Better Bosses: The Pandemic as Impetus for Re-Thinking Management
with Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale
Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale are the co-founders of Raw Signal Group, a B Corp-certified, Toronto-based business dedicated to helping businesses improve their leadership. Their experience in the tech industry inspired them to help founders sharpen and improve their management skills. Among their many guiding principles, Johnathan and Melissa believe that “the measure of a leader is the excellence of their team.” So, how do you keep talent invested, engaged and fulfilled? What flaws in your current management style are holding your team back? Johnathan and Melissa answer questions like these, and many more, through their work.
In Episode 3 of the Scale Conscious Podcast, Johnathan and Melissa join us to discuss why leadership isn’t something you are born with, and how being honest about your work environment is important. They also tell us more about how the shift to remote work has only made management skills even more important. And they walk us through why they approach their work with a refreshing, curse-word-filled attitude.
Plug into this episode if…
You want to learn more about the difference between a stereotypical leader and a team-oriented manager.
You want to hear honest thoughts on how management styles need to improve.
You want to get insights into how workplaces can make changes inspired by the shift to remote work.
Resources
Episode highlights
Remote work has changed things
Companies have felt a more urgent need to re-assess their workplace structure and culture during the pandemic.
For managers who were already making strides and keeping employees’ needs in mind, the remote shift opened up doors to finding new talent. But for management that had flaws, it was an especially challenging time.
While some companies are saying the issue is on the talent side, the problem might be with management and the workplace.
Leaders aren’t born
Many higher-level positions came from promotions, which often don’t include training on how to manage teams. Leaders aren’t born with these skills.
Becoming a good leader doesn’t have to be complicated — it’s more about learning the right ways to make day-to-day actions, like one-on-ones and team meetings, more effective.
If leaders want to improve their management style long-term, they can start soaking in guidance from podcasts, books, newsletters, and more.
Employer branding requires being genuine
As the “Great Resignation” takes place, companies can feel like they need to be incredibly impactful and purposeful in order to attract and retain employees.
However, not every company needs to be curing cancer or saving the world. Employees are happy to belong to an encouraging team, earn a fair paycheque, and have work-life balance.
Becoming a great employer or leader isn’t about sugarcoating work or marketing yourself inauthentically. It’s about bringing your strengths to the surface and working with those.
Angela Wallace: Hey there, welcome to Scale Conscious. I'm your host Ange Wallace. Just a heads up, this episode will include some curse words beginning with this introduction. You've been lovingly warned: There are some swears. In my first podcast series, I'm amplifying some tactics startups can take to create conscious companies and build a regenerative future. In this episode, I'm joined by Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale, co-founders of Raw Signal Group, where they edit the newsletter [unclear] and build better bosses with management and leadership training for leaders and growing organizations. They're also co-authors, and their most recent book, "Unmanageable: Leadership Lessons from an Impossible Year" was published in 2021. I'm excited to speak to Johnathan and Melissa about their B Corp business model, and learn more about their training program BPX. Let's get started.
So thank you, Johnathan, Melissa, for being with us on Scale Conscious.
Johnathan Nightingale: Our pleasure.
Melissa Nightingale: Thank you so much for having us.
Angela Wallace: Amazing. I know that you work really closely in building better bosses. So you work with Raw Signal Group, your company that you co-founded. And I'd just love, really, to start off hearing from you reflecting on your motivations in why you began that business and also sort of the significance in the kind of company you've created. I know you're a certified B Corp.
Melissa Nightingale: We are. In terms of sort of how we got started, I think Johnathan and I both came up in the very early days of the web. Our first management experience was both sort of working at Mozilla. And we were individual contributors and got promoted into positions of management. We were really good at the individual work that we were doing, and then found that we were running a team of people and in terms of sort of like how that brings us to the modern era for our Raw Signal Group. We figured like, that was sort of just us.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, we had this, this experience that, you know, you get promoted, somebody taps you on the shoulder — feels good, right? They say, you know, in my case, you're an engineer, 'The other engineers seem to like you well enough. We'd like to have you manage a team of engineers.' And that feels like trust, that feels like recognition. And so you say yes. And you sort of assume that there's going to be this other thing that happens where somebody teaches you how to do that job. You don't even really say it out loud, you just sort of like, surely, surely that's coming. And it didn't. And then it didn't at the director level. And then it didn't at the VP level. And we found that, you know, before we founded this company, we'd worked with a dozen different companies and over and over and over again, people were being promoted into these roles, but not given the tools to do them well.
