Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the Influence and Impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you, as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development. And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the influence and impact podcast, where we're talking about that situation where you're managing, leading a team. And you keep getting pulled into internal politics and tension between your team and another team. This is something that used to come up a lot for me comes up a lot for my clients. And I thought it would be a really nice practical episode for you. Now, sorry that there hasn't been an episode for a couple of weeks, it was half time. And I was envisaged thing handing my child over every now and then to his grandparents who have just moved to the village. But it turns out the first week after you've moved up is not a great time to look after a small child.

So Charlie and I had a very quiet chilled out half term, which I think he needed. But I know that I needed. It's getting a bit wet up here in Cumbria. So I'm getting used to that. And yesterday was brilliant because I went to the Lake District which is just up the road and is beautiful, and went for a lovely walk with my entire family for my brother in law's birthday. And it was just lovely to be out in nature somewhere new, seeing the changing colours of autumn and stretching my legs because I don't know about you. But when it's wet, and I'm busy, it's really really hard to find the time and then make myself go out and exercise. And I find that my mental health really, really needs that. And I notice when I haven't. So today I shall be grabbing my waterproofs and going out even if it's just for a 10 minute walk around the park behind my house. In other news, and what's been going on, I've just been super, super busy doing corporate work, we kicked off a Global Women's Leadership Programme. Last week I was down in London, it was fantastic to see people in person, including Hasina on my team, because we've co led quite a few things together virtually, but we haven't done it in person. And I will be talking about my team more and more because the team is growing. And both the behind the scenes team and also a team of fantastic associates, all women running their own fantastic businesses who share the same values as me. And who can deliver because I have too much demand to deliver it all myself. And the journey down to Cumbria or down to London from Cumbria on the train makes me feel a bit sick. So I don't want to be doing it every week, which is pretty much what I've done for the last six or seven weeks. But it's really exciting because obviously new people bring new experiences, they bring diversity of thought and experience to the team, they have different styles.

And so we know that you'll be getting this amazing experience, but it's going to be varied be a different amazing experience depending on who within my team that you're working with. So exciting times really need to spend some time planning that probably think about changing the name as well. But we will see how we get on with that. Okay, so let's get on to this topic, which actually came from a question that someone asked on a coaching call.

This also features in the book because in the book, there is a troubleshooting section. But the back asking some questions I've been asked that probably you wouldn't feel comfortable asking your boss or colleagues in the workplace. So I provide some really practical support there. Oh, that's the other exciting thing that happened. We got reviewed in people management magazine, who basically said it was a comprehensive and Essential Guide for any female leader. That's fantastic. Okay, the question someone has asked me is, I'm constantly getting dragged into the detail of discussions between my team and another team as they can't resolve it between themselves and it's such a waste of my time. How do I tackle this? And I know this used to happen a lot of the time when I was leading teams as well. And so I've basically got a three pronged approach that you can use. You don't have to use all three of these Um, but if you did, it would work incredibly well. First thing that you can do is to coach your team to be able to deal with it. So empower your team to be able to navigate internally, themselves. Now, sometimes, obviously, there are things which are causing significant issues that are outside of their control.

So I would only use this one, if you really think that they can, they have got the freedom and authority and information that they need in order to be able to resolve these things themselves. How do you go about coaching your team in this situation? Well, I'd start by exploring the narrative. So the stories that have become common place around the other team, because what generally happens is we decide that another team is hard to deal with. And then we think everything that they do is unhelpful. And we do this with individuals, as well, we have one or two experiences of someone which are not as positive as we would like. And we decide that they are negative, or unhelpful, or inefficient, or whatever it is. And once that's in our mind, then confirmation bias kicks in. So confirmation bias means that our brain is filtering information all the time, because otherwise we will be completely overloaded. And what it does is it lets in the information that agrees with what it already believes, and ignores the information that provides evidence to the contrary. So these people might sometimes let's say, you decided that they were unhelpful, sometimes they might be being helpful, but you're probably not noticing it and your brain is focusing on when they're unhelpful, because confirmation bias is kicked in. And it absolutely happens within a team as well. Because once someone else has verbalised it well, then that really confirms what you're thinking.

