MURIEL WILKINS: I’m Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. I’m a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that, hopefully, they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they’re facing. Today’s guest is someone we’ll call Margaret to protect her confidentiality. She’s an executive who’s held leadership positions for over a decade at a few different companies.
MARGARET: It is highly rewarding, it’s high visibility, it’s high impact, it’s high stress, and it requires always-on. But I really love what I do. Even when I sometimes don’t love the job, I really love the people problem-solving aspect. How do I coach people? How do I upskill them? How do I help form context? I’m aware that some of my superpowers in this role are, I’m very good at giving context, I’m very good at connecting dots for people, and I am a nerd at heart, and I love the hands-on, and I love the problem-solving.
MURIEL WILKINS: After some time at her previous organization, Margaret decided to look for a new executive position. And then she decided to take a chance and take an opportunity abroad.
MARGARET: I took it for a number of reasons. One is, it was an overseas opportunity, which was very interesting, and we’ve traveled a lot, and now we have the opportunity to travel more. We have a nice window of opportunity where kids are in good shape. They don’t need us for a little while. Parents are in good shape. Let’s just take the opportunity while we have it. And I really like the company’s mission and vision. It’s just one of those things that just really aligned.
MURIEL WILKINS: But the new role has not been without its challenges.
MARGARET: I came in, and immediately, there was a crisis. So I wound up diving in and getting very tactical and operational to help get through that crisis. Just as I was hitting a point of, “Okay, I think we’ve got everything under control. I can pull back up and really start focusing on strategy,” we had another crisis hit. My boss had to leave unexpectedly. Suddenly, I get thrown into his position. As it turns out, we also were in a situation where we were needing to cut costs. I did a big reorg. At one point, for almost the entire year last year, I had 20 direct reports, which is not tenable at all, and I wasn’t able to give them the attention that they needed. I just didn’t have the bandwidth and the capacity. And so I felt very bad about not being able to be the leader I needed to be for those folks.
MURIEL WILKINS: Margaret, like many executives, is someone who’s been in leadership roles for many years, but it still isn’t smooth sailing. She’s feeling bogged down in the tactical and managing the unexpected crises and having a hard time focusing on where she really wants to take her work and her team next. Let’s start the conversation as I ask her about where she is today, where she wants to go, and what she thinks might be standing in her way.
MARGARET: I’m now in a position where the crises are handled. I’ve got the right leadership team. What I really need to do now is what I should have done two years ago, which is, I need to build out the three to five-year strategy. I need to make sure that everybody understands what the really, really important things are, and I’m stuck. I feel like I’m still stuck in the operational pieces. I feel like I can’t really truly pull myself out of it because I can still see things happening. I’m a little exhausted. Also, I’ve sort of hit a point of, the previous two jobs, I felt like I was firing all cylinders and I had these great superpowers and getting great recognition, and I don’t feel like I have those superpowers anymore. I’m wondering if, this is a horrible thing to say, but am I past my peak? Did I expend all my superpowers? Am I just done?
But I really feel like I have writer’s block. I know what needs to be done. I really do. And doing this for a long time, I’m well-educated and well-experienced. I know I need to get this written down. I know I need a communication plan. But when I say I’m working on the plan, I’ve literally been working on it for six months. But largely, I’m just procrastinating. I want to build a plan, but there are a couple of reasons that I’m feeling stuck. One is the thing I said before, which is, there were these crises and I wound up getting sucked down in the tactical, and I’m finding it very, very hard to come back up.
MURIEL WILKINS: You faced a number of crises when you first joined the company. The role was not a role that you weren’t unfamiliar with, right?
MARGARET: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: It sort of leveraged things that you had done in the past.
MARGARET: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: But you faced those crises. Those crises resulted in you having to get very tactical-
MARGARET: Yep.
MURIEL WILKINS: … down in the weeds. You were able to up-level your team and get past the crises. And now, you’re at a place of trying to do the longer term, thinking three to five years out, something, again, that you’re not unfamiliar with. But you’re finding yourself stuck, blocked, procrastinating from moving forward and doing it.
MARGARET: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right? Okay. Got you. Before we jump into what you believe is keeping you blocked, what does that feel like to you to feel blocked? How do you know that you are stuck?
