Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / You Can’t Promote Someone Into Management with Alícia Rius (stage 4) - Ep. 418

Transcript

You Can’t Promote Someone Into Management with Alícia Rius (stage 4) - Ep. 418 · The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast

• 0:00
  Scott Ritzheimer: Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again
• 0:03
  to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast-the only podcast that
• 0:06
  grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a
• 0:09
  founder. I'm your host Scott Ritzheimer, and here's something
• 0:13
  that takes most founders way too long to figure out, and that is
• 0:17
  that you actually cannot, not shouldn't, not might not, but
• 0:22
  cannot promote someone into management. Our guest here
• 0:26
  explained what we mean by that. But you can give them a title,
• 0:29
  you can give them a team, you can even bump up their salary if
• 0:33
  you're extra generous and nice. No, I'm just kidding. But none
• 0:36
  of that actually makes them a manager because being in
• 0:39
  management isn't a level up from what they're doing. It's
• 0:42
  something altogether different. We'll talk about what that is
• 0:45
  here in just a moment. And why is this important? Because your
• 0:50
  best people got promoted probably because they were
• 0:53
  exceptionally good at doing the work. But now, if you're in
• 0:57
  level four, like so many of you are, you're watching them
• 1:00
  struggle with a job that nobody, probably including you, prepared
• 1:04
  them for. But you're wondering why in the world this isn't
• 1:08
  working and what to do about it. Well, if that's the case, you're
• 1:11
  in a great spot because here with us today is Alícia Rius,
• 1:14
  who has spent years inside fast-growing companies watching
• 1:18
  the same thing happen over and over and over. Brilliant people
• 1:21
  get promoted into leadership and quietly start drowning. As a
• 1:25
  founder, co-founder, and CEO-sorry-of three ventures,
• 1:29
  she's lived it herself. Today, she runs Hive Leadership and
• 1:33
  Team Coaching, where she works with scaling companies to do the
• 1:35
  one thing that actually stops the bleeding: building clarity,
• 1:40
  clear roles, clear expectations, and clear decision making before
• 1:43
  the chaos becomes the culture. She's a creator of the 4p of
• 1:47
  Leadership framework and the author of *Lead with Clarity: A
• 1:50
  Practical Guide for New Managers and Founders. Nobody Prepared
• 1:53
  for the Job* She's here with us today, Alicia. Welcome to the
• 1:57
  show. Really excited about this conversation because it's an
• 2:00
  important one, you-I think you open the book, if I'm not
• 2:05
  mistaken, with a reasonably bold statement that stepping into
• 2:10
  management is not a promotion. If that's the case, what is it,
• 2:14
  and why is this so important for the founders listening today?
• 2:17
  Unknown: Well, first of all, Scott, thanks for having me
• 2:19
  today, and to go and answer your question, it's not a promotion;
• 2:25
  it's a career change. Now, let me explain that what it means.
• 2:29
  So, most companies, even the way we treat our best people, is to
• 2:34
  reward them for being excellent at what they do into their next
• 2:39
  career step, which is going into management. Now you were
• 2:43
  exceptional at doing your job, you know your craft, all the
• 2:47
  shortcuts, and why not? We are growing. We need to build teams,
• 2:51
  and therefore I'm going to promote you to manage people who
• 2:55
  does the job that you were doing. However, that is not a
• 2:58
  step up. It's a step out. It's a career change, because now you
• 3:03
  have to. So the new job requires you to have a new set of skills,
• 3:08
  a mindset, and most importantly, an identity, a new identity. So
• 3:13
  that creates a lot of confusion for people who, you know, go
• 3:16
  into that new role and start and things starts to fall apart is
• 3:21
  not what they expected. Things are off, but you can't pinpoint
• 3:24
  exactly what it is. And the person who promotes them also
• 3:28
  feels frustration because he was the best at doing that, or she
• 3:32
  was the best. Why is not working? Why we're not, you
• 3:35
  know, hitting targets? So there's a lot of things that
• 3:38
  needs to be taken into account, and and is that that requires
• 3:42
  another? I mean, the type of job completely change, and nobody
• 3:45
  explained that to them.
