Melody Wilding (00:40.257)
Congratulations, you have been promoted to manager. But as you are going to find out, being a great individual contributor doesn’t always automatically translate to being a great leader. Our guest today knows a lot about that and I am so excited to welcome to the podcast Ramona Shaw. She is a certified professional leadership coach. She’s also the founder of Arcova and she is here to share with us how to become a confident and competent new manager. So let’s dive in. Ramona, welcome. I’m so excited to have you here.

Ramona Shaw (01:16.758)
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

Melody Wilding (01:19.016)
Yes. I want to jump right in and talk about the fact that you for the last, for many years, we were even talking, you have your own podcast, which is now has hundreds of episodes. You’ve been doing this for a long time. You’ve coached countless professionals through the transition from IC, from individual contributor to manager and leader. And I would love to hear from you. What is the most surprising challenge?

that people face when they’re trying to make that shift.

Ramona Shaw (01:50.858)
Yeah, so I think it’s two, but they flow under the same or go under the same theme. It is this idea that as a leader, I should be helpful. And somehow most of us have picked up this idea that a manager is helpful and a manager is also someone who has a lot of answers and knows what to do.

And so when we step into a leadership role, I think the biggest challenge for people is to realize, or is realizing, that for as long as they hold on to this idea that as a manager, they need to have all the answers and they need to help everyone, the longer the team will depend on them and the harder their job gets. The way to become effective as a leader.

is to not have all the answers and not to help everyone. And that’s totally counterintuitive. And for many people, that’s one of the biggest challenges they have to overcome the hard way or hopefully an easier way.

Melody Wilding (02:51.435)
Yeah. So how do you straddle that line of not helping too much and not having all of the answers, but especially in the early days, creating credibility and respect.

Ramona Shaw (03:05.204)
Mm -hmm. Well, I think the idea that credibility and respect comes from our expertise is something that most of us have sort of naturally. It has been true and has been proven as we rise up early on in our careers. The more we know, the more we do, the more successful we are. The more impact we have, the more recognition we receive, and the more rewarded we feel. And so as we move into a leadership role,

these old patterns continue to carry on. And we still think that the more that we do and the more that we have answers and know it all, the better it will be. The question here is, when we look at how do we build trust or how do we build respect with our team members, it is actually to let go of that and to…

Ramona Shaw (04:03.756)
Sorry, I’ll pick right up.

Ramona Shaw (04:10.698)
is actually to let go of that and instead to lean into the relationship as a whole, into a way more collaborative approach with them and also recognize and really apply the idea that trust doesn’t just come from your competence and your expertise. And up until that moment, a lot of us have or have in the past,

or are currently leveraging competence as a way to build trust. And we rely on other people trusting us because we have a higher degree of competence or expertise and knowledge. And so in order to sort of navigate this and gain trust, we have to recognize that avenue is only one of many. Actually like Ken Blanchard’s model on trust here where he talks about A for ability, that is our expertise.

B for believability, and that speaks to our integrity and how we build trust through our integrity. Z stands for care, how we build trust by demonstrating care for other people and for them to know that we have their success in our minds and our care that in our hearts, we have their back. We want to help them be successful in their roles and really demonstrating that.

And then D for dependability. So how reliable are we and how much do what we say we actually also do and how much do we actually walk our talk and our role model and deliver on the expectations ourselves that we also set on other people. And so we have to expand the idea of what trust really means. And when we do and we take a more collaborative approach to that, that is when we leverage the power, not just of us as a leader, but also as a team as a whole to thrive together.

Melody Wilding (06:00.991)
I love this. And I had not heard that model from Ken Blanchard before, but it also reminds me, I’m sure you’re aware of the warmth competence model, right? Of presence or yeah. I usually talk about it in the context of executive presence in the workplace that if you map warmth on one scale and competence on the other, you want to be in one of the upper quadrants where you’re balancing those two things. Because if you’re too warm,

Ramona Shaw (06:27.714)
Mm

Melody Wilding (06:29.548)
people might see you as a pushover, but if you’re too over index on competence, then you’re unapproachable, you’re a jerk. And what I think is interesting that you’re saying is competence is not just how much you know, how much you know technically about the subject matter expert. It’s also about how you show up. And in terms of leadership, like you were saying, dependability, reliability, are you providing clarity? Are you creating

Ramona Shaw (06:51.486)
Mm

Melody Wilding (06:58.801)
vision so that people know what they’re working towards. The definition of competence expands from just knowing all of the things because I would love to hear your take on this because as you become a leader it’s impossible for you to be a subject matter expert and for you to have your hands in all of the things.

