How to Set Yourself Up for Success in Your New Management Role - Zulean Cruz-Diaz

3:31AM May 29, 2023

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Zulean Cruz-Diaz

Keywords:

talk

leaders

manager

listen

started

work

trusted

connect

reflect

overwhelmed

team

figure

reflection

job

podcast

grew

role

sabrina

today

power

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Hey, I'm John.

And I'm Becky.

And this is the We Are For Good podcast.

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So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happening?

Hey, John, I'm feeling a little new leader Becky 24 years old like is going to be seen today. And I can't wait to learn from our guests. I wish we could like pull our

old selves up to the table because I was looking for these kinds of like people to lock arms with and resources back in the day. And so, so excited to have this conversation. And we just have to first shout out our friend, Sabrina Walker Hernandez. He's one of the most incredible human she came on and has taught multiple times on our podcast about just really disruptive, how to engage your board, how to show up as a human how to do this, and even small towns, how they can be just powerhouses for philanthropy. So when Sabrina says you need to meet one of my dear friends, who is also a powerhouse, come on to the front of the line, we would love to you know, spend time with them. And that is our guest today. This is Sue Lyon Cruz Diaz, we are so delighted to have her. She is a consultant and building leaders in strategic planning. But she's here in our house today to talk about how do you set yourself up for success in a new management role. And you know, we have a huge heart for the young professional, we're talking about bringing our old selves up to the table because that was us we have complete impostor syndrome of these roles that are sometimes feel too big for us for where we're at. But as we grew up, we realized that we had everything we needed. We just needed the confidence, we just needed someone to kind of be in our corner to tell us that we've got it. And so sue Leon is going to come in and she is going to kind of thread some of her personal experience. I love that she is a texture Rican, which is a Texan by birth, but Puerto Rican by blood, you know that I got a deep love for Puerto Rico after visiting for the first time recently. But she believes that to build a united community, you need to have a strategic clear plan, or how she calls it as a guiding star. And I love that word picture. I can see Sabrina and some overlap in this to have just this clear strategic plan. And in addition to that, to have a cohesive team and so as a management coaching consultant, she aims to really build strong leaders for brilliant missions. And her mission is to form individuals from scratch with interpersonal relationship skills and management tools for strong working and trusted group dynamics. She is based in Texas not too far from us right now. It is an honor to have you on the podcast, my friend, welcome to the We Are For Good podcast.

Thank you, John. And Becky, I'm glad I could put your faces to your voices. I've been listening to you guys for a couple months now. And I just I love the way you guys put stