Overcoming Personal Challenges
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Dr. Rakish Rana (The Clear Coach) is a life coach who challenges, encourages and supports clients to find direction, happiness and purpose.
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Although managing a team can be challenging, it can also be incredibly rewarding. The bigger the team the more there may be to manage and the harder it may be. In my time as a team manager, there were numerous challenges that I needed to regularly overcome.
Numerous books have been written about the topic (a fast Google search will reveal them), and many training providers also offer management training, both of which serve as helpful resources. However, the first management job, which usually begins when you transition from being a team member to the team manager or team leader, is the one component of team management that, for me (and many others I have encountered), no book or training can prepare you for. Most of the time, you either manage as your predecessor did or exactly the opposite. Neither may be the ideal strategy for you and your team. What do you then?
As a rookie manager, I still had difficulties even though I had a very good understanding of how to manage well. These difficulties are ones that any seasoned manager would encounter while leading a brand-new team, but they are made worse for the inexperienced manager. Here are the top six challenges I faced as a new manager and how you can overcome them:
1. How To Effectively Manage And Lead Previous Friends
The establishment of ground rules, originally by my own manager upon my introduction as the new team manager, helped boost my confidence and gave me the ability to clear the way for progress. What ground rules can you set to help you lead?
2. How To Approach A Challenging Conversation With A Former Coworker
It is tough to have a difficult talk. First, gain some direction by seeking guidance from your management and/or HR. For me, I thought that explaining that these conversations were part of my work and that I couldn’t play favorites was a decent approach to start the conversation.
3. How To Conduct A Team Meeting, Especially One With Friends
As with any meeting, it is crucial to have an agenda prepared and available in advance. This enables you to enter the meeting with assurance and the focus needed.
4. How To Conduct A One-On-One Meeting With A Team Member
In this case, I chose to employ the same tactic that I discovered to be effective with one of my prior supervisors. I went through the tasks completed the previous week, the objectives for the following week and any problems that had arisen—a general strategy that over time was adjusted for different people.
5. How To Delegate Work Instead Of Doing Everything Yourself
This was really difficult since I usually performed at a high level as a team member and I now expected the same from my team. In the end, you have to learn to trust your team and communicate your expectations.
6. How To Best Satisfy Your Own Manager’s Requirements
Although I’ve classed this as a challenge, it actually wasn’t as difficult as I first believed. Here, I drew on the knowledge of my prior bosses to figure out what had previously worked well. Regular contact took place. I made sure to check in frequently and to share information with my boss in the same manner that I shared it with my team.
Having managed a diverse number of people in my teams for over 10 years, I think the key to being a good manager is having confidence and effective communication skills. To overcome each of the aforementioned challenges, we all needed confidence and effective communication abilities. As managers get more experienced, these challenges get much easier.
Organizations frequently spend money on coaching their CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, etc. But seldom spend it on their more junior managers. As a life coach, I’ve had new and junior managers come to me for coaching to help them become better and more confident managers. If professional coaching is truly out of the question for you, I would advise direct and open communication with your own manager or HR contact, who could serve as a mentor and assist in coaching you.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Part of the series “Spirituality and Success”
Gay Hendricks
Photo by Mikki Willis
About six years ago, a colleague of mine mentioned a powerful book she read that changed how she saw herself and her largest barriers to living a happier life. I raced to read it, and found it transformative in my life, and began teaching the principles to my clients. The book is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. Virtually everyone on the planet has at one time or another experienced the feeling that there’s something greater awaiting them in their life, work and relationships. But in my work as a success coach, I’ve seen that relatively few people truly “brave up” enough to push through their deepest fears and reach that highest and best potential. Gay’s work helps us do just that.
I was thrilled to speak with Gay this week, and learn more about what he has uncovered in his long and accomplished career that reveals our deepest barriers to creating the lives and the impact we long to.
Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., has been a leader in the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind therapies for more than 45 years. After earning his Ph.D. In counseling psychology from Stanford, Gay served as professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Colorado for 21 years. He has written more than 40 books, including bestsellers such as Five Wishes, The Big Leap and Conscious Loving (co-authored with his mate for more than 35 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks), which are used as a primary text in universities around the world. In 2003, Gay co-founded The Spiritual Cinema Circle which distributes inspirational movies and conscious entertainment to subscribers in 70+ countries.
Gay has offered seminars worldwide and appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including OPRAH, CNN, CNBC, 48 Hours and others.
Here’s what Gay shares:
Kathy Caprino: Based on your experience as an executive coach for many powerful and influential CEO’s around the country, would you please share what you see as the single largest challenge in the way of leaders making the impact they dream to?
