How Accidental Managers Become Intentional Leaders
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“When, when the team does well, give away the credit. When the– when things don’t go well, managers should be the first one to say, “Here’s what I didn’t do well there.” – Joel Hilchey
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author and “Fun-at-Work” expert Joel Hilchey on leadership lessons for accidental managers.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is a keynote speaker, “Fun-At-Work” expert, CEO & executive producer of Beanstalk Creative, a team of entertainers turned educators helping their clients create fulfilling careers. He’s a leadership facilitator at the National Student Leadership Conference and he’s the co-author of 2 books, with a recent book authored himself called The 6 and a Half Habits of Highly Defective Bosses: Serious Lessons for Accidental Managers.
Connect with Joel and learn more about his work…
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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Joel Hiltscher, and here is why he is awesome.
He’s a keynote speaker, fun at work expert, CEO and executive producer of Beanstalk Creative, which is a team of entertainers turned educators helping their clients create fulfilling careers. He’s a leadership facilitator at the National Student Leadership Conference, and he’s the co-author of two books.
But his latest co- not co-authored by any… He, he’s all by himself on this one. It is The Six and a Half Habits of Highly Defective Bosses: Serious Lessons for Accidental Managers. Super curious about what an accidental manager is. And if you know this show, we like to define things. We’ll dig right into that.
We got Joel. Hello, Joel.
Joel Hilchey: Hey, it’s great to be here, Russel. Thanks for having me
Russel Lolacher: Thrilled to do this. A bit of a hiccup already that we’ve been having this lovely conversation, and I forgot or pushed the wrong button for recording. So we’re gonna dive right back in. Thankfully, that was a very quick…
Joel Hilchey: We get to have it again and say, a- and go even deeper this time. It’s…
Russel Lolacher: It’s one of those things that I’m glad it didn’t go down further down the road and I’m like, “Ah, sorry Joel.” But you know, technology and me.
Joel Hilchey: Totally. Totally. We could call it a near miss of and, and then we learn from it. It’s great.
Russel Lolacher: I love your, your… ‘it’s a teachable moment, Russel. You’re an idiot, but it’s a teachable moment. You learned.’ Appreciate that. Um, we’re gonna get into accidental managers. I know you and I are both passionate about the idea that managers and leaders, they’re different, both super important, but they are extremely different skill sets, approaches, how culture, workplace culture rewards or acknowledges these things.
I wanna get into all that because that’s, that’s something I know my audience really struggles with sometimes when they see cultures and how they address these things. But before we get into any of that, sir, the question I ask all my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?
Joel Hilchey: Okay. So the one that comes to mind is from when I was studying engineering but, um, was doing a, a summer student job. My dad worked in the cement industry, and I was lucky enough to get a summer job at at the cement plant as a shoveler. He was a manager or perhaps a leader, and I was a shoveler and and, and a laborer.
And my shift foreman, um, his name was Mike. He was a really good guy, and he… I remember once the, the kind of the, the image that came to mind was we were loading something up on a crane and I put my hand on the pulley, and I didn’t know anything about cranes. If you, if you’re in the audience, you, you do.
You know you’re not supposed to do that, I guess, because Mike basically, like, swatted my hand away and was like, “Joel. Oh, no. Get your hand off that thing. You never put your hand on a pulley. If, if that guy up there misread one of my signals, he could start the pulley up, and your hand would get sucked into that thing, and then you wouldn’t have fingers or maybe not a hand.
W- we want you for the long term, Joel.” And, um, and although I, I got scolded, he, he was obviously looking out for me. He cared about safety. He, he, you know, I, I, I trusted that if I was doing something wrong, he was gonna step in to help me, and that level of support is, I, I think, not something that every employee gets.
So I, I think of that as like, “Oh, yeah, this guy was going to bat for me. He was a good guy, um, and a, and a good manager.” So it– I don’t know if that resonates. I know that’s kind of a specific environment and, and it’s different than the white collar, quote unquote white collar stuff. Most people, you know, on their computers typing away and working on spreadsheets.
But, um, but I think, you know, I talked with a, a, a, an investment banker guy the other day, and he said to me, “Great bosses, like, will go to bat for their team, but they’ve got the juice to deliver.” And I, I think this guy Mike showed me like, yeah, he, he would go to bat for me, and he would do what it take do what it took to, like, deliver for me, to, to keep me safe.
So I, I think it, it does apply. The principle applies in lots of places. Um, but I don’t know. What, what do you hear in, in that story?
Russel Lolacher: Well, I’m, I’m curious about also is how you received it, because there is situations where, especially at that young age, suddenly this person in authority, the person that’s mentoring you, coaching you, is physical with you and, and, and very abrupt in his response. So I mean, you took it in a way, or maybe it was reflective over time that you took it in a way that it was sort of like, “He’s looking out for me.
He’s, you know, being physical, but in that environment it’s okay,” blah, blah, blah. The other side of it is that somebody could look at that and be embarrassed. Be like, “Oh, you had to do that in front of others. You had to do that in the workplace because you don’t think I can hack it, or you think I’m an idiot and you think I’m still learning.”
So it’s not only the intention, it’s impact. So I’m kinda curious as to, ’cause you went back quite far, ’cause you’ve been an entrepreneur for quite a while, is h- what have you taken from that in, in that environment in your own interaction with whether clients or, or anyone you interact with professionally?
