What Leaders Need To Stop Doing w/ Julia Rock
Because I always challenge them, I say, if you have an analyst who's coming into the same organization that you started in, say, 20 years ago, and they're still doing the same thing that you were doing, and they're still having the same struggles
Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast.
I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.
Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now, let's get communicating.
Now, let's get communicating with my guest today, Julia Rock. Joining us from Big Texas, from Houston, she's the founder of Rock Career Development, a keynote speaker who also has spoken on the TEDx stage.
She is a leadership consultant and executive coach who's here to help us deal with burnout and many other workplace dynamics. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Julia.
Hello, Roberta.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm just really excited for this conversation.
And I'm excited that you're here.
Welcome. So why do you say that leadership is hard?
People have a misconception about what it means to be a leader. So a lot of people think that you can just step in to leadership and you know, you have the title and the office and everything and you get to be the boss.
But leadership comes with a lot of challenges, and it requires you to put yourself on the back burner a little bit in favor of the people that are working for you, that you have to prioritize the people that work for you, which means you have to be a
lot more unselfish than you would normally be as an individual contributor. And that's just hard for us to do. Leadership, it also requires a certain level of courage, right?
When you're an individual contributor, you can always say, well, my boss can handle that. I'll leave it to my boss to handle.
When you are the boss, you're the person who has to make the tough decisions, the tough calls, and sometimes the decisions you make are going to be unpopular. Do you have the courage to navigate that?
And then the last thing I will say about why leadership is hard is that the type of growth that it requires in terms of who you are and your mindset, and it has to happen pretty rapidly, right?
Because especially if you're a first time leader, you have to immediately shift your thinking as to, how do I make things better for my team? How do I set the right vision for my team?
How do I make sure that I'm developing in the way that I need to, to be the right example for them? And so that takes a lot of immediate growth. And so all of those things come with leadership.
It's not just the paycheck and the title in the fancy office.
It's funny because reason number one and the reason number three that you gave are almost tied together.
Because I'm asking myself, if you get promoted on Friday to a leadership position and you were individually contributing all along, and then you celebrate Monday, you suddenly must now be this person with this growth mindset you're talking about.
Leadership Transition
Who helps leaders make that transition?
First, it starts with the leader that they are working for.
It starts there because the leader that you're working for, especially if they see that you have the potential to step into a leadership position, they should be helping you with certain opportunities and helping to groom you, making sure that you're
getting a certain level of visibility, working on certain projects and helping you to hone those skills. At the same time, the responsibility is also on the individual.
If you know that you want to step into leadership, it is up to you to start thinking about what will that look like? Who do I need to be when I step into that leadership role? And what skills do I now need to develop?
Because if I've been a heavily technical person and then I'm going to step into a leadership role, that means that there's the soft skills, they need to be developed.
My communication, my presentation, empathy, all these things I need to spend more time on. And me as the individual, I have to think about what do I need to do to get there.
And that's why coaches like myself, others exist so that individuals can go and get that help.
Because if you're doing it on your own, you may be missing something, there may be blind spots you're not seeing, there's expertise that coaches and consultants can provide to help you look at yourself with a different lens.
So that by the time your leader says, Hey, Roberta, I'm going to put you in this position that you're not panicking. It's like, Hey, I know it's going to be a learning curve, but I've already gotten started on this journey.
And so it's not this on Friday, I'm thinking one way and then on Monday, I'm thinking another way. It's more so, Hey, I've been working on this and I'm ready.
If you've been working on it, one of the communication aspects of being promoted to a leadership position is one moment, Julia and I appears in the hierarchy. And the next thing you know, suddenly you report to me.
So how do I have that awkward conversation with you on the first day now that the dynamic has changed?
I think people make that conversation more awkward than it needs to be. Part of it is this is a work setting.
Even though we're peers or maybe we have a relationship, we understand that this is a professional space and that our careers may not progress at the same pace.
And so part of the conversation is sitting down and saying, you know what, Roberta, I'm excited about the time that we've had to work together as peers. And now I'm even more excited to have you as a member of my team.
We know each other, we understand our communication styles, and so we've got a good foundation to build from. Obviously the relationship is different now, but I want us to be able to pull on everything that we've had in our friendship.