Ramona Shaw (07:01.868)
Thank

Ramona Shaw (07:19.86)
Yeah. And I actually, you know, every time one of my clients reaches sort of, I call that the milestone when you start to realize that you have people on the team who know more than you do. It’s like, yes, you’re moving in the right direction. Similarly, if you suddenly feel like, everyone’s really busy and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I worry if my job might get eliminated. That is also a good thing. That means your team is running well. Now the issue would be if you would pause there and just let it ride out.

But instead of looking at, great, now I have buffer and time and mental space to actually see how I end them together with my team. How can we increase significantly the value that we add to the organization? But it is that the trade off for sure, where someone has to look at, yeah, how much do I…

lean in and how much do I help and how much do I actually know and I need to know and then also how where do I need to pull back out to stay and maintain the maturity of my time up at a higher level and the it is walking a tightrope where you feel like at some point we’re going to go this way but then it’s like hold on a second we got to go in the other direction and you got to find that balance and it’s it’s a hard thing to do and

You know, most people struggle with it. I’ve definitely struggled with it. And it boils down to you understanding what is expected of your role and your responsibilities. What do other stakeholders expect of you? And then that combined with what does your team need and what makes your overall consolidated outcome better for some organizations and some teams or some leaders I work with.

They need to be in it and they pretty deep and they cannot really let that technical skills fade. then yet others hardly need to be in it at all. And for them, it’s really trying to figure out how can I let go of holding all the strings? So there is just not one size fits all. It all relates to your job, your expectations, and then figure out where I am today, what opportunities do I have to elevate up.

Ramona Shaw (09:41.034)
and to become really adaptable or flexible to move quickly down and quickly up, depending on the situation.

Melody Wilding (09:46.389)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And what’s really interesting, I totally lost my train of thought. I had something really good and smart to say. It totally left my head. Give me one sec.

Melody Wilding (10:06.485)
You were talking about knowing the accent. I got it. Sometimes when I talk, it comes back to me. Okay. Bradley, we’re going to pick up here. What was really interesting about what you were saying is what I think lies underneath all of that is a skill you need when you become a leader is more of that situational awareness and situational maturity to realize you have to read the room.

You have to spend much more time reading the dynamics, understanding other people’s motivations and desires. And to your point, you can’t take a one size fits all approach because what might be appropriate with certain stakeholders or in a certain team is different at a different time or with different people. So I think it’s just a, it’s a great takeaway for all of us to be thinking about, you know, the ultimate maturity is being able to.

sort of a playbook that you’re pulling from, but be able to adjust based on the circumstances. Yeah. What, what I find when I’m working with clients, because you know, it is so common, probably more common than not, that people go from being an individual contributor to a manager with zero people management experience. The biggest struggle I have seen people face is changing their own identity from

a doer from the person who gets a lot of satisfaction and grades their own productivity on how many tasks they’re, they’re taking off and how much they’re, they personally are getting done to becoming more of an enabler for other people where they are not the one actually doing the work. And for so many high achievers in particular, that’s really disorienting because now you don’t have as clear a measuring stick.

to know how you are doing. Any thoughts on that? Can you break down any of the insights you share with your clients when they’re going through that identity transition?

Ramona Shaw (12:15.914)
Yeah, and it really, I think it boils down to this idea that your success is not a team success. And that is definitely harder to grasp and also harder to control to a degree. And so people who have high personal standards often struggle with this the most because they have been used to do whatever was needed in order to deliver a high quality outcome or deliverable. And

They work hard, they work long hours, they perfect it, they are usually very well organized so that they don’t drop the ball. And suddenly now they have to hand this stuff out to other team members, delegate the work, let other people do things differently. And at the same time, they also know, they read the leadership books, they know that when stuff goes south, they’re the ones who will be blamed and who will have to take the blame.

And knowing that, my reputation is at risk. And I built, I worked on this reputation for so long and I put so much work into it and effort into this to have this solid reputation. And suddenly I’m supposed to hand it over to someone on my team. No way. Right. So then we become controlling and we feel like we need to just hold those strings. I’ve seen it from, you know, being CCed or proofreading emails, people who send others.

calendar reminders, inserting yourself into meetings where you weren’t really invited or you’re not actually needed, having to sign off on every single decision, every single proposal, grammatical changes, design changes that are unnecessary because we’re looking at the work of others with our same standards. And we have to let go of that ego that’s driving this.