And then you are even more convinced that you're right. And when you are convinced that you're right, you're basically very entrenched in a point of view, and you're quite invested in being right. And being convinced that you're right is never a great way to go about influencing somebody else, because essentially, you're making them wrong. And even if you don't fertilise that, it's still being communicated in other ways less consciously. Now, one exercise that you can do with this is contained within the book. And it's basically a perspectives coaching exercise. So we do this sometimes on influence and impact calls and on training courses as well. But it's basically a way that you can put yourself in the other person's shoes, and you can do it as an individual, or you can do it as a team, rather than talk him through the whole exercise. Now, what you could do as a really simple version is just try and put yourself in the other teams shoes, and think about so get your team to think about well, how does it feel to be on the receiving end of our communication? How does it feel when we're disappointed with them? Or they're not meeting our expectations? How might that feel on the other side? What might be going on for them, that means that they're not able to meet those expectations. So it's just worth doing that thinking. And basically, what you're trying to do is reframe your team from going to go from we are completely right in this and we're very righteous about it, and they just need to improve to Okay, well, from our perspective, this is how it looks and feels. But there are other perspectives that we could look at this from.

And when we start to do that, we start to see that oh, actually, we might not be 100%, right, things are not quite as black and white as perhaps we perceive them to be. Now the other thing you can coach them on is their problem solving skills. So you could teach them some questions to help them to think about problem solving more effectively. Or you might need to embed a little bit of a growth mindset. So most people are fairly familiar with this term, but a fixed mindset. Basically, a thinks that you're stuck with a situation or you're stuck with a particular level of ability in something and just find lots of evidence to reinforce that fact. A growth mindset can always see possibilities and potential and sees all incoming information is useful even information of which which we might consider to be unhelpful or failure, for example. So adopting a growth mindset, a simple way to do that is to start to use the word yet at the end of self defeating sentences. So we find it really all we haven't found a way to work effectively with that team, yet completely changes it to we haven't found a way to work effectively with that team yet. The assumption shown by adding the word yet is there is a way or numerous ways to work effectively with that team, we just haven't come across it yet.

So what we need to do is to think differently, to try new things to approach things differently. So just adding the word yet is really helpful. The other thing that you can do is to coach them on their influencing skills, if you give them since that is all about that, I'd like to hope so like to think some of you if you're leading teams have bought a copy for your team to share, if not got them individual ones, to help them to navigate the workplace. But there's definitely some great stuff in there on influencing skills. The other thing that's really important is that you make sure that you are being clear on the authority that they have. And so what authority do they have to make these decisions, because if they're coming to you all the time, it could be that they don't know how to solve it themselves, it could be they don't believe they have the authority to do it, it could be they don't want the responsibility of doing it, it could be they're worried that they will do it in a different way from you, and you won't be happy about that could be any of those things.

And that's why coaching is so useful, because you're asking questions, not just to get them to think differently, but to make sure that you've got the right understanding of the situation and to see if there's anything that you are doing, which could be exacerbating the situation. The other thing they need to know is what's appropriate, and what's not appropriate to involve you in. If you're getting really involved in the detail, it's likely that that's not appropriate. I've quite often sat down when I was a director, particularly in into indirect, I've quite often sat down with heads of teams that have been coming to me about tensions with each other and explain to them that part of being at the head of level is learning to work with people at your level learning to problem solve those issues. yourself. Now, I'm not saying that you always have to do that. But you do need to have the ability to do it, at least some times. So it's worth making sure that they're clear.

If we're talking about more junior people, then yeah, you probably don't expect them to deal with those things themselves. But when you're talking about heads of teams, then there might be some training that you need to do with them, as well as some coaching, but also being really clear about what's, what problems are appropriate for them to solve at their level, and what problems are appropriate to bring up to you. And so yeah, really helping those heads of teams to develop their cross departmental working skills is useful. Okay, so that's the first option, you could coach, your team. Now, the second option is that you can meet with your peer in the other team. So I used to do this a lot when I was going in as an interim, and I would notice tensions between teams, I get bored with the same questions coming up all the time, or firefighting, I like to try and get to the heart of a problem, and to proactively solve it. So I really, really encourage you, if your team are coming to you all the time, because they can't solve it, it needs you to get involved, then you can get together with your peer in the other team. And you can have a meeting with them. And the way I'd suggest being at that meeting is something like I've noticed that I am getting pulled into these discussions a lot. I imagine you are too, it doesn't seem to be the most efficient use of anyone's times, I'd love for our teams to work really well together, can we sit down the two of us having talked to our teams, and see what we can do to figure this out together to find a way of working that works really well, for both teams.