And if someone truly respects you, they're going to respect the role that you step into. And if they can't respect that, that says something about the relationship you thought you had in the first place.
So I think we make the conversation more awkward, and we have all this angst and anxiety. And if the person respects you and you respect them, you should be able to tell them, I'm so excited to continue working alongside you.
It's in a different capacity now, but we still have the opportunity to share ideas, come up with things together, bounce ideas off of one another, and still work together collaboratively. That's what I'm excited about.
And so the person on the other end is probably going to be like, yeah, you know what, me too. There may be some blurred lines initially where you're trying to work through it because there's always growing pains in relationships.
But I think when you have that conversation up front, you both know where you're trying to get to, and you're going to be respectful of each other's positions.
Yes, I think the human side of us does make it more awkward than it should be. Yes. Because here's the thing, today it would be much easier to have that conversation.
When I started my corporate job in the 90s, because today, like you said, you bounce off ideas of each other, you're more collaborative versus you just knew your boss knew everything. There was no Google, so you just followed the instructions.
So that would have been a little bit more awkward than what we think it would be now.
Yes, yes. And I think that that's such a good point, is that if we look back some decades, the work culture was a lot more hierarchical. And for many of the larger organizations, it's still that way.
I come from finance and I come from energy and they still have a lot of hierarchy there. But I believe that over time, we've seen the flattening of organizations because people want to take out so many layers of management because it's expensive.
And so what we find now is that you may not have those seven levels of bosses anymore. You may only have two. And so there's not that much distance anymore from you and the most senior person in the organization.
And so that's a different experience that then allows for probably a little bit more freedom in the communication, still respectful and professional.
But you don't have this fear that you might have had in years past when it was like, oh, I've got to go to the bosses, bosses, bosses, boss about something. Right. And so I think the shift in work culture has helped a lot.
And here's one thing I'll also say. I think the pandemic also helped with that, because you saw that no matter what position you had, everyone is struggling. Everyone has lost someone, everyone's had to adapt in some way.
And so I think to a certain extent, it's humanized a lot of leaders and humanized all of us to realize that we are more than our work. We are more than just the task we deliver, that we have things that are going on outside.
And life gets hard for us.
And so when we see the humanity in other people, it makes it easier to approach them and connect with them and have conversations, even in a work setting versus, you know, back in the day where you were just seeing that person on a pedestal, you
weren't really seeing the humanity of them. I think it's a little bit different now.
Humanizing Leaders
I'm glad you brought that last point about the pandemic making us more human in your coaching business.
How do you help leaders become more human? And I'm wondering if when you coach your clients, have you had any that say, you know what, I thought the perks were great, but I'm not a people person now, I realize.
Yes. Yes. So I've had more than you would think of leaders who have said, this is not what I wanted.
Where do I return this job to sender?
So I've had those conversations, and there's some people that either opt to maybe go and start a consulting practice or think about another career move a couple of years out, they finish out their leadership and try to get into more of a senior
advisory role. There's some people who realize that leadership is not for them. And some of that comes from the conversations that we have, and they realize that this isn't what I feel aligned with. And so we help to think of a strategy for them.
But when it comes to humanizing leaders, the way that I help them go through that process is, I call it the time machine, where they go take themselves back to when they were an analyst, or a specialist, a frontline employee.
I'm like, let's step into the time machine and remember what it was like when you were in those seats. What were you looking for from your leaders? How did you want to be treated?
How did you want to be seen?
And then they had to take a moment and say, I remember what it felt like when I felt like a number, where I felt like my bosses didn't care, where I felt like I was just being asked to do tasks and I didn't know why my work mattered.
It's a deep reflection point for them. And then they realized that, hey, I don't want to feel that way. And I don't want my people on my team to feel that way because they are human.
I do see them, especially if you're stepping into leadership for maybe the first or second role, you have this kind of fear that it's like, I've got to show strength and I've got to show that, that I'm holding the line and I'm the big boss.
But they forget that the folks who are working for you, they're humans just like you. They're dealing with the struggles, they have lives, and they're not looking for a robot or a machine as their boss. They're looking for a human being.
