Kate Waterfall Hill (00:00)

Welcome back to work everybody. It's the New Year. Isn't it exciting? I'm so pleased to welcome you back. Just a quick team meeting to say that we've dreamt up a new expression, a new set of words that will galvanise us for this coming year. So we're all heading in the same direction, feeling a common goal, a shared purpose. 

And our new phrase for 2025 is, wait for it, wait for it, ‘do more with less’. Isn't it great? And I'm really looking forward to hearing all of your ideas for how we're going to do more with less and the best idea of each week gets, what do they get? A bar of chocolate. And the best idea of the week gets a bar of chocolate. Fantastic. I don't really want a bar of I'm on a diet. Can I have something else? An apple? Or an apple. Yeah. Great. Looking forward to seeing all of your contributions in the coming weeks. Do more with less. Let's go team. 

Introduction (00:56)

Hey everyone. Welcome to Work’s Not Working, a show about forward thinking people leaders, innovators and academics and how they think we can fix work to make it more meaningful, healthy, inclusive and sustainable. Brought to you by The People Space.  

I'm Siân Harrington and on today's episode, we're tackling the universal truths and myths of what it really means to lead effectively in the modern workplace. Joining me is Kate Waterfall Hill, an executive coach leadership expert and creator of Linda, the bad manager, who you heard at the start of this show and whose viral videos have struck a chord with over 200,000 followers and millions of viewers worldwide. Why does Linda resonate so deeply? Because as Kate points out, bad managers aren't born, they're created often due to a lack of support, training or even awareness. 

In this episode. we explore why so many well-meaning managers fall into the same traps and more importantly, how they can break free from them. So later on, we'll be diving into how Gen Z's expectations are forcing a rethink of outdated leadership norms and why some leaders are struggling to adapt. We'll look at the surprising parallels between quiet quitting and quiet unbossing and what they reveal about our evolving view of leadership. And we'll discuss the four C's of leadership and why empathy and authority aren't opposites, but actually essential ingredients of truly effective leadership and how to strike the right balance. 

But first, let me tell you a bit more about Kate. With over 30 years of business experience, including a meteoric rise to managing director at just 29, Kate brings a sharp blend of leadership acumen and engaging humour to her work. As an executive coach and keynote speaker, she specialises in helping leaders and teams navigate the messy realities of work. with clarity and purpose. Her book and podcast, How to Lead, distil her insights into actionable advice, making the art of leadership both accessible and enjoyable. So let's dive straight in, starting with why bad managers like Linda are everywhere and what we can learn from them. 

Siân Harrington (03.10)

So Kate, I'm delighted to welcome you along here today. I'm looking forward to our discussion. Linda, bad manager. Now it's clearly striking a nerve with many people out there.

Why are there so many Lindas in the workplace? Even those with good intentions often fall into the bad habits of Linda. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (03.30)

They do indeed. Yes. And that's why I get so many comments and also new ideas for new videos that haven't ever run out. And I think it's because people just don't have any guidance. And often people are accidental managers. They've been good individual contributors, high achievers, doing their job well. And the natural course in most organisations is to say, ‘oh you're doing really well at your job, you're a great data analyst, for instance, so we'll give you a team of data analysts to look after because then you can show them how to do it’. And being a good data analyst and being a leader of data analysts is two totally different things, but nobody ever gives you any training. Very few organisations give people the training. And sometimes people are coming to me for coaching and training and paying for it themselves because their organisation isn't. 

So I think a lot often it's because they haven't had any guidance. They haven't had a good role model maybe, dare I say, that might be the case. And I think most of the time it's just people being too busy and not having the intention, not spending time thinking, how am going to make this message land well? How am going to give this good feedback? How am I going to set my expectations? And it's just muddle, muddle, muddle through the day, muddle through my emails, muddle through endless meetings, back to back meetings. And got to the end of the week on Friday. Fantastic. I made it. And we do it all over again on Monday.

Siân Harrington (04:47)

Yes, that's certainly the case. And it seems that Linda, bad manager, has really hit home particularly with Gen Z. Now you talk about how that generation Gen Z, Gen Z, whatever you want to call it, is reshaping the workplace, but reshaping for the better. Why do you think they're, or how are their expectations challenging the dated leadership norms? And why do you think many leaders are struggling to adapt to that? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (05.13)

I think the Gen Z, Gen Z generation – and I hate to generalise in generational stereotypes, but it is true – the majority of the younger people seem to have an ability to look after themselves a little bit better than the Gen Xs, which is my generation and the Boomers, because it just seems to be a cultural change, a cultural shift. And it might've been something to do with COVID, or it might be just something to do with mental health awareness and less taboo, people having more therapy, people being open about having conversations about how they're feeling and their emotions. 

And it just seems that often the younger people have better boundaries, to be honest. And they're saying, do you know what, this is what I want from work. My work doesn't define me. It's not the everything about me. And we're getting a lot of pushback from younger people saying, do you know what, I don't want to be the manager. I'm happy being an individual contributor. 

 In fact, I was at a workshop yesterday and all of the people I was in the team workshop with were all individual contributors. And I said, do any of you want to be managers? And they all said no. And they were all different generations. And they said, I just don't want the hassle. Don't want the bother. And so they want to come to work and do a good job, take whatever the rewards are in terms of compensation, salary, what have you, take their holidays and just leave it at that. it's, and it feels like there's a generational shift towards work not being the definition of who you are. Whereas a lot of older people, you'd meet somebody in my generation and say, hello, how are you? What do you do? I think that it's more about hello, how are you? What are your pronouns? They have a different conversation. So it's an interesting shift. 

And I think it is challenging for managers to be able to manage the Gen Z generation who, I had a conversation with somebody in TV the other day and she was saying that in her way of doing things, TV is very high pressure, it's fast paced and you're expected to work really long hours and love it because you're in TV because you love television. And she was finding that some of the younger people are saying, ‘Oh, do you know what I'm going to take her self-care day today’ or ‘I'm not going to be online for a couple of hours because I'm having a nap’ in the middle of a working day and she was sorry you're doing what and it's just a different sort of way of working and it's going to be difficult I think for people to manage but we're going to have to adapt. 

Siân Harrington (07.32)

Yeah and there's quite a bit of research that's showing that that Gen Z does want to shake up what we think work is about I think and also that whole leadership is definitely, even millennials are talking about it's harder to manage a Gen Z than to almost manage upwards to Gen X or even Baby Boomers. So there's definitely a major, major issue there. Now in your book, How to Lead, https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Lead-step-step-Founders/dp/B0DJSPVH8K  you do talk about the importance of balancing empathy with authority. And I wonder whether that's part of the answer to this as well, to how to lead this new generation. Why is it still so hard for leaders to manage to balance that. And why is it that still leaders, and we've got a lot of big names out there at the moment in the wider world, men who very much have come from that authority background that we've been saying has been dead as a leadership star for donkey's years, but it still seems to be there. So they feel it's like soft. Why is there still such a problem with managing to balance this sort of empathy with authority? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (08.42)

I think in the old days, it used to be command and control style leadership, wasn’t it? Where it was, people would say, this is how you do it. This is what I want you to do. This is when you want you to do it by, and it was very instructional, directive, and yeah, very much hierarchy. And the trend over the years has been, has come, again, I think it might be to do with COVID. It might be to do with the younger generation coming through, where people are expected, expecting their leaders to actually listen, to spend time with them to understand them and get to know them, to respect their boundaries and to be more of a type of leader who aligns people with the vision so they’re really clear about what the purpose is and what the overall common goal and shared purpose is so that people feel a sense of, what's the word I'm looking for, they feel a sense of meaning and a real sense of what's driving them and why they should get up in the morning and put the effort in. So I think there's less about command and control and more about setting out a vision, being an inspirational leader that people want to follow and then enabling the people to work out the ‘how’ for themselves. So the leader being the setting out the ‘why’, the manager setting out the detail of what they want them to do, but leaving importantly the ‘how’ to do it to the sort of coaching style of management. 

And that align and enable, it means that you can bring people along with you rather than dragging them with you or hitting them with a stick to make them come with you. And I think that just times have changed and we as leaders and managers need to evolve our leadership to be more emotionally intelligent, to understand people a bit better, to get a full picture of the full person and to understand that somebody who's sitting in the corner not speaking to the rest of their team, wearing headphones, focusing on the job at hand, isn't doing that because they are office or, you know, not collaborative in any way, it's because they need to focus and they might have the sort of brain that needs to be quiet and focused and that's okay. 

