Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #21: Support and Manage
The final exercise of Leadership Step By Step! For this last exercise, we had to support and manage a person that we lead to doing a task for us. The steps were:
- On your own, think about the person’s passion that makes them good for the task that you learned about in your previous conversation. Come up with a list of things you think you may need to support them with.
- Meet 1-on-1: remind them of their task and their passion that came up with the previous exercise.
- Together, write down what kinds of support would make them more effective.
- Figure out what you can and can’t do.
- Create work plans for both of you.
- Support them according to the work plan for you.
I decided to do this exercise with someone whom I had a lot of contact with so I could give myself the highest chances of success: my daughter and her window screen cleaning task. The speaking part of the exercise itself went okay. I felt like I stumbled through it and my delivery felt clunky, mechanical, and awkward in the way that I discussed it with her. That said, we did get through the exercise and layed out what the task was and the feelings that would help her to accomplish it, what I could do to make her more able to do it, and set a plan to get the task done. During and after the talk, she seemed happy to do it, which is a big change from the usual teenager response I get when I ask if she can do something (eye-rolling and long sighs). I also felt better for being able to elicit that response, rather than what usually feels like nagging and makes me frustrated being met with resistance to doing something so minor and yet would help out the family so much.
What we decided she needed was accountability and impetus to start, as well as some help doing the task itself, so we decided it would be best to do together. In doing the task, it both started and ended rough, but found it to be fun and relationship-building in the middle. When I first asked her to start the task, despite our conversation earlier that day, she ended up being resistant and tried to get out of it, and I almost felt like I went back to nagging mode, but with a little pressure, she started to move, and once we started, it was smooth! We removed window screens, and I showed her how to clean them while we chit-chatted and laughed about various things. We were both having fun and enjoying the time together.
The last rough patch came when we realized the task was taking way longer than we had both anticipated and we began to run out of time before her volleyball practice. At this point, the “desire to do things perfectly” that we used to get her to want to help with this task in the first place started to hinder us: I said let’s just hurry up and finish it up and get the task done, but she wanted each screen to be done perfectly, and we ended up having some tension over it, but we came to an agreement that she could do her own windows as perfectly as she wants on her own time, but for the rest of them, I just want to get them done, which she agreed to, and we finally were able to finish the task!
Upon reflecting on the exercise, I think that there were quite a few places I could improve. In the conversation itself, I think I could do with some more practice so that the conversation is smoother and more natural, rather than sounding like I’m reading off a checklist (which I was). I think we could have also set some much better boundaries regarding our task to eliminate the tension in starting – just deciding on a timeframe and some conditions for doing the work (like not failing the task due to expectations of perfection) would have gone a long way in improving the task. I think I probably could have motivated her better by making use of her own passion more in starting the exercise.
Overall, I think that this methodology is far better than what I have been doing in the past. Nagging, demanding, or convincing is replaced with positivity, motivation, and a sense of teamwork. Like I mentioned, there’s work to be done for me to really be able to use this technique well, but I think there’s a lot to be gained from becoming proficient at it. I think that this technique could be well used not just at home, but at work or with friends as well. Not because you want to “use” people around you to do things, but because it creates a deeper relationship while connecting over a task that will hopefully help them to feel more of the passion they describe. I’m looking forward to practicing this skill more!