• 3:47
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, I don't know that it. We can really
• 3:49
  overstate how important it is at this level because if you look
• 3:52
  at the level three founder, who is the one who becomes a level
• 3:55
  four founder, all they have are great players, right? Like
• 3:59
  that's who. That's how you win at level three, and so the only
• 4:04
  option for bringing a manager in from within the team is to do
• 4:07
  exactly what you're talking about, right? To and we usually
• 4:10
  pick our best person, and and and I think what makes this so
• 4:14
  challenging is you do that a couple of times, but then you
• 4:16
  think there's something wrong with the managers, like they're
• 4:19
  all broken, they're all they've all got it wrong, but you don't
• 4:22
  really see it going right because they're all struggling
• 4:24
  with the same problem that you created. So that starts to
• 4:28
  compound. Gets really confusing because now it's like your whole
• 4:30
  management team is struggling. So someone who's in that
• 4:32
  position, founder, business is growing. It's great. They're
• 4:36
  trying to keep up, and they need folks to help them manage it.
• 4:39
  Let's start with let's actually start with basics, just in case
• 4:42
  we missed it in level three. What does good management
• 4:46
  actually look like?
• 4:48
  Unknown: Well, that is something that they need to talk between
• 4:51
  themselves. So what happens most of the times is that the person
• 4:55
  who promotes them, if it depends on the size of the company, if
• 4:58
  you have a chart, one thing, but maybe. It's the founder himself
• 5:01
  or herself that is promoting them, and they assume that they
• 5:05
  will understand what the job requires, and that is the first
• 5:09
  mistake. Assumptions is your enemy. So the first thing is
• 5:13
  about creating clarity about what do I expect from that
• 5:17
  person. So if you are the person who promoted them, you have to
• 5:21
  stop and think. What do I want from that person? What good
• 5:26
  management or leadership looks like to me when it's successful,
• 5:30
  and have that defined because then you can go into that person
• 5:34
  and say, I'm promoting you into this, and this is what I'm
• 5:37
  expecting you for the next three months, six and nine months, and
• 5:41
  these are the targets that we're going to be hitting, and that's
• 5:44
  what I expect you to do. Now, when that doesn't happen,
• 5:48
  because as you said, you grow fast and things move very
• 5:53
  hecticly, and we don't have time to stop and think. It's a
• 5:57
  luxury. So what happens is that you don't see what you're. You
• 6:01
  know what you don't want, but you haven't defined what you
• 6:04
  really want to see. So what for me, good management looks like,
• 6:08
  it would be it's personal to every person or every founder.
• 6:13
  Find out what that looks like, define it, and then share that
• 6:17
  with the person you just promoted.
• 6:20
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, you've got literally the book on the
• 6:22
  topic of leading with clarity. One of the challenges that I I
• 6:28
  find with the founders I work with is that they think that it
• 6:31
  is clear. They they don't understand how it could not be
• 6:34
  clear. It's like I've asked you to do that. What is it that gets
• 6:38
  in the way of founders and actually being clear, not in
• 6:41
  what they say, but what their team understands.
• 6:45
  Unknown: What's something very interesting about that is that
• 6:48
  for them, for the founder who's promoting the people, clarity is
• 6:52
  extreme in their head, because what happens is that they
• 6:56
  started the idea, they started the business, so clarity still
• 6:58
  holds in their head, and it's easier to share when you have a
• 7:01
  five to 15 people in your team. Now, when you pass a number,
• 7:06
  that clarity needs to be visible, and that's when
• 7:10
  processes needs to happen, and you have to have documentation
• 7:14
  explaining step by step what that means for you and for the
• 7:19
  team. Now, again, because we assume, or the clarity is very,
• 7:24
  you know, clear in your head, then you again assume that it's
• 7:28
  obvious. But when you are, or you have something in your head,
• 7:33
  or you have those expectations, you are sitting in a different
• 7:36
  chair than your team, so you don't have the exact visibility
• 7:39
  of what your team is doing, or your lead teams, and that's why
• 7:43
  you need to sit down and align and say, "This is what I'm
• 7:46
  expecting. This is what I want to see. Let's have that
• 7:49
  documented because then we can check if it it matches. And what
• 7:55
  doesn't matter, then we have to bridge the gap, and that's how
• 7:59
  you keep improving your processes.