But having that conversation with them to say, rather than the manager saying, my interpretation of you having your headphones in all the time and not speaking to anybody is that your office and not a team player is actually saying, I noticed that you wear your headphones a lot and you sit quietly. I'm really interested. I'm curious to know what's that about? What does that do for you? And then the person can say, when I'm doing creative work or I'm doing data analysis or I'm planning, doing some strategic planning, I need to have some quiet space. Yes. Okay. 

And as a manager, you can accommodate that and lean into it and understand it and be sympathetic towards it. And it could be good. And that understanding to build a good relationship, build trust, psychological safety, people are more likely to innovate, admit mistakes, ask good questions if they feel safe. And I think that's more and more important. We're understanding it more and this empathetic leadership actually isn't soft at all. It's actually a really strong, because it gives people boundaries, people guidance. And actually, as Brené Brown brilliantly says in her book, it's kind to be clear. And that's what we need. 

Siân Harrington (11:47)

Yeah, it's interesting. And I guess we all fall into this trap. You can't help it to some extent, because you've come through a system that's taught you this way of working. I even recall when one of my team sat there with headphones many years ago, about 12 years ago, I was like, how can you concentrate with music? I was the opposite. I actually needed that quiet. And now I can do that myself. It's just what you're used to, isn't it? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (12.14)

Yeah, absolutely. And also it might not be that they're wearing headphones for music. It might be they're wearing noise cancelling headphones. And again, we know, we all make assumptions that they're doing something naughty in some way or something that's somehow means you're not giving your whole self to your work, but actually that might be the way they need to do it. 

Siân Harrington (12.33)

Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned earlier, accidental managers, and we know that many managers, many Lindas, if you want to call them that, are created when high performers in their particular technical subject are promoted but without the requisite leadership training that's required. What do HR leaders need to do to break this cycle and actually set managers up for success? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (12.56)

In an ideal world, HR managers and leaders would be giving people the requisite training and support that they need. And obviously, I would say as a coach, that coaching is the best way to do that. Even if all they did was give people my book or a book on leadership, that would be good. That would be a good start. There's lots of free resources out there. Podcasts like this and podcasts like my own. I've got my own one as well called How to Lead, that there are ways of doing it. 

But I guess for HR managers it's supporting their new leaders and new managers and saying, these are the resources that you might want to look at. And if the company can't afford to give them training and coaching, then fine. But then direct them, signpost them to other resources and give them time. That's the other thing. I think probably the biggest difficulty that new managers often have is that say they've got a portfolio of work that they know a number of clients, they already work on 20 clients themselves. Then they're given the job of managing the client success team and nobody takes any of the portfolio away from them. So they're still doing the 20 clients and trying to manage a whole load of people at the same time. 

So that's the other thing that HR managers can do is campaign to the senior management team to say, when we promote somebody they have to have at least 20% of their workload taken off them in order for them to be a good leader and to have time with their team, time to think strategically, time to plan and also just time to ‘be’ sometimes. think we need to building time between meetings and things like that. Yeah, so that would be the sort of the ideal scenario that HR managers could do. 

But also, yes, I would say training and support and there are loads of different courses out there, but also coaching is the cream of it really, to spend time one-to-one with somebody who can really help walk alongside you in the journey, give you some support and unlock the solutions and the mindset shift that you need to become a really good leader is really important. 

Siân Harrington (14:43)

Do you think that managers are unfairly blamed for all the ills in an organisation because it seems that very often when you dig down into discussions with people, it comes back to the managers of the blockers between this great idea, this great strategy at the top, and then the people doing the work. But often it feels to me that's quite a convenient excuse.  

Kate Waterfall Hill (15.06)

Yes, it might be convenient excuse, but it is often true. But I don't think it's necessarily deliberate. I think most people, if you've got a Linda the bad manager-style person, generally, I don't know whether I'm naive in thinking this but I don't think people set out to be a bad manager. I don't think people get up in the morning and think, I could do it like this. I could be listening to my team and I could be setting them a vision and I could be inspiring and managing them well. But I'm not going to bother. Today, I'm going to be a complete, I was going to say a swear word there, I'm going to be a nasty piece of work. I'm going to undermine other people. I'm going to judge them unfairly. I'm going to take all their good ideas, talk over the top of them, tell them they're wrong publicly. All those awful things that bad managers do. I don't think anybody sets out to do that. 