Joel Hilchey: You know, okay, so when I think about it, it’s like, was I embarrassed? I could have been, but I think because he justified it, he gave me good reasons for what he was doing, and obviously the principle of, you know, keeping the team safe was sound, um, it didn’t feel embarrassing to me. Had he not s- had he just swatted my arm away and said, “You idiot, what are you doing?
Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to put your hand on a pulley?” No, I didn’t know. You know, people don’t– People only know what they know. They, I think a lot of times people make these mistakes. But, um, when managers need to step in and, and give some sort of feedback, the way they do it really matters.
And one, one of the chapters in the book, we’ll get into this, but habit five of highly defective bosses is feedback fumbling, and I think there’s three ways to be bad at feedback. One is to not do it at all, one is to do it badly and the third is to be bad at taking feedback. And I think what stuck with me from this time is that often I think, “Okay, I need to give some feedback.
I need to give it sensitively.” But in the moments where I think, “Oh, gosh, I don’t wanna embarrass anybody here. I don’t wanna say this at all,” I actually think of the flip side of doing it. Like, what am, what am I implicitly saying if I don’t give this feedback? Then maybe I’m, I’m allowing this. You know, if, if Mike didn’t take a stand on safety, he’d be basically saying, “We say we care about safety, but when push comes to shove, meh, you’re on your own.”
Um, we might say, “Oh, I care about quality,” but then when I see something that’s not up to quality if I, if I don’t do something about it, what am I implicitly saying? Saying, “Well, actually, we don’t really care about that. It’s fine the way it is.” And that relates to also habit two, which is mediocrity mongering.
But so I, I think the thing that stuck with me from this is actually the way in which when people take a stand for, on something, you know, whatever the issue is, that communicates what they care about. That’s that’s one sign of showing their values.
Russel Lolacher: I call that the leadership gap, which is that ver- the difference between what your words are versus what you s- actually do and reinforce. Like, the values on the wall on a poster, and you’re like, “We don’t do any of those things,” but they sound really good for recruitment. So, for an organization like that to say safety’s our number one priority, and then, like, not saying anything or allowing things to happen, then there is that gap between what is said and what is done.
And employees aren’t dumb. They see that. They understand what… And it, and it hurts the relationship. It hurts that
Joel Hilchey: Yeah. Yeah. We sniff it out when people are inauthentic like that or, or incongruent, you know? When, when– People very quickly pick up, you know, they, they see with all their senses and, and, you know, smell it and see it and, and, and live it, you know? They’re like, “Oh, this is what happens around here.” And that culture is much more, I think, um, alive than the words on the wall.
Sometimes they’re aligned, often at least some of them are not
Russel Lolacher: Let’s get into a bit of the root of the problem, and hopefully we have some answers, because we’re talking about accidental managers today. And I love setting the table and sort of defining terms, because I’ll have a lot of people on the show and they’ll be like, “Leadership, leadership, leadership.” I’m like, “Great.
What do you mean by leadership?” Because it could mean… Or diversity or accessibility was one the other day. Was like, “We need to be more accessible.” I’m like, “What do you mean by being accessible?” ‘Cause that can be different b- based on different people. Or is it an umbrella statement? But again, if we don’t talk from the same songbook, we don’t know what we’re trying to do.
So having said that, accidental managers. What the heck do you mean, Joel?
Joel Hilchey: Yeah. So Most people, about 80% according to the stats self-identify as accidental managers or accidental bosses, and it means sort of a collection of things. These are often people who didn’t– they, they weren’t gunning for the leadership role. They, they didn’t go to school for it. They, they often didn’t get any training for it.
These are people who by circumstance almost, they sort of describe it like, “I don’t know, I kind of stumbled into this leadership role.” A-and so I’m talking about those people. These are you know, I’m imagining, um, a few different archetypes maybe. Often one of them is, like, the technical expert who got really good at what they did and then somebody said, “Wow, can you lead the team?
‘Cause you’re really good at doing this thing. Can you be the person who leads the other people who are not as good at doing it as you?” Um, that, that’s a common model. That’s it’s almost like a team captain model in some ways. My, my pal in investment banking said this, this is a common model there, where the, the highest producers are the team managers. Another model might be the, the, just the most senior person in the room, the person who’s been around the longest, and their boss leaves and, um, they say, “Well, you seem to know what’s going on here. Why don’t you, why don’t you take over?” Um, and but they’re shoulder-tapped to do it. It’s not that they had their hand up for it.
Um, f-for entrepreneurs, often they’re, they’re just trying to do a thing. You know? They’ve got this idea to make a product or make a s- an app or a something or but and they realize, “Oh, I need, I need some other people to help get it done.” And so they, they realize they need a team, but they, they never were really thinking like, “I wanna lead people.
That’s my purpose here.” The, the– maybe a fourth archetype is actually the kind of working professional. I’m imagining somebody like a, like a roofer or a, or, you know, a contractor. Um, a-and, and a, a pool service technician. And then, you know, they’re, they get busy in the busy season and, oh, they’ve got a nephew that needs a summer job, so they bring on the nephew and then, “Oh, Lord, ’cause we got an extra big job this week.
Do you have any buddies that could come along?” And the nephew comes along, and then before they realize it they’ve got this busy season and kind of a seasonal work and pattern and, and now this like, you know, solo pool service technician is managing a team of 12 and a part-time bookkeeper. And they, you know, they don’t, they didn’t know what they were getting into.