Gay Hendricks: The single biggest challenge is what I call the “Upper Limits Problem.” I’ve worked with hundreds of extremely talented, capable executives and professionals over the past 45 years. Yet even with their awesome skills, there were still areas of their lives in which they kept hitting upper limits and then sabotaging themselves. In my work, we identify the underlying issues that trigger the Upper Limit Problem, so that people can rise smoothly to higher and higher levels of their potential without bumping their heads against the false ceilings that are held in place by negative belief systems.
Caprino: Your book The Big Leap is one of my all-time favorites on how we limit our own success and happiness and what to do about it. You explore this “Upper Limits Problem” and the 4 fears that underlie it. What are those fears and how did you uncover them?
Hendricks: I first noticed the Upper Limit Problem in myself, back when I had just finished my Ph.D. In the counseling psychology program at Stanford. One day I was sitting in my new office, having just landed my dream job, feeling as good as I could remember ever feeling in my life.
Suddenly, after about ten seconds of enjoying that feeling, I found myself consumed with worry about my 7-year-old daughter, who had just left that day for her first-ever 3-day sleepover camp. I found myself obsessing that she might be lonely and homesick, even though she hadn’t even been gone a full day.
In my anxious state, I called the camp to find out if Amanda was okay. The camp director told me she could see her out the window playing soccer and she looked just fine. After I got off the phone I reflected on how I had gone so quickly from feeling great to being so caught up in worry, especially worry that was not connected to any reality.
Suddenly I had the flash of an idea: I had begun to worry because I was allergic to feeling good for any length of time! I began to explore this in myself and the clients I was working with, most of whom at the time were mid-level executives at Silicon Valley firms.
Eventually I was able to identify underlying barriers and fears that held Upper Limits Problems in place.
They are:
Hidden Barrier #1: Feeling Fundamentally Flawed
The unconscious mantra of this fear is:
“I cannot expand to my full creative genius because something is fundamentally wrong with me.”
Hidden Barrier #2: Disloyalty and Abandonment
Another widely-held fear is of being disloyal to or leaving behind people who have been there for us in the past. We pull back from greater success because we fear we’ll end up all alone, abandon our roots, and leave behind people whom we love or care for.
The unconscious mantra of this fear is:
“I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up all alone, be disloyal to my roots, and leave behind people from my past.”
Hidden Barrier #3: A Belief That More Success Brings a Bigger Burden
A third fear is of being a burden; some people unconsciously believe that more success will bring greater burdens.
The unconscious mantra of this fear is:
“I can’t expand to my highest potential because I’d be an even bigger burden than I am now.”
Hidden Barrier #4: The Fear of Outshining
Common among gifted and talented children, this fear often emerges from a strong subliminal message they received from their families that if you shine too much, you’ll make others feel bad or look bad.
Greater levels of success and happiness often trigger these fears, which cause us then to pull back to lower levels of fulfillment.
The unconscious mantra of this fear is:
“I must not expand to my full success, because if I did I would outshine _____and make him or her look or feel bad.”
Caprino: I’ve experienced all of these barriers and they can be crushing. How can we overcome the upper limits we’ve imposed on ourselves and our lives?
Hendricks: In my work, I ask my clients to make specific commitments that expand the amount of abundance, creativity and love in their lives. Once they make the key commitments, the process of change becomes much smoother and easier.
Caprino: You talk about “practical spirituality” which is something near and dear to my heart as well, and is so needed in our world today. Would you share your conceptualization of “practical spirituality” as it relates to our creating more authentic success, joy and reward in our lives?
Hendricks: Practical spirituality is acting from your deepest chosen commitments in such a way that it simultaneously elevates your life and the lives of those you touch. Practical spirituality is not about adopting any kind of religious belief—it’s about connecting with people in what I call an essence-to-essence manner. Your essence is who you truly are, beneath all the levels of history, conditioning and programming.
When we connect with our own essence at deeper levels we also open a deeper connection with others. The best leaders of the 21st century are those who operate from a place of authenticity while encouraging the full authentic development of those around them.
Caprino: The “zone of genius” is something you’ve taught so many leaders to find for themselves, to unlock their highest and best talents and capabilities. What is the zone of genius and how do we get to it?
Hendricks: Most successful people are operating in their Zone of Excellence, in which they are doing things at which they are highly skilled. This zone is ultimately unsatisfying, though, because it does not engage the innate genius of the individual.
Human beings are only at their happiest and most productive when they are drawing on their unique abilities, what I call the Zone of Genius. Your activities in this zone are the things you most love to do and the things that bring you most abundance and satisfaction per time spent.
As with any other kind of lasting, meaningful change, commitment is the gateway to the Zone of Genius
Caprino: Finally, you’ve said “Creativity is the antidote for addiction.” Wow – that’s powerful. Please share more about that.
For more information, visit https://www.Hendricks.Com and The Big Leap.
For more from Kathy Caprino, visit her personal growth programs and her book Breakdown, Breakthrough.