MARGARET: I have Post-it notes all over the place with themes of things that I need to go on that three to five-year roadmap, and I can’t visualize how to put them together. I have action items on my to-do list that go undone for longer than they should, just because I look at them and go, “Mm, I don’t know if that’s important enough.” I’m having trouble prioritizing. I have a little focus issue, but I don’t actually think it’s a focus issue. That part, I can’t pinpoint. I’ve never really had problems focusing. Although I will say my calendar is full every single day, so getting any focus time to actually sit down and brainstorm and visualize and think only comes on the weekends. And by the time the weekend comes, all I really want to do is sleep. It’s like I’m exhausted.
MURIEL WILKINS: It’s interesting to me because I asked you what does it feel like to you. What you are describing to me is evidence that you are stuck. But what does it actually feel like? Why is it a problem for you?
MARGARET: It feels like I’m letting the team down. It feels like I’m not doing my job. It feels like I’m not demonstrating the leadership skills that I know I have. Another example of that is, about nine months into the role, did a coaching session. I had a 360 review. And so a lot of people at the company who knew me by then knew me because of these crises. The main piece of feedback that came back was, “Wow, she’s really great in a crisis. Gosh, she really keeps a level head. She’s really good at keeping everybody calm.”
All of those things are 100% true. That is what I do and that is part of my job. That is not my only skill, and it bothers me that when people think about me and what my skill set is, that they just see, “She’s really good in a crisis,” and not, “Wow, she’s an amazing leader. Gosh, look how she inspires her team. Look how she is moving the needle on what they’re actually doing.” Because I know I can do those things. Every time I say this, I feel like I’m in victim mode, but I got waylaid by the … We had to get tactical and get things done, and I just still feel like I can’t quite pull back out.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Okay. What I’m hearing from you is, “I’m known within this organization as this leader who can … well, somebody who can handle a crisis,” because it’s interesting to me that you did not use the term leader in that realm. You just said somebody who handles crisis.
MARGARET: Yep.
MURIEL WILKINS: And then you juxtaposed that with that you don’t like not being seen as a leader who can inspire and coach people. We’ll get to that in a second, around why is one a leader and the other is not. But before we get there, I have a question around, if I were to ask those same folks who responded to that 360 and gave you that feedback around, “Wow, she really handles crisis well,” et cetera, et cetera, if I were to ask them what are their expectations of the individual who sits in the role that you’re in, and how do they define success for that role, what is the value they’re hoping that role brings, how would they define it?
MARGARET: That’s an interesting question, because I’m not sure they know. I think they would say my job is to make sure that the company is protected, that information is protected, that … I’m trying to figure out how to say this. This is not coming out quite right. I think they would say, “Hey, well, she knows what the job is. So we just expect her to do it well.” It’s a good question.
MURIEL WILKINS: Why is it a good question to you? What is it bringing up for you?
MARGARET: I’m not sure they know what my job is, actually, except to handle crises or prevent the crises from happening in the first place.
MURIEL WILKINS: And what if that is your job?
MARGARET: Well, it sort of is, but it’s a little bit more than that. It’s ensuring that everyone in the company understands how we manage risks across the company, and part of managing risk is managing the crises that come when a risk manifests. But part of the job is just keeping those risks from manifesting, to begin with, by communicating, by showing a cost benefit analysis on, “If we spend this much money, we can reduce the chances of this happening by this much.” It’s that latter part that I haven’t been able to do, and I don’t think my team is equipped to do yet either, and so there’s some training and upskilling that needs to happen. It’s not just that I need the head space, because I can get the head space. I need to get unstuck from where I am. I’m just handling crisis after crisis after crisis and dealing with complaint after complaint after complaint into, “I’m going to make sure that we, as an organization, are serving the business, that we are demonstrating that we can make the business better by showing how much we can save, we can improve the business.”
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. But what I’m hearing you say is, you are demonstrating value in the role. It just feels to you like you’re not demonstrating the full value that you can bring.
