CHAPTER 21

Support and Manage

When last we saw Chris the salesman, he turned his frustration with cold calling into a practice of in-person seminars within a few months by leading Mark, an expert in event marketing, to help him. Mark taught Chris everything he knew and helped him market his first event. Still, enthusiasm and even inspiration only got Mark started. I told you the beginning and results but left out the middle, where Chris supported and managed Mark.

“I can’t meet for a couple weeks,” Mark said to Chris while planning that first event.

“Why not?” Chris asked. The step they were on was easy and didn’t need weeks of work.

“I’m not feeling well. I’ve been putting off my health for a while. I know it’s my diet and not exercising. I have to take some time to figure out how to get healthy again,” Mark explained.

Years before, Chris had worked as a personal trainer. “Mark, I’m an expert in helping people with health and fitness. I can help you with all that,” he said and then described his background and how he could help.

“I can’t accept. It’s too much,” Mark said, probably sensitive to making more money than Chris.

Chris insisted. Mark eventually accepted. Chris and Mark then met a few times to identify Mark’s needs, his habits, and his goals and then to develop practices to achieve his goals. In the end, Mark didn’t need time off from Chris’s project, and their collaboration became two-way. Mark helped Chris with marketing and Chris helped Mark with health and fitness.

A skeptical observer could say Chris was just doing something easy to get more work in less time out of someone already working for free without paying him any more.

This view misses what support means to the person receiving it. If you only look at money, Chris didn’t spend any to get more work out of Mark, but Mark already had money. Money from his job was devaluing his passion. He was working for Chris for personal reasons his employer missed.

Meanwhile, Mark had been sick enough to put off something he enjoyed. From Mark’s perspective, Chris gave him health and enabled him to work on what he cared about, finally, as a break from the drudgery of his paid job. Chris freed him from the distraction and helplessness of his deteriorating health. Mark insisted on paying Chris for his time. Chris protested but eventually relented and accepted a token $20.

In other words, technically, Chris got paid to receive world-class training in exchange for helping with some easy (for him) fitness training. From Mark’s perspective, he got health, longevity, and a fun project in exchange for helping a friend with some easy (for him) marketing training, too.

Everybody needs support. Leaders who support their teams will create productive and efficient teams with high morale. When you Lead With Empathy and Inspire, your team will feel like you’re supporting their passions, increasing the MVIP you created. They will care less about how easy your job is than how much you helped. Your job often becomes easy and rewarding since so many workers need similar support, which you get good at giving. In Chris’s case, supporting Mark was easy and enjoyable, but Mark still appreciated it for the value of his health, not Chris’s effort.

Chris and Mark’s relationship illustrates a common result of leading and supporting with the exercises from Unit 4. Chris and Mark mutually supported each other. They ended up connecting as friends, not just people doing a transaction. Each gave what he was strong in and got what he was weak in. Each looked forward to working with the other.

The leader and follower roles blur when you Support and Manage after you Lead with Empathy because each becomes so invested in the projects’ success. Each leads when leading helps and follows when following does.

There is one big difference between Chris and Mark in the partnership. Chris initiated it, created Mark’s MVIP, and acted on the support Mark needed. From then on, Chris could let their roles evolve based on the project’s needs.

Chris’s ability to initiate and sustain projects means that his next project will be as rewarding. Mark’s next project, if he doesn’t have those skills, may or may not be as rewarding. Like others without these skills, he’ll likely consider himself lucky if a project is so rewarding for him.

Lead people this way, and they’ll want you to lead them again.

The Support and Manage Exercise

This exercise is to sit with someone you’re leading and recalling his or her passion and the MVIP you created to create a role for you to Support and Manage the person.

What to Do

You’ve connected a few people’s passions to your tasks. Some of the tasks will take time, money, and other resources to complete. If you only Inspire people, they’ll want to do the task but may lose motivation, run out of resources, or hit other problems that require support.

1.Before meeting, on your own, think of the tasks you are leading people on and put yourself in their places. Write down what they can’t provide themselves.

2.Meet one-on-one with each person you are leading.

3.Remind them of your conversations connecting their passion to your task so they feel understood and motivated during this conversation. (Note that their passions may evolve, so be prepared to learn and adjust.)

4.Together, think of what support will make them effective and free them from distraction and what communication and check-ins you’ll need. Write these things down together.

5.Figure out what you can and can’t do.

6.Create work plans for both of you.

7.Support them according to the plan until the project finishes.

Do this exercise with each person you are leading.