Melissa Nightingale: And specifically in terms of sort of how that led to Raw Signal Group being a B Corp, we we felt like the impact of leaders not being well equipped for the challenges of leadership and management — we could see the downstream consequences of that everywhere we looked, right? At the time that we founded Raw Signal Group, there was sort of a lot going on, it just predates by a little bit the Me Too movement, there was a lot of conversation starting to form around like, why are there so many folks who are working in organizations that they're really perpetuating very toxic cultures?
Angela Wallace: Yes.
Johnathan Nightingale: It's funny, too. I promise we'll let you get a word in edgewise in a second. But one of the things that's funny about B Corp certification for us is that we sort of always knew we would be a B Corp. We always had it in our head that we would go and do that and went through the certification process. And it was exactly what we hoped it would be, which is to say it was rigorous. It made us ask questions it made us think about like, "Well, we don't have a policy on that. Should we have a policy? And we don't have documentation for that, should we?"
Angela Wallace: Yes.
Johnathan Nightingale: But what's funny is that when you talk to other people, especially people without the certification, they think that it's a marketing tool. They think that it's a thing that you do, so that you can tell everybody that you did it.
Melissa Nightingale: They think it's a sticker.
Johnathan Nightingale: That's right. Yeah. And you know, you have to pay whatever you have to pay for the sticker. And you gotta fill out whatever forms you gotta fill out for the sticker. But fundamentally, you're buying a sticker. And that's just not how we relate to it. I think if B Corp had a clause that said you were never allowed to tell anyone, we would still do it.
Angela Wallace: Yeah.
Johnathan Nightingale: Because the thing for us, it's around, "Can we benefit from the thinking other people have done about ways to take account for your impact as an organization? And can we hold ourselves accountable to that?" That's really what drove it.
Angela Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that sort of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. I think that ties back to almost all pursuit of leadership is, "Can you be intrinsically motivated to become a better boss, to build a better business?" And yes, there's those external rewards that can come from that. But I think it's a marathon doing these things. And so having that internal motivation is so critical.
Johnathan Nightingale: It's interesting that you say that too. Because when we talk to the individual leaders, there's another misconception that shows up. I think people have this portrayal of leaders, right? Managers in particular — micro-managers, in particular — as pursuing it because they want power over other people. And we've met those leaders. But there's this tiny, little minority, that almost everyone we work with, is trying really hard to do a good job at this. They just don't know how.
Angela Wallace: Absolutely. And so, you know, just transitioning a little bit here. I know that you're authors. You've written about these topics. So you not only run robust training programs through Raw Signal Group, you've sort of brought this storytelling to the market through your books. So your first book is "How F*cked Up Is Your Management?: An Uncomfortable Conversation About Modern Leadership." First of all, tell me a little bit about how you got to that title because I love it. And then secondly, drawing on that experience as authors: what do you believe are some of those pitfalls startups and leaders need to avoid to evolve?
Melissa Nightingale: One of the questions we get all the time about the first book is, "Why is it so angry? Why is it so grumpy? Like, 'how fucked up is your management?' is a really like combative question." And for many folks sort of after the book came out, they're like, "This is a book that's impossible to buy for anybody else. Because you can't put it on somebody's desk..."
Johnathan Nightingale: It feels pretty passive aggressive.