MARGARET: Yes, I think that’s true. Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. Now, the question is, what is the value that is needed in your organization? Because I can say, “Hey, I can run 26.2 miles.” But if the race only calls for 13.1, do I really need to run the 26? I’m not going to get an extra prize for running 26.2, right? I better go find a race that requires 26.2. So I’m not saying good or bad. I’m just asking, is the need in your organization and the expectations of your organization aligned with the expectations that you have of yourself as a leader?
MARGARET: The second part of that is good. Let me come back to that. The other piece of this is I like the running analogy. I don’t think we need to run a marathon. I think we, at least, need to hit the 5K. Right now, all we’re doing is sprints, because we keep having these crises, and we’re just sprinting, and then sort of resting for a little bit, then we’re sprinting again. If we can do the 5K or the 10K, we can do fewer sprints.
If I can demonstrate, If we do these things and we do them in the right way and we do them in this methodical, ‘Here’s my long-term plan to help us get where we need,’ nobody has to keep running sprints. We actually get to run together. We get to support one another in this 5K or 10K, and we all get to the finish line at the same time. Right now, nobody’s actually getting to the finish line because these crises just keep coming.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.
MARGARET: We have to stop the crises from coming, because everybody’s just going to keep getting exhausted if we don’t do it the right way.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. What conditions would need to be in place for you to be able to run to 5K? I.e., what conditions would need to be in place in order for the crises to stop coming?
MARGARET: I need to be able to articulate what the actual risks are, what we’re trying to accomplish, why it’s better for us in the long term to address these now than to keep addressing them as crises as they come up. Ultimately, when the crisis happens, we put a bunch of band-aids on and it stops again. But if we actually put the brace on first and then actually did the training, we would build up better muscle, and then we wouldn’t have to have the band-aids on all the time.
So if I can do a better job, both myself and, again, helping my team get there, of explaining, “This is our long-term journey. This is our couch potato to marathon training over the next three years. The reason it’s good for us is because you’ll be able to speed up your development and delivery because all of the right things will be in place, and you won’t get pulled back every six months because we have some sort of crisis because something didn’t go well.” There are ways that I can demonstrate. They’re not easy metrics, but there are metrics there that I can demonstrate where we can help reduce tech debt. We can reduce incidents that cost us money in the end. It’s the stopping and sitting down and getting out of my own head to write that down.
MURIEL WILKINS: What would need to be in place for you to do that? To stop and sit down and write it down. Stop, sit, and write.
MARGARET: I know it seems so easy, doesn’t it? Part of it’s calendaring, and I’m aware that that’s largely under my control most of the time. Again, when incidents keep coming up, some of it’s not under my control. I get urgent requests all the time. One other piece that’s in place is my boss. He’s also very tactical. And so what we’ve talked about, having a broader strategy that I can then also say, “I’m going to hang my strategy on your strategy and we’re going to create this vision together.” There’s no vision there.
And so I’m trying to create a vision that should be part of a broader strategy, but it’s not, because he can’t quite get there. He will say, “No, I like the strategy. I just need time.” And so I feel like I’m a little bit in the same spot. But then he’ll spend an afternoon running random reports and then send us all reports saying, “Look how bad these numbers are.” Well, that’s not strategy. That’s not what we actually need. So we wind up a little bit in whack-a-mole mode. And so part of what I wind up doing is responding to him on a regular basis and trying to follow up on these random things, which effectively is just another crisis. It’s not technically a crisis.
MURIEL WILKINS: Margaret’s situation shows us that even when you’ve led at multiple organizations for years, problems will always arise. That’s because even while drawing on your own experience and knowing what you’re capable of, the chemistry of the team, the culture of the organization, and even your own energy levels change. What started out as a problem she viewed more about her own internal ability to put together a plan, to push through what she calls her version of a writer’s block, quickly turned into a multi-layered conversation about her team and whether they need more upskilling, or whether her boss is what’s keeping her stuck. We’re still digging more into what is really holding her back from putting together a proactive plan instead of always reacting.
I love that you used whack-a-mole because I am envisioning you whacking, that game where you’re whacking them down.
MARGARET: Yep.