So very much in a positive, friendly, can do problem solving approach where you're collaborating, you're in it together, not my team having issues with your team, I think we need to talk about this. Because no one wants to have a discussion that will lead to the other person going home and having a few sleepless nights worrying about it probably. Okay, so what you can then do is you can go and talk to your team and gather the issues from them. You can be coaching them through that so that they can start to see different perspectives as you talk about it. Or you can just do some fantastic listening, because it is their lived experience. And I think you do want to be able to recognise and acknowledge that people will just get super, super frustrated. If you can't do that if you just go straight to positive thinking we don't want that what we want to do is to make sure they feel heard, and to give them the mindset tools, they need to be able to approach things in a way that helps them and the other person. So once you have gathered that information, then you can To analyse it and look at it and look for trends, you want to be able to have specific examples to hand because whenever giving, you're giving any kind of feedback, you want to have specific examples to hand. But you can look for trends. And before that meeting, you can also put yourself in your peers shoes.

So put yourself in the shoes of the head of the other team and think what's going on for them? What are their priorities? At the moment? Where does this fit amongst their priorities? Is this really important to them? Or is this just a minor nuisance that they wished didn't take up any of their time? What's their understanding of the situation and just having a think about that beforehand, rather than going in not having thought about it is good because that will mean that you're not blindsided by anything, hopefully. And it will mean that you're not reacting within the meeting, you're responding, because you've actually thought through some of these things beforehand. So I would definitely do your prep for that meeting. And then I will go in and think proactively about some ideas you could throw into the mix, in order to make that that conversation proactive and solution focused.

So I have a six step model for influencing I've probably shared it before on the podcast, that basically step one is to build your relationship with someone because it's so much easier to work with someone and influence them if they like you, you know how to be best friends, about being kind being interested in their life, recognising what they're doing well, and celebrating that all of those are great ways to simply build a relationship. And if you have a positive relationship with somebody, well, then they will give you the benefit of the doubt. If their only experience of you has been around tensions or negative experiences and situations, then it's much harder to influence them. So step one, build a relationship. Step two, understand them. So it's much easier to put yourself in someone else's shoes if you've done step one. But like I said, think about what are their priorities? What's going on for them at the moment? Or who is it important for them to impress? What are they being measured? On? What's their history and experience with the organisation and with your team? Or maybe with your predecessor or with you? Just thinking we have what are their resources that they can allocate to this? How stressed are they generally what keeps them up at night? Really thinking that through can be super, super helpful? Then think about what do they want from this situation? So what would they like to leave this meeting or discussion with? And then that's step three? And then step four, think about what would you like from this situation? So yes, you might like all your problems solved. But actually on that list of things that your team gave you, or that you are aware of yourself? What are the real game changers or deal breakers? What are the things that are really important? And what are the things that maybe it's worth just sucking those up? Because actually, you get the important stuff dealt with? Step five, is to then think well, what can we propose that could be a good starting point for discussion? So something that ideally meets both needs. And then the sixth step is to have that discussion. And to raise it as a starting discussion not this is what I think the solution is. I have used this technique, so many times, and actually, it's never gone wrong. But for me, it's always improves the relationship, people like that you are leading in that situation is led to really constructive conversations. And you absolutely have to go in with an open mind. You can't like I said earlier, go in with a I'm right, they're wrong. And I just need to get them to see things. My way.

The idea is that you go into that meeting open minded, and you may think, well, they're not going in open minded. They might not be but actually the energy that you bring to a situation does impact the people on the receiving end of that, if they are used to you being a typical human being and reacting rather than responding or bringing all the past history into the meeting in terms of tension, well, then they are going to react to that. But if you come in and the energy of the meeting feels different, and it feels problem solving collaborative, positive, you both want to come out of it with something positive, or then you will find that with most people, you get a different response, even if not immediately, because, you know, their nervous system is probably on high alert, if they've you know, for you to have had some tensions when you've been having these discussions about your team's bar, give them a bit of time, and they will respond in a more positive way than they have done previously. said though, is around having the direct conversation with your Pio. And then the third piece is if you cannot so if you've tried one on too, or just too, and you and your peer have not been able to find a way to make this work, I would suggest seeking some clarity from someone more senior than both of you. So often, tensions arise between teams over a lack of clarity.