Melissa Nightingale: "...and not have them feel attacked." And I think for both Johnathan and myself, like, the book was the culmination of us writing for about two years on the topics of management and leadership that we felt like people weren't talking about. We'd really sort of gotten to this point where we felt like a lot of the things that came up in fast-growing organizations were entirely common, like there were common challenges that were coming up. And we felt like no one was talking about the stuff that was hard. People were either writing from like, a very sort of theoretical, Socratic perspective in terms of like, just how all leaders work without any practicality around terms of like, what actually happens when you've got humans sitting across from you. Or they were writing from sort of the business perspective entirely in terms of like, business profitability and challenges in terms of like strategic direction, which are valid, but weren't the pieces where we were seeing organizations trip up.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, it's funny. There's multiple things that went into that framing for that book, that title for that book. And one of them is that you know, the answer to, "Why are you so mad? Why are you so angry?" in that book is: We're not angry at you, we're angry at us. That, like, we're writing about stuff that we wish we'd learned the first day of management, and that actually took us years to learn. But like, you do that learning — when you put somebody in a management role, and you don't equip them, what you're saying is that they're going to do that learning on other people.
Angela Wallace: Right.
Johnathan Nightingale: And that's hard. It's hard to reckon with that. And to say, like, that's a place where I really dropped the ball. That's a place where I really let somebody down. Not like, I was ineffective, but like, somebody had a crappier experience at work than they should have and I was their boss in that moment. And so like that anger, if you want to call it that, that Muse is in the rearview mirror, looking at our own come-up as managers and leaders. It's not for anybody else. But the other reason that we chose something sort of provocative and punchy like that is because we know — we were writing for a tech audience, that's where we came from. And tech has a lot of trouble hearing anybody other than them. They have a lot of trouble listening,
Melissa Nightingale: No ego in tech, zero ego in tech.
Johnathan Nightingale: But like, if you came from social sciences, if you came from gender studies, if you came from so many places where like, we could benefit from the stuff that you have studied, and that you're knowledgeable about, tech really struggles. And so you sort of have to grab their attention.
Melissa Nightingale: And in part, the reason why tech struggles with hearing other industries is because so much of tech is being told, "It can't be done." And then going and figuring out a way to make that thing real in the world. And so as an industry, we do have a bit of a chip on our shoulder, because so much of the way that we sort of come into these roles, and the way that these organizations come into being is that you have to have the vision before the reality is possible. And so you end up with a group of people who are like, "Okay, well, like this is my management style. This is how I do it." And you're like, "Well, you know, that isn't historically how it's been done." And you've got an entire industry that's like, "Well, I specialize in things that haven't been done before."
Angela Wallace: Yes. And so do you believe that that sort of predisposition in that industry has just meant that there's less of a focus on how to manage people over projects, or programs, or products — and just that the people piece gets dropped?
Melissa Nightingale: A big core founding question for Raw Signal Group was: ignorance or malice? That was the thing that we were trying to figure out when we were sort of starting to get ourselves like into this work. We said, "Look, if the problem is that bosses have not been given any of the foundational skills or tools, and that is resulting in toxic workplaces because they are under-equipped, we can equip them. If the fundamental challenge here is that these are businesses that either should not exist in the world or leaders who should not lead in the world, then that's a different problem."
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, then we'll make a deliberate choice not to work with those people. We know that the tools that we bring into our conversations with bosses, we know they work.
Angela Wallace: Yes.
Johnathan Nightingale: They're backed in research, right? Like there's things that we know about how to build a team of people who are thriving, how to build an organization that's all going in the same way. Those are learnable skills. You don't — you're not just born with those. But to give those tools to somebody who's going to be more effective at destroying the planet or waging war or, like, selling misinformation, like, we choose not to do that work because we know the tools work.
Melissa Nightingale: And I would say like five years into doing this work, it has been sort of eye-opening that the vast majority of folks that we meet are under-equipped, right? They're leading their teams in the best way that they know how but their tools are very limited. And they haven't been introduced to new tools yet.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, so when you talk about like, under-investing in people, focusing more on product and stuff, it's certainly true that that happens. But it's tricky. There's a bit of a chicken and an egg problem, because if your CEOs knew that, under-investing in people was making your business perform less well, if they could connect the dots that you've got three different teams building the same thing because they're not talking to each other, and they don't realize the other two teams exist — if they could see that stuff, they would realize that under-investing in people is under-investing in product, it is under-investing in tech, right? It is under-investing in your business. But that would assume that the CEO's somehow magically got the thing that we didn't get when we became managers or directors or VPs, right? Like, nobody's born knowing this stuff. And even a lot of the business programs keep it really theoretical and focus a lot on cases and spreadsheets, and not a lot on the pragmatics of operating in a fast-moving organization.
