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Management Material
Welcome to Management Material.
My name is Catherine Van Der Laan. I started my career at the bottom as an assistant and worked my way up to become the boss’s boss in 8 years. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that what got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to be.
This podcast is for top performers who want to be amazing managers. I’ve coached lots of talented people to get them from entry-level to recognized top performers to new managers to seasoned executives. I challenge deeply held beliefs and change how people see the world.
Management is all about leadership. The best managers were developed leaders long before they had any direct reports.
Here's one thing that most people won't tell you: Management is a skill. Management is a skill you can learn, just like the hard skills that got you to where you are now.
Management Material is about developing you into the best manager you can be. Let’s turn YOU into management material.
Management Material
Rebuilding Trust and Mastering Transparent Communication in Leadership
Ever wondered how to piece back together the fragile puzzle of trust once it's fallen apart? That's what we conquer on today's Management Material, as I share the transformative journey of a leadership development client navigating the treacherous waters of office politics and slander.
You'll be privy to our intense discussions on accountability and the power of transparent communication, all vital in stitching the seams of broken professional relationships.
It's like reconstructing a bridge while crossing it, and you'll gain invaluable insights on how to hold the hammer.
Fears of vulnerability often handcuff leaders, but we're snapping those chains. Listen as I recount the story of a client who embraced their boss's challenge to improve communication, only to unearth leadership potential they never knew they had.
You'll get a front-row seat to an honest look at the role ego plays in our professional engagements, setting the stage for a revealing tale about a confrontation with my own boss that's coming up in a future episode.
It's not just about talking the talk; it's about walking the walk with your head held high and your communication lines wide open.
Book a complimentary management coaching conversation at https://calendly.com/catherine-vanderlaan/free-60-minute-leadership-consultation
Email me at catherine@managementmaterialcoaching.com to ask a question or get in touch.
Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/managementmaterialcoaching
Find out more about Management and Leadership Coaching at https://managementmaterialcoaching.com/
if you need to re-establish trust whether you broke it or somebody else broke it for you the way to re-establish the trust is by submitting to accountability, to open up free-flowing and consistent communication and then follow through consistently. Okay, it is to stay humble. It is to stay humble. It is to submit to another person and to say I am willing to walk through this with you and to give you control. Now, that is a difficult thing to do. Welcome to Management Material. My name is Katherine Vanderlaan. I started my career at the bottom as an assistant and worked my way up to become the boss's boss in eight years. And, man, I love management. Welcome back to Management Material. Welcome back to Management Material.
Speaker 1:Today we are talking about how to reestablish trust, whether you broke it or someone else broke it for you. So this is a topic that I was discussing with a client of mine. We were talking about his office politics. He is trying to figure out why people or he was trying to figure out why people didn't trust him in the office. Now he is an individual contributor, would love to be a manager someday. Actually, he's kind of going back and forth on that one, whether he wants to be a manager or not. It's a lot of work, but he was trying to figure out why people were treating him very poorly, why people were asking for more documentation, why people were treating him very poorly, why people were asking for more documentation, why people were treating him as if he wasn't doing the work that he said he was doing, as if he wasn't somebody to trust. I mean, you can tell when people don't trust you. You absolutely can tell. Right, as we're going through this, we decided that it didn't fully matter what happened whether he broke the trust or somebody else did it for him and I'll just give you a little spoiler here Somebody else broke the trust for him. He didn't actually do anything wrong. Somebody was slandering him in the office. That happens. It's happened to me. It's happened to a lot of different people.
Speaker 1:Some people can get pretty manipulative and will slander other people in order to bring them down to make themselves look better. If you're doing that, stop it. It's really not good. Maybe go change companies and reestablish your reputation. If that's something that you have been doing, that is not being a leader. Bringing other people down so that you can look better is not something that is going to give you a leadership position for very long anyway. It's not going to make your company into a company or your team into a team that people want to be on Anyway.
Speaker 1:So this guy was dealing with this, dealing with this lack of trust on his team. People were treating him as if he wasn't trustworthy anymore and we needed to establish a way for him to reestablish trust in his team. So we talked about what he could do and decided that he should go to all of the people that clearly did not trust him, submit to accountability for them, even though he didn't think he needed it, so he had to eat a little hum pie, submit to that accountability, open up this free, flowing and consistent communication and then follow through. So it's kind of the same thing that I do with my kids. Actually, I'm not going to give you names or anything, but I have kids and one of them is in the middle of elementary school. She does stuff, sometimes in the home, like any child that would cause me to not trust her Right. So almost every child will steal things from their parents. Almost every child is going to lie about not doing something wrong so that they can try to get away with it. But they have developing brains and we as adults tend to be a little bit smarter. We can catch them in their lives. Whether we call them out on it all the time or not is a different question, but I had to walk her through this. Here's how you establish trust. You submit to accountability, you open up that free flowing and consistent communication and over time, as I see you follow through, that trust will be reestablished. That is generally how to reestablish trust. That's the point of today's podcast episode. Let me tell you how it worked.