So I think a lot of people end up like almost by, by happenstance. They, it– for me, this was the path. I was a solopreneur. I was in the training and development world, and I had hired an assistant and we, we got busier and I hired a media person and, and I was three years into having an emp- like a team of, of employees.
And one of my people came to me with a, a problem. One of the other one of the other teammates had said something sort of inappropriate, and it wasn’t huge, but it was the type of thing that mattered to her. And, and she said, “Well, gosh, what should we do? You know, do we have a policy for this sort of thing?”
Like, f- I had a lousy answer. “Policy? No, I don’t know. We don’t have a policy. You know, we’re working across the kitchen table from each other. We don’t have a policy for this.” “So, well, should we do something about it?” “Well, yeah, probably should do something.” “Well, are you going to do something about it?” “Y- I yeah, absolutely.”
Like, you know, I’m stumbling my way through this thing. So we, we found a solution, but it was the next day that I kinda had this realization. I was talking about it with my wife, debriefing the conversation, and I realized, like, sh- she had come to me not as my assistant, but as her employer. Like, she came to me ’cause I’m the boss, and, and I was responsible for her career and her working environment and the team dynamics and all this stuff that I, I didn’t, I hadn’t thought about at all before.
So, um, as I shared that story and, you know, other people, it, I… What I’ve seen in chatting is people, about 80% say, “Gosh, I never planned to be doing this. I gosh, yeah, but here we are, and I guess, I don’t know, I’m, am I doing the right things?” So when I say accidental managers, I mean probably the majority of managers, but also people who self-identify as like, “I got into this, but I don’t, I didn’t really feel prepared for it, and, and I, I wanna do a good job.”
This is the thing about accidental bosses are really, I mean, almost everybody has a bad boss story. Um, but the good news is about 80% of people, about four in five, are are satisfied with their boss right now. That’s good. That still leaves about one in five who aren’t at any given point in time.
But, um, yeah, I’m interested in these, in the people who h- not just have bad bosses, but are worried that they might be bad bosses. Because in my experience, bad bosses are often relatively good people. They just, you know, they, they, they’re muddling their way through. But what stands out to you in all that?
That’s a, that’s a long-winded…
Russel Lolacher: no.
Joel Hilchey: definition, but…
Russel Lolacher: All good. I mean, like I’ve, I’ve known executives who were horrible at being leader. Great person, great people. Like I would… If you wanna go for coffee a- and hear about your history, but some of them were like conflict avoidant, so they would never be involved in situations where somebody might disagree with them or have, or have negative impacts ’cause people have their feathers ruffled.
No, no, we’re just gonna let the status quo go until it dies, regardless of how uncomfortable everybody is. Because to them, I can’t, I don’t wanna be in that situation. So I, I totally get it from the, the person versus the role or the responsibility of leadership. Why do you think this is such a problem that we have these accidental leaders?
‘Cause you were saying 80%. That’s a big amount of people. I mean, in my brain I’m thinking laziness, because it’s sort of like, I don’t wanna go through the entire hiring process of finding somebody that’s a better fit. You’re standing right there. That’s easier for me. Why don’t we just do that regardless of the consequences?
Or to your other point is we got busy. There was no strategy, there was no knowledge transfer, there’s no plan. So you know what? I just, yeah, it’s just convenience, I guess would be the other aspect of that. Is, is that what you’re hearing and seeing?
Joel Hilchey: Yeah, I, I think that, um, I’ve seen a, a, a, a split in kind of management approaches. The biggest companies, they have well-entrenched management training processes and programs and tracks. You know, people… They’ll rotate people around department to department, and they identify early, and they specifically train kind of leaders or managers. Now, we can talk about whether that’s effective or not, but those people are not necessarily the accidental managers. The far bigger group of people, though, even though the, the biggest companies have, you know, these tracks, the far bigger group of people are in the small, medium businesses. You know, the, I, I mean, in one area I was talking with a, a small business center in Ontario, and their area, a nice touristy area up near Collingwood he had a stat that said something like 70% of the people in their region were employed as micro-businesses.
So these are people, by, by their definition, who are really working for themselves or with one other person
Russel Lolacher: Mm-hmm.
Joel Hilchey: So, you know, this is the pool service technician perhaps, or y- you know, the, the, the plumber. But, um, or the service provider, the, you know, the, whatever it is. They’re running a maybe a small cafe even.
But, but he said these people don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs. They think of themselves as sort of, “No, I’m working for myself, and maybe I’ve got a little bit of help.” So those people are bosses if they’ve got the one extra person, but they often, you know, they’re, they’re mostly focused on doing the service.
So that’s a, a large group of people. I was amazed, 70% of people in that category. That’s in one region. But, um, but then there’s this middle ground, you know, the groups that have, like, two to, I don’t know, 50 or 100 employees. And somewhere in there, I think, is where, um, where these accidental managers really emerge.
E- these are the people who were so successful that they, they were busy, and so they needed to hire. And to your point, I think it’s convenience. I don’t think they’re, they’re saying, you know, “We wanna put bad leaders in place.” But if, on a small team, the challenges that… I heard a nice thing, the small business challenge is you never hire for the same position twice.