MURIEL WILKINS: Because you are. You’re in reactive mode, reacting to whatever pops up, whether it’s your boss, whether it’s whatever is happening. It’s interesting to me that I asked you, what do you need to stop, sit, and write, and you went to what’s getting in the way of you stopping, sitting, and writing. I’m still not hearing what would it take for you to stop, sit, and write this story that you actually articulated, which is the couch potato to marathon in whatever many weeks, which I love.
MARGARET: I think I might use that as our analogy now.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.
MARGARET: This is our vision board.
MURIEL WILKINS: Let’s imagine. What needs to be true for you to stop, sit, and write for one hour?
MARGARET: Okay. What needs to be true? Either we need to have no more crises, which is probably unrealistic, or I need to be able to confidently delegate those crises to somebody else. That’s number one. I won’t go into whether or not I can actually do that. I’ll just say I think that’s part of it. Either I need my boss to stop randomly sending metrics or, I guess, same thing. I need to be able to confidently delegate that to somebody else to deal with. I will say, in that case, I do feel like I need to protect my team from that, to some degree, like, “Why do they need to deal with that noise?” Except that means I’m dealing with the noise. So it would be nice if he would stop. I don’t see that happening. So either I need to deal with the noise myself or be able to delegate the noise to somebody else. Or I need to figure out how to have a conversation with my boss on, “This is not productive, and you need to stop it,” which is also reasonable.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And so, Margaret, I’m going to try to keep it simple because I’m a pretty basic, simple type of person. What needed to be true and what enabled you to take the hour or two hours that we’re spending together today?
MARGARET: I put it on my calendar. I blocked it off, and I blocked off time to prep for it.
MURIEL WILKINS:
What would it take for you to do the same thing, to write your couch potato to marathon plan?
MARGARET: If it’s time on my calendar, I need to protect it and not let those crises interrupt that blocked time.
MURIEL WILKINS: What can you use from what’s happening literally right now in the moment? Because in the time that we’ve been speaking so far, and I’m going to look for wood that I can knock on. Here we go.
MARGARET: Well, I will say I was literally in a crisis meeting about an hour before you and I met.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. But yet here you are, right?
MARGARET: I am, yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: So we have evidence that it can be done.
MARGARET: It can.
MURIEL WILKINS: And that’s all I want for.
MARGARET: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. What I’m trying to figure out is, what’s the formula that allowed right now to happen, which is we’ve at least had a good chunk of time. I’m not saying it’s going to be enough to write the whole plan, but we’ve had a chunk of time right now that allowed you to do this. So what’s the formula that you can then transpose to other areas where you find you’re not getting that?
MARGARET: Not to be flippant, but this was nine o’clock my time, PM, so it’s not during my normal daytime. So it was actually easier to schedule. I am not unwilling to spend after hours time doing what I need to do, but I will also say that the brain power that it takes to do that is not something I want to do late at night, because I’ve tried it multiple times and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t really end in good results. This takes midday, fully awake, semi-caffeinated brain power time to actually work on.
There is a piece of protecting the calendar. It seems like it should not be that hard, but there’s a … because of the job I do and because of the regular … I mean, there are literally weekly issues that happen, at least. Part of it is, I think, as we’re talking about this, figuring out how to truly delegate to somebody else and say, “You know what? For the next two hours, you need to take meetings. You need to do whatever the things are. I’m not going to put anything else on my calendar,” and trusting that they’re able to handle whatever issues come up in that moment, or conversations with other leaders that come up in that moment, and trust that I don’t actually have to be in that room.
MURIEL WILKINS: Have you ever tried that?
MARGARET: Yes. I think I’m closer now than I probably was six months ago when I had 20 direct reports. I have a leadership team in place now that, I think, is really good. I think there’s still some room for development, but I wouldn’t necessarily hesitate to put them in front of other leaders. I think I’m in a much better position than I was just a few months ago. To be honest, I also think I need to convince everybody else that the leaders I have under me now are strong. People have gotten used to coming just directly to me, and so they’ll just keep coming directly to me because they know I’ll fix their problem for them.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.
MARGARET: And so I need to tell them, “Yes, I know I could fix it for you and I could probably fix it for you quickly, but I actually want you to go work with that person and let them help you fix it instead.” Because I need to start delegating so that somebody else can take this on.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. What’s coming up for me is, when you shared that you took this role overseas, and you and your partner, your husband, decided, “Yep, we’re going to do it.” You described it as there was a window where things were aligned in a way where it was possible. The kids were good. The parents are good. You have this window where you can go and do your thing. I think in a way you’re sort of describing right now creating that window, not necessarily waiting for the window to just happen, but creating the window. And so just in the same way that the window for you to be able to work overseas was the kids being good, the parents being good, all these stars aligning, I’m going to shift a little bit and say, well, what are the stars that would need to align in order for you to now have a window where you can focus and engage in these longer term, as we call them, highly important, not urgent efforts. But the difference is you’re not going to wait for them to just happen organically.
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: You’re going to try to actually align them yourself. But the first place is like, what are those stars? And then let’s talk about how you align them.
MARGARET: I like that. Thank you. I think that’s a good parallel. What stars need to be aligned? I need to have the right leadership team under me that not only do I trust, but our stakeholders also trust. I need my boss to not play whack-a-metric. I need the right support from a communications plan. I need the space to be able to communicate with the team on a regular basis, and I just haven’t been very good about doing that. It’s one of the things that doesn’t necessarily come naturally to me. I love doing it, but I really have to think about it. I’m not an extrovert, so communicating outwardly on a regular basis is not one of the first things I think about doing.
Historically, when I’ve done this and done it well, I’ve had a team around me who said, “Hey, by the way, we’re hearing stuff,” or, “We think we’re going to hear stuff soon. Can you post something? Can you say something? Can you put an email out?” Whatever. I don’t necessarily have that around me right now, so I need people around me who will help signal those things for me, like, give me the space. Trust. Time. Trust and time, I need a little inspiration that I can figure out, if I get the brain space. I can also ask my team for that. That’s the other thing. I’m also aware that they can help with this. But also, there’s a little bit of, “This is my job to create the strategy,” and to give them the messaging that then they can take forth.
I don’t want to put it on their shoulders that they’re suddenly supposed to create this strategy, although it’s a good development opportunity for them also to help me with that process. So if I can find the in-person of, say, whatever time with them and let them help with that, we’ll probably come up with a better product.
MURIEL WILKINS: There’s a couple of things there. First of all, kudos to you for identifying the stars, because there is a lot of stars out there. You could look up at the sky and not see them because it’s cloudy, et cetera. But you’re seeing the stars and then you’re picking them and you’re creating your own Big Dipper diagram to recognize, “This is what I need to align and how I need it to align in order for me to be able to have that window, that space to be able to do the strategic things that I said I want to do.” Kudos there.
One of the things to realize in choosing those stars is also which ones are actually in your control and which ones are not.
MARGARET: Yep.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so you named star number one as having a leadership team that I trust and others trust. In your control, not in your control? Where would you put that? Do you have influence over it? Do you not have influence over that?
MARGARET: I think I do, actually, to some extent. I mean, I can’t control their actions, which will, in fact, influence whether people trust them or not. But if I can communicate to our stakeholders that I trust them, and not just say the words I trust them, but actually demonstrate that I’ve put my trust in them, then that will go a long way to having the stakeholders actually trust them. Now, the actions they take after that are not under my control, and if they aren’t able to reinforce that trust, then we have to have a whole different performance conversation.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. It’s sort of like middle ground. You can’t fully control if others trust them. You can do things to influence that. But you trusting them, that is in your control. You choose whether you trust, and as you said before, one of the ways you can demonstrate that is you delegate certain things to them, which is supported by trust. So we can grab that star. That star fits in the diagram.
Star number two was boss doesn’t play whack-a-mole, whack-a-metric. In your control, not in your control?
MARGARET: Not in my control at all. I thought it was for a while, that if I just did what he asked, that it would help. But then I realized he was just going to move on to the next one and then on to the next one. 100% not in my control.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. Love it. Beautiful. Wish we could have it. Wish upon a star. Can be in the galaxy, but not part of your diagram. Let’s just put that one to the side and hope that-
MARGARET: Okay.
MURIEL WILKINS: … eventually, it aligns on its own.
