February 21, 2025 • 13 mins
Ever wondered about the difference between managing a team and managing other leaders? Join us as we explore the importance of a staff-first perspective, as well as discussing the potential pitfall of losing empathy as you climb the leadership ladder. Dive into how you can ensure that the people you lead are aligned, and having a positive impact on their direct reports.
Are you allocating your time to best support the leaders you manage?
If you want to ensure that you are fostering a culture of support and accountability, this is the episode for you!
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 12:00pm MST. Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect
, starting with your team, goingout to the organization and
even out into people's personallives.
Here we offer you the chance tolearn from real-life stories of
leadership so you can gain adeeper understanding and level
up your own skills Fromcommunication to culture, to
power and equity, to feedback,to resolving conflict and more.
(00:23):
Join us and make sure you'recreating the ripples you want.
Welcome to Leadership Rippleswith Leah Fink.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah
Fink.
Today, we are going to betalking about the difference in
leading individual contributorsversus leading other leaders.
What should you change in yourapproach?
Eb shares their story.
I've recently been promoted toa management position and this
is the first time I'll bemanaging managers versus
(00:54):
frontline staff.
I feel like I should probablybe doing something different as
I'm leading this new team, and Iwould love to hear your
thoughts.
First, thank you for sharingthat, eb, and congratulations on
your new position, and I justwant to say well done that you
are already considering thesethings.
I really appreciate that you'realready thinking about what can
(01:15):
I do with my leadership that'sgoing to serve this group of
people better and taking actiontowards that.
First, I'm going to invite youto take a moment to reflect on
your own experience.
This is always a great startingpoint and a really great
practice for leaders to startempathizing with their teams.
What are some of the things,coming from the position that
you just did that you reallyappreciated from your manager
(01:38):
when you were a frontline leader?
These are the building blocksthat you're going to start to
use as you develop more of yourleadership, as you understand
your leadership core values anda note to higher levels of
leadership in any organization,you should be doing this as well
with every level of yourorganization, as much as you can
.
Can you remember the experienceof being a frontline staff, the
(02:00):
challenges you had, theresources you wanted, what you
wish was communicated to you asleaders?
When we start to advance in theorganization, more and more
levels of leadership and thehierarchy, we start to focus on
our own priorities andresponsibilities and challenges,
and of course we do.
Of course we prioritize thatover the responsibilities and
(02:21):
roles of other people.
That is important.
However, sometimes we get socaught up in those pieces that
we forget about all the staffexperiences that we're
influencing by being in ourposition.
This is everything about thelived experience of the employee
and, ultimately, too, aboutyour customers, no matter who
they are.
This all trickles down fromwhat you're prioritizing in your
(02:43):
role.
Even if this is the case, thatyou maybe didn't start in this
organization like EB did, you'recoming into a leadership role
in a new organization, I wouldsay then it's even more
important to take this time toreally understand the staff
experience at every level.
Do you know what's happeningfor your frontline staff to your
mid managers.
(03:03):
What are the challenges thatthey're all facing that?
Additionally, as we've talkedabout on this show before,
there's a lot of studies thatshow how power affects the brain
.
Now, and one of the things thathappens is, as you are in
positions of power for longertimes you're in these leadership
positions for longer times youcan actually start to lose your
(03:25):
mirror neurons, and thatbasically means your empathy.
It can be harder to empathizethe higher up you go, and so
it's really critical as well forleaders at all levels to
constantly be practicing thisempathy.
Make sure you're keeping thosemirror neurons, and one of the
ways you can do it is to keepreflecting back on other
people's experiences.
So this is a critical step forall levels of leadership, and I
(03:48):
hope you are considering thisnow that you know that.
The reason I've started withstaff experience, this concept
of what are our staff thinkingis this is the heart of
leadership.
I truly believe that isleadership at forefront should
be about serving the staff thatare reporting to you, and it has
to come before yourdeliverables, your outcomes, all
(04:11):
of those pieces at.
At its heart is who am Isupporting?
How can I be doing that better?
And that is what really getsyou those really great outcomes.
So keeping that at the veryheart of your leadership, no
matter what position you're in,this is something I wish I had
done more in.
One of my earlier leadershiproles was when I came in.
(04:31):
I wish I'd really committed allmy time even going over time
for a little while to reallymake sure that the staff were
secure in a new program we wererunning, that I would have spent
all my time mentoring them,making sure they were up to date
and understood everything,because as things progressed and
I hadn't committed as much timeas I needed even though it was
(04:51):
a huge amount I noticed that Iwas facing challenges that I
could have avoided had I donethat.