Because by the time you, somebody leaves and somebody else comes in, the whole business feels different. It’s, it’s changing, and that person had a unique skill set and did a, a weird combination of stuff. Everybody does everything in some ways. And in large companies, the roles can be much more specified and hopefully clarified, at least theoretically so.
But in the, the kind of middle ground, this is where everybody has a lot of responsibility. No, I mean, fun question to ask is how many people are doing exactly what their job description says? Right? Like, other duties as assigned is actually the lion’s share of their day probably. Um, and that’s if people even have a job description.
You know, the first time I wrote a job description was when I needed to hire somebody. I was like, “Oh, I gotta find somebody.” But then I admit we’ve hired people without job descriptions before, and it’s taken us months to create it. We said, “Well, you know, we j- we just need help now.” So I think that when, when things are going well in small businesses, you’re busy and you’re selling, but that doesn’t leave a lot of managerial or, or, um, strategic thought space for how do we systematize this and how do we make sure the culture is propagating well?
Um, so I think that’s where it comes from. It’s not that people are intentionally putting, you know, bad people. They’re putting good people into, into place, but they’re not intentionally fostering the skill sets that really make managers thrive. Um, I got interested in this because everybody has bad boss stories, and I– they almost always start with some version of like, you know, “He’s a good guy, but…” You know? Or, “Oh, she really great a- built a great business, but she does this thing.” And, um, and I, I started kind of categorizing those things in my mind, like, oh, there’s some common things here. Many of them come from culture or that we kind of default, well, in the absence of somebody saying, “Don’t do it like that.
Do it like this,” then we sort of default. A lot of it actually comes down to how we were parented, I think. You know, what, what do we think the best way to get somebody to deliver on time is? What, well, what did your parents do when you were late? So that, that can be kind of a fun thing to explore.
But the main thing I want to say is I’m not trying to demonize most bad bosses here. I think people are doing their best. They’re just in a situation where they’re, th- they’re fumbling through like everybody else.
Russel Lolacher: Self-awareness is coming up for me quite a bit on this, because as you were talking about, there are accidental managers who they don’t know what they don’t know, to be blunt, right? They’re put in these positions, now you’re responsible for people. I worry that the people above them are showing their lack of leadership because they’re basically throwing people in a deep end without support and going, “Oh, you’ll figure it out.”
That’s not leadership, everybody. So what, what… To be self-aware, like, how would we know? We know we got the role because of circumstances, but how do we know we have defective traits or habits that might be causing more harm than good being put in these positions? Because we’re here, we’re… First we have to figure out the job and what, and related duties assigned looks like.
That’s not leadership, that’s just the job. So where’s some canary in a coal mine or things that going, “Maybe my intention and my impacts are not really aligning. Maybe, maybe I need to be looking at things”?
Joel Hilchey: Yeah. You know, I had a driving instructor way back when I was young, and I think he said something like “Really driving is about developing good judgment, and, um, good judgment comes from experience.” And experience comes from bad judgment. And I had this… Right. It, so, when I think like, “Okay, where’s the canary in the coal mine?” I think often the first time people realize a thing is when it does- whatever the thing is that they’re doing, it doesn’t go well. So, it, it could be a small thing. Hopefully, I mean, the whole canary thing is like you bring a canary because they’re more sensitive than the, the human. So if the canary dies, then, like, we, we know we’ve got time, but probably now it’s a good time to pay attention to what’s going on in our environment.
I had a, a… My first assistant that I hired stayed with me for two years, and I– And then when she left, she was amazing. She, you know, was part-time assistant, and she was great, and then she said, “Great, I’ve taken a full-time position at this other place.” And I admit that I didn’t see it coming. But I wondered after that, should I have seen it coming?
Y- like, and I had this realization that I never once asked her, “Do you see yourself in this part-time assistant role from now until eternity with me?” Like, and had I, had I even thought to ask that question, it– I probably could have predicted, “No, this is not…” She, she would’ve told me, “No, I don’t think so. I think I wanna be finding a full-time thing,” or, “I think I wanna be growing my skill set in this way.”
Any sort of conversation would’ve been a benefit, um, and I just never thought to have it. Mo- Th-this is habit one, actually, function forgetting, which I sort of, think about as short-term and long-term, and task-focused and people-focused. So a nice two-by-two matrix if you’re a visual guy like me. So short-term task-focused things, those are the obvious ones.
That’s like the project management stuff. That’s… Especially the people who have been an expert in that field, they thrive doing that. They’re like, “Let’s get it done.” The long-term task-focused is the strategic side of things. You get to ask, “Are we working on the right projects? Are, are we doing the right things?”
You know? Or, “Are we just… Well, we, we started this project, so let’s finish it.” Managers and leaders, I would say as well, need to have some involvement in saying, “Well, are we doing the right things, and are we aligned with what’s gonna achieve the goals?” On the people side of things this the, the short-term stuff let’s say the, the team dynamics matter.
You know, somebody comes to you and says, “Oh, my coworker’s is, is being a jerk.” Oh, and the, the boss often goes, “Oh, man, I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t know how to…” What I don’t know, what do you think you should do? Like, the, many of them are not trained in interpersonal conflict or or, or they, they don’t even wanna deal with it sometimes.