And so by helping the leaders go back in that time machine, they remember that I didn't need my boss to be a machine either. I just wanted them to be human and talk to me like a normal person.
I wanted to have a connection with them and I wanted their help.
And so helping them to uncover that and discover more empathy, that's how we get more into the human and realizing that just because you have this title today, you didn't always have that title.
You used to have to ask for time off, and you used to have to ask to clock in and clock out. You were there at one point.
And so let's not forget that you were once there and make sure you're carrying the treatment that you would have wanted to your employees today.
I'm so glad you mentioned how you asked them, and remember what it was like for you. Because I don't think we highlight that enough.
We talk about empathy a lot, but that's basically saying, put yourself in their shoes right now, now that you're a leader. Because you used to be in their shoes not too long ago.
That's right. And I think that that's the thing, because it also takes some pressure off of them, because they also look themselves in the mirror and realize, I'm not that much different.
Yes, I have more years of experience and so forth, but I'm not that much different. I'm not somehow above them. I'm not a god above them.
I was in their shoes not that long ago. I faced many of the same challenges. And what that also helps them to do is energize them to make changes in their organization.
Because I always challenge them.
I say, if you have an analyst who's coming into the same organization that you started in, say, 20 years ago, and they're still doing the same thing that you were doing, and they're still having the same struggles that you were having, what does that
say about the leadership in the organization? Doesn't that mean that there has not been enough change and improvement to create a better experience for the employees coming in?
And some people feel like you have to earn your passage, but for other compassionate leaders, they're like, you know what? You're right. If things are still as bad as they were for them as it was for me, that means we have a lot more work to do.
And so that's another place where they can see that, hey, I'm not that different, and I need to make a change for the people who are going through what I went through.
I am so not a fan of that whole, you have to earn your right to be treated well. It reminds me of those boarding school cruel pranks. Yes.
I hate that type of treatment. It is so unnecessary. I mean, what does it achieve exactly?
It's unnecessarily cruel.
It's unnecessarily cruel because if you're a leader and you hated what you were experiencing, the idea of allowing another person to go through something that you personally hated, it's just cruel.
To prove a point of some kind, it's truly just cruel behavior.
It's very unnecessary.
Burnout Explained
You say burnout is not a workload problem. How so?
Workload is part of it. So if your plate is full, sure. So part of it, it starts with leadership as well.
And there's a number of different facets as to why leaders themselves drive burnout. The first is that they don't have a clear vision, and they cannot tie the work that their employees are doing to the greater vision.
And so the employees are showing up every day, making the widgets as they call it, but they don't really know why their work matters. They don't know where it's going.
And so they don't feel a sense of purpose because their boss has not been able to show them, hey, this is why what you do solves a problem in the world. This is how it serves our strategy.
The second piece is many leaders, they forget that they're the ones who are responsible for the type of work their people are doing.
And so if you have a team of people that are just doing busy work, right, that's not adding a lot of value, they're just checking boxes and just doing tasks, of course people are going to feel burnt out and stressed out for doing something that
doesn't seem to move the needle in some way. And then lastly, you have the fact that they're not placing work in the right places. Often, you know, leaders have what I call top performer bias, right?
So you look at your team and you have Roberta and Julia, and they're the top performers on the team, so they're getting all the work, all the projects, all the things.
And so you have other employees, then, who are not getting the same level of work, they're not getting the same level of support, nothing.
And so not only are you burning out your top performer people, because they're like, I can't take anymore, but the people who aren't top performers, they're looking and seeing how they're being treated and how they're being treated differently and
not being given certain opportunities. And so then for themselves, it's like, do I even belong here? So I'm just going to show up and just do the bare minimum.
And then lastly, on the flip side of that, for the employees, many of us, and I'm going to hurt some feelings when I say this, but for many of us, we find ourselves sitting in positions that we know we should have left a long time ago.
The jobs either don't align with our values, they don't align with where we see ourselves now, the person that we've become, but we continue to stay because we need the paycheck, or it's what we got our degree in or whatever it is.
We rationalize why we stay there, but day after day we go and we feel drained, we feel disconnected, we don't have energy, and it's all because we're out of alignment, and we keep forcing ourselves there.