Angela Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. And it's those pragmatics that get what we know in our head into our behaviors, right? That, like, move us into actions that make us better bosses. And so I think that's really a powerful kind of journey to take people on.
Melissa Nightingale: The saddest stat in our industry, like, the saddest stat for people who do professional training or sort of professional development is that 70% of the things that you're teaching people end up on the floor. They don't use them at all. And so one of the sort of core elements that we looked at is, "How do you make it so that you're teaching somebody something on Wednesday that they can then turn around and use in their day-to-day work on Thursday?" Because if they don't have the opportunities to practice it connected to their actual day to day work — well, we know what happens. A tool that you don't use is not a tool.
Johnathan Nightingale: It's interesting. We sometimes ask leaders, we ask them to think back to an experience when they were managed, right? Because as bosses, you orient so much towards what you're supposed to do as a manager. And we're like, "Let's go back to what it felt like to report to someone, and a time that a boss had impact." And we let them tell us good stories, bad stories, whatever. The bad stories are very often specific. I had a boss and on this day, they said this thing. And this thing was really hard for me to hear. And two weeks later I left. The good stories often are sort of unmoored from a specific case. They say like, "Well, I had this boss once. And I just I always knew where I stood with her. And it was always really clear that like, she wouldn't give me more than I could carry. But she would sometimes give me a lot.
But I felt like I could feel her confidence in me. And so if she gave this to me, I felt like I could do it. And I grew more in two years than I had in the 10 years prior." And what stands out is over and over and over again, when people are telling stories about a boss that had real impact, it's not about one interaction, it's about them getting really intentional and structured. That's the stuff you can get good at. When we talk about pragmatics, it's not... it's not life-changing to say you should have one-on-ones, except that running one-on-ones really well really changes what it feels like to work on your team. It's not a stellar insight to say you should give feedback, and it should be well structured. But with some tools around how to give that feedback, like, there's a night and day turnaround in how it feels to work on that team. And whether I feel like I know where I stand.
Angela Wallace: Yeah. And when I reflect on how relational that is, and how much time we spend at work, like over the years of our lives, that we're in the workforce, it is sort of transformational. So it might sound simple to spell it out like that. But the application, the overall impact, you know, day over day, year over year, in people's lives can be profound.
Melissa Nightingale: Yeah, we spend more time at work than we do with our families, which is sort of a sad stat. That's a true stat. And then the other one that that I've heard recently is that the relationship between you and your manager has more of an — a more profound impact on your overarching health than your relationship between you and your sort of doctor, right? Your family doctor. Like, your relationship with your direct line manager is more important than that.
Angela Wallace: That's I mean, that really does put it in perspective, and just really underscores why the work you're doing is so important, and how much of a meaningful impact it can make for those who are willing to dive in. So on that note, with the fact that you train bosses to be better bosses, you know, I was reflecting on this before we got on together. How that sort of experience, how that training took shape, pre-pandemic. And today — I'm not gonna say post-pandemic, because I think we're still in it in so many ways. But I'd love for you to share with us: How has the pandemic challenged some of these tenets of conventional management approaches? What has, or is, being rewritten in the rule book?
Johnathan Nightingale: I think the conventional management approach, at least in the North American context, but really, we're working with people all over the world, and this seems pretty consistent. The conventional management approach in a lot of industries is not to manage. And pandemic has certainly made that harder. The conventional approach, when you talk to so many bosses was "You know, I can sort of tell if somebody's doing their work or not. I walk by their desk," right? There's all these sort of informal things you can do to compensate for a lack of management skill when you're in an office together. You can see who's spending all their time in the kitchen, you can see who's getting tapped on the shoulder for help.
And you can sort of reassemble even if you're an alien, if you've never worked in that company, you can stand inside an office of a 50-person startup for a day, and you can figure out who we count on and who we don't count on. Like, you can see that. In principle, there's every way to see that in a remote context as well. But what remote does is it exaggerates those failures, it's like an amplifier. So if you're on top of your management game, then the last two years might have felt really special to you. Because you can recruit from all over the world. And you've got people who are able to work from home and have that extra flexibility. And you might be seeing that in like just a happier and more productive workforce if you want to sort of bring it down to a dollars place. But if you're not on top of your management discipline, the last two years have been a real disaster. Because you've lost the plot on so many things.