I think it is often because they're high achievers and they're problem solvers, they think they need to get things done. They have pressure from above, pressure from underneath. Maybe they're a bit nervous about their own jobs. Maybe they've got peer pressure effectively as well. But I think it's mostly hapless. don't think it's potentially tiny bit negligent that they haven't gone and got themselves training or looked into how they could be a better manager, but it's by accident. And that I do often think it is the manager that's at fault. 

But there's really easy solutions. And it is things like listening and taking an interest in your team and advocating for your team, advocating for yourself, setting really good boundaries, going to your manager and saying, I need more time to lead and things like that. So we do have agency, but it's just, I suppose it's just having the spark of, you know, I want to do something differently now. And I think this routinely people need to stop and think and say, what do I want out of my career and my leadership and my life? How do I, how am going to make it better? How am I going to make it more joyful for myself and for the people I work with? And just taking a moment to think I could do this differently if I chose. I don't need to just make, be running around on this treadmill week after week and it being hard. And often what happens is people go on the treadmill of bad management. And being a bad manager themselves doesn't feel terribly nice. It doesn't give you really good, those good positive outcomes you want. And then it often needs to burn out. So that's the shame. 

Siân Harrington (17:18)

That's interesting because you're very much there talking about that agency of that individual as opposed to, suppose I was implying that I felt quite a lot of it was systemic organisational issues and also potentially top leadership, not investing enough in the management. And  I think all of those are there, but yeah, what I'm hearing from you is that also as individuals we can step up ourselves. We don't have to wait to be given how-tos by the company. It's in ourselves to actually find that information and to look at good management and see what we can learn from them. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (17:55)

Absolutely. And part of that is spending some time reflecting on what we did well, what were the challenges, what did we learn, what would we like to do differently. If money was no object and we could wave a magic wand, what would we change? And then actually what small steps can we make to affect that change? And it's all very well saying, oh it's not fair. I've got too much to do. I've got too much work. I don't have enough resources. The budgets are constrained. Yeah, those things all are really frustrating. But nearly everybody has those same problems. But it's about, as you say, taking up your arms as it were, and going and fighting for some change. And actually if you're in an organisation where you don't see any change and you've tried to change things and things aren't going to change, then why are you still there then? 

Siân Harrington (18:44)

That's a really interesting way of seeing it. So when you are the alter ego, Linda the bad manager, what particular behaviours have you found people are coming back to you and saying, mostly saying, ‘Oh my goodness, that is my boss’. What are the particular things that you're hearing the most common issues from people when they're seen as real resonance there, you could be their boss. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (19:08)

Yes. I think there's probably two main bits. One is the listening, so not listening. And whether that's talking over the top of people or not giving people time or telling people what to do and not hearing their point of view or asking for their suggestions. That's probably one big one. 

And I think it's probably from a good place, not a good place, but good intentions anyway, that the manager thinks that they need to have all the answers. And that shows that they're a great leader identified the issue, they've identified the solution and this is what you're going to go away and do. And actually a better leader who has more confidence and actually higher self-esteem is one that says, ‘Hey, so what happened with that project?’ When we're reviewing the project, it's not a who's to blame and what went wrong and whose head's going to roll. It's actually what went wrong? What processes do we need to have a look at? What do we need to develop and change? How do we learn from that and move forwards positively? So that's one thing – listening.

And the other thing I would say that's a really big gripe is meetings. It’s people having meetings that are meaningless, meetings that go on too long, meetings that are back to back and just wasting people's time in meetings when it could have been an email, it could be some project management software, could be another way of keeping a track of the projects that are going on and using meeting time to genuinely collaborate, communicate, build relationships, give positive feedback or constructive feedback and actually help people along their way to improving things rather than just assessing what they've done. 

My most popular Linda the bad manager video, in terms of the ones that you're looking for is one called ‘job justification’. And it literally is Linda saying, I'm just going to make you go around the room and tell me what you're doing to justify why you've got your job. It's a complete waste of your time. I acknowledge that, but we're going to do it anyway. 

Siân Harrington (20:56)

That is fascinating, isn't it? And it again shows that after  a100 years or so of management, if we want to call it that, the way that we approach management, we still are stuck in old bad habits that we just can't seem to shake off. And often I think we can try and look for more clever answers and actually it's very simple issues that are causing this bad management. It's not some very deep thing, it's just communication, listening. It's, as you said, meetings. Meetings seem to be the bane of everybody's life and everyone says so, and we're still doing it. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (21:35)

It is a really strange thing, isn't it?  It's so strange. And it's such a universal truth that meetings tend to be a waste of time. As you say, why aren't we challenging that and saying, okay, what do we want out of this meeting? 