And when I say it’s an ego, it’s because it like really feels deep down like something is being jeopardized. This is not comfortable. When we let that go and we can see that my success is now the team’s success. And so for as long as I keep doing it, I will continue to keep doing it. And it’s not scalable because we’re all as good as we might be. We’re all just one single person.

Ramona Shaw (14:38.686)
And then look at, how can I help my team do this best? And even though I know it’s going to feel uncomfortable, I do have to coach them and I do have to help them without owning it. And I do have to show them, show them the way, uphold standards. We say like, we are professionals. Here’s what we’re expecting. But fully knowing that every so often,

usually more often than we think, someone’s not going to meet the standard. And then I’m going to have a really good coaching opportunity, a learning opportunity at hand to help that person level up. And so that goes hand in hand with mitigating or acknowledging the risks. If I’m in a high -stake, high -risk situation with a brand new prospect, yeah, I’d probably be a bit more hands -on, especially if the person who’s supporting or owning that is doing it for the first time.

but all the other things. You can kind of take a step back and also, and I say this as the final thing, know and trust that other people don’t judge you as harshly as you probably judge yourself. Other people, especially if you’ve been promoted within the organization, they already know what high standards you hold, how well you know your subject matter, how…

what a professional you are. They already know that you do not need to prove that over and over, year in and year out. And so now what they want to see is, can you as a leader build a team that ultimately, not from day one, but ultimately will be able to execute at a high level, not necessarily your standards, but at a high level? And so when we can kind of let go of that and take a step back and…

and take a bit more of a relaxed stance or perspective on it, it will help tremendously.

Melody Wilding (16:37.909)
Yeah, yeah, because one of the most, what people on your team want to feel is ownership, right? And if you deprive them of that, they’re going to get frustrated very quickly. And so I’m always, I work with, you know this, I work with a lot of perfectionists, strivers, and it’s really hard for them to let go of that control. But I always say your job now as the leader, you are defining the what and the why. What needs to get done.

Ramona Shaw (16:44.994)
Mm

Ramona Shaw (16:50.423)
Yep.

Melody Wilding (17:08.001)
to what standard and why is this important? And the how should mostly be handed off to them unless there are very, very specific protocols that need to be followed. And so sometimes for people that’s a helpful shift to make. Yeah, is there anything you would add to that?

Ramona Shaw (17:25.332)
Yeah.

Ramona Shaw (17:28.702)
No, I think that’s right. Letting them do the how and really paying attention to that inner voice and potential turmoil that happens when we have to let go. Because this is real. I think we both have probably been in situations where you’re like, my gosh, I literally have to hold onto my desk to not do what I want to do. Or just shut the computer and walk away because I’m so tempted to.

Melody Wilding (17:50.145)
No.

Ramona Shaw (17:56.31)
do some final touches and redesigns or whatever it may be. yeah, noticing that the cost of that is demotivating the employees and having them be less committed to the project or the task at hand. And that’s a cost I’m not so willing to pay.

Melody Wilding (18:13.973)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s so interesting. I know you talk a lot about this idea in your work, but it comes down to managing your own emotions. You have to be willing to manage the temporary, intense discomfort of stepping back, maybe a few balls drop, maybe things aren’t to your liking, but that’s a temporary discomfort for a much longer term gain. Yeah.

Ramona Shaw (18:36.042)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Maybe one more thing that I’m gonna add. And think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding sometimes. We know that we have to take the blame, right? And we know that we have to pass on credit. I think that’s common knowledge. I think what sometimes people misunderstand is if something happens on my team, I have to take the blame. I believe that we have to take the blame out on the, like, towards others.

On the outside, we’re totally taking the blame. We’re not saying like, yeah, my team member messed this up when we’re talking to our boss or talking to a client. We’re taking the blame. However, internally team internally. So then I take that blame. I turn around and I speak to my employee. I’m not taking the blame. I might say, here’s how I co -created this. Like I’m here’s my part, but fully knowing that they’re going to have to take their part.