Star number three was being able to communicate with your team on a regular basis, but also having support to help you do that, because it’s something that you know can do. But in order to be able to do it, one of the conditions that you need is support in terms of others signaling to you, “Hey, this is the time,” or, “This is what we need to do.” In your control, not in your control?
MARGARET: That one is in my control. I can pick the right people or I can communicate, at least especially with my direct staff, and say, “This is my strength. This is not my strength. I need a little help where I don’t have the strength for you to point out where I’m not communicating when I should.” Or find a comms director who can help me create the plan and identify … Even if it’s a rote on a regular cadence, it’s still getting out there. I don’t have any of that right now. It’s very ad hoc, and I know I’m doing myself a disservice by not communicating with the team on a regular basis. It’s so important from an inspiration, from a context, from an engagement standpoint, and I really feel like I’m falling down on that one.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. What is clear to me is you have outlined all the conditions that you need. There’s a distinction between, “What are the conditions that I need to be able to do this work,” versus, “How do I do the work.” And you’ve been jumping right into, “How do I actually write this plan.”
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And yet what’s keeping you stuck is the conditions haven’t been in place for you to have the space to write the plan. And so sometimes, we got to go back a couple of levels, when we’re not doing the thing that we know we’re supposed to do. Sometimes we got to lay out the conditions that then either inspire or motivate or just make it more amenable for us to actually do the thing. I think about there are certain things that I really don’t like to do. I hate working on my bills, hate having to do some administrative, and I find myself procrastinating on those things. What I learned is, like, “Let me make it an experience that is more amenable to me.” What do I do that? Well, what are the conditions that would need to be in place that would make that task, one that I really don’t enjoy, one that would be a little bit more enjoyable? You know what I do? When I have to do my bills, I light candles in my office. I have nice music playing in the background.
MARGARET: I love that.
MURIEL WILKINS: My surroundings are conducive, right?
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: I put a time limit. I align all the stars to make it-
MARGARET: That’s awesome.
MURIEL WILKINS: … a little bit more palatable, to help you focus on it. And I think that’s what you’ve been able to do here, right? Like, what are the stars?
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: What are the stars that are in your control?
MARGARET: I think you’re right. I’ve been sort of flogging myself for, “Why can’t you just sit down and get this done?” But not really thinking about what are the things that are keeping me from getting it done, and what could I change that would make it easier or pave the path for me to actually get there. It’s not just a, “I have control over my calendar. I should just figure it out.” It’s, I actually need other people to help me and give them the calendaring pieces that I can’t take on or that I shouldn’t take on, because I need to do this. Because it’s important. A lot of leaders feel like we need to shield some of our folks from overloading their plates, overburdening them. But if we don’t make the space to do those strategy things, to do the communication things, to do the visionary and inspiring things, we’re really doing them a disservice, because we’re not giving them anything to hook onto in their own daily lives.
MURIEL WILKINS: We’ve reached an important inflection point here in Margaret’s coaching conversation. When we began our session, Margaret feared that she was losing some of her superpowers, that there was something standing in the way of doing the kind of strategic long-term planning that she knew she was capable of. Getting more into the details about what was preventing her from putting a plan together, we quickly discovered that there were many other stakeholders, competing priorities, and organizational structures that were also contributing to her “writer’s block.”
It’s good to acknowledge the gray area here. Some coaching clients come with a steadfast belief that they need to change their own behavior. Others come with problems they attribute to outside forces beyond their control, like a boss. The reality is, with almost every leadership issue, it’s usually some combination of both internal and external forces helping to create hurdles. Everything, after all, is co-created.
It’s a positive sign that Margaret is taking on personal responsibility here and trying to figure out how she can change to do better, to be on the path she wants to be on while also setting the organization up for success. As she starts to think about practical steps she can take next, I was curious about how she leverages her relationships at work, and whether she was approaching them in a way to get the most out of them.
One of the words that I’ve heard you repeat a few times in the most recent part of our conversation is this word around help and asking for help. You said something a little while back around like, “Well, if I’m the leader, shouldn’t I be able …” and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m sort of using my own words here. But, “If I’m the leader, shouldn’t I be the one who creates the strategy? Should I really be putting that on them?” Inherent in that is an assumption that as a leader, you can’t ask for help.