Melissa Nightingale: Yeah, I think we look at things like the conversation around the Great Resignation. And we have so many folks saying, you know, "Talent is a real issue right now" and we're like, "Is it talent? Or is it the interest and ability for people to do effective and wonderful work within your organization?" Because like, that problem, where people come into your organization, they want to do good work, and they aren't able to do good work. That's management, that's what we call management.
Angela Wallace: Absolutely. And I heard someone say, just yesterday, is it the Great Resignation? Or the Great Realization? And I loved that so much. Because truly, is this just people kind of waking up to sort of how shitty things were before and sort of sacredness and sanctity of our time and our life? And we do go to work for all those moments, all those years, all those hours. Isn't it that we should pursue our fullest potential, pursue our greatest purpose? And can management actually amplify that and support that? That's the deep question that I think a lot of us are considering now.
Melissa Nightingale: Yeah, I think that the starting point for Raw Signal Group five years ago was to say that management had impact in doing this job like that it was a job that you could do well. And it was a discrete set of skills that you could learn to do well, that it wasn't a case of, "I'm born with it, or I'm not born with it. I'm a natural leader, or I'm not a natural leader." And that part of that shove, at least in the early days was just getting organizations to take it seriously, that it was a thing that mattered.
And I would say what's been different for us in the last two years is that many organizations that felt like it was a thing that they wanted to address, suddenly felt like it was urgent because it was adversely impacting their ability to either get people in the organization, get people to stay within the organization once they were there, or get anything done when nobody was in the same office together. And so a lot of these things that we thought about as like, important, but some day important, were suddenly on fire within the last two years.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah. And I think, you know, some leaders see this conversation around, you know, "If you're going to be spending that much time at work, it should be something you're deeply passionate about, you should pursue, your bliss and your purpose." They feel very frustrated by that, because they're like, "You know, whatever company I'm running, I'm not claiming to change the world, right?"
There's some famous quote, I forget which CEO it was, but it was the CEO of a soda company, who was saying, you know, was trying to get people motivated around stuff and said, as part of their all-hands speech, like, look, let's be honest, we're not curing cancer here, we sell sugar.
Angela Wallace: Right.
Johnathan Nightingale: Right. And like, what a refreshing moment of candor, because that's certainly what that company does. And this is my thing is that, I think it's — I think it's a red herring. I think there's dignity in all kinds of work. There's dignity in cleaning floors, right? And if you're somebody who's running a company, and you feel like, "Oh, I can't tell a purpose-based story, there's no like, my work doesn't matter, right? And so I'm going to lose everyone. If we tell people to chase their purpose, then they're going to leave." I'm like, well, a lot of people will work for like a fair wage and being treated well, and respecting their colleagues and feeling like their work matters. Like, you don't have to tell a story. Not everybody has to be curing cancer there.
Melissa Nightingale: But it's the funniest part about our jobs is that we work with a lot of different leaders across a bunch of different organizations across the globe. And everyone wants to talk about how hard it is to tell the story of the work that they're doing. So our non-profit folks say, "Well, we don't have the deep pockets of our for-profit counterparts.
Johnathan Nightingale: If only we were a startup.
Melissa Nightingale: If only we were a startup." And then our startups say, "Okay, yeah, but we're venture-backed, and we're going as fast as we can. And we're, you know, we're not IBM," and then IBM is, like, turns around is like, "Okay, well, we're also not, you know, the cool hip startup." Everybody wants somebody else's challenge and the fun part about the work that we do is that those challenges are all — they're more similar than they are different.
Yes, like in a non-profit organization, your mission statement may carry more weight, because it's sort of a different type of thing. But for most organizations that's some combination of, "Do we have leaders who can confidently talk about what it is to manage here, what it is to do the work that we're doing day in, day out and why it matters?" Like, that is every organization's challenge.