But that’s, that’s a function of that, that team lead role. Um, the, the fourth quadrant is the long-term people development one, and this is the one that’s most commonly forgotten because very rarely do I hear leaders say, “Okay, now as part of your job as team lead, your role is to make sure that the people on your team have solid career development plans and can, like, re- really feel like they’re learning and growing and developing with us.”
Um, so that career development piece it, it some managers can feel resistant to it because they actually feel like they’re coaching people off the team. You know, they’re saying, “Hey, do you wanna leave this team? What’s next for you?” Um, there is, there is some truth to this. I talked with a, a, a prof at a university the other day who said, “One of our metrics,” this is a big institution, “as managers is how many of our staff go on to other positions, like how many of them move on.”
He said, “This is very good for the individuals, but very bad for the department because they are leaving too fast. It’s a revolving door.” So there needs to be some retention, um, but also managers do need to help develop their people. And if we have only one metric, like are people moving on, that’s probably not the full gamut of, of your responsibility.
Um, really what’s happening in most cases is that the people on the team are already having that internal conversation or they’re talking about it with their friends, “What’s my next move? Where am I gonna go?” And the choice as a manager or perhaps as a leader is whether you wanna be involved in that conversation or not.
Um, so that’s– I, I view that as, like, basic, okay, what are the basic areas of my job, and have I thought about those things? We can get into other habits too, but that, I think the main thing that people– that often wakes people up is they have a bad experience. The team isn’t functioning well. They go, “Oops, we didn’t pay attention to team dynamics.
Oh, that project seems like a waste of time. Oh yeah, I guess we weren’t very strategic about that.” It’s the canary in the coal mine.
Russel Lolacher: It’s a few things that pop up for me in there. One of the ones is I love larger institutions that talk about, “Well, we need to grow people. They need to leave.” I’m like, “Yeah, but you need to check where they’re moving to.” You have to understand that, “Oh, we have this huge turnover. We must be successful.”
I’m like, “No, they’re taking laterals to get the hell away from you.” Like they are… Or they’re leaving base because you pay crap. So why are they leaving? Not just they are leaving, ’cause I’ve heard of organizations that use that metric but then don’t look at the context of that metric. Oh, because your leaders have been bullying them out of existence, so they’re leaving.
Oh, well, it’s success based on your HR metrics, but why? Right? So
Joel Hilchey: You could look at the flip side too. You could look at it, how many people come into the, um, the team based on that manager. Like, you know, maybe there’s people who used to work with that manager and they’ve brought them along because everybody loves working for that person. Like, that’s a good, a good sign also.
Russel Lolacher: Well, it depends on why they love working for them. ‘Cause they let them get away with stuff. They, you know, they, you know, they’re, they
Joel Hilchey: Caveat
Russel Lolacher: a blind eye to your bad behavior. It’s always that context. Like I’ve, I’ve seen horrible leaders keep the same people around them because they allow them to be horrible leaders, and they are enablers.
So there’s always another side. ‘Cause I mean, I talk about trust a lot too, and people will talk about, “Well, trust is important.” I’m like, “If it’s good trust,” ’cause I’ve trusted leaders to not have my back. I’ve had leaders I’ve trusted to never be there for me when I need them. It’s still trust. It’s, it’s about consistency.
But we don’t… We only look at black and whiteness of it, not the contextualization of it. And I think that’s the problem a lot with accident leaders, accidental leaders is that, or managers, we put them in positions and then label them leader when they’re presenting no traits of a leader. But because they’re in a position, we call them on a leadership team.
I’m like, I can count four out of those five people have never had a leadership trait in their life. But because you label them, people think that’s what leadership is in this organization. Now suddenly we have to look at that as the modeled behavior we have to do to be successful. I’m like this is an ecosystem problem, not a…
Yeah, not a leadership problem. Sorry, you got me a little ranty there. I just, I
Joel Hilchey: It’s good.
Russel Lolacher: It interesting
Joel Hilchey: I, I talked with, um, a friend who works in a, a big oil company, oil and gas company. I won’t say which one, but, um, she said l- the leaders in their organizations or the people who get promoted, let’s say, um, kind of fall into two tracks. The, the people who come from the sort of, quote-unquote, “blue collar,” the kind of like trades side of things, they’re often identified for leadership based on their interpersonal skills.
‘Cause the, the people– You know, if you can turn a wrench better than the other person, that doesn’t necessarily make you stand out. You say, “Well, that is a good wrench turner. We need people to do that.” But the, she said the ones who really, like, demonstrate that kind of interpersonal leadership, um, get identified, and often there’s some self-initiative there as well.
They look for people who are taking an, “Hey, why don’t we, why don’t we get together and do a thing?” Or, or why don’t… You know, they’ll, they’ll talk with the team about an issue proactively. So she said that, that path is actually pretty solid, and we get very good leaders from that path. She said the more problematic one is the white collar path.
Quote-unquote, “white collar,” that kind of professional realm. And she said it’s because it’s assumed that that white collar professional realm already has the leadership skills or the, the interpersonal skills, and that’s the, the mistake. And she said what actually gets promoted is not kind of visionary, interpersonal, um, savants.
It, it’s people who are good at, um, sucking up to their boss.
Russel Lolacher: Mm-hmm.
Joel Hilchey: Th- they’re good at, um, perhaps hiding issues that and not quite being honest. They, they k- kind of paint a rosy picture. And it’s, it’s people who are, um, sort of similar to their boss because, hey, we all have that bias of we like people who are like us.