I'm sure somebody listening is probably in that situation right now.
Yes.
Because I've been there.
And we all have been, because we're human, we're trying to have that sense of security. But here's the thing. They say that great leaders are the ones who mentor their teams to the point where they make themselves replaceable.
That's right.
That's right. That's what a lot of leaders don't think about. They forget that their role is not about self preservation and self development.
Their role is for the development of the people who work for them. You should be able to develop a team of people to run past you in their career.
That you're pouring in to them, you're coaching them, you're mentoring them, so that you yourself are probably out of a job. That the team can run so well without you.
And then, you know, as they get to ascend in their career, you're like a proud parent.
I mean, when I saw team members on my team getting new projects, even after I was no longer their boss, I was cheering for them and just so excited to see their success.
But often the manager role, I won't say leader here, the manager role, people feel as if I want this success to myself, that this is about me and me wanting to get ahead and me hitting my career goals and aspirations and getting the big paycheck and
the nice new car and the bonus, the stock bonus or whatever. Forgetting that leadership is a service. You are serving the people who work for you.
Yes, you're getting paid and they need to do their jobs and do them well, but your role is to serve the people who work for you and they come first, not you.
It makes me wonder how challenging it is for that type of leader to delegate, because sometimes you find that they don't have this trust on their team. They think whenever I do this, I do it so much better.
If I give it to Julia, will she do it as well as I would have?
Man, here are two things that I have found when it comes to managers who delegate or who lack delegation. It's one of those things where it's that mindset of, if you want things done right, you've got to do it yourself.
They don't trust their people enough to take on the work. That's why when you hear people say delegate, I always challenge them. I'm like, are you delegating to people?
Are you empowering them to do work? Because those are two different things.
If you're just putting a task on someone's desk and you're going to be hovering the whole time and you don't give them the tools they need, then it's not really delegating in a meaningful way, and the person's not getting any development out of it.
But if you're empowering the person saying, hey, I'm entrusting you with this work, and I'm going to give you the tools and resources to get this done. Just let me know if you need my help or the results. Now this person is able to take ownership.
They're able to get their own development, and they're going to see how much you trust them and their skill set, which means that they're going to be willing to work even harder for you.
But a lot of leaders, they feel that they have to hover, and it's like, well, if you don't trust your people to do the work, why did you hire them? But here's the thing that we don't talk enough about.
There are managers who they trust their people, but they don't trust themselves. So they don't have enough understanding about whatever the topic or the subject matter is, and so they want to be in the mix of everything.
They want to hover over everything because they themselves don't trust the skills that they have. They don't trust the knowledge they have about the topic, and so they want all the explanations. They want to see all the files.
They want to see all the work you're doing because they don't trust their own skills. Unfortunately, I've had a couple of managers with that. I realized, I'm like, wait, so I don't think it's that they don't trust me.
I think it's that they don't trust themselves with this, which is unfortunate, but we don't talk enough about that because no manager is going to say, I don't trust myself enough.
They're going to say, no, I just want to make sure the team is doing it right. But it's like the team is equipped. They know their stuff.
It's you who's coming in without the knowledge, who probably needs more support and more understanding, but you're able to hide behind the title of leader. And so you can always just say, I just wanted to see what the team was doing.
And that way you never have to confront the fact that you yourself don't feel equipped.
You know why we don't talk about that enough? Because we automatically assume that if you've been promoted, there's this subconscious confidence you should have that, oh, you know what?
The organization recognized my talent, my skill, my contribution. So obviously I know what I'm doing. So we always assume that you already have the confidence.
I don't think many of us would question that you wouldn't trust yourself. That's why I think, yeah.
That's right, that's right.
Now, when you talk about the fact that people are disengaged. So some of the examples we've already spoken about, which is, if your team, you just give them tasks, but you don't empower them.
What are some other reasons that your team may be disengaged?
There's several reasons why your team may be disengaged. You know, part of it is if they don't feel like you have their back, you know, because if they're showing up and because you're asking them to come to work and give their best every day.
And unfortunately, you don't see, oh, they don't feel like you are doing the same for them. For example, you know, I talk about pass along syndrome.
