Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
When we think of a confident leader, we might imagine someone who always knows the right thing to do straight away, or who has all the answers. And then we feel bad that we like to think things through before responding, or that we don't always know the answer. Some of us can spend a fair bit of time negatively comparing ourselves to this completely fictional and seemingly perfect leader, when that mental energy could be going somewhere far more productive. So today I want to unpick the myth that a good leader always has the answers. I'm Carla Miller and this is Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Ready to be more impactful. Let's get started.

Carla Miller [00:00:59]:
Now, the first thing I want to say is, would you actually want to work for someone who always had the answers? To me, that sounds like someone who thinks that they're always right and who is always right. That sort of person probably struggles when they don't know the answer, getting defensive or vague or avoiding the question, or they genuinely think that they have the right answer to everything, even when there are much better answers out there. I can think of a few examples from the stories I've heard from coaching clients of the sort of managers like that. And I can tell you now, those sort of managers and leaders do not bring the best out in other people. There's a lot of ego involved in that. Personally, I'd much rather work for a leader who, yes, has their own ideas but but also is interested in the views of others and knows that there are other perspectives and that they don't always have the right answer. So let's talk about why you don't actually need to have all the answers so we can let go of this super high expectation that you've been placing on yourself that is making you feel like a failure and not good enough and is not based in reality at all. And we all have plenty of those expectations.

Carla Miller [00:02:15]:
But let's just focus on this one for today. So the first reason is this idea of cognitive flexibility. So cognitive flexibility doesn't come naturally to many of us, but it's something that is really, really powerful for leaders to develop. And it's the skill of rather than making a decision and then going into a meeting and either telling everyone that's your decision or asking for other opinions, having already made up your mind. Cognitive flexibility is about being genuinely open minded, basically. So yes, from your experience, from Your intuition, you might have a sense of the way forward, but it's seeing that as one perspective, one potential option, and not automatically assuming that that is going to be the best one. So if you have cognitive flexibility, you're able to go into that meeting, yes, with your perspective, but. But genuinely listen to all the other perspectives before making up your mind about which is the most useful solution.

Carla Miller [00:03:23]:
Approach perspective. This means that you're able to genuinely engage the people in the room because people can tell when you're actually listening to what they have to say or whether you're just listening in order to respond. It also means that you are getting a wider range of engagement inputs, potential solutions, perspectives that will develop your thinking as a leader and help you to understand your team better as well. Now, another reason that you don't need to have all the answers is because when you have all the answers, you don't train your team to think for themselves. They become very reliant on you to solve their problems and to answer all of their questions. I always think this is a little bit like spoon feeding your team. So anyone that's had a kid or seen a kid learning to eat, you know that moving your child from spoon feeding onto solids is a frustrating, very messy business. And honestly, if you, like me, are a little bit of a clean freak and like to do things fairly quickly, it would be much easier to just keep spoon feeding them.

Carla Miller [00:04:35]:
But, but then at some point you've got a 16 year old who cannot feed themselves, you have to go through that painful period of letting them do it themselves, make a mess, do it wrong, get frustrated, whatever it is. It is the same with your team. If you keep on spoon feeding them and don't go through that period where they learn to do things themselves and to genuinely think for themselves and be given that responsibility to do that. You, you never develop them into the people and potential leaders that they can be. They never develop those critical thinking skills because you're doing it for them all the time. So if instead of having all the answers, you train your team to think for themselves, this empowers them, it develops them and their skills and their confidence. It frees up your time and it brings more depth and diversity of thinking into things as well. Now another place where it's relevant and you don't need to have all the answers is when you make the move from specialist to generalist.

Carla Miller [00:05:46]:
Now what I mean by that is in your first couple of roles as a line manager, it's likely that you're line managing people who know less about your area of expertise than you do. And so it's really easy to have all the answers because you've done their jobs before, you know exactly how to do it. But at some point, as you develop in your career, it is likely that you are going to become more of a generalist. You are going to start line managing people who know more about their area than you do. And if your expectation of yourself is that you should always know more than the people who work in your team, and that as a leader, it's your job to know the answer to everything, you are going to find it a very frustrating period. Your inner critic may get very vocal and you may also drive the people that work for you and do know more about their area than you slightly mad. So the great news is that actually you don't need to have all the answers in that situation. And so if you don't need to have all the answers, what is the secret to being a good leader? Well, there are lots of those, but a really, really key one is asking great questions.

Carla Miller [00:07:01]:
That's right. Forget about having all the answers. Be brilliant at asking questions. Now that is a skill that you can keep on honing and it's very aligned with taking a coaching approach to managing and leading your team. So if a team member comes to you and asks you for an answer for something that actually in their role, it would be really great if they came up with an answer themselves or at least thought it through. You could ask, what have you come up with so far? Ask that enough times and eventually they will say to themselves before coming to you, ah, she's going to ask me what I've come up with so far. So what have I come up with so far? Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Don't actually need to ask her that question.

Carla Miller [00:07:41]:
So what have you come up with so far? Is a great question. If someone's trying to make a decision, then you could ask, what risks and opportunities can you see with that approach? Or what else do we need to consider before making a decision? Have we forgotten anything important you could ask in a meeting? There are so many brilliant questions out there. Even just asking what's important here is a really powerful question because we can sometimes get lost in all sorts of things that are actually quite peripheral in a meeting. And that reminder of what's important here is a really good one. And it takes confidence to ask questions rather than thinking that you need to have all the answers and your confidence coming from that. But it's a really fantastic skill to develop and it's actually hard to go wrong asking a question. And for those of you that are interested in learning more about powerful questions you can ask and how you can coach your team, there's a fantastic book by a former guest, Jude Sclater called Think Like a Coach, which is a really great starter for helping you to start to introduce more questions and less answering into your interactions with your direct reports in particular so this is the last of our three mini episodes to celebrate the return of the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please make sure that you click Follow so so that you get notified.

Carla Miller [00:09:09]:
And don't forget that we are running a giveaway on the 16th and 17th of June. So if you're listening on either of those two days, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Or if you don't listen on Apple Podcasts, please share the podcast on social media with a post about why you listen or what you've got from a previous episode. Take a screenshot and send it to me@helloarlamiller.co.uk and you will win a set of my Influence and Impact affirmation cards to help you build your confidence as a leader. If you do that before the end of the 17th of June. So I will be back in a fortnight with the next episode. We'll be returning to a normal length of more like half an hour long episodes, but hopefully this has been a nice return to listening to the Influence and Impact for Leaders podcast. And please do spread the word, tell people about it.

Carla Miller [00:10:06]:
Hugely, hugely appreciate that. Thanks and take care of.