So I was doing a workshop yesterday and we were talking about their team meetings and they were saying, how can we do it better then? So I do want to have a team meeting. I do want to see my team, but what could we do to make it more meaningful? And  actually that is the first step is to get together as a team and say, do we want out of this meeting? What are we all here for? What would be useful for us to share, know, help each other with, ask each other questions. How can we, what obstacles do we need to unblock? And actually a really simple agenda and understanding your role within that meeting is really important, but a really simple agenda of saying, one thing that's gone really well, one thing that you're finding challenging and one thing that you need help with or you'd like to offer help with. That's it. Those three things. That would be a good start rather than I've been working on this project for the last six months and I told you about it last week, I'm going to tell you about it again. 

Siân Harrington (22:35)

One of the things you talk a bit about is quiet quitting and quiet unbossing. I think we've spoken quite a lot in recent years about the quiet quitting phenomenon but quiet unbossing. Tell me a bit about that and how these two trends reflect deeper issues within leadership and how do we reverse them?  

Kate Waterfall Hill (22:51)

Yes. So the unbossing phenomenon is that as what I referenced earlier on about people just generally not wanting to be managers and feeling like that responsibility is a burden rather than a privilege. Actually, to my mind, being a leader and a manager is just fantastic. I love the idea of that intellectual challenge of how am going to get across this? How am going to make it land well? How am I going to deliver this change? How am going to stretch this person to get the most out of them. But for others, they just, as I said before, they just literally want to show up, do the work, go home again. So that's the quandary that we've got as time goes by. Are we going to find that there's going to be a whole generation of people that don't want to be managers? And then you're left with the older generation still being managers and not moving with the times. So we're going to going to have this, going to a wrestle between the two. Yeah, it's a phenomenon that'd be interesting to see played out and see what happens next. 

Siân Harrington (23:46)

Yeah. And I again, agree with you that I think that the role of the manager will change and the manager will become the coach, I believe quite strongly. That's what, instead of managing that world of management is changing. And it is all about helping people, particularly in a more technological age, bringing out the best of the people to give the best that humans can give into an organisation. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (24:12)

Yeah, if you don't mind me chipping in, that point you just said then has sparked an idea with me, is that that's the tricky bit as well. Now technology is more and more prevalent and more and more important and crucial with our businesses, sometimes the leaders don't actually know what their people are doing. And that's what's tricky because they're not technical experts. When you're a leader or a manager of a group of subject matter experts it's quite tricky for some leaders sometimes because they're not the expert necessarily. They haven't got the technical expertise but they still have the responsibility to set out the vision and the common purpose and the direction and motivate and inspire others, give them a sense of psychological safety so that they're encouraged to innovate and admit mistakes and what have you. So there's still a role for the leader, even if they don't have the technical knowledge even if they don't have to know the ins and outs of what that person's doing each day. 

So that role of coach becomes even more important because you don't know the answers yourself. Actually, you can't direct it. You can't be the overbearing manager in that situation. All you can do is coach. So all you can do is say, how are you? How's it going? What do you need from me? What could you try? What are the blockers? What are the risks? What's the first next step? What resources do you need? How can I help? No sorts of open questions that that are the beginning of coaching, they're very scratching the surface. But those are the things that you could do, even when you've got a team of subject matter experts. 

Siân Harrington (25:36)

We mentioned earlier the command and control, and I referred to the fact that there seems in the world at the moment to be quite a lot of big egos, if I can call them that, in the world of business and politics and various things like that. And it strikes me that they represent that idea in a way that leaders are born and they're charismatic and all this. And we still vote for them. We still look up to people like this. And yet we all know that in terms of getting real results and getting a good business, that's not that leadership style we should be promoting. Why do you think we're still attracted to this sort of idea in a way of the charismatic leader? 

And it fits really in a way to my that earlier question about the soft skills approach and coaching and everything is a different type of leader. And we know that works better, but somehow we still seem to look for somebody who does know the answers, even if the answers are wrong. It implies that they know the answers, they've got the fix. Why is that because it sounds to me like you're saying that the generations Z in particular doesn't like that. And I think we're seeing that in the way they are pulling out of politics and other areas where you might see that sort of power play work. 