MARGARET: I think that’s true. I mean, yes, I think there is … It may be where I came from, it might be because I’m a woman, but yes, I think when you hit a certain point, there’s a feeling of, “Well, I’m here, and clearly, I’m expected to know what to do, so I shouldn’t be asking anybody else for help because I’m supposed to know what to do.” I have also found, as I’ve moved up in my career, when people talk to you, there’s a sense of … How do I say this? Sense of responsibility to be the person who knows the things. I feel like when people are looking up to me, I’m supposed to know all the things. I’m supposed to know how to do all the things. I’m supposed to be able to just do all of the things. I’m supposed to have superpowers because I am where I am. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like that. And so I think asking for help, particularly among peers and the folks below us, becomes very difficult as we continue up through the ranks.
MURIEL WILKINS: What’s the risk of doing that?
MARGARET: The risk of doing that is that you potentially look like you don’t belong where you are.
MURIEL WILKINS: What’s the risk of not doing that?
MARGARET: Well, you don’t continue to move up.
MURIEL WILKINS: So either way?
MARGARET: Yeah, exactly. Good point. Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, look, I can’t sit here and say, “No, people don’t believe that about …” I mean, I don’t know these folks. Who knows? But it is an assumption, right?
MARGARET: It is. I think it comes down a little bit to imposter syndrome, and I hate that phrase. I think we need to change the script on how we talk about that. It’s just a feeling. But it is, again, at least for women in traditionally and heavily male fields, for things that I need help with, I do in fact have a very trusted circle of people that I will ask questions of. I will not put questions out to an entire group largely because, again, there’s a little bit of, if somebody even thinks a little bit that maybe I don’t deserve to be where I am, me asking for help just reinforces that.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.
MARGARET: And I would not put myself in that position.
MURIEL WILKINS: I understand, and I want to respect where you are in terms of what you’re willing to do or what you’re willing to “risk” versus not willing to. You have your own boundaries around that. What was interesting to me is that in sharing, you said … There’s sort of gradients. You went from, “Well, the expectation is that I know everything and I shouldn’t ask for help.” And then there was, “I might have a few people I can ask for help, and I do have that.” And then there is, “But I can’t just put it out there to everybody and yell over the megaphone, ‘Help. Somebody come help.’“ You’re not doing that either. But there’s some gradient in there. And so you write the rules. What are the rules that would make you feel … Here’s a formula you’re solving for. You said you love solving problems. So here’s the problem. What rule would need to be in place for yourself where you could feel like you belong, and safe, and you get the help that you need? What would that look like?
MARGARET: I like framing it that way. I think that’s good, because the one thing that I do strongly believe is, the leaders that I have working for me know their space, and they probably know it a lot better than I do. And so I do, in fact, need their input and help as we’re talking about a long-term strategy, because I don’t want to impose a strategy that doesn’t make sense, because I don’t know their area.
I think asking for help in that context is, “You know your space better than I do. I would really like your input and your help on actually creating this. Let’s sit down and talk about how we do this.” Or, “Can you write down your ideas? I’ll collate all of them and then we’ll all come back together and talk about it as a group.” But it enables them to be the experts that they are. It enables them to feel like they’re supporting me in what needs to be done. It enables them to feel like they’re contributing to the larger vision and the value that we bring to our stakeholders, and it doesn’t put the entire burden on me to figure it all out.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. I mean, in a way, you’re distinguishing between where everyone adds value, right?
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: You’re leaving it up to them to add value from a subject matter expertise standpoint. As you said, you want to show up as the leader. That means you’re not the subject matter expert. That’s not your role. Do you need to know some things? Of course. We all need to know something. But is your role to know everything? Is that how you measure success in your leadership role?
MARGARET: No, that’s exhausting.
MURIEL WILKINS: Right.
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so there’s a part of this around making sure that not only are you aligning the stars, but you’re also aligning with the North Star, which is how are you defining success in this particular leadership role and operating according to that and making sure that all the other stars are aligned with that as well, which, as we talked about before, you get to place them. You get to allocate them.