I’m expecting them to reflect and own what went wrong. So we actually have a learning opportunity to work with. Because if they don’t own that, if I’m taking it on towards them as well, and I say like, yeah, my fault, I didn’t train you, you did nothing wrong, I’m depriving them of a learning opportunity. Unless, of course, that’s true, and it was really just my fault. But otherwise, no, we take the blame from the

Outside, we turn around and we have a really good learning opportunity to talk about where we share out the responsibilities and I can maybe go first and say what I own, but then I expect them to own their part as well.

Melody Wilding (20:10.647)
Yeah, so, so important. love that distinction of sort of having a, having a message of accountability externally to your stakeholders, but in the team, you, you manage it at that sort of bifurcated level. There’s yes, it’s a 50 50 street, like you had a contribution, but so did they. And you both have to come into the table to look at that. So managing, moving into management from

just being an individual contributor is a hard enough move enough, but it becomes a lot more complicated when you are now managing your former peers. So any advice about how to do that, especially, know, sometimes people are either good friends with people they are now managing, or they’ve had a rocky relationship with this peer and colleague and now they have authority over them and they have to performance manage them.

What do you tell people who find themselves in that sort of position?

Ramona Shaw (21:12.8)
Yeah. So first I would say, know that a lot of the response that you get from them or the behaviors that you see in your former peers has more to do with them than it has to do with you. So the fact that they now have someone who might be younger than them, someone who might have a shorter tenure at the company than them, someone who might not look like them, sound like them,

talk like them, someone who may…

Ramona Shaw (21:48.714)
may be a friend, someone who may be more seen as an enemy, whatever it may be, they may have wanted to get promoted, they put their name in the hat and didn’t get it, whatever is going on, they have to process that for themselves. And we don’t need to control that. We don’t need to tell them that they’re wrong, that no, I should be the one who got the job and there’s nothing wrong with me as someone with lower tenure having it, you I’m doing a better job or…

or age doesn’t really matter here either or gender doesn’t matter whatever it may be. No, to them that is what’s going on for it, for them personally. And so this is where we want to give other people space to like process what is going on without feeling like we need to involve ourselves in some way and make it personal because then we’re going to come at it not very compassionate. We’re usually going to come at it in a somewhat defensive mode. Or

We feel guilty about it. We take on too much when it’s actually theirs. So I would say in the beginning, know that when you get promoted to lead your former peers, it’s going to be difficult for them. At least some of them, some might be great champions for you, but for some it’s going to be difficult. And then don’t try to avoid facing that reality or not talk about it. I think the best thing to do is early on say like, Hey,

I understand this may feel a little uncomfortable or this may feel like a big change. Our relationship may change as a result of that. And I’m fully aware. Let’s give it some time where we both sort of settle into our roles and we figure out how to have our meetings and how I can best support you and what you need from me. Let’s give it some time to figure out how to of reconfigure this relationship. And even if you see them be upset, like let them be upset.

If it crosses the line where they start to be disrespectful, that’s a whole different story. But assuming that they just kind of have an emotional reaction to it, let them have it. And then the second part of it, then sort of, guess the second part of that is to talk about it openly and transparently. And then the third is, especially if you have friendships with those former peers, is to really distinguish when are you talking to them as their manager and when are you talking to them as their friend or their former peer or colleague.

Ramona Shaw (24:09.686)
For some people, really using the analogy of like, hey, I’m gonna step into shoes of the manager or here I’m putting on the friend’s hat now to distinguish in a conversation, when are you speaking as what? Because as the manager, you have to do what a manager has to do regardless of the friendship, because that wouldn’t be fair. So you have to remain fair and you have to do the effective and the right thing as a manager. But sometimes you might look at this differently and you wanna speak as a friend.

but distinguish the two, so that is very clear. And if you feel like there’s too much in overlap and it’s hard to create boundaries, I would say lean to the conservative side and try to get yourself out of sort of the murky waters for a while, and maybe like not join happy hour for a few months until there are more clear boundaries in place before you join those happy hours again or whatever that may be.

Melody Wilding (25:04.917)
It’s such great advice because there’s always whenever a relationship changes, there’s always an adjustment period, whether you know, you’re getting a new boss or now you’re somebody else’s boss. And it’s just going to take why a while for that, you know, for the relationship to come back to equilibrium. and also what I’ve seen is now you may need a new peer group, right? You’re at a different level. And, and so your peer group may need to change as well.