Johnathan Nightingale: That's it. And for any leader who's listening If you — you don't need, unless you're Facebook, I have no advice for Facebook, but you don't need to hire hundreds of thousands of people. And you don't need to tell a story that fits in a Super Bowl ad so that you can reach 50 million, right? You're trying to find the five people who are going to be a great fit for your organization who get what you're about and understand why it matters to you and why it would matter to them.
That's the story you need. It's not a global branding exercise. It's like, "Can we find people who were excited the way that we're excited about it?" And if you're not excited about it, if you're in one of these businesses, and you're like, "I can't tell the story about why it matters," then yes, you're going to have a talent problem. You really are.
Angela Wallace: Right, because that's going to extrapolate into the hiring and the firing process, I imagine.
Melissa Nightingale: Absolutely.
Angela Wallace: You know, I'm thinking of the crossroads so many leaders feel like they're at now, you know, where we're sort of getting back to it, there's been vaccines go out, some folks are boosted. And they're thinking about the next chapter, the road that lies ahead, as we sort of gather our breath after this experience we've all been through with this global health crisis.
And you know, a lot of people are talking about the future of work, and how will that take shape? So for all those who are listening, whether they're a startup founder, a C-Suite executive, or a young person at the precipice of their professional life, what are you saying to folks about how to intentionally create conscious and resilient cultures? What do you want to leave them with as that kind of gift?
Melissa Nightingale: I would say like the biggest gift that I've gotten in my career has been the ability to ask what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? In my early career in tech, I was so enamored with things, particularly working in fast-moving organizations and fast-growing organizations, that I sort of asked the very superficial version of what could possibly go wrong, and didn't stop to consider how many possible things could go wrong. And I think as folks are coming into the future of work, there's so much energy and enthusiasm around like, "Let's make something really different. Let's make something that the world's never seen before."
And I love that energy and enthusiasm. But I think for a lot of organizations we're writing policies that start from the aspiration and don't start from the edge cases. So I would just encourage, as leaders are thinking through sort of the return to either the return to work, or this sort of brave new future of work, whatever those things are, just thinking through, like, "Will it do the thing?" If you've got a person who's starting in the role, and you know, they're brand new, and it's their first job ever, will it support them? If you've got someone in the role who's struggling, do you have an answer for that? That as you start to bring in some of those edge cases of when things don't go swimmingly, you will get a better picture of whether you're building a system that's sustainable, or a system that's going to fall down.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, we have talked to friends and you know, people we've worked with in the past and stuff a lot over the last two years about their own resignation and realization journeys, right? About their own, "I'm not sure this is the place for me, and I feel really let down by how early pandemic went in this organization. And I'm thinking about going elsewhere," whatever it is. And one of the things we always say to them is look, like, you have a free pass. Everybody in the last two years has a free pass. You got gaps in your resume? It was COVID.
Angela Wallace: Yeah.
Johnathan Nightingale: You switched careers? It was COVID. Right?
Angela Wallace: Yeah.
Johnathan Nightingale: It's — everybody's gonna look at 2020 to 2022 and, take your point, maybe ongoing — but they're certainly going to look at these last two years and give a fair bit of leeway for "Oh, yeah, sure. Like, you were on one path, and now you're on a different path, but COVID." And I think the thing I would put to people trying to architect the future of work for their own organization is that you get the same pass. But you only like, — you can't forget how you treated people. Because your people won't forget that switch. You do have an opportunity in 2022, to say, we've torn a bunch of stuff down and we're building new stuff back up and we're — you use the word "intentional" and I think that's a great word. We're going to be really intentional about it.
So the stuff Melissa touched on: How do we treat people? How do we pay people? What's the multiple between the highest-paid and the lowest-paid person in our organization? How do we reckon with our impact on the environment? Like all of this stuff, if you're like, we should definitely figure that out at some point, now's a really good time. Because like, one, the competition is stiff. And many of your competitors for talent are doing that work. And two, you've just, you've got this moment where you can stand in front of your team, whatever team's left or whatever team has grown, and say like, "In this next phase, here's who I think we are."
And that's a real gift and it is not everlasting. You can always reinvent your organization, but humans like narrative, and they like moments, and there's a moment right now where you have an opportunity as a leader to say, "We've given this some thought, and here's what it means for us. Here's what our organization sees work feeling like for the next 18 months."