MARGARET: I like the way you said that because it actually triggered … You said, “Define success in this leadership role.” I think I’ve been trying to define success in this role the way I was successful in previous roles. It’s not going to be the same formula in every role. It was for a few roles. This one’s just different for a variety of reasons, I’m sure. But I think that’s a good way to frame it going forward is, for whatever I’m doing, how do I define success in this particular role? I would use the analogy of parenting. What I do now to be a successful parent with an adult child is different than how I would’ve defined success as a parent of a toddler. Very different. It’s still parenting. Very different success criteria.
MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right. And so guess what? You’re still leading.
MARGARET: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: If we go back to the beginning of our conversation when you’re like, “I’m just managing all these crises. I’m not leading.” Yes, you are. You’re still leading. You’ve been leading all along. And now you’re out of that, or you’re trying to find windows. So you’re still leading. And part of figuring out how do you move into this more strategic space is part of the leading. You don’t wait until you get there to lead. Aligning the stars is part of leading. Okay?
MARGARET: Yes. No, that makes sense. Yes. I really do like that framing of it, both the, How do I define success in this role? But also, the, How do I push the stars into alignment? Because you can’t just wait for them. You can see all the little blockers, but actually changing the way you’re looking at them, and which ones do I control? What can I move? Versus, what can’t I? If I can’t move it, then we control what we can control in the moment, and we do what we can do with that. That’s really helpful.
MURIEL WILKINS: Love that. Love that. Okay. I feel like this is a good time, because there’s a lot there, and I want to make sure you are able to walk away with enough in your hands versus too much, that then nothing happens. How I tend to close my meetings with all of my clients, which is, I’d love to hear where you are now versus where you were at the beginning of our conversation.
MARGARET: I feel like I knew all of this, and you just pulled it all out, putting me in a position to think about things differently. We all get a little bit stuck in our rabbit holes. I really appreciate the way that you asked different questions, gave me different framing because I really feel like I’m not stuck in that hole anymore. I feel like I can take this and now actually move forward and take some action on resigning things, reframing things, recommunicating things in order to put us all in a better space where I can help create the strategy we need. Actually, I feel a lot better. This is good. This is good.
MURIEL WILKINS: Good. I’m glad to hear it. You know what? I love the fact that we talked about stars so much today, so I’ll throw another one in there. Sometimes we just need the full moon to be out to be able to see what’s in front of us, and I think that’s what happened with you today. So now that you see it and you know what you need to do, it’s really about just committing to that next step and then keeping it moving for yourself. Okay?
MARGARET: Yes. Thank you so much. Very helpful. I appreciate it.
MURIEL WILKINS: Margaret’s leadership experience served her well in the past. But in some ways, it might be what’s keeping her from being strategic in her current role as she held onto the belief that she couldn’t ask for help and that she should have all the answers. My job as an executive coach is often to challenge those assumptions. By asking her what conditions might lead to a different outcome, Margaret realized that what was keeping her from leading strategically was in large part under her control. For her, taking steps to bring the stars into alignment wasn’t about just clearing her calendar or sitting herself down and really making herself focus. It was also about learning to lead at scale by being clear about what’s needed and asking for support. That’s it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders. Next time …
NEXT EPISODE’S GUEST: So while I am here doing everything by the book, going through the correct channels of authority, if I need something done or approved or whatever, he just goes right into the owner’s office and gets what he wants, which is frustrating. How do I rise above that?
MURIEL WILKINS: If you’d like to join my community for exclusive live discussions, apply to be on the show or sign up for email updates, head over to murielwilkins.com. You can also pre-order my new book, Leadership Unblocked, wherever you get your favorite books. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins and Instagram at @coachmurielwilkins.
Before you go though, I have a really important ask of you. If you love the coaching conversations on Coaching Real Leaders, it would mean the world to me if you could go to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to subscribe to the show and leave a five-star review. Of course, if you think others would learn from these episodes, please share it with them.
Thanks to my producer, Mary Dooe; sound editor, Nick Crnko; music composer, Brian Campbell; my director of operations, Emily Sofa; and the entire team at HBR. Much gratitude to the leaders who join me in these coaching conversations and to you, our listeners, who share in their journeys. From HBR Podcast Network, I’m Muriel Wilkins. Until next time, be well.