Speaker 1:So this gentleman that I'm coaching in leadership development and his career, he did this with his team. He went to his boss and he said hey, I'm hearing this. This is how I feel like I'm being treated. Can you please let me know what is going on? What is causing this? Treated? Can you please let me know what is going on? What is causing this? So he asked a question in a very humble way, in order to understand what was going on. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast at all, you hear me say very often ask to understand, ask questions to understand, not to make a point, right.
Speaker 1:So he asked a question to understand what was going on and his boss said that she had been hearing some rumors going through the team about X, y and Z, that he wasn't treating people well, that he wasn't doing his job. He was demanding higher quality work from other people than he was delivering himself. So he said okay, well, what can we do about that? I don't agree with the feedback. I don't know, and I don't really want to know, where it's coming from, but I don't agree with it. But I'm willing to work on it. If you think that that's something that I need to work on, I'm willing to work on it.
Speaker 1:He submitted to that and said I'd like to show you that this is not happening, not that it never happened, just that it isn't happening. So he opened up free flowing communication, said I'm happy to do check-ins more often. I'm happy to get feedback reports from different team members. I'm happy to open channels of communication. How would you like to do this? So put the ball back in his boss's court Now. His boss then came up and said okay, great, I would like to talk every other day, every other business day.
Speaker 1:So Monday, wednesday, friday, I'm going to touch base with different team members who all report to me and ask them. Now, I don't know about you, but if that was told to me and it was told to my client, I'd be kind of nervous. I mean, what if there's a blind spot? What if there's something I'm not seeing? What if there's something I really, really need to improve? What if there's something he's really not doing?
Speaker 1:Any person's initial response is to get pretty defensive in this conversation. These conversations are emotional, they're personal and you feel it right in the pit of your stomach, right? You don't fully, fully want to work on this. You don't believe it. You don't think that there's anything wrong. But in order to reestablish trust, to establish yourself as a leader, to really make a difference on the team, you need to submit to that accountability and submit to that authority. He worked through those emotions. I promise you Talked about it. He was a little peeved. I'll just say about this that she really was trusting the rumor mill instead of him and that it makes sense. It makes sense from both sides.
Speaker 1:He followed through. He talked to her Monday, wednesday, friday, had that consistent communication open. They worked on Slack a lot of times. He did everything that she asked and she saw consistency in his follow through. She saw that his work quality was high. She saw that real time people were not complaining and, in fact, were very satisfied with his work, and that he didn't take it personally when he very well could have. All of that showed leadership. It showed humility. It showed that he was faithful, that he was available, that he was teachable and he became somebody that she trusted more than anyone else on the team.
Speaker 1:So here's my point, because that was a long story and I hope you saw yourself in that. If you're listening to this, I hope you see how this could work. Here's the point. If you need to reestablish trust whether you broke it or somebody else broke it for you the way to reestablish the trust is by submitting to accountability, to open up free-flowing and consistent communication and then follow through consistently. Okay.
Speaker 1:It is to stay humble. It is to submit to another person and to say I am willing to walk through this with you and to give you control. Now, that is a difficult thing to do. That is a hit on most people's ego, but ego is not what makes a leader. Ego is what makes somebody a person people don't want to follow. Ego is what makes you hard to work with when you can set your ego aside and talk to the people around you with humility, ego aside, and talk to the people around you with humility, with care, with love. That means that your ego is on the back burner and probably simmering. Now you can talk to me. If we're in a coaching relationship. You can talk to me and take that ego and take it from the back burner simmer to the front burner boil. We will talk through it, man, but you can't do that in the workplace. If you do that in the workplace, it will not go well. Oh no, I was about to tell you a story, but I think I'll save that for another time. The time that I really yelled at my boss and he laughed in my face, we'll talk about that another time.
Speaker 1:But very, very often when I am coaching somebody, doing some leadership coaching, maybe doing some management coaching people will say, hey, if I do that, I'm not going to be seen as an authority figure, I am not going to be seen as a leader, I'm not going to be seen as somebody that people can trust and be partnered with right in a team. First, what I want to say is what makes you think that's true? What makes you think that's true? Because if you had a colleague that came to you and said hey, I hear that this rumor is on around about me, or I hear that people are saying X, y and Z about me. I don't think that that's true and I'm happy to show you that it isn't. They are direct they.
