Sometimes doing your job means actually doing your job.
Yet one of the habits we find hard to shake in a leadership role is seeking permission for doing what we think should be done. That’s the topic of this week’s coaching reflection.
Transcript
Intro
Sometimes doing your job means actually doing your job.
My name is Andy Polaine and every week I spend my days coaching design leaders and in these videos, I reflect upon the common themes and questions that come up in the week.
Not asking permission
And this week, I want to talk about this idea of not asking permission.
So we go through the first half of our careers and often really the first half of our lives, with other people telling us what to do. From kindergarten all the way through to graduation, whether it’s your parents or teachers. Everyone’s giving you a structure and saying, okay, this is what you have to do.
And then you have this moment of graduation where you’re suddenly faced with the rest of your life. And it’s a little bit scary and oh my God, what am I going to do? Then we find our way and then we enter the workforce and we start that ladder all over again and there’s something that someone once said to me ages ago, that’s really stuck with me, which is the hard thing about growing up is realizing that adults don’t have all the answers.
And there’s a similar thing that happens when you move into leadership, which is part of your job is to make stuff up. Part of your job is to decide, this is what I think should be done. This is what I think we should do. And this is how we’re going to go about doing it.
Part of it is that we’ve gone through that whole part of our career always deferring to someone else. And it feels deeply strange to be the one who says, okay, we’re going to do this and we’re just going to do it.
So one thing to remember is you may be the most senior design person in your organization. There’s no one else really to check in with to see whether this is the right thing to be doing or not from a design perspective. So, if you say what I think we need to do this. I think we need to travel here, or I think we need to have this event or I think we need to implement this kind of structure in the way we work. Just go ahead and do it.
You don’t need someone who probably knows less about design than you do to tell you that that’s okay and to give you permission.
Dealing with blocking stakeholders
If you have a stakeholder who does have some kind of blocking power, one of the ways you can deal with that is just to say, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to have this meeting going to have this workshop, going to deliver this piece of work, or this is going to go live. And give them a deadline for feedback or response. If you say, I’m going to do this. If you see any problems with this, please let me know by Friday. What you do is exactly what they do to you, which is to give you a deadline that they want you to respond by. And if they don’t, well, then it’s their fault, assuming they actually got the message. And you just go ahead and do the thing. And quite often that really gets around a lot of the gatekeeping.
It is actually your job
Now there is a caveat around this, which is sometimes you do actually have to have sign off from someone to release resources. And that can be problematic, but you will find quite often you can just carry on doing stuff and it’s your job to do it. Those people may be looking to you to actually just step up and do that stuff.
One of the things that comes up in coaching quite often is people saying, oh yeah, one of the bits of feedback I got is that I’m not being proactive enough. And this is exactly what they mean. If you’re the most senior design person and you’re working with senior leadership and they’ve asked for certain outcomes, it’s your job to come up with the way you’re going to achieve those outcomes. Then, if you keep saying, is this right? Is this the right way to do this? You’re actually not doing your job. Your job is to be the one who says this, I think, is the right way to do this. And to go ahead and do it.
Now, it’s not that you just mow down everyone else. You might want to get feedback. You might want to get input from different people. But someone has to go, we’re going to do this and just get on with it.
And with that, you have to get over the insecurity that well, it’s just my opinion. I’m just making this up. Because everyone’s just making it up. And that’s the thing about growing up, which is realizing you don’t have all the answers, but you do it anyway.
Outro
I hope that’s useful for you. If you’d like to check out my coaching practice, it’s at polaine.com/coaching, and I’ll put the link below.
If you’ve got your own tips or thoughts about this topic, please comment below. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.
Thanks very much. And I’ll see you next time.
