Jacob, thank you so much for this comment. It has made my day.😊 If I could make a video that would help you the most, what topic would you like it on? All the best on your leadership journey. H

Well, I don’t know what I don’t know, so I’m open to anything really! But there’s definitely lots I’m struggling with. Balancing personal and professional relationship with my team members for example. A trusted team member has had disappointing performance recently, making mistakes he knows better and not being conscientious. I want to say it’s unacceptable, but at the same time I understand it’s been an incredibly busy few months for all, stress levels are high, we’re stretched thin. Everyone is tired and overworked, me included, so I haven’t done a good job as a leader, setting expectations, supervising, mentoring... Personally I empathize and don’t want to hold this against him, but professionally we have to hold ourselves to a better standard… The other one is politics! E.g. People who say what others want to hear at the detriment of the business. I call them out as a matter of principle (nicely, e.g. “Do you think it would maybe be better to do things this way to avoid this future problem?”) but it feels so lose-lose because doing things the “right way” is often not the “easy way” and people like quick solutions, but often these shortcuts have long term consequences that will hurt the business or at least limit its future growth. I cause frictions by saying “we should do better here, this will bite us back later” but I don’t mean it to make people’s lives more difficult, but because I really believe it’s in the best interest of the company. An easy example is outsourcing versus building the team and know-how in house, but basically all kinds of procedural things like formal employee evaluation, interview and onboarding procedures, data management and security; things you really shouldn’t take lightly but are easy to brush off! Another politics move is by-passing communication channels and going to your team members directly. I don’t want to micromanage and it’s ok in my book to ask for info directly, but when others start to ask my team members to do lengthy tasks it makes resource management hard. I often feel like other teams will try to offload tasks to my team members but if I intervene it’s again lose-lose: If I refuse I’m not a team player, and if I say yes then it becomes harder to meet our team’s objectives… I’ll leave it at that. Sorry for the long comment, all the best Helen!

@@jacoblambert4066 Thank you for taking the time to share this. 🙏 First off I feel your pain! It is difficult navigating the space between ‘leading’ the team and ‘being a member’ of the team, and balancing the personal relationships therein. You have also given me food for thought on the video front, and I will definitely make a video on managing the politics of cross functional workflow/tasks and relationships and how it can make it harder to achieve your own objectives and what to do about it. It will appear in the New Year. As for your colleague who seems to have lost their mojo, my advice is talk the them about it, and by that I mean ask them to find out why. Use a One-on-One or go get a coffee together and ask how they are. Say that you have noticed recently they have not been performing at the same levels as before (use specific examples) and you are wondering about what is going on as it doesn't seem like them. Reinforce how much you value and trust them. Finding out why should help you understand and together find more options on how to address it. This video on influence is all about structuring a conversation and asking questions to find out what others think. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9eAlsiTrMmXlHU.htmlsi=aEs3NRiceq6VTMjB These are really good conversations to practice as a manager as you will have lots of them over your career! At this stage its not about managing poor performance it is about understanding why. If you haven’t subscribed already, I have a newsletter you might find useful, weekly lessons and extras. Plus I am planning several live free masterclasses for the New Year, and you will able to find out about them via the Newsletter. Find out about it here. www.growthinc.co/newsletter-signup All the best, Helen