Ramona Shaw (25:23.361)
Mm

Ramona Shaw (25:34.978)
Mm

Melody Wilding (25:35.143)
And who you are confiding in probably needs to change as well. I’m looking for support from, yeah. Another dimension to management now is hybrid, hybrid distributed fully remote teams and work. How, how have you seen or what have you seen? I should say, what have you seen be successful for people that are now managing in this environment where they don’t have that.

in -person opportunity to build trust, to communicate more clearly, to build that sort of in -person culture.

Ramona Shaw (26:12.0)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so this is an interesting one. I think generally speaking, not that much, not that much changes. Like we’re still in the business of people, whether we’re remote or in person, we’re still people, yet it’s not the same. So fundamentally speaking with leadership, a lot of it applies. I don’t think you need to completely rethink what you’re doing, but rethinking,

how you spend your time together and especially in a hybrid setup, it’s just being really intentional and communicating the whys for all the decisions that are being made at a higher level or on your level. Why a certain hybrid structure? Why return to work? Why remote? Why do you have to be at your desk at a certain time?

and then look at your meetings and the meetings that you currently have, do they actually serve the purpose? If we had a blank canvas, and I know of companies who’ve said, and they’ve actually, the IT team did execute this, rolled this out, where they canceled all meetings with internal parties. One Monday morning you came in and your calendar was just empty unless you had like external meetings, but everything was wiped clean. And then the company would say,

rethink which meetings you actually need and how you want to hold them and for how long you want to hold them. Like don’t just do what you’ve done in the past. And I think moving, moving into a different setup or just figuring like noticing how it’s maybe not working so well anymore requires us to take a step back and wipe everything clean and rethink how we should do this. I also think the aspect of the team becomes a lot more important. So the one -on -one conversations

that in an office environment are sufficient because we have a team environment and we bump into other people and we have a sense of belonging because everyone’s sitting there. In a remote environment, we don’t have that. so bringing the team together more often, I think is a really important aspect. And that could be through off -sites, it could be through team development sessions, it could be through team meetings. It could also be through something that I recently learned from

Ramona Shaw (28:33.638)
a remote and hybrid expert, his name is Chris Dyer, and he was on the manager track podcast. And he said he does these tsunami meetings, which I thought was a great idea. He basically chooses some kind of random sort of black sheep moment where he would say, let’s assume like one Monday morning, we got hacked and we couldn’t access any of our documents. And then as a team, they would brainstorm how they would go about this.

And it is a great team building exercise in itself because everyone has to contribute and everyone brings in their own perspectives and looks at their own workflows and how they would manage that. It also actually does some service. Like it is actually a good thing to practice, right? We know of the companies who’ve thought about what if a pandemic hit and they were definitely better prepared than those who’ve never thought about what would happen if a pandemic hit. And so it could really be useful. It’s a great experience as a team.

And what Chris is highlighting, which I thought was interesting, is that he, as a leader, would start to recognize who contributes, who takes the lead in those conversations, especially when he, as the leader, the manager, would step back and not talk much, who doesn’t share much, who interrupts others. He sees the dynamic and then uses that for future coaching moments on a one -on -one basis with individuals to say, hey,

Here’s how I noticed you show up. Make sure that in your meetings this month or in next few weeks, you pay attention to not interrupting people. Or I noticed you didn’t contribute much in that meeting what was going on. it provides some insight into a broader sort of fun, low key, low risk conversation. Yeah.

Melody Wilding (30:16.983)
Smart, smart.

Ramona Shaw (30:19.222)
That’s, I thought that was an interesting idea, but I do think so overall, if I have to look at the big things, rethink your meetings, bring the team together more, make sure that the team members don’t only see you as a resource, but the entire team as a resource, communicate way more than you think you need to communicate. We used to say like over communicate, right? When you think you’ve said something too many times, you’re probably saying it right. I think this is rings true even more so for remote and hybrid.

Melody Wilding (30:49.137)
Mm Yeah, you have to.

Ramona Shaw (30:50.652)
Which I’m actually curious on hearing your tips too.

