Imagine All the People
Kate
Apologies for the long hiatus! As I have a final few “things about Competence” (skills, attributes) to write about, and just a few more people to use as examples, it gets harder to nail down just the right match. It’s also hard to keep up something like this for what’s now a couple of years. Kudos to people who write regular newsletters on top of other work and life. Of course this series is dedicated to people who can work consistently over time to achieve goals. You see why that might be important.
One of the best things about my work is getting to spend time with fiercely capable people. Studying capable people is a big theme in my life. We all enjoy our work more when the people around us do their part with good humor. We don’t care for it when we have to watch our backs or pick up a lot of others’ slack. One of the reasons Competent people are so good for an organization is that they like to be busy. They can shoulder a heavy load, and often have the capacity to take on dropped responsibilities. The extra resources any project needs to keep going when unexpected things happen are built into a Competent person. Many people have some of these attributes we’re discussing, and lots of people are nice and know how to do their jobs well. It doesn’t take having the full set to be a real asset to any group. We can all hope to be better at these things. The people who embody most or all of these skills though, they knock it out of the park on a regular basis.
The attribute I’d like to talk with you about today is sharing. Not just in an Elmo-loves-to-share kind of way, but in a way that makes an organization healthy. In this sense, sharing encompasses a host of things. My best example is Kate. I met Kate when we both worked for Susan. Kate’s background is in communications, but she has genius in many areas. Today we’re looking at just the one attribute.
Now, forget what you know about sharing for a few minutes.
Let’s talk about collaboration. Kate gets things done by knowing the right people to do them. (She’s often one of those right people to do the things.) It’s hard, as a manager, to strike precisely the right balance of trusting employees to act (not micromanaging) while staying to do useful work with them. There’s a sixth-sense some people have for when they should be involved, and when they should not. Kate is a textbook example of doing it right. Sharing in the sense we’re considering today is Kate’s willingness to share the load, the responsibility, and the credit. She wouldn’t leave a colleague or employee hanging. She also doesn’t take on work that can and should be done by someone else.
I recall a couple of occasions when Kate checked in on how her staff were doing by asking me questions about my work with them. It never came across as an inquisition or lack of trust, in fact she was leaving them to work uninterrupted and only following up from the periphery in case help might be needed.
A few years ago, Kate had a new role in our organization. She inherited a large project to replace a legacy system. The system was used by all sorts of people for a surprising array of tasks. Over the years it had been modified to do things it was never intended for, and had become a critical piece of infrastructure well beyond its original function. Bringing in a new system to do both more and less than the old one was a massive undertaking.
One of Kate’s first steps was finding an executive co-sponsor for the project. She found someone with weight and influence outside our department who would participate to make the thing a success. Often project sponsors become nothing more than executive names on project charters. Not so these two. They were in project meetings for months, they advocated up the chain and persuaded colleagues, and made the project work.
Kate didn’t run the meetings herself, she trusted others to do that. She was in up to her eyeballs, but from day one she shared the credit. It was very much her project in the sense that any failure would stick to her, but when good things happened, she shared the credit with her co-sponsor, the project team as a whole, and specific individuals on their critical pieces.
In that same project, Kate also made brilliant use of project management. Not one PM, but coordinated ones. It’s rare to see that. Kate attended those project meetings, with dozens of participants. These were big meetings, with the potential to swing wide, get bogged-down, and otherwise be a problem. In that time, I watched Kate being a valuable participant, but letting her PMs and project leads run the meetings. I also observed her playing “sheepdog” whenever things were getting to be more than the other staff could control. Knowing what a leader is good for means being able to share the work, bring authority in a helpful way, and not suck all the air out of the room.
In that big project, one important part wasn’t keeping pace with the rest, so Kate brought in someone to help. She didn’t supplant her employee running the group, she gave them an understanding of how the new person would support the work, the importance of getting up to speed, and a face-saving view of this as just extra resources and help. No one felt bad, and the work picked up. Not only did Kate “share” trust, but she also shared her own perspective of teamwork and ego-less collaboration.
Throughout that project, Kate relentlessly brought work to the attention of people’s supervisors, functional and IT managers, the CIO, and the rest of the project team. That sharing of credit meant making sure everyone who does worthy activity gets credit, but also literally telling people. Sharing. As a communicator by trade, Kate deftly puts words where they need to be. Her timing is usually perfect.