Kate Waterfall Hill (26:52)

I think in politics in particular, people are voting. We're talking about the States really – this is only my personal view, but I think people are voting for that charismatic, if that's what you want to call him, leader. But not sure that's the right word, but anyway, I know what mean. Yeah. He seems to have captured people's imagination. I think it's largely because the people who are voting for him are voting for the fact that he says he's going to improve their lives. And they believe that they bought into that narrative that he's going to make their taxes will be better, that their income will be better, will, jobs will be secure. So it's actually a selfish drive to vote for that particular person. That's my opinion about that. 

And actually in real life, when we're working day in day out with somebody, yes it's nice to have somebody who's charismatic, who you look up to and you think, wow, they really know what they're talking about. But actually when it comes down to it, if they're charismatic, they also need to be a good listener. They also need to be a good coach. If they're charismatic and talk over the top people and steal their ideas and don't encourage psychological safety, then that's not so good. So charisma might be the icing on the cake, but the other bits of being a great leader are probably more important. In a day-to-day basis, that's what people are looking for. 

That's what I'm hearing from people. I work with people one-to-one and I work in groups as well. And I hear it all the time that people just want to feel valued and seen and heard. And that's the most important thing. And it's important in conflict resolution as well, when there's tension, the role of leader is not to ignore that and to brush it under the carpet and pretend it isn't there, but actually to shine a light on it and say, I've noticed that in the meetings when so-and-so speaks, you shut down. Tell me what's that about? Let's explore that. And then go and speak to the other person, find out their point of view, and then facilitate potentially an open conversation that's not an argument, that's not a fight, but actually it's an understanding of each other and seeing if we can come to an agreement. 

And that again is the role of leader, which I think a lot of people shy away from. They think hard conversation, conflicts, urgh don't want to deal with that. But actually to my mind, it's again, as I say, it’s a great intellectual challenge to see how can I resolve this in a successful way? How can I get two people to hear each other, to understand each other, to maybe acknowledge their differences and to appreciate their differences and enjoy them? That's a real art as well. 

Siân Harrington (29:17)

So we talked earlier about some of the bad behaviours, like not listening. If you had to choose the three worst, the three biggest bad habits of managers, but also then what can we do as leaders ourselves, as organisations, as HR people, to help to fix that? What practical steps? What would those three behaviours be and what can we do to start fixing them? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (29:40)

Okay, so the three behaviours I would say I will actually start with the listening. would say that listening and thinking that they have to solve all the problems themselves. That's probably one key thing that better leaders do well is listening and actually leaving space for other people to identify the issue come up with some options and then identify their preferred solution. 

The other thing is making time for people and actually spending time with them, time to lead, being intentional, taking a minute, just literally a minute before every meeting saying, what do I want to get out of this meeting? What's my role in it? How am going to play this? How am I going to get the positive outcome that I want to achieve? Every conversation, spending just a minute or two thinking about how you're going to do that at the beginning of every day, spending some time on how am going to be a good leader? Maybe reviewing yourself at the end of every day. Did I do well? Did I trip up anywhere? What do I want to do better tomorrow? So making time to reflect and think. 

And then the sort of the crux of being a good manager is knowing how to delegate well, because you can't do everything yourself. And if you're trying to do everything yourself and you're micromanaging or controlling everything, then actually you're not giving people the empowerment and the engagement that they like and they want to have generally speaking. So setting really clear expectations and making sure you give really clear responsibility and accountability to the person you're delegating to, discussing reasonable deadlines, making sure the other person's brought into that, but also understanding the obstacles, the risks, the resources they need, and then asking them importantly, this is my favourite question when you're delegating somebody, so you've set out your expectations and the desired outcomes. My favourite question is, what's your first next step going to be? And then the person you delegated to, if they don't know the answer to the first next step, it might be they need to go in and have a think about it, but it might be that they haven't understood what you've delegated. So that's a really clear way of knowing whether you've delegated well or not. So those are three bad habits that I see, not listening, not making time and not delegating. 

And then in terms of actionable steps from organisational people or for HR professionals and people leaders is when you promote people, to set them up for success. So remove some of the work they have so they have time for people management so they can spend that time being a leader. 