Melody Wilding (30:53.173)
Well, I totally agree that you have to be so much more intentional and sometimes structured in your communication because there’s not just that spontaneous, you know, information exchange that happens. and the thing I’ve heard the most, again, you know, I, I tend to work with people who are more sensitive, who may read into dynamics. And during the pandemic, a lot of them.

especially when we all shifted to work from home, it’s gotten a little better now that people are returning to office. But people’s biggest question in their mind was, I don’t know where I stand. I don’t know if my boss is happy with me. They sent me this short email. Are they angry with me? Am I getting fired? And so when there’s not that sort of organic interaction, it’s so much easier for people to read.

between the lines and for their interpretation to be negative. And so even if it’s, you know, if you send someone a team’s message and it says, Hey, can we talk at 5pm today? Adding to that, nothing is wrong. I just wanted to check in about XYZ goes a very long way to, to not making that person go into a full blown panic. and I’ve also seen, I’m not sure if this, if you’ve seen this as well, but sometimes it’s just the

little touches that go a long way with a distributed or remote team where, again, going back to teams or Slack, having a shout out channel where people are acknowledging one another or putting silly memes, that there’s just some of that more lighthearted connection because all of your communication is just work, work, work meetings, meeting meetings. Yeah.

Ramona Shaw (32:43.558)
Yeah, and I like that you’re paying attention there to the encouragement and the recognition that we often don’t get enough and especially in the remote world, we really don’t see it. And in my work, we talk about having a leadership system. we know right out of our minds, I’m not wired to see all the things that go so well, first and foremost, they’re actually wired to see the things that don’t go well, first and foremost. And so we could

give, typically we can give feedback a lot easier on the things that we didn’t like. But we know that the recognition is, to me, I think it’s the most important and sort of cheapest and easiest leadership tool that you have, because it doesn’t take that much other than to be reminded to do it. And so as part of a system, we always talk about how do you want to build that in? it?

You think about it the day that you have your one -on -ones. it every Friday? Is it that you do team, like a kind of a shout out or run Robin in your team meetings? Are you sending thank you notes once a month? Like, what are you doing to ensure that somewhat systematically or on a regular occurrence, you give recognition and you praise and you reward people for going above and beyond or demonstrating key values.

Melody Wilding (34:02.037)
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned the term leadership system and I’ve heard you say this before. I’m, I’m an advert listener of your podcast, the manager track. So everyone should definitely go check that out. But I would love for you to just break down a little bit. What do you mean by leadership system? What, what goes into that? What should people be thinking about in their own leadership system?

Ramona Shaw (34:29.088)
Yeah, a leadership system is really just composed of all the routines and habits and behaviors that you demonstrate or use on a regular basis. And it starts from here is how I onboard or here’s how I interview, right, my hiring process, my hiring frameworks. Here is how I onboard a new employee. Here is how I, we, I, or we do goal setting processes. This is how we

define or do strategic planning. This is how I give feedback and recognition. Here is how I coach or set development goals for people. You know, there’s the different coaching frameworks. There’s different ways to instill accountability. And when we teach in our programs, when we teach these tactics or behaviors or toolkits sometimes, such as frameworks, those all become part of your leadership system because then you know,

If I notice someone is coming late, like this is the third meeting that they’re late. have a note. This is like, can see this is like a playbook, right? And I know what to do in such a case and what kind of question to ask or how to approach this because it’s part of my leadership system. When I have someone who’s underperforming, don’t like figure kind of struggle and shoot from the hips and be reactive until I escalated to HR and we have to end.

institutional or set up a PIP, performance improvement plan. That’s like last resort, but what happens between you notice and not meeting expectations and the PIP is being kicked off, you got to have some kind of like overarching system in place that, that helps you understand what to do when, and the system isn’t set in stone. Like any system you’ve continuously tried to optimize it and evolve it given the responsibilities that you have.

Melody Wilding (36:21.567)
Hmm. First of all, it’s a brilliant concept because it, when you’re a manager or a leader of any type, your cognitive load increases so much and the more, you know, you’re going to, you’re going to confront these difficult situations and the more you can shortcut it and not have to reinvent the wheel every single time, you’re going to save yourself so much energy and grief by doing that. So

Ramona Shaw (36:34.348)
Mm

Melody Wilding (36:51.157)
I love it for that. The second thing, because I know this will be on the mind of people who are listening, which is when you say a system, do you literally mean documenting, okay, these are my steps, like writing into Google Doc, these are my steps if someone is underperforming, this is the protocol I go through, this is the template of the message I sent to HR, or is this something that’s more,

more just in your head.