Sometimes things don’t go well. (Hopefully this isn’t the first you’re hearing we live in a flawed world.) Kate is one who can make you feel better by sharing her own experiences. Never in the “oh, you think YOU had it bad” sense. Always in a way that connects people with support. Whether that’s laughing at herself to relieve someone’s embarrassment or awkwardness, or just sharing companionship over coffee when things are overwhelming, Kate takes care of the people around her. That form of connection is also what I mean by “sharing.”
Kate is also good at sharing information. Not just project information, but the sort of information that doesn’t make it into company newsletters, but is helpful to have. Kate uses some of her other Competence skills to connect dots. “Oh, by the way, I was talking with Marie, from Acme University, I met her through a mentoring arrangement. They’re looking for advice on how to do the same kind of project you’ve been working on for a while. And obtw they’re doing really well with that thing you’re trying to get started.”
Kate seeks out mentors, which might not seem like a form of sharing. In fact, Kate connects other people with her mentors. She shares what she’s learned. She’s aware of other similar organizations and how they do things, which works in both directions. She also mentors innumerable others formally and informally. No need for people to learn from their own experience if they can learn from others’!
And the most interesting nuance, sharing work. Sharing responsibility. The function of a manager is to get work done through the efforts of others. With some managers it can feel like tasks get flung out like dirty laundry, or fastballs. A manager who instead “shares” work is a different experience altogether.
Kate carefully considers what work is needed, and fits the work and the team together like a jigsaw puzzle. Or perhaps a mosaic. Kate considers skills, what people enjoy doing, what’s already on everyone’s plate, priorities, even personality. Then shares with the people involved.
I’ve never seen Kate be “attached” to her vision of how work should be shared. The point is the goals but equally it’s the people doing it. It’s easy to bring up “I can do this part, but I’m not good at this small part of it” and Kate will be right with you to identify someone else good at that part. Often herself. She shares the work by doing part of it. No “good luck, tell me when you’re done,” instead, always knowing she’s right in there with the group.
I’ve seen (and been) inexperienced management imitating that. Being comfortable with operational work and uncomfortable as a manager makes for splendidly bad management. Clinging to the old job someone had before they were promoted is classic. Or the sort of boss who pretends to be the “everyman.” But really they’re not. Not available, not doing anything of particular value. Kate and others like her are able to share the load without doing their subordinate’s job for them and without pretense of doing more than they are.
If you’re following the series, this may sound like Susan in the last article. Sharing and helping are related. Difficult to distinguish. Kate learns from the people around her. We’ve both learned from Susan. I don’t think it’s incredibly important to tease apart sharing and helping. But it’s important to see how many forms sharing might take.
I recommend thinking of “sharing” in a very broad sense when we look at Competent people. It might be as simple as sharing a snack to help people perk back up. That’s the “right this moment” way the attribute shows up. Inside, it seems to be a very open view of what people need and what you have. An awareness of others. An insightful view of what could be better if X only knew or had access to or felt appreciated for Y.
I like the example of credit-sharing the most. It illustrates some of the underlying traits we’ve already discussed, but it is truly about giving away what you have. Someone is giving you credit for your work, and your immediate thought is for the team. You immediately turn around and give away that credit. That builds trust. Trust with the person giving you that credit, trust of the people doing the work that they’re seen and appreciated for it. In so many ways it improves teamwork. But to do it, you have to have a deep understanding of what I mean here by “sharing.”
Kate’s work is high-profile. She builds reputation and others’ desire to pitch in for her just by doing her normal activities. She has a canny sense for when something is “tilting at windmills” but she’s not afraid tackle even a giant problem that needs it, regardless of the odds.
As a woman in IT, Kate is keenly aware of implicit and structural bias that can hold people back for reasons other than their capabilities. But those problems are so deeply ingrained in how organizations function that challenging them is fraught with peril. Kate isn’t afraid to smoothly and reasonably pursue something wrong all the way up the chain of command. I’ve seen her do it. Kate shares her leverage and position to chip away at big problems.
Try thinking about the opposite of Competence. Consider how people feel working with or for someone who doesn’t share (credit, trust, resources, etc.). You can find more business school publications on corrosive team traits than you could read in a lifetime. But frame it positively instead. Most of that corrosiveness is just the absence of this one behavior.
This kind of sharing should be standard operating procedure for everyone, not just the people we talk about in this series. When I say Competent people share, that’s in a broad sense of collaborating, giving credit, sharing the load (and sharing out the load in a developed sense of “delegation.”)
The deftness, thoroughness, and well-managed intention comes out in Competent people in ways we can all stand to emulate.