And pass along syndrome is something that leaders struggle with, where they may get a request from someone more senior from them, a board member, whatever it might be.
They get a request to have their team do some work or pull some information together, whatever it might be. And instead of the leader asking the question, why do we need this work? What is it for?
What question does it answer? Instead of doing that vetting on their team's behalf before sending work over, they're just handing it off. And the team's already stretched thin, they're busy, and they're like, well, why do we need this?
What are we doing this for? We already have other priorities. And so they don't feel like that you have their back.
Another reason why they may be disengaged is because they simply don't trust you because perhaps you have shown them that they can't trust you, whether it's that they've been blindsided by information, you've changed your mind about something you've
committed to without giving them any sort of rationale. And so they may feel that, okay, I can't trust this person. So I will do my job because I know I need a paycheck.
But other than that, they're not going to get anything additional out of me because me investing too much has burned me before because it's clear that the leadership is only out for themselves and I can't trust them.
Another reason why employees may begin to feel disengaged is that they don't feel like they themselves can achieve their career goals in the organization.
That they're not getting any sort of development or conversations about their career plans or development plans. And so it's like, okay, I'm showing up, but there's no conversation of promotion. There's no conversation about my next opportunity.
And so it doesn't really seem like my boss is invested in me and my growth. And so why am I going to come here and over perform and give them everything when they don't even really care about whether or not I grow here?
And so again, I will do what I need to do to keep my paycheck. But in terms of giving more above and beyond, they're not going to. And so there's several reasons, but I wanted to just share a few of those.
No giving extra miles if they're not interested in my career goals, which then begs the question, you know how when you get interviewed and you get the job, and then during induction, they ask you about your career goals and how they're going to fit
into the organization. Where does that suddenly get thrown away? Because a lot of these conversations I had, Julia, am I wrong?
Yes. Yes. It's so funny because when you're coming into the organization, everybody wants to put their best foot forward, right?
So we're going to value you, Roberta. Just let us know where you want to be, and we're going to support you on the journey to where you want to get to.
But then you get into the role now, and the organization and your leader, they begin to just think about what the organization needs.
So it's like, okay, well, we need Roberta to stay in this seat because this is what's happening on the team, this is what's happening in the company, whatever. So they never quite get back to, well, what does Roberta need as well?
So they only think about that when they're bringing you in because they know that one that's a selling point and they know that it's the right thing to do.
But once you get in, these leaders, some of them are also overwhelmed in their own jobs and they're just thinking about how do we just keep this machine moving.
But also, I think overall, many of these organizations and leaders, they just think about what does the organization need? How do we make more money? How do we get more revenue?
How do we do whatever our thing is, sell more product? So they're thinking about what the organization needs, and they forget that the people that they have are their greatest asset.
And as a result, it's required for them to invest the time and energy to make sure that these folks are happy. When you look at the research, it shows that many employees, they don't feel as if their organization cares about their career development.
Gallup has done some studies and some other platforms. Employees worldwide, they don't feel like their bosses care about their development. And so that's really saying something.
But again, it's that they have lost sight of the employees are part of this equation too. It's the organization, what they need, but it's also what the employees need to make sure that things work well together.
Yeah, sometimes I think just the overwhelm of the work and everything that needs to be accomplished. Nobody thinks about, hey, let's go get her HR file and see what she said when she was on track.
Yeah, but let me chime in here for the employees who are listening. This is where you have to take career ownership because your boss may be overwhelmed.
So it is up to you, if you have not had one-on-ones with your boss, it's for you to get them on the calendar.
It's for you to help develop the agenda to make sure that you save time on the agenda to talk about your career development and your career goals. You are the CEO of your career, you're in the driver's seat.
So if they're not supporting you, if they're not asking you the questions, they're not talking about your development, it's up to you to bring up that conversation as much as possible.
And then if they're truly not going to develop you, then you have to make a different decision. But in the meantime, it's up to you to say, hey, I'd like for us to meet once a month for our one-on-one, if you don't have those in place.
And if you do have them in place, hey, I'd like to add some time for this week's agenda to talk a little bit about my career goals. It's up to you to have that conversation if they're not going to have it with you.
You are the CEO of your career.