So, hoping to save you a littlebit of time there, that you
really take this time to startwith from the employee space.
That being said, that's thebase I wanted to start with, but
let's talk about the difference, really, between leading
individual contributors andother leaders.
(05:12):
If you listen to past episodesof the show, we've talked about
the responsibilities ofdifferent levels of leadership,
of different people in theorganization, what they should
be focused on.
So we talked about experts andmentors and system operators and
visionaries and how, as youprogress through different parts
of the company, more time inyour role should be committed to
(05:33):
each of those different things.
So when you started with thecompany, you're probably in that
expert role where you reallyfocus on those tasks.
As you moved up EB to your pastleadership role, you were
starting to move more into thatmentorship space, maybe a bit of
system operations, and now inyour current role you should be
mostly in that mentorship spacevery little expert, little bit
(05:55):
of systems operations, maybe atiny bit of visionary.
But your main focus again ishow are you mentoring these
people?
How are you now progressing?
This leader to take on the nextrole?
And the reason I want tohighlight this as well as often
when people step into these newroles, they get stuck a little
bit on that past role.
(06:15):
They get stuck a little bit onmaybe the expert piece, the
things that they were expert andthey felt confident in, and now
they're a little bit moreunsure.
So you want to stick to thatprevious piece and this is to
suggest to you that what youreally want to do is shift fully
into this new position andreally focus on mentorship.
So you know that the leadersyou're leading know how to lead,
(06:36):
and the important part withthis is how are we going to
measure this?
How do you know that they'regoing to be good leaders?
Well, the first thing you coulddo is you can ask them.
You can ask them to self-assesstheir leadership skills.
What are they confident in?
What are they less sure on?
Do they have any questions thatneed to be answered?
That would provide themimportant clarity for their role
, or even for the roles andresponsibilities of their teams,
(06:58):
because a lack of clarity inany of these pieces is often
where we run into trouble, whereit gets harder to have outcomes
or deliverables or just evenholding people accountable down
the road.
So we want to get them toself-assess and then we really
have the ability to help them.
We can step in and supportthose places where maybe they
(07:18):
are feeling more unsure.
Are there trainings?
We could recommend even simpleresources like books or podcasts
they could listen to.
Maybe there's another mentor inthe organization that you could
match them up with.
Maybe there's just answers thatyou need to give them that
provide that clarity that wetalked about.
There's so many different waysthat you can now become their
(07:39):
advocate.
You are now the person that'sstepping in and saying, hey, I
heard what you said, here's howI am going to help you as your
leader.
That'll make them feel reallygood.
It'll increase their confidenceAll good things that you want
to support.
But that is also aboutself-assessment, and what we
know is that we are very good atbelieving that we understand
(08:00):
other people's experience waymore than we do.
So self-assessment is a goodstart, but what we really need
to know is the impact that thisleader, or these leaders, are
having on their staff teams.
So how are we going to getinformation from their direct
reports to ensure that thisleadership is aligning their
intentions and their impact?
(08:20):
There are a lot of differentways that you could explore
right.
There's leadership 360s.
You can create open-endedinvites for feedback.
You could talk to the staffteam, and what I would recommend
is actually that you starttalking individually with some
of their direct reports andstart to get a sense of what's
happening.
What's their experience of thisleadership?
A caveat to this, as you gointo this process, is you do
(08:45):
really want to be aware of howbig this power differential
could be right.
We've talked about again aboutpower differential, how your
brain responds physiologicallydifferently and your amygdala
activation fight, flight, freezeright that bit of fear response
(09:05):
and now you are another level,even up, of leadership, coming
to talk to them.
There can be a bit ofvulnerability and hesitancy
there.
So approaching this very gently, probably making it a little
bit more casual, and being veryclear on your hopes for that
conversation are good startingpoints.
Right, you don't want to comein and just say, hey, I'm here,
(09:27):
give me all the feedback about Xleader.
That's probably not going towork very well.
But if you talk about some ofthe goals that you have and
trying to promote leadership ina healthy way, about how you're
trying to encourage culturedevelopment through leadership,
and asking this person for somegenuine feedback, assuring them
about where that feedback isgoing to go, how it's going to
(09:47):
be used, would all be veryhelpful.
They want to make sure, withthat vulnerability, that this is
not going to be punitive forthem, that it's not going to be
punitive for their leader.
They don't want to throw someunder the bus.
So, making sure you've startedto cultivate this safe space,
this culture.
This might take a couple times,a couple different meetings
(10:10):
before you get there, but if youhave gotten there now, you get
to have these greatconversations about these
specific things that you want tocheck in on, and some of the
things you can consider askingthe staff about their
perspective of the role could bethings like do they understand
their role and responsibility?