• 8:02
  Scott Ritzheimer: Another of the big distinctions between level
• 8:05
  three and level four, like you're talking about here, are
• 8:08
  that you you can't you can't be the only one who's clear anymore
• 8:15
  in your communication. Your managers have to be clear as
• 8:18
  well, and I think it's reasonable to assume that most
• 8:21
  of them are going to struggle in the same way that the founder
• 8:23
  did initially when they were learning how to be clear. So,
• 8:26
  how does a founder who's trying to coach one of the managers on
• 8:30
  their team, and and and the founder doesn't feel like that
• 8:34
  manager is being as clear as they think? What what would be
• 8:37
  some ways to approach that?
• 8:39
  Unknown: Asking questions, and I think that one of the things
• 8:44
  that founders and new managers needs to learn are coaching
• 8:47
  skills. And for one, that is asking for help. And you've
• 8:51
  talked a lot with experts in your podcast: is ask for help,
• 8:56
  and then ask if the other person needs help, and that's how you
• 9:00
  start understanding where the other person is falling short.
• 9:05
  And also, even sometimes when your communication you think
• 9:07
  it's very clear, then a good question to ask is, "What did
• 9:12
  you understand about what I just said? And then that person will
• 9:17
  give you an answer, because even when you try to be very clear,
• 9:21
  the language that we use or the context that we we use in that
• 9:25
  moment, the other person might interpret it in a different way,
• 9:29
  and that's why it's so important to just try to see if the other
• 9:32
  person got what you were intended to communicate.
• 9:36
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, so helpful, so helpful. Something
• 9:38
  else that I found really helpful as I was reading through the
• 9:40
  book. Very simple, but the challenge here with a founder at
• 9:45
  this level is there's like so many things that they have to
• 9:48
  fix all at once, and that's really overwhelming. And so, if
• 9:51
  we're saying, "Hey, not only do I have to learn how to lead
• 9:53
  better, I've got to get all my managers to lead better, there's
• 9:57
  there's this like overwhelm that might cause you to never. Even
• 10:00
  start so one of the things I found really helpful was your 4p
• 10:03
  framework, and I'm wondering if you could just kind of quickly
• 10:06
  introduce those to us. Folks who want to dive deeper, we'll make
• 10:08
  sure they know how they can get a copy of the book. But what are
• 10:11
  these 4p's and why are they so helpful for someone learning to
• 10:14
  manage?
• 10:15
  Unknown: So the 4p leadership framework is a diagnostic tool
• 10:18
  to find out where clarity is missing in your leadership. So
• 10:22
  when we I was studying leadership, the most of the
• 10:25
  challenges that founders face fall into one of those four
• 10:29
  buckets or multiple. It's either personal, the way you lead
• 10:32
  yourself, people, how you lead others, purpose, which is
• 10:36
  strategic leadership, and process operational leadership.
• 10:41
  Because I come from systemic and I love systems, I think
• 10:45
  leadership is also systemic. And the beauty of this framework,
• 10:50
  and I have a drawing in the book. It's each piece is
• 10:53
  connected in a circle. The beauty of it is that when you
• 10:56
  have a challenge to face, or many, it feels overwhelming. But
• 11:01
  you find out what's the first one that you need to to tackle.