Ramona Shaw (37:24.639)
So it depends, which I know people love that answer. I think some of my, the participants in our programs are very prescriptive and that’s just their personal preference. They’re like, hold on Ramona, what did you just say? Like literally, then you probably have to start with your role play. And they’re like, I love, love that kind of language. And they literally type that down and they put that into their system so they can refer back to it when they’re in those situations.

because it resonates with their personal approach and preferences. But then others are way more visually oriented or framework oriented. And they know, I have a framework where here’s the three steps or different phases, or there’s different, just like you would look at a disk assessment, like, I can categorize in four.

buckets or you have a matrix that I think about and here, and that’s how I go about, for example, making decisions or think about how having promotion conversations and it’s a lot less scriptive. it’s a personal personal preference. I do think that when you have a system in place that you really hone and you develop, it not only makes you better, you know, however, again, however you want to do that in whatever channel or documents you want to use.

And by the way, talking about AI or generative AI, we talk about workflows and all that. We can get to that in a little bit. But it will also help because you can use some workflows for your system. But overarching, OK, you have that in place. And then whenever you are interviewing for another leadership role and you get questions, which most definitely you will at some point, how do you manage an under performer?

How do you ensure that your team and like, what do you do if your engagement scores are low? How you’re going to bring engagement up? And if you’re like in those moments, like, huh, yeah, what would I do? Let me think about a time that happened and what I did. That tells me you have no plan. And if I asked you, how do you, and if you’re a marketing manager and I ask you, how do you run a Google ads campaign? And you’re like, yeah, let me think about how I would do that. I would not hire you.

Ramona Shaw (39:43.438)
I need to know that you have some kind of framework or methodology to how you run Google campaigns. And similarly, if I want to hire you for a leadership role, I got to know you have thought about this. You’ve learned your lessons, you optimized your system, and you can articulate it. You know, you can talk about it.

Melody Wilding (40:00.907)
Yeah. And it makes it so much easier when you have to then hand things off in the future that even if you have just a skeleton outline or approach to teach someone else from, you’re not starting from scratch. It’s not all in your head because this is we we’ve talked today about a lot of, you know, pitfalls that, that managers make. when I’ve seen, I would love to hear your opinion on this, but one I have seen is people make themselves indispensable and therefore.

Ramona Shaw (40:06.392)
Yeah.

Ramona Shaw (40:10.23)
Mm -hmm.

Melody Wilding (40:30.603)
they can never advance because all of the knowledge is up here. And even though they are a leader or manager, they’re still the only one who can do many of those things and have that institutional knowledge. It’s not documented, it’s not in a format that they can pass along. So they’re stuck, they have to stay in their role. Yeah.

Ramona Shaw (40:32.427)
Mm

Bye bye.

Ramona Shaw (40:50.73)
Yeah. gosh, such a good one. Yeah. And the memory is like so many people, and this happens especially for new managers. Like I’ve relied on my memory a lot. They’re like, yeah, but you now have a team of four people. So that means you were like capacity is exponentially bigger. Now you have five, four times as much on that you need to sort of think about. And even if you’re conservative, you might have two and a half times as much. need to be thinking about, can you memory keep up?

And how much longer are you trying to keep up with your memory? it’s like, I’m also not a super organized, like methodical person overall, but you got to track notes for your team members to your track notes for your boss. You have notes on decisions that were made. got to take half task lists, not just with your deliverables, but also with other people’s deliverables, because you’re going to have to check in with them and hold like develop this accountability. There’s so much we have to.

capture versus continuously rely on our memory. Yeah.

Melody Wilding (41:51.829)
Yeah. And let’s transition. brought up AI because AI is a big part of what can make this easier. And I know this is a big part of the work you do at Arcova. So I would love to hear just a little bit about that, how you work with leaders and companies around AI. And then we can talk a little bit about some of your best tips for, or creative use cases you’ve seen for how people are using AI at work.

Ramona Shaw (42:20.138)
Yeah. So it’s such a fast developing space, obviously, that I feel even what I say now, by the time this podcast gets released, things may have changed. But fundamentally speaking, there are, we are definitely, many of us are definitely looking at how do I get better sort of at my job or how do I use it for whatever

profession that I’m in, BDS, if you’re in a sales org or you’re in a finance team or you’re in an operational role or whatever it may be, how do you leverage and how does the organization want to leverage AI or specifically generative AI to get better, improve quality, reduce costs, reduce errors and so forth? So that’s a lot of people are thinking about that.