And she said that’s where I see these accidental managers emerge is, is people who have been promoted because they don’t rock the boat. They’re not particularly visionary. They’re, they’re agreeable, and they’re, they’re, you know, they’re fine and b- but I– This is where I think the, like, leader/manager thing.
They, they might be an effective manager, but, but they are likely not. I mean, the, the traits I associate with leadership are, like, having a vision and figuring out, “Okay, we’re, we wanna go this way. How do we get people on board to do it?” And we’re, we’re gonna kind of rally people and move– get people to move in a common direction, facilitate moving in a common direction.
And that needs a lot of different skills at different times. You know, some people need a, a creative spark. Some people need, um, a re- very clear path or logic or reason. Some people need the kind of get-it-done-ness you know, first to act spirit. Some people need A really understanding, like, empathy.
Empathy is like the glue that holds teams together. Um, so any of those things can be leadership traits in the right context. But to me, if you don’t have the vision of, like, getting a team to move in a common direction then that’s, that’s the piece that’s missing. You can manage it, but you- that’s not leading it
Russel Lolacher: The, the management feels very focused on the what, while leadership is the why and the how. Like, it’s like, you know, m- manage- you delivered a thing, great, but how did you deliver the thing? Or did you have the same team you started with, or did they all jump ship because this was a horrible experience for them?
But according to our metrics, you delivered a thing. Forget all the, you know, titanic level of horror that happened behind the scenes, you delivered a thing. So where’s the personal responsibility in this as a leader? So say I’m looking at this, ’cause we say yes to opportunity. Why wouldn’t we, right? “Hey, do you wanna make more money?
Hey, do you wanna move up the hierarchy?” Like, these are things that we are programmed to want and need based on, “Hey, I gotta pay the mortgage. I about- gotta pay the rent.” But we’re not prepared. We’re not ready, even if the organization is lazy, convenient, w- however, puts us in those positions. Should we say no?
Should we… Like, how do we handle it to not put ourselves in those situations and show leadership for ourselves?
Joel Hilchey: That’s a great question. I think that one of the, um, questions that bosses, leaders, managers should– we should all ask ourselves this is sort of a values question, is like, how do I wanna be remembered at, in my role here? How do I want… You know, if, if I were listening to other people talk about me, what would I want them to say about me and how I did this role?
And, and we can do this with our just lives in general. You know? I- if you’ve ever done that exercise, like what would you want people to say at your, at your funeral? Like, write your own eulogy. And that is– it sounds a bit morbid, but it’s very clarifying to say, “Yeah, what matters to me? What kind of person do I want to be known as and remembered as?”
I, I ha- I stumbled into this in management. I, I’d done personal development stuff. I’d done that sort of thing a few times, but I never did it with my role as a boss. I was just, you know, I was just running a thing. I and… But then I was doing a New Year’s thing, I thought, “Well, how do I want my team to feel?”
And I think I wrote down happy, proud, and grateful or something. Like, I want them to feel grateful to work with this cool group of people that we have. And, um, I said, “Okay, well, who do I need to be then in order to make the team feel that way?” And the three words that came to mind were kind, fun, and generous.
It’s like I wanna be kind, fun, generous CEO. Now, am I always a kind, fun, generous CEO? No. Sometimes I’m snarky and stingy and grouchy, you know? But, um, but it– When I have a, a tough challenge, like say I have somebody I need to talk with that’s gonna be a difficult conversation, or I have to make a, a tough choice even maybe to keep an employee or not I, I sometimes glance at my little sticky note on the whiteboard, and it’s like, “Okay, what is the most kind, fun, and generous thing I can do?
How can I be that in this situation? What does that mean to me? And can I clarify, oh, yeah, it is ki- I need to let this person go because I need to protect the team or the, or the business model maybe.” And, you know, the, if, if there have been times where we’ve needed to let people go because we’ve said, “This is not sustainable, and if we don’t make a choice now, w- we’re all gonna, you know, be looking for new jobs in a while.”
Um, I– this is really a values choice, you know? For, for leaders to say, “Okay, what matters to me, and how do I wanna show up doing that? Um, and what does that value look like in this situation?” Now, we should all have little, you know, like flashing lights that, it’s like, “Hey, your, your values. You’re not doing the thing.”
Because we’d all be made fools many times a day probably by saying, “Is this really the most generous thing you can be doing right now?” And there are some in there that maybe, maybe my values actually have a– they rest on a stable foundation. So I care about security. That’s a value, too. And if security is threatened, I might say, “You know what?
Kind and fun can, can take a back seat for a moment.” Like, I might have values that emerge when, when gaps open up. But I think the thing with values is this is, these are the things we want to es- espouse when we have hard choices to make You know, it’s easy to follow your values when things are going well.
It, it, values matter when our, when we’re challenged with something, when we have to choose. Well, do I wanna be truthful or kind, or can I be both, and how do I merge those two things? I have to have a hard conversation. What does it look like to balance these two values? I care about being honest, I care about being kind. does that look like together? I, so I, I think to go back one level, should everybody do it? Should everybody say, “Yes, I’ll take that role”? No, not everybody should say, “Yes, I’ll take the role.” I have a good friend, works in technical sales, and he is very good at technical sales. He’s an engineer type, and he was great.