It might be clarity about whose responsibility it is that what happens a lot. It might be clarity about or lack of clarity about authority, and who has the authority to do things, or it might be lack of clarity around expectations, again, that one comes up a lot. And so it may not even be the fault of two teams. And I've seen this a lot I had, I worked in an organisation where there was crossover between the roles of two teams, and who was responsible for what, and it caused huge amounts of tension. And I came in and I just went, Well, who is responsible for this, and no one really knew. And I said, Well, let's make a decision of a mat. And when we had to negotiate that decision, it wasn't a really simple decision. But once we'd negotiated that everyone was clear and the source of tension disappeared and the tension dissipated, as well. So that can happen quite a bit. And expectations are a big one, especially if you are the other team or some kind of department, which is seen as an internal service department, though most internal service departments actually may do way, way more than that, they can add real strategic value, if only people would stop seeing them as an internal service department. But whether it's HR, or marketing, or finance, often, there are there's a lack of clarity on expectations, whether that's about timing or timeframe for deadlines, or the information that's required, or just how much of a priority it is in their workload.

These tensions come up again, and again. And again. And if if your team is one of those teams, where your your stakeholders are basically your colleagues, then it's really worth thinking about how can I proactively provide as much clarity as possible so people understand what we do and don't do and how we do and don't do it. So, sometimes things like that need someone more senior to make that decision between the two of you who may not be able to agree whose responsibility something is who has the authority or agree on expectations, in which case, you can seek clarity from your manager, and their manager. Or if you're both reporting to the same director, then it's your director. And you can say, look, we've tried to sort this out between ourselves, we've had a meeting highlighted the issues, we think there's a lack of clarity on this that can only really be clarified by someone at your level, or someone at senior leadership team level or chief exec level need you to make that decision, please, or to go and have that conversation on our behalf. Now, I want to reiterate that this is your final port of call if the other approaches don't solve the issue, because what you don't want to do is just to be constantly pushing issues upwards without contributing to a solution. But you're listening to this podcast, you've listened to by poker for a while, probably.

So I highly doubt that that is your approach. Okay. So that's what you do. When there's tension between your team and another team, you coach your team, you can meet with your peer on the other team, and you can seek clarity. I hope that that has been helpful. If you haven't bought the book yet, but you love the podcast, save yourself a lifetime of pain, and go and spend 15 pounds on the book, or I think it's like eight quid on the Kindle version, because I have packed these pages full of really, really practical stuff like that. And coaching tools like the perspectives exercise that I worked on, and that I mentioned, there's just so much in here. And in a really, really helpful format. Admittedly, you can't really go on a walk and read it and you can listen to a podcast when you're reading it. But you will find everything you need to navigate the workplace as a women leader or someone who aspires to be a woman leader or is leading without a job title that says leading because there's lots of you doing that. I think you'll find that super, super helpful.

Okay, so good luck putting that into practice, feel free to message me. I don't tend to check my Instagram messages very much but I am on LinkedIn all the time. So feel free to message me on LinkedIn. If you've used something this from this and it's been interesting or useful. And if you found this episode useful, please do leave a review or a rating on whatever podcast Hey, admins, whatever podcast player, you are listening, it really helps other people to discover the podcast, we just hit 90,000 views when we just hit 91,000 Not for you, because we've just hit 90,000 downloads of the podcast. Sadly, if not 90,000 An episode. It's 90,000 all time. But that is amazing. And I really hope that these episodes have been serving you if they have, please spread the love, share the love to me about really to other people who will find it and leave a review.

Thanks very much. Take care, and I'll speak to you next week.

If you've listened to the podcast and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look. First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back.

So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes Influence and Impact for women at management and leadership level and Be Bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level. You can preorder my book Closing the Influence Gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops or to run my influence and impact programme or be bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering.

If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you take out