Do they know about thedirectives that have come from
you?
Do they have a comprehensiveunderstanding of that?
How do they perceive companyculture and how do they think
(10:30):
they're part of that?
And then, of course, beyondthat, you can ask questions
about their experience withleadership.
What do they like about theirleader?
What do they think their leadermight want to improve on?
All of those questions can comeinto play in this nice and
relaxed conversation where theyknow that that feedback is going
to go to a good purpose.
And, of course, there are morequestions you can add.
(10:52):
And I just want to get this baseconcept that these levels of
leadership can interact.
You can interact with some ofthose direct reports and make
sure you're getting a reallywell-rounded view, and this is
going to take time.
Let's say you're leading fiveleaders.
You want to make sure you'reconnecting with more than one
person for each of those leaders, so you're not getting a
(11:12):
specific perspective, you wantto get a couple perspectives.
So that is going to take time.
If you are prioritizing, let'ssay, 15 meetings, you're going
to have those meetings multipletimes.
Of course that's going to taketime, and I promise, though,
that this is worth it.
You taking the time to reallyunderstand how your leaders are
operating means that you'retaking out any problems with
(11:34):
clarity, with roles andresponsibilities, with
accountability, that people cando their jobs properly, that
they're happier in their roles.
You're not going to have torehire these roles as much.
There's so many benefits tothis.
So, hopefully, everyonelistening to this regardless if
you are a frontline leader,planning on moving up, maybe, or
(11:54):
a CEO, regardless of where youare in your organization is that
you're taking this time toreflect on the people, how you
can prioritize the experience ofstaff, that the leaders who are
leading them are doing a greatjob and that you know that from
their perspective, because thisis really creating this space
where everyone is accountable,everyone is able to do their job
(12:18):
, feel supported, and reallythat is what creates an amazing
culture.
As a reminder to all ourlisteners, if you have a story
you want to share with us or aquestion, we would love to have
it.
You can find the link for thatin the description below and, as
a thank you for that, I'llfollow up, make sure your
question's answered and to saythank you for contributing to
(12:39):
our show, and I want to thankyou so much for taking the time
to learn with me, to listen, toreflect on these pieces of your
own leadership, hopefullyconsidering all the ways that
you can continue to keep empathyas your leader, because this is
so critically important.
So thank you for listening andremember to ask yourself what
(12:59):
kind of ripples am I going tocreate this week?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
We hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure to subscribe, commentand connect with Leah at
meetleahca.
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect
, starting with your team, goingout to the organization and
even out into people's personallives.
Here we offer you the chance tolearn from real-life stories of
leadership so you can gain adeeper understanding and level
up your own skills Fromcommunication to culture, to
power and equity, to feedback,to resolving conflict and more.
(00:23):
Join us and make sure you'recreating the ripples you want.
Welcome to Leadership Rippleswith Leah Fink.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah
Fink.
Today, we are going to betalking about the difference in
leading individual contributorsversus leading other leaders.
What should you change in yourapproach?
Eb shares their story.
I've recently been promoted toa management position and this
is the first time I'll bemanaging managers versus
(00:54):
frontline staff.
I feel like I should probablybe doing something different as
I'm leading this new team, and Iwould love to hear your
thoughts.
First, thank you for sharingthat, eb, and congratulations on
your new position, and I justwant to say well done that you
are already considering thesethings.
I really appreciate that you'realready thinking about what can
(01:15):
I do with my leadership that'sgoing to serve this group of
people better and taking actiontowards that.
First, I'm going to invite youto take a moment to reflect on
your own experience.
This is always a great startingpoint and a really great
practice for leaders to startempathizing with their teams.
What are some of the things,coming from the position that
you just did that you reallyappreciated from your manager
(01:38):
when you were a frontline leader?
These are the building blocksthat you're going to start to
use as you develop more of yourleadership, as you understand
your leadership core values anda note to higher levels of
leadership in any organization,you should be doing this as well
with every level of yourorganization, as much as you can
.
Can you remember the experienceof being a frontline staff, the
(02:00):
challenges you had, theresources you wanted, what you
wish was communicated to you asleaders?
When we start to advance in theorganization, more and more
levels of leadership and thehierarchy, we start to focus on
our own priorities andresponsibilities and challenges,
and of course we do.
Of course we prioritize thatover the responsibilities and
(02:21):
roles of other people.
That is important.
However, sometimes we get socaught up in those pieces that
we forget about all the staffexperiences that we're
influencing by being in ourposition.