Leadership Practices to Stop
You say leadership needs to stop doing. What is that?
Well, there are several things that leaders need to stop doing. One of the things that they need to stop doing is trying to solve systemic problems with band-aids. I always say you can't treat a gunshot with a band-aid.
And oftentimes in an organization, leaders or especially the executives and so forth, they're trying to treat systemic problems with their employees with band-aids.
So they'll look at the employee survey and the employees say, hey, we're looking for new opportunities, we're not satisfied. And what they think that means is, let's give them more pizza parties. Let's do more team building.
Let's give them the afternoon off once a quarter. And they think that that's solving the problem. Instead of saying, clearly there's something wrong here.
We need to invest more time to get more insights. And so taking the time to dig deeper and understand what your employees actually want from you instead of just going with what you think they want. Because if you ask them, they'll tell you.
So that's the first thing. The second thing they need to stop doing is that when they do get any kind of feedback, letting it go by the wayside.
Oftentimes when companies ask employees for feedback or they do a survey, all the data is collected, they have some sort of pretty PDF or email about what the results are, and we never hear anything about it again.
And so the employees are like, wait, I thought we provided feedback on this. We're still doing this? And the thing is, your employees don't expect you to say yes to everything.
They just want an answer, right? They don't need the yes. They just need an answer of any kind.
Even if you say, hey, we've taken this under consideration, it's not something we can do right now. Or, hey, this is something we're thinking about, but it's probably two to three years out.
Your employees can take that because at least they feel like, hey, you listened to us, you thought about it, you evaluated the resources, and it may not be something we can do right now.
And so the big thing is, if you are going to take the time to get feedback, that you at least circle back with your employees to say, hey, we can do this or we can't, and here's why.
And then the last thing I will say that I wish leaders would stop doing would be to hiding decisions.
So often what you see in organizations, whether it's layoffs or restructuring or a new project implementations, one day they're not there and then the next day they're there.
And it's like, well, when were we given any time to prep or we weren't given any communication in advance? It's just like you guys have made this decision and we're just finding out at the last minute.
And your employees understand that tough decisions have to be made sometimes. Your employees understand that things change, but what they can't accept is you blindsiding them and not involving them in the process.
Even if you make the decision, it's also about just letting them know, hey, this is something we're considering, or hey, this is the decision that we've made.
We're not going to implement it until here, but we wanted to give you the heads up so that you can start to make whatever plans. So employees want to be treated like adults.
They don't need you to hold and guide their feelings and try to spare their feelings or anything. They're adults. They want you to treat them that way.
So share with them as you're making decisions so that they have enough information to make decisions for their own careers.
Moral of the story, communicate.
Yes.
That's what this show is about. Everything falls down to communication.
That's right.
Julia, anything that I haven't asked you today, you were hoping to share with our audience, especially those who are leaders.
So, I wouldn't say that you haven't asked. It's just I want to reinforce the idea that for leaders, it's important for you to determine what kind of leader you want to be. How do you want to be remembered?
What do you want your legacy to be? Do you want to be the leader that doesn't trust their people, that doesn't communicate, that doesn't show empathy, that doesn't care about their people?
Or do you want to be the leader that sets the standard, that develops and sets the right example that people want to be and be around? You have the opportunity to make that decision, but you've got to think about what kind of leader you want to be.
Words of wisdom from Julia Rock, the founder of Rock Career Development, Keynote Speaker, TEDx Speaker, and Leadership Consultant. Julia, this has been such a pleasure and you've taught us so much. Thank you very much for being on our show today.
Thank you so much Roberta.
I was so excited to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.
My absolute pleasure. And before you go, please tell us where our listeners can reach you.
Absolutely. So LinkedIn is my favorite platform. So my name is Julia-Rock.
If you put them in the URL, my profile will come up. And I'm at The Julia Rock on all the other social media platforms, on threads, on Instagram. You'll be able to find me at The Julia Rock, or you can visit my website rockcareer.com.
rockcareer.com, The Julia Rock and Julia-Rock on LinkedIn.
We were able to rock this joint. Thank you very much, Julia Rock. Don't forget to subscribe, liberating and a review on Apple and Spotify.
Stay tuned for more episodes to come.
