It can be hard transitioning to manager. It totally shifts the mindset and value-creation principles that so many new managers developed, delivered, and were recognized for in being promoted to manager. The shift isn’t just one of roles. In many ways, it can feel like one of identity. The people we promote to manager typically value what they do, and value the impact what they do has had on the company.
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When we promote them to manager, we recognize them for what they have done, but we change what they do. We change how they are expected to add value and have impact. And yet, we rarely slow down to help reframe what it means to be a manager and how that’s different from the work they’ve done to get there.

I was having this exact conversation with a new manager when it dawned on me that she was actually expressing a sense of loss in becoming a manager. She felt less impactful in this role, less valuable for “passing off” work to someone else that she had always done herself. So, in some attempt to hold onto her historic value, she kept doing what she’d always done - and just layered her new management duties on top. She was burning herself out, her team was flailing, and she was even considering leaving the company.

This is a person who had recently been promoted because of her indefatigable energy and commitment to the company! They love her. She loves them! For nearly a decade, she has found life-purpose and meaning in her work there. She is proud to have helped build the company, to have been there to grind it out with the founders and just make stuff happen for their customers. In other words, she knows how to deliver value and how to feel valuable as a hard-working, dedicated, individual contributor. Now, she’s a struggling manager.

It dawned on me that to reboot this transition to manager, she has to redefine her value creation equation – from an equation where she creates direct value to one in which she also creates value through others.

I explained somewhat off-the-cuff that as an individual contributor, she delivered one unit of value with one unit of work. As a manager, when she enables one of her people to execute on that unit of work, she creates one unit of value out of the fact that it was executed and another unit of value out of the fact that someone else did it. In other words, as a manager, she is creating more value, not less, when someone else does the work and does it successfully.

She looked at me puzzled for a moment, and then a sort of liberated smile flashed across her face.
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“That’s it!” She exclaimed. “I never thought of it that way. But, that’s it. I know I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. My supervisor has been pushing me that it’s not just about me delivering the work. It’s about the team. I’ve got a great team. I know they want more from me. They want to grow. I’ve just been thinking about it wrong.”

So, here’s the simple math:

Individual Contributor Value = Work Execution

Manager Value = Work Execution + Capacity Building
 
Work Execution Variable:

• Did the work get done?
• Was it done well?
• Was it done on time?

Capacity Building Quotient:

• Did someone else get an opportunity to grow and own the work?
• Did I have the opportunity to work on something else?
• Are we closer to someone else consistently delivering the work without me?

 
Questions for a new manager to ask yourself:

1. Yes, the work needs to get done, but do I need to be the one to do it?
2. What am I not doing with my time because I am doing this? Which one is more important for me to do?
3. Would our team be better off if someone other than just me knew how to do this? Felt supported to do this?
4. Is this a one-off task or something that will need to happen again? Do I want to keep doing it? Should someone else own it in the future?
5. Is my team ready for more responsibility? Are they looking to grow? Is this an opportunity for them to step up and me to step back? 

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We live in a culture of more-more-more. As a result, we often think we have to do more to be more, that our personal and professional development amount to an accumulation of experiences. The passive presumption, then, is that that experiences naturally bear the fruits of knowledge, or better yet, wisdom.
 
But, busyness breeds neither knowledge nor wisdom, and “activity without learning is merely a happening” (Myles Horton). Further, busyness can be isolating – even as we are working with others and serving on boards and are always around people, our relationships can become increasingly shallow. We are doing more and relating less.
 
So, if you are looking to get more meaning out of what you do, here is my first challenge: stop focusing on how much you do, and try and figure out how much you’ve learned.
 
Here is my second: find ways to share what you have learned so that what you do matters to the world.
 
Here are a few ways that I invest in figuring out what I have learned from my experiences, what I am continuing to learn from them, and how I can share some of that with others:

1. Set up interesting conversations with smart people who ask really good questions. I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with some brilliant minds and some deeply committed learners. I have learned more about myself and my work in coffee shops than in school or anywhere else. When I share my thoughts with others, I am forced to hear them and understand them differently. When I welcome their questions, challenges, and perspectives, I continue to evolve my learning from experiences – even those I may have had many years prior. This is the gift of critical friendship.
2. Write or draw or otherwise externalize your thinking. The process of writing, whether a private journal, a blog, or even a book is a great way of figuring out what you have learned, how you express it, and what questions you are still struggling with. There is something about the deliberate process of getting words out of your mind and onto paper or a screen or wherever that presents new opportunities for analysis. If writing isn’t your thing, consider a sketchpad to doodle and draw visual expressions of your thinking. The point is to get it out of your head and into a format you can observe more critically. 
3. Sign up to teach something to somebody in a structured way. I believe at our best we are all teachers and learners and have the opportunity to be so in every interaction. But, there is something about the deliberate process of signing up to do a workshop on a topic, lead a lunch-and-learn, be a guest speaker or a guest writer that forces some clarity of thought – especially as we consider how others will receive our message. These sorts of activities force us not only to expose (to ourselves) what we think we have learned but also to package that to share with others – which, for me, is the ultimate point of learning. This process culminates then in the reflections and questions of an audience, which loops us back to the process and possibility of #1.