This is everything about thelived experience of the employee
and, ultimately, too, aboutyour customers, no matter who
they are.
This all trickles down fromwhat you're prioritizing in your
(02:43):
role.
Even if this is the case, thatyou maybe didn't start in this
organization like EB did, you'recoming into a leadership role
in a new organization, I wouldsay then it's even more
important to take this time toreally understand the staff
experience at every level.
Do you know what's happeningfor your frontline staff to your
mid managers.
(03:03):
What are the challenges thatthey're all facing that?
Additionally, as we've talkedabout on this show before,
there's a lot of studies thatshow how power affects the brain
.
Now, and one of the things thathappens is, as you are in
positions of power for longertimes you're in these leadership
positions for longer times youcan actually start to lose your
(03:25):
mirror neurons, and thatbasically means your empathy.
It can be harder to empathizethe higher up you go, and so
it's really critical as well forleaders at all levels to
constantly be practicing thisempathy.
Make sure you're keeping thosemirror neurons, and one of the
ways you can do it is to keepreflecting back on other
people's experiences.
So this is a critical step forall levels of leadership, and I
(03:48):
hope you are considering thisnow that you know that.
The reason I've started withstaff experience, this concept
of what are our staff thinkingis this is the heart of
leadership.
I truly believe that isleadership at forefront should
be about serving the staff thatare reporting to you, and it has
to come before yourdeliverables, your outcomes, all
(04:11):
of those pieces at.
At its heart is who am Isupporting?
How can I be doing that better?
And that is what really getsyou those really great outcomes.
So keeping that at the veryheart of your leadership, no
matter what position you're in,this is something I wish I had
done more in.
One of my earlier leadershiproles was when I came in.
(04:31):
I wish I'd really committed allmy time even going over time
for a little while to reallymake sure that the staff were
secure in a new program we wererunning, that I would have spent
all my time mentoring them,making sure they were up to date
and understood everything,because as things progressed and
I hadn't committed as much timeas I needed even though it was
(04:51):
a huge amount I noticed that Iwas facing challenges that I
could have avoided had I donethat.
So, hoping to save you a littlebit of time there, that you
really take this time to startwith from the employee space.
That being said, that's thebase I wanted to start with, but
let's talk about the difference, really, between leading
individual contributors andother leaders.
(05:12):
If you listen to past episodesof the show, we've talked about
the responsibilities ofdifferent levels of leadership,
of different people in theorganization, what they should
be focused on.
So we talked about experts andmentors and system operators and
visionaries and how, as youprogress through different parts
of the company, more time inyour role should be committed to
(05:33):
each of those different things.
So when you started with thecompany, you're probably in that
expert role where you reallyfocus on those tasks.
As you moved up EB to your pastleadership role, you were
starting to move more into thatmentorship space, maybe a bit of
system operations, and now inyour current role you should be
mostly in that mentorship spacevery little expert, little bit
(05:55):
of systems operations, maybe atiny bit of visionary.
But your main focus again ishow are you mentoring these
people?
How are you now progressing?
This leader to take on the nextrole?
And the reason I want tohighlight this as well as often
when people step into these newroles, they get stuck a little
bit on that past role.
(06:15):
They get stuck a little bit onmaybe the expert piece, the
things that they were expert andthey felt confident in, and now
they're a little bit moreunsure.
So you want to stick to thatprevious piece and this is to
suggest to you that what youreally want to do is shift fully
into this new position andreally focus on mentorship.
So you know that the leadersyou're leading know how to lead,
(06:36):
and the important part withthis is how are we going to
measure this?
How do you know that they'regoing to be good leaders?
Well, the first thing you coulddo is you can ask them.
You can ask them to self-assesstheir leadership skills.
What are they confident in?
What are they less sure on?
Do they have any questions thatneed to be answered?
That would provide themimportant clarity for their role
, or even for the roles andresponsibilities of their teams,
(06:58):
because a lack of clarity inany of these pieces is often
where we run into trouble, whereit gets harder to have outcomes
or deliverables or just evenholding people accountable down
the road.
So we want to get them toself-assess and then we really
have the ability to help them.
We can step in and supportthose places where maybe they
(07:18):
are feeling more unsure.
Are there trainings?
We could recommend even simpleresources like books or podcasts
they could listen to.
Maybe there's another mentor inthe organization that you could
match them up with.
Maybe there's just answers thatyou need to give them that
provide that clarity that wetalked about.
There's so many different waysthat you can now become their
(07:39):
advocate.
You are now the person that'sstepping in and saying, hey, I
heard what you said, here's howI am going to help you as your
leader.
That'll make them feel reallygood.