Also train them give them some support, give them some coaching, give them some signposts, then to resources that they can read or listen to that will help them with their management and preferably give them a mentor or a buddy or a coach, either internally or externally that can help them walk alongside them because I think it can be quite lonely when you're promoted, you think you can't really share it, particularly if you're promoted above your peers, you can't really talk to your peers about how you don't know what you're doing, you don't really want to talk to your boss that you don't really know what you're doing. And unless you've got some good buddies in your peer level, sometimes that's awkward too. So actually somebody else who you can trust and you can talk to openly about your vulnerabilities and your worries and your concerns can be really helpful.

Sian Harrington (32:37)

I'm hearing quite a lot of talk about reverse mentoring at the moment. And so how can Gen Z teach leaders how to lead and how can we take those lessons and put them across organisations? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (32:50)

Yeah, I get this question quite a lot actually, when I'm coaching people, sometimes it's about managing their team, sometimes it's about managing their peer relationships, but a lot is about managing their stakeholders and their line managers. So Simon Sinek has a great line which I borrow routinely, which is, be the leader you wish you had. 

So if you've got a manager or a leader who doesn't spend any time with you and who doesn't do one-to-ones and doesn't know what you're doing, then rather than leaving it and leaving it then getting to your end of year appraisal and them saying, oh, I don't really know what you did this year, so I'm not going to promote you or give you a pay rise, take responsibility for that and say, I was thinking we might have a one-to-one once a month and I'll just literally 20 minutes, I can just catch you up on the successes, the challenges, what I've learned and what I need from you.

Generally speaking, anybody half decent will say, sounds like a good idea. That sounds nice and simple. I can follow that. So actually you're training them how to be a leader in effect. And if they don't want to do that, if they resist having one-to-ones with you or you booked them and then they cancel them, send them an email anyway, send them a monthly report saying, as I say, these are the successes I've had, top three. These are the challenges. This is what I've learned and this is what I need from you. And maybe some ideas for change or suggestions for improving things, improving efficiency, increasing revenue, decreasing costs, those things that most managers want to hear. 

So actually speaking in the language of your manager, what will light them up, what they'll be interested in is really useful, to think about their seven love languages that people talk about in relationships and personal relationships. Some people love gifts, some people love words of affirmation, some people like acts of service. It's worth thinking about what your manager likes. And if they want to hear about you reducing costs, talk to them about that. If they want to hear about client retention or good patient outcomes or whatever the organisation is you're in, talk to them in those terms. 

I was thinking what we could do in terms of our working relationship so that I could be more efficient in this area, the area that your boss is interested in, then this is what I need from you as a manager. So actually taking the lead and saying this is what I need from you might be a good place to start. 

Siân Harrington (35:00)

So we know that bad management, bad leadership is bad for business. It will affect ultimately your profitability and your sustainability. It's bad for your team. You alluded earlier that it's bad for you as a person as well, if you are a bad manager, if you are a Linda. In terms of things like burnout, you've mentioned and overwhelm, you become ineffective, you lose your own sense of value. We're talking a lot about burnout, mental health issues, things like that today in society, but in business as well. What can we do as people leaders to try and do more here? Because there's been a lot of investment, but it doesn't seem to be getting much better. What's our own personal responsibility as a manager here? And what can the organisation do to help to prevent managers getting to that stage? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (35:52)

I think, again, it's going back to being intentional. Where as a manager, if you just bumble through your day, then it's going to not get any better. But actually, if you, as I say, literally take a minute every morning to work out what you want to get out of the day. And before every meeting, what you want to get out of the meeting, you're much more likely to get something out of it if you've actually been intentional about that. 

And if you can imagine having a team that's looking to you with their eyes wide open and waiting for the fantastic things that are going to fall out of your mouth, because you're going to be visionary and inspiring. And they're going to be enjoying what they're doing and coming to you with ideas because they feel like. they've got that psychological safety, asking good questions that actually you're going to listen to because you're open to that. Coming up with solutions so you don't have to, taking things off your plate because you're delegating. 

If you imagine being a really good manager, it's a joy and you people, the atmosphere is better. The output is better. You're enjoying what you're doing more. And so your whole life is improved by being a better manager. It doesn't feel like this sort of heavy burden of responsibility and drudgery and people moaning, complaining. So people come to me and say, I don't want really want to be a manager because all it is people complaining, people moaning, feeling like you're squashed between the senior leaders and the team. But actually if you can take a different view of it and actually enjoy it, then you will be more productive and enjoy your life more. And then hopefully not get to a burnout situation. It's hard. It's not easy being a manager. I get that, but it can be good fun if you get it right.

