish all of your previous responsibilities AND manage your team. Which, that might be fine if you could magically find the ability to delegate. But delegating still feels awkward and difficult because you’re so nice and so driven to do it all yourself.
When I’ve been a manager, I’ve always felt validated that I was put into that position but then also an intense pressure to do a good job. I’ve known that a part of the position is to be a leader. I’ve always wanted to have a thriving team - great communication, smooth operations, efficient production, and everyone feeling validated and supported and motivated. But then I have tough decisions to make, there’s too much to do, I feel overwhelmed, I feel drawn in too many directions. That’s when the negativity would start - the negative voice in my head: I’m not good enough, this is too hard, I’m not cut out for this job, everyone’s going to find out that I’m a fraud.
I could see examples of great leadership in the people I admired, but I didn’t have the mental muscles to replicate it. I saw that good leaders were regulated and positive and clear in communicating to their team - but my internal negativity would diminish my confidence, and my ability to focus, when trying to communicate with my team. I saw that good leaders struck this beautiful balance between delegating tasks, providing direction to others, doing a lot of work themselves, and having everyone feel empowered and motivated - but I would always feel a sense of guilt and insecurity and fear (“Do I seem mean, or pompous, or selfish, or lazy by asking my teammate to do this? Will they resist? Is it the wrong decisions”) when giving directions to my team. I saw that good leaders could quickly and maturely de-escalate, empathize with, and redirect an employee that was resistant and upset - but I struggled with confrontation and would feel triggered and dysregulated whenever one of my team members was upset. At the root of my struggles to be a good leader was this negative mindset.
This flow of negative thinking is the single biggest obstacle to being a great leader. In his book, Positive Intelligence, Shirzad Chamine describes 10 “Saboteurs”. We all have a couple of main Saboteurs.
The Controller Saboteur lies to us and says “if I just force my team to work harder - I’ll be alright” - and then we inadvertently cause our team to feel disempowered and be less successful.
The Hyper-Achiever Saboteur lies to us and says “if I just compete and perform even better, we’ll push through and I’ll get the validation I need to feel good about myself” - and then we inadvertently ignore the emotional needs of ourselves and others and we’re actually less successful.
The Victim Saboteur says “if I retreat into self-pity, my team and boss will finally come and rescue me and give me the support I need” - and then we inadvertently push people away so they respect us less and don’t actually want to support us.
Intercepting and redirecting this negative mindset is one of the core pillars of being a successful leader. In the Positive Intelligence framework, this is a part of mental fitness. When you can respond to these challenges with a positive mindset, rather than a negative mindset, you’ve got good mental fitness. This is how you break down good leadership into its simplest form. You start with your own inner negative mindset - and start growing the muscles needed to replace it with a positive mindset.
In my work with training people to increase their mental fitness, we don’t focus on the surface level issues of time management, communication skills, or business plans. Why? Because any insights you might get from focusing on these things would be temporary and useless if you had a negative mindset that would erase all your progress. Positive Intelligence focuses on the root factors. In Positive Intelligence, Chamine summarizes all of the recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, performance and leadership science, positive psychology and cognitive behavioral psychology. Hundreds of studies all point to this conclusion: there is a tipping point of positivity (what Positive Intelligence calls “mental fitness”) that is the root factor between success and mediocrity, between flourishing and languishing, between thriving and sliding. The book further illustrates that there are three factors that are at the root of this high mental fitness. The first factor is this ability to intercept your negativity - what PQ calls “Intercepting the Saboteurs.”
When it comes to being a new manager and having the opportunity to grow this soft skill of leadership, the most effective and long lasting way is to focus on your mental fitness. When the manager is no longer subject to the flood of self-imposed negativity of their self-sabotaging thoughts, the possibilities are endless.
I’m David Gustafson - father, amateur yogi, super enthusiastic about helping people, and a Positive Intelligence Coach. I’m based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’d love to connect and help you and/or your team to boost your positive mindset muscles and thrive.