Speaker 1:In the last podcast episode, we talked about radical candor, how to give feedback, and so there it's about being direct and showing that you care. Right, if one of your colleagues came up to you and said hey, something's going on, I'm hearing that people are saying these things about me, I don't think that they're true. I'd love to just talk about it with you. And then they submitted to accountability from you. They submitted to free-flowing and consistent communication with you and they followed through. What makes you think that they become less of an authority figure? In fact, when I see somebody like that, I think, wow, that person cares, they're consistent, they're professional, they deal with things directly and they follow through. I love that. I love that that is a leader. Man, I don't care if you're an assistant, if you're a CEO. That is a leader, and I will follow that person throughout their career.
Speaker 1:This podcast episode is really about. It's about how to establish that trust. It's about how to be somebody who people can trust when that trust has been broken. And if you are looking for that, then you have to put your ego to the side, even if it's not true, your ego is not helping you, it's hurting you. Put your ego to the side, open discussion about it, submit to accountability, open up your free flowing and consistent communication and follow through. If you want to make sure that this is applicable, this is applied to your situation and you're having trouble with that, please click the link below. I give a lot of leadership coaching, a lot of career coaching as well. If you're in a career that maybe doesn't suit you, we'll find something else. I can help you become that leader that shines, that leader that people want to follow. I can help you become management material. Go ahead and click that link. Schedule a free consultation. Let's see if this is a good fit for you and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:If you need to reestablish trust, whether you broke it or somebody else broke it for you, the way to reestablish the trust is by submitting to accountability, to open up free-flowing and consistent communication and then follow through consistently. Okay, it is to stay humble. It is to submit to another person and to say I am willing to walk through this with you and to give you control. Now, that is a difficult thing to do, thank you. Here's how you establish trust. You submit to accountability, you open up that free-flowing and consistent communication and over time, as I see you follow through, that trust will be re-established. That is generally how to re-establish trust. That's the point of today's podcast episode. Let me tell you how it worked.
Speaker 1:So this gentleman that I'm coaching in leadership development and his career he did this with his team. He went to his boss and he said hey, I'm hearing this. This is how I feel like I'm being treated. Can you please let me know what is going on? What is causing this? So he asked a question in a very humble way in order to understand what was going on. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast at all, you hear me say very often ask to understand, ask questions to understand, not to make a point, right.
Speaker 1:So he asked a question to understand what was going on and his boss said that she had been hearing some rumors going through the team about X, y and Z, that he wasn't treating people well that he wasn't in his job. He was demanding higher quality work from other people than he was delivering himself. So he said okay, well, what can we do about that? I don't agree with that feedback. I don't know, and I don't really want to know, where it's coming from, but I don't agree with it. But I'm willing to work on it. If you think that that's something that I need to work on, I'm willing to work on it. He submitted to that and said I'd like to show you that this is not happening Not that it never happened, just that it isn't happening.
Speaker 1:So he opened up free flowing communication, said I'm happy to do chickens every more often. I'm happy to get feedback reports from different team members. I'm happy to open channels of communication. How would you like to do this? So put the ball back in his boss's court Now. His boss then came up and said okay, great, I would like to talk every other day, every other business day. So Monday, wednesday, friday, I'm going to touch base with different team members who all report to me and ask them for feedback on your performance.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't know about you, but if that was told to me and it was told to my client, I'd be kind of nervous. I mean, what if there's a blind spot? What if there's something I'm not seeing? What if there's something I really, really need to improve? What if there's something he's really not doing?
Speaker 1:Any person's initial response is to get pretty defensive in this conversation. These conversations are emotional, they're personal and you feel it right in the pit of your stomach, right? You don't fully, fully want to work on this, you don't believe it, you don't think that there's anything wrong. But in order to reestablish trust, to establish yourself, that is a hit on most people's ego. But ego is not what makes a leader. Ego is what makes somebody a person people don't want to follow. Ego is what makes you hard to work with. When you can set your ego aside and talk to the people around you with humility, with care, with love, that means that your ego is on the back burner and probably simmering. Now you can talk to me. If we're in a coaching relationship, you can talk to me and take that ego and take it from the back burner simmer to the front burner boil. We will talk through it.
Speaker 1:But you can't do that in the workplace. If you do that in the workplace, it will not go well. Oh no, I was about to tell you a story, but I think I'll save that for another time. The time that I really yelled at my boss and he laughed in my face We'll talk about that another time. But very, very often when I am coaching somebody doing some leadership coaching, maybe doing some management coaching people will say hey, if I do that, I'm not going to be seen as an authority figure, I am not going to be seen as a leader, I'm not going to be seen as somebody that people can trust and be partnered with right in a team. First, what I want to say is what makes you think that's true? What makes you think that's true? What makes you think that's true? Because if you had a colleague that came to you and said, thank you.