And then they said, “Can you manage the sales team?” And all of a sudden he was having hiring and firing conversations with a team that was geographically distributed around the world. He was up in the middle of the night having conversations, you know, ’cause he’s on the other end of the phone when there’s a problem.
And he hated it. And his his, his wife hated it too because he got distant and disconnected from the family. And he eventually said, “I want my old job back. I don’t– I d- this is not the path that I, I thought it was.” You know, it’s a, hey, it’s a good opportunity on paper, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right opportunity for each person.
Now to the company’s credit, they gave him his old job back with no pay cut actually, because they recognized, “Okay, we wanna keep this guy. He is very good at this. Let’s keep him in his zone of genius, and let’s honor him for what he’s contributing in that role.” I don’t necessarily think that managers should be m- making a bazillion times more than, than the people doing the work, um, when those individual contributors are super valuable in and of themselves.
So, compensation’s a whole separate thing, but I mean, you mentioned how do we reward people? If we reward people just for saying yes to the promotion, then we’re gonna incentivize people to go out of their zone of genius
Russel Lolacher: I love that. I mean, I call, I’ve called it the Michael Scott problem, where it, from The Office, where it’s sort of like a great salesperson becomes a horrible leader, but you lost a great salesperson. So you, you, it, you, it’s a double whammy of impact to your organization. So, the reality is unfortunately, that people do say yes for monetary reasons because we, we certainly underpay certain professions and so forth, and it’s an opportunity to move up the ladder and more opportunity and blah, blah, blah, even if you’re not ready, all those things.
So say you said yes. As an accidental leader, is there an opportunity to collaborate with your team to make this a learning opportunity for you? Because again, we keep talking about it like you’re here by yourself, that you’re an island of, of issues and problems. So obviously the people above you don’t have their leadership in, or they’d be looking for the right fit for the right role.
But you’ve got this amazing group of people that you’re now responsible for. How can you tap into that to better serve you as a leader?
Joel Hilchey: That’s a great question too. So if you ask the question, what is my primary job as a boss? You know, like just start with first principles. Okay, I’m in this leadership role. What is the main thing I’m supposed to do? Well, the main difference for– that I can see is that now you’re responsible for not just your output, but the output of the team in general So then you say, “Okay, well now my question is how do I get the best out of my team?”
And I think it’s a great place to start with a conversation with your people. I think just having some humility and saying, “Okay, I, I’m the team lead. What do you need? What do you need to do your best work? Um, w- what would be helpful for you? What role do you want me to play?” Habit three is hassle-making.
That, that’s not what we wanna do. That’s the defective habit. Um, people, people often have, you know, small annoyances that get in the way of them just doing good work, and this is particularly annoying to, like, A players. You know, people who are, are really good at what they do. The main thing they want, in my experience, is they wanna do awesome work.
They don’t wanna be slowed down. They don’t wanna work with bozos. They don’t want– A players do not like working with B and C players. You know? They, they wanna fly. And a manager recognizing this can ask like, “Okay, how do I remove barriers and obstacles for this person?” They’re gonna, they’re gonna wanna do it anyways.
Um, r- let’s not put in obstacles. I had somebody… This is a mediocrity mongering habit, but somebody shared a story. She said to them, “I had a leader tell me once I finished this project in, like, two days, and the person came and said, ‘Oh my gosh, that would’ve taken most people a week. Slow down. You’re making the rest of us look bad.'”
And she said, like, “I thought that was just something people pretended to say when they were pretending to be insecure.” Y- right? Like,
Russel Lolacher: Yep
Joel Hilchey: It’s– that’s developing a culture of mediocrity rather than celebrating your high achievers, and that will drive away those high achievers. She did. She left. She said, “I don’t wanna work for that person anymore.
Um, I’m not going back there.” And and unfortunately, those high producers, those high achievers often account for a lion’s share of the team’s productivity. You know, the 80/20 rule thing or… But I think to go back and say, well, what, what can a, a manager do? Ask your high performers, “What do you want from me?
How– What role do you want me to play? Where do you think my strengths are, and how can I help you? Where are your strengths? What are the things that are annoying to you that you don’t wanna do? What could we outsource? Are there things that you wish you didn’t have to do?” Um, often policy and procedure takes over.
There are sometimes very good reasons for policies and procedures, and in those cases, the manager often needs to clarify why those things exist. They need to be the person who can communicate the bigger culture or the bigger purpose of, of those things. Um- So, as a basic starting point, ask, “What do you need?”
Next next thing is share the credit with people. This is, this is part of the philosophy. You know, “Hey, I’m just one person here.” It’s, it’s sort of servant leadership you could say, you know, to say, “What, what do you need from, from us?” Notably, there’s great, um, metaphors with coaches and, um, you know, sports.
Like the, the coach isn’t lacing up his skates at you know, in between periods and going out on the ice saying, “I’ll show you how it’s done here.” No, the coach kind of says, “Okay, what does this team need?” They’re watching, they’re, they’re observing, and then figuring out where they have leverage. Um, do we have the right people?
Do we need to develop certain skill sets? Um Not only share the credit, but be careful not to point the finger. So habit four is credit stealing and finger-pointing. When, when the team does well, give away the credit. When the– when things don’t go well, managers should be the first one to say, “Here’s what I didn’t do well there.