Siân Harrington (37:28)

And I mentioned your book earlier, How to Lead, and in there you talk about four Cs of leadership engagements, that's clarity, control, challenge and community. So which of those do you think leaders neglect the most and how can they address it? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (37:45)

Probably clarity, I would say, and probably clarity is the one that I think is the most important. You can get away with some of the other ones if you don't have those, but without clarity people just don't have that sense of direction. And in clarity, it's probably the most complex of the four that I talk about because it has five levels within clarity. I'll take you through those if that's okay. 

The five levels of clarity are right at the top. You've got the organisational vision. So what the organisation's all about, what's its purpose. And sometimes people have, when I say that to CEOs and founders, do you have a vision for the organisation? Oh yeah, mm-hmm, yeah. And I say, what is it? And they go hold on a second, I just need to look at the website. Okay. So it really needs to be a vision that you really live and breathe all the time. In fact, I talked about that on my podcast this week. So the overall organisation vision is the first thing. 

Then the next is the team's purpose, how that, how your team is delivering into that organisational vision above it. 

And then the next level down is at individual's purpose, their role within that team purpose within the organisation's objectives. So the three levels – organisation, team and individual purpose. 

And then the last two are clarity of your career development. So where you're going to go next, how you're going to be continually growing and your professional development and what systems there are in place to help you do that, what vision you have of your career. 

And then lastly, on a day-to-day basis, are you clear on the expectations? Do you know what you're expected to do on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis? And do you have a good system of delegation of accountability of understanding your role and responsibility? So those are the five levels of clarity and they're quite hard to do from a manager point of view, but if you have them as a checklist and then you have them as questions that you ask on a routine basis, maybe once a quarter, you actually go out and speak, ask your team in an employee survey: Do you feel that you have an understanding of the employees, of the organisation's vision? Do you understand the purpose of the team? Do you understand your own role within that purpose? Give it a score out of 10. Measure it, benchmark it, monitor it, track it, work on it. 

Siân Harrington (39:57)

I like that because I think we do that intermittently and maybe don't call it clarity and have it in that step sort of approach. We might look at it and do you understand how you're delivering to the business but not putting it into the framework so that it's all the way down cascading to that. So I think that's a really good way of seeing it. We're coming to the end, I'm afraid. So if there was one key takeaway for people leaders out of what you've learned from Linda the bad manager, what you've learned from your coaching, everything you read, what do you think, especially as we go into 2025, what do you think that key takeaway, that one thing people should focus on perhaps to improve management? And maybe we can say from you as a personal manager and also as an organisation where do they need to put their sort of investment if you want to call it that? 

Kate Waterfall Hill (40:50)

I think it's about just taking some time to be intentional. So that includes reflection, seeing what's worked and what's been challenging and what you've learnt, but also intentional about how you want to make a difference going forwards. So that could be from the organisations, the people leaders and HR professionals, or from individual managers, just spending a minute – and it doesn't need to be a long time – but regularly do it. Block it out in your diary so that you spend your regular time. it may be as half an hour a week. It's maybe a couple of hours a month where you're thinking a bit more strategically, but not necessarily about the direction of the organisation or the team, but you're thinking about the strategic direction of your leadership. 

So you're making time to think, okay, how am I going to be more intentional? How am I going to make time to lead my people? How am going to make time to listen? How am I making time to delegate well? And if I may be taking a misstep, maybe wherever I've been a bit Linda the bad manager-ish and where would I like to, how would I like to polish that and refine it and seeking feedback from others on how you're doing. So that would be my thing. think just taking a minute regularly to be intentional. 

Siân Harrington (41:57)

That was Kate Waterfall-Hill on the pitfalls of bad management and how we can all strive to lead with more clarity, empathy and intention. If there's one takeaway from today's discussion, it's that great leadership starts with being intentional, taking the time to reflect, listen, and act with purpose. Whether it's rethinking your meetings, embracing a coaching mindset or breaking free from old habits, the small changes you make can have a profound impact on your team and your organisation. 

So thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on LinkedIn at Sian Harrington, the People Space for more insights into the future of work. You can also explore additional resources at www.thepeoplespace.com. This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard and you've been listening to Work’s not working… let's fix it. Goodbye.