You will often end up telling those you lead, at their request, specifically what to do and having them tell you specifically what they want from you. What would feel like micromanaging if you hadn’t connected their passion to the task will feel to someone you inspired like support. They will see you as a resource for acting on their passion. They will often feel grateful for getting to work more. Until you grasp the value of the MVIP you are creating for them, you may not feel you are worth the effort they put in. When you realize that they are working for themselves, you will sense how much they value the work.

When I lead, I think of my support role like the founder’s in a startup who takes responsibility for what anyone else doesn’t. If the team needs paper clips at 2 a.m. and the only store that’s open is across town, the founder gets them. When the team feels that support and it keeps them from losing focus, they give more, even if you aren’t burning as many calories or spending as much time on the project.

You can even hire someone to support them, reduce your load, and expand the team’s abilities, although you’ll still hold ultimate responsibility.

Many students are surprised at the amount of both freedom and control this exercise gives them. For example, when people feel passion for their work, they will often ask you to manage them in ways that would feel like micromanaging otherwise. They’ll say things like, “Tell me exactly what to do and how to evaluate my performance so I know how to do it,” or “What are all the deadlines and subdeadlines for each part of the project? Who depends on me when?”

Managing people is as important as leading them. People lose focus and meaning in their work without support and management, no matter how inspired they felt at first.

Most of us have felt inspired and worked with effective people without the team reaching its goal. An inspired team needs effective management to support it. Leadership and management overlap significantly but have many distinct parts. Most people have more experience and skills managing.

Common Needs

Here is a partial list of common needs of teams and team members, in no particular order. Different people and teams have different needs. Your communication skills, self-awareness, sensitivity, and experience will guide you to learn the needs of your teams that you can support.

Material resources (such as money, supplies, food)

Protection from others wanting their labor and time—“air cover”

Conflict management

Connections to others outside the team

Expectation of success

Vision

Feeling understood in their motivation and passion

Vacations

Reinspiration

Motivation

Standards to meet

Recognition for their effort

A shoulder to cry on

A sense of urgency

More time

Less time

Clarity

Silence

Solitude

Systems (such as computers, schedules)

Advice

Space to work

Material reward

Nonmaterial reward

Listening

Accountability

Privacy

A kick in the butt

Ownership

Doing this exercise with teammates or followers will transition your relationship with them on this project from leading them on this project to managing and supporting them. You generally spend more time managing people than leading them.

If you’ve led them effectively, they will want to do the work you assigned them for the meaning it brings. Since managing them will feel to them like you are supporting them in their passion, they’ll want you to tell them what to do, for example, when appropriate.

By analogy, in a partner dance, for the follower (let’s say female) to follow the lead (let’s say male), she wants to know that he will support her. He, in turn, needs to know from her what support she will need in order to give it to her. The more they communicate their expectations during rehearsals, the better they both can perform. When she knows he will support her, she can perform to her potential—she can risk falling and experimenting when she knows he will catch her.

How Inspirational Leadership Transforms People You Lead

Post-Exercise

In this exercise, did you find yourself telling people what to do, assigning accountability—what used to feel like micromanaging—and seeing them appreciate you for it?

Most people who learned more about management than leadership are surprised by how much their teammates want and welcome specific, detailed instruction—that is, to understand their motivations and connect them to the task.

That emotional connection between teammates and their task gives them ownership and meaning in their work. They want to do it for their own reasons. Without it, management often sounds like, “Here’s what the team needs done, here’s your role, do your best, I’ll hold you accountable.” We don’t want to sound authoritarian or micromanage, but it’s hard to avoid when the people you’re leading don’t have emotional connections, feelings of ownership, and meaning in their work.

When you Lead With Empathy and Inspire, you become a resource for them, someone to help them, like a dance follower wants her lead to lead her so that she can do more than she could alone. For a skillful leader, the more clear and firm the lead, the more freedom the person being led has to shine, take more risk, and so on.

The challenge for leading clearly and firmly is to do not too much, not too little, and not too different from what your team needs. The way to find that balance is to know people’s passions and motivations. They know their interests and limitations better than you. Unit 4’s exercises are designed to develop the compassion, empathy, beliefs, and skills to have them share them with you. When you Support and Manage, you match their abilities and interests to the job’s needs.

The next stage in leading people is more detailed management, for which many resources exist.

The next stage in your leadership development is to practice the skills and beliefs you developed in this book. Now that you have technique, it’s a matter of practice.

Lead people this way—with empathy, compassion, passion, and inspiration to create passion, meaning, value, importance, and purpose—and people will want you to lead them again.