You know, I, I could have seen this earlier. I wish I had tried this. I– Is there something I could have done?” And then you create a culture where people can take responsibility for their aspects of, of the whatever failed also. Um, the last thing that maybe I’ll, I’ll say is this, the half habit. We didn’t talk about the half habit.
Habit six and a half I call it consistently inconsistent, which didn’t feel worthy of full habit status, but it also kind of contributed to this whole coming up short feeling. Um, great managers balance kind of consistency or stability with flexibility and innovation. If you’re too stable, nothing changes, and y- everything becomes stagnant.
If you’re too flexible or, um, scattered, then, then nobody knows what is going on, and today’s priorities didn’t matter yesterday, and it’s constantly changing, and there’s this sort of like tornado of chaos around people. And so one interesting question to ask people is, “Between the balance right now of flexibility and, um, and stability, where do you think we are too flexible?
Where are we too entrenched?” And you can ask people this, and, and they’ll tell you that most people will give their honest opinion of where we need to have more, you know, innovation or where we need to systematize a little bit more. This seems inefficient. There must be a better way to do it. So I, I, I think asking questions is the common theme here.
You know, “What do you want my role to be? What do you need? What do you think?” And if you have better questions, you’ll get better answers, especially kind of what, what about the vision? You’re, you’re now a sensor for the organization that can help consolidate different perspectives, and all those perspectives are useful in guiding the team.
Russel Lolacher: I, I think curiosity is one of the key DNA aspects of any good to great leader, is you need to be curious. You have… You don’t have all the answers. So speaking of an answer, I’ve got one more question to ask you to wrap up our conversation today, Joel, which is if someone’s listening and they find themselves as an accidental manager, they’re, they’re having some of those habits, those disruptive habits.
They’re maybe not having the impact they want. Maybe they’re in over their head, and they don’t even have time to even try to be a leader or strategic or anything. What’s a mindset shift or a step they could be taking starting tomorrow that at least gets them to go down the path of righting the ship or, or at least being more aware of it?
Joel Hilchey: Yeah. Um, I think y- what I realized, I, I don’t think I ever wrote this in the book because I, I sort of realized it holistically looking back. The journey that I was trying to capture is the journey from accidental manager to intentional manager. And the intention part has many different facets. We can be intentional in many different ways.
But from the starting point of saying, “Well, how do I want my people to feel? What do I want them to say about me? Who, how, what are my values? I wanna intentionally try to live that.” For some people, they can be more intentional with their calendar. Like, do they own their calendar? Are they proactively putting the types of things on the calendar that they, that they think are important?
You know, one-on-ones, whether annual or semi-annual, quarterly strategic, like, little block out times. Um I, I had a, a t– a great conversation, a friend of mine who’s a CEO of a company of about 50, 50 employees, and he said, “You know, I’m still a doer in many ways. Like, I’m a, I’m a contributor in many ways. But the company also needs me to be the CEO, and I realized that when I would go away to a conference and kind of be not a doer for a few days, things still went along okay.
And I thought, ‘Well, what if I took a day and kind of just thought about my role and thought through a big issue?'” And he said he tried it, and he, he evolved his thinking, he said. W- that he would not h- he wouldn’t have got to that place had he not given himself some time. So I think the accidental managers, this is the hard thing to do because we’re all overwhelmed and there’s so many…
You know, it’s never today’s priority to take a block of time to think big picture. But this actually, I think, is, is the key and, and it’s something I’m excited to do. When, when I work with companies and, and leaders, we take a little time and make, like, a one-page dashboard, a personal dashboard. Write down all the roles.
Not a to-do list, but think of like, what does a dashboard do on a car? It, it tells you the signals that are like, “I should be paying attention to these things. At a glance, I can tell if something is off.” And if you can put a one-page dashboard together of my roles, my areas of responsibility, the mindset shift that happens is, “Oh yeah, I’m not just d- grinding and doing the work here.
I, I actually have some, some ability to take a step back and see a bigger picture, and, and then I can direct my attention appropriately.” And I think you, you can end up being more confident that you’re working on the right things at the right time. Gosh, and I mean, I do this regularly, and it’s still– B- it’s always overwhelming, but I do it regularly because without fail, when I take a little block of time and say, “I just need to get my thoughts in order here,” when I do that, I always come out the other end with more clarity and more confidence that I’m, I’m actually doing the things that matter on the team and taking actions that, that matter. So that’s the mindset shift. Intention rather than, “Whoops, I guess this is what I need to do,” you know? “Here we go.” Um, so this has been a great conversation, Russell. I, I hope that I hope that something here has been useful. Um, oh, and if people wanna take the the Highly Defective Boss assessment, you can do that at joelhilchy.com/bosses, and you can try that there for fun and f- it’s free.
Um, you can f- or you can find the book and you can do it there.
Russel Lolacher: I will put it all in the show notes to make sure people can find it and link to it as they need to, to, to give theirselves their own self-awareness education of are they an accidental manager or where do they need to focus on? Thank you so much, Joel. That is Joel Hilchey. He’s a keynote speaker, CEO and executive producer of Beanstock Creative, leadership facilitator, and he’s got a book.
He just mentioned it. It’s called Six and a Half Habits of Highly Defective Bosses: Serious Lessons for Accidental Managers. Thank you so much for being here, sir.
Joel Hilchey: Thank you. It’s been great, Russel. Take care