And then may also be thinking about how do I get more productive? One thing is for sure that as a manager at our core, we’re really looking at how does this all impact leadership? Like a manager, people leader in their role. And first and foremost, people bring their own AI. So it’s like, bring your own phone, bring your own AI, whether you want it, whether it’s allowed in your organization or not. If you

If your company hasn’t incorporated AI yet, know that your team members, there’s a very high chance that a good amount of your team members are using it in some way or form. And so we have to start thinking about, great, no one can pause this or stop this. can also not wait for the IT team to address it because people are using it. Let’s figure out how we can as a team

Optimize workflows, like really think through what are the repetitive tasks and start to consult, you know, have a list of those somewhere. And then what are different tools, different method experiment with all kinds of different options and how to optimize, streamline, make those workflows more efficient. And it evolves like every week where I look at some of these workflows, I learned something new and I realized like, I got to

Ramona Shaw (44:39.52)
try this over here and maybe this is better or this is easier. And so it keeps changing, but stay in the game to continuously experiment and learn along the way. The second part is like, yeah, how do you as a manager use it in order to be better as a people leader? And so specific use cases are in, I think personally, a big one is around communication. How do you communicate something to

a person who is very focused on results. You have an idea, a message. You might want to have an offsite for your team. Now, how do you sell that offsite to someone, to your CFO, because you need to get a budget? That is literally something that you could drop into a chat, bit here, and clod or Gemini or whatever you’re using and ask it to brainstorm alongside with you.

ask questions, iterate on it. It’s not Google where you ask it once and you then take whatever comes out as like the final answer. It is conversational. So you keep iterating it with it. If you have been told that your emails are too long or your emails are too short, drop your emails in there for a few days in a row and ask it to improve it in whatever you’re trying to improve.

then look at the output and you’re learning just by seeing what I would write so that you can start to adapt this type of writing for yourself going forward or you can automate it. But just really to help us with some of the changes that we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to get better at communicating. Be just more concise, more elaborate, more friendly, preparing for objections. Hey.

Melody Wilding (46:28.695)
Mm.

Ramona Shaw (46:29.718)
Here is an initiative, here’s the one -pager, make sure it’s anonymized, are you following any safety rules around it? You upload that and you say, what are objections? What are pros? What are cons? To have a sparing partner alongside you with things that you could otherwise, you don’t really have anyone to share this with, unless maybe you have a partner at home that brainstorms these things with you. So I think these are a couple. Another one that I think it…

It can be useful is in the decision -making process. So looking at different decision -making frameworks that you might have.

Hold on, hold on. Different decision -making frameworks that you might have or.

Ramona Shaw (47:19.372)
Sorry, I’m just checking. Someone rang the doorbell. Or decision -making frameworks that you have. Making decisions well and having a process in place to do so, speaking of the system, is also a critical skill for managers. And these tools can help you identify pros, cons, look at different, again, frameworks to plug it in, to think about your decisions from new and different perspectives that may not come natural to you.

So I do think it is a sparing partner as much as it is an assistant for a people leader. And it assists and it automates. We talked about the systems earlier and the workflows that you can create in terms of the onboarding documents, onboarding emails. It could be around interviews, interview evaluations, summarizing your emails, all of that. We’ve heard of that before. So it’s automating. It’s assisting you with tasks and analysis.

And then I think for managers and people leaders, the biggest component is really how do I use it as a learning tool? And that’s very important.

Melody Wilding (48:27.247)
Really smart. didn’t think about it using it as a sparring partner for your ideas. That’s excellent. Ramona, this has been fantastic. So many great gems and ideas and perspective shifts for those of you. think it’s also a good reminder. We’ve talked a lot about the transition between IC to leader, but everything we talked about today also applies if you’ve been a manager for a long time, because sometimes you need to go back.

to the fundamentals. And so I think everybody will get a little something out of this. And with that, where can people connect with you, learn from you further, work with you? What’s the best place to send them?

Ramona Shaw (49:08.096)
Yeah, thank you. And I really enjoyed this conversation with you as well. I know I always do. And I feel like we could go on and on. My website or our website is arcova .org. But I would suggest to either go check out the Manager Track podcast or to, if you’re in moving into a new leadership role, check out the book, The Confident and Competent New Manager on Amazon.

Melody Wilding (49:29.793)
Highly recommend both. If you are listening to this, you are probably in your podcast app right now. So go ahead, search the manager track podcast, hit subscribe on that. It’s fantastic show. Ramona does these solo episodes that are always so packed with really actionable tips. Highly recommend. Ramona, thank you so much again for coming on the show and just very grateful for you.

Ramona Shaw (49:53.708)
Thank you, same to you, appreciate you Melody.