• 11:06
  Think about it as a chair that has four legs, and each leg is
• 11:10
  1p So when one the chair is wobbly, you don't rebuild the
• 11:15
  whole chair or throw it away. What you do is to find the leg
• 11:18
  that's more unstable and you fix that. You focus on that first,
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  and because the chair is one thing, suddenly the whole chair
• 11:27
  improves. The same happens with this framework. When something
• 11:30
  is not clear enough, you focus on that area, and I have case
• 11:34
  studies where then, by default, it creates a ripple effect that
• 11:38
  other areas are improving by itself because whenever you work
• 11:42
  on something, it impacts the others. So that's why it's. I'm
• 11:47
  telling funders it's okay to feel overwhelmed, but you don't
• 11:50
  have to find out where your clarity is missing, which
• 11:53
  dimension needs your attention the most. Work on that and see
• 11:57
  how the rest improves, and then you will go to the next.
• 12:00
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, that's so helpful. That's so helpful,
• 12:03
  Alicia. It sounds so easy, and to some extent, it's simple, but
• 12:08
  it's not easy. It should be. I I think good management is
• 12:11
  something simple to understand, but difficult to do. Right,
• 12:14
  unless you're intentional about it and you develop the skill for
• 12:17
  it, then it becomes then it can become second nature. So there's
• 12:21
  this question that I'm eager to get to. It's a question that I
• 12:24
  ask all my guests. I'm very interested to see what you'd
• 12:26
  have to say. The question is this, Alicia. What would you say
• 12:30
  is the biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all? What's
• 12:34
  that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening
• 12:36
  today knew?
• 12:39
  Unknown: That they need to know who they are. Find out who you
• 12:44
  are and who you need to be, and that thing will unlock many of
• 12:49
  the challenges that you're facing. Sounds simple, but it is
• 12:53
  like a lot of introspection, and that's something that we don't
• 12:58
  talk enough, and we take it for granted. We we think we know who
• 13:02
  we are, but we go through different identity crises
• 13:05
  throughout our life. And sometimes we are on autopilot,
• 13:10
  and you think you know who you are, but you things have
• 13:13
  changed. So find that out.
• 13:16
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, so good, so good, Alicia. We cannot go
• 13:21
  any further without talking about where folks can get a copy
• 13:23
  of this book. So remind us what's the name of the book,
• 13:26
  where can folks find it, and how can they reach out to you to
• 13:29
  hear more about the work that you and your team do?
• 13:31
  Unknown: Thank you. the The book is this blue one. It's called
• 13:34
  Lead with Clarity: How New Managers Turn Confusion into
• 13:37
  Confident Leadership. It's available on Amazon, and also if
• 13:40
  you are a founder or team lead, and you are curious about where
• 13:44
  clarity is missing in your leadership, if you go to my
• 13:46
  website, hiveleadership teamhiveleadership.com/resources,
• 13:53
  you will find a test, a self-assessment. You answer
• 13:57
  that, and it'll give you a rudder and a score, and then you
• 14:02
  some next steps.
• 14:05
  Scott Ritzheimer: Brilliant, brilliant. Well, Alicia, thanks
• 14:07
  for being on the show. Thanks for writing the book. I really
• 14:10
  enjoyed it. I know those who who take the moment to to click
• 14:14
  couple clicks on Amazon, you've got it yourself. You will not
• 14:17
  regret it. But thanks for being on. Join us from the other side
• 14:20
  of the pond. We didn't even say that the opening here, but just
• 14:23
  a privilege and honor having you here. I really appreciate it.
• 14:26
  And for those of you watching and listening, you know your
• 14:29
  time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as
• 14:32
  much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait
• 14:35
  to see you next time. Take care. Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer
• 14:43
  here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and
• 14:46
  Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what
• 14:49
  you need for the level you're in right now. If you want to
• 14:53
  discover what level you're in, take our 10 question Founders
• 14:56
  Evolution quiz for free at Founders Quiz. That's
• 15:01
  foundersquiz.com. It'll pinpoint exactly where you are and give
• 15:05
  you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next
• 15:08
  level in your journey as a founder. If you got something
• 15:12
  out of today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, or
• 15:15
  review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let's be
• 15:18
  honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible
• 15:22
  guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and
• 15:26
  I'll see you in the next episode.