It'll increase their confidenceAll good things that you want
to support.
But that is also aboutself-assessment, and what we
know is that we are very good atbelieving that we understand
(08:00):
other people's experience waymore than we do.
So self-assessment is a goodstart, but what we really need
to know is the impact that thisleader, or these leaders, are
having on their staff teams.
So how are we going to getinformation from their direct
reports to ensure that thisleadership is aligning their
intentions and their impact?
(08:20):
There are a lot of differentways that you could explore
right.
There's leadership 360s.
You can create open-endedinvites for feedback.
You could talk to the staffteam, and what I would recommend
is actually that you starttalking individually with some
of their direct reports andstart to get a sense of what's
happening.
What's their experience of thisleadership?
A caveat to this, as you gointo this process, is you do
(08:45):
really want to be aware of howbig this power differential
could be right.
We've talked about again aboutpower differential, how your
brain responds physiologicallydifferently and your amygdala
activation fight, flight, freezeright that bit of fear response
(09:05):
and now you are another level,even up, of leadership, coming
to talk to them.
There can be a bit ofvulnerability and hesitancy
there.
So approaching this very gently, probably making it a little
bit more casual, and being veryclear on your hopes for that
conversation are good startingpoints.
Right, you don't want to comein and just say, hey, I'm here,
(09:27):
give me all the feedback about Xleader.
That's probably not going towork very well.
But if you talk about some ofthe goals that you have and
trying to promote leadership ina healthy way, about how you're
trying to encourage culturedevelopment through leadership,
and asking this person for somegenuine feedback, assuring them
about where that feedback isgoing to go, how it's going to
(09:47):
be used, would all be veryhelpful.
They want to make sure, withthat vulnerability, that this is
not going to be punitive forthem, that it's not going to be
punitive for their leader.
They don't want to throw someunder the bus.
So, making sure you've startedto cultivate this safe space,
this culture.
This might take a couple times,a couple different meetings
(10:10):
before you get there, but if youhave gotten there now, you get
to have these greatconversations about these
specific things that you want tocheck in on, and some of the
things you can consider askingthe staff about their
perspective of the role could bethings like do they understand
their role and responsibility?
Do they know about thedirectives that have come from
you?
Do they have a comprehensiveunderstanding of that?
How do they perceive companyculture and how do they think
(10:30):
they're part of that?
And then, of course, beyondthat, you can ask questions
about their experience withleadership.
What do they like about theirleader?
What do they think their leadermight want to improve on?
All of those questions can comeinto play in this nice and
relaxed conversation where theyknow that that feedback is going
to go to a good purpose.
And, of course, there are morequestions you can add.
(10:52):
And I just want to get this baseconcept that these levels of
leadership can interact.
You can interact with some ofthose direct reports and make
sure you're getting a reallywell-rounded view, and this is
going to take time.
Let's say you're leading fiveleaders.
You want to make sure you'reconnecting with more than one
person for each of those leaders, so you're not getting a
(11:12):
specific perspective, you wantto get a couple perspectives.
So that is going to take time.
If you are prioritizing, let'ssay, 15 meetings, you're going
to have those meetings multipletimes.
Of course that's going to taketime, and I promise, though,
that this is worth it.
You taking the time to reallyunderstand how your leaders are
operating means that you'retaking out any problems with
(11:34):
clarity, with roles andresponsibilities, with
accountability, that people cando their jobs properly, that
they're happier in their roles.
You're not going to have torehire these roles as much.
There's so many benefits tothis.
So, hopefully, everyonelistening to this regardless if
you are a frontline leader,planning on moving up, maybe, or
(11:54):
a CEO, regardless of where youare in your organization is that
you're taking this time toreflect on the people, how you
can prioritize the experience ofstaff, that the leaders who are
leading them are doing a greatjob and that you know that from
their perspective, because thisis really creating this space
where everyone is accountable,everyone is able to do their job
(12:18):
, feel supported, and reallythat is what creates an amazing
culture.
As a reminder to all ourlisteners, if you have a story
you want to share with us or aquestion, we would love to have
it.
You can find the link for thatin the description below and, as
a thank you for that, I'llfollow up, make sure your
question's answered and to saythank you for contributing to
(12:39):
our show, and I want to thankyou so much for taking the time
to learn with me, to listen, toreflect on these pieces of your
own leadership, hopefullyconsidering all the ways that
you can continue to keep empathyas your leader, because this is
so critically important.
So thank you for listening andremember to ask yourself what
(12:59):
kind of ripples am I going tocreate this week?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
We hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure to subscribe, commentand connect with Leah at
meetleahca.
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Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.