 
We can’t always do more, and doing more isn’t always a good idea. In fact, the cult of doing more often obscures the process of learning, which of course, limits the possibility of teaching.
 
Alternately, if we would all focus our energies on learning and then teaching from what we do, we could all do a lot more with our lives.
 

​And, I promise I will stop trying to convince you.
 
Convincing doesn’t work, and it never has. And, it’s making us dumber.
 
Convincing is a form of coercion. Power imposed. It seeks conquest of the others’ perspective (action), which usually only retrenches the others’ perspective (reaction). Think about a time when you knew someone was trying to convince you of something counter to your beliefs. How did you respond? I know my initial response is usually to defend and challenge, if for nothing else, the sport of it.
 
In fact, I have never been convinced of anything, and, I bet, you haven't either.
 
When it seems like we have been convinced, what has actually happened is that we have learned. Someone has shared a new perspective in a way that we could understand. They have provided new information that we were able to consume. They have posed a question that gave us a safe space to rethink our assumptions. They have done something that has enabled us to reflect on our positions in a way that alters them. Something has happened within us. They haven’t imposed it, forced it, or made it so.  They haven’t convinced us. They have provided a prompt and/or an environment in which we could convince ourselves.
 
This is teaching/learning. This is the open exchange of power.
 
In a post-truth America, understanding this dynamic is even more critical. There will always be facts, “facts”, and “alternate facts” that will make any case on anything. We can always find someone on the Internet who agrees with us, or we can say it enough times in enough places that it appears so. This emboldens those who want to convince and bolsters the defense of those who won’t be convinced. The logical conclusion of this dynamic then is a stalemate, the end of teaching and learning, a perpetual confirmation bias arms race with the chilling effect of an intellectual Cold War.
 
Stop convincing. Start teaching. Stop being convinced. Start learning. It’s critical to our relationships and fundamental to our democracy.
 
You’ll never convince me otherwise.

Many years ago, I learned a training/facilitation protocol we simply call Comfort/Risk/Danger.

When working with a team, the protocol helps them, based loosely around whatever it is they are trying to accomplish and what kind of work it entails, to share what things put them as individuals in the comfort zone, the risk zone, or the danger zone.

For instance, some team members will be totally comfortable with public speaking; for others, it feels dangerous. For some, crunching numbers is comfortable; for others, it would be a risk. Some find conflict dangerous; some find it risky. And, we all know those who are a little too comfortable with it.

But, we need speakers; we need numbers people; we need people who create, manage, and support effective conflict. And, we cannot afford for those skill sets to reside with one person or in one department. It’s too easy for them to get marginalized, or to go away completely. Some element of each has to be part of a broader culture.

So, as the protocol helps demonstrate, building an effective team cannot just be about capitalizing on what everyone is already good at (i.e. what puts them in the comfort zone). Creating a team is about learning how to support a pervasive element of risk.

Humans learn better when there is some level of risk. In the risk zone, we are stretching, challenging ourselves, and actively asking questions and seeking solutions. When we are comfortable, on the other hand, we are surrounded by what we already know. We aren’t actively learning. When we are in danger, we aren’t learning either (social, emotional, and professional danger; not just physical). Fight or flight kicks in. We shut down, seek relief, and avoid (or project our danger onto others).

This week, we launched Zeumo in four beta schools with a little over 4000 students, and Comfort/Risk/Danger has been on my mind all week. I have watched and experienced this frame play out not only within the Zeumo team, but with our school partners and their students.

How do we launch a new product and company in a way that doesn’t put those of us at Zeumo in danger? How do we support each other’s risk and keep out of danger?

How do we offer a new educational technology in a way that doesn’t put teachers or administrators in danger? How do we support them as they risk trying something new?

And, for students, how do we…well, for this kind of thing, our students seem to be more capable of staying safely in risk. They are still natural learners.

This week and this frame have reminded me why I enjoy teenagers so much. It has also reinforced just how powerful an educator-who-is-still-a-learner can be. We met many this week. And, finally, it has proven to me that new education technologies can and should do more than facilitate business as usual. We must risk working with students in new ways and flexing our own traditional practices to meet their real and current needs. We must be willing to be risky.
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