Angela Wallace: And I love this sort of note of hope because after everything, you know, gestures around at everything, there's just been so much challenge and loss and grief, I think, that people have felt. So to imagine that there's actually this sort of range of opportunity. You know, don't squander what we have here and really consider how to rise and meet the moment.
And there's something I think, very compelling for leaders in that sort of guidance, which is great. I know that we could probably talk for literally hours, I could pick your brains on so many things. But I just want to, I guess, reflecting in closing our conversation, I'm just curious if you had any more advice, one last wisdom you want to share with all those who are listening? What would you want to leave people with?
Melissa Nightingale: One of the common pieces that people ask us about management and leadership topics, specifically around bossing, is they're like, "Am I the only person who's finding this incredibly hard?"
Angela Wallace: Yes.
Melissa Nightingale: And specifically, I think in the last two years, a lot of us aren't working in offices, alongside colleagues. And so many of the folks who got promoted for the first time within the first two years, or within the last two years, rather, or in the first two years of their management career, have no grounding in whether this is normal, or whether this is harder or easier, or they just don't have calibration. And so the thing that I would offer for folks who who may find themselves in that spot is one, like, it has been an atypical two years. If you're finding it incredibly hard to step into management and leadership roles right now, like, you are in good company. Many folks found the last two years hard, regardless of how many years they've been doing it, but particularly for our people who got promoted within the last time frame, like the last two years, that time frame has been really tricky.
And then the other piece I would offer is that, like, Johnathan and I spend all day every day talking to bosses who are trying to get better at this stuff. And the neat part about our work, the thing that we really respond to, is getting to see folks over sort of a long time horizon, right getting to see folks that we worked with in 2017, out there in the world in 2022, doing sort of their day jobs, day in day, out. And so what I would offer if you've got folks who are in that spot is just that this is stuff you can learn, this is stuff that you can get better at. And if you're finding it really hard, there are supports out there.
Johnathan Nightingale: Yeah, I think I would pick up on that to say, you know, if it's true that most of the positive stories people have about their managers are long game stories, right? They're like a series of interactions. And if it's true that, like, management is very complicated, but it's a set of learnable skills, then the last piece of advice I would give folks — especially now when everybody, however hopeful they are about the future, is also feeling kind of depleted and uncreative about a set of things — is to change your inputs. That, like, what you surround yourself with, what you read, who you follow on Twitter, like, what newsletters you subscribe to, like all of that stuff changes how you see and changes what you see the option space as right? Like when we talk about, "Be really intentional and think about what your business stands for now," there may be leaders out therelike, "I want to do that. What are my options? Like, Where's my menu? And I will, I will choose good things, I promise. I just like don't have the energy to think about all the dimensions of my impact as a business in order to know where I should be making changes." That's fair. Right?
We opened by talking about the B Corp assessment, in part because it's one of those tools that we found was a useful input. The qualification process was almost secondary to just being asked a bunch of questions and saying, "Well, we don't know the answer on that one." But I would say, find sources, find people talking about the stuff that you want to understand more and people talking about leadership in ways that resonate for you. Doesn't have to be us, but it can be us. Because like, the more of that you're soaking in, the more your long game changes. It's not about changing it tomorrow. It's about, like, every day starting to see yourself in a different way and starting to see the act of leadership in a more fulsome way.
Angela Wallace: Yes. Such incredible advice. Thank you both. Melissa, Johnathan, it's been such an honor to have you. Thank you so much for joining us in my first podcast series. You're so good. Thank you so much. And yeah, you're just powerful guides for all of us who desire to become better leaders, so keep cursing, keep training. And thank you.
Thanks for listening to Scale Conscious. I'm Ange. This show's produced by Lead Podcasting. Special thanks to team members, Kendall and Alisha. Discover more about our work with CPG startups at Scaleconscious.com. If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and we'll see you here next time.
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Scale Conscious is a podcast that explores the tactics startups can take to create conscious companies and build a regenerative future for all. Join host Ange Wallace as she explores building purpose-driven businesses and scaling consciously with some of today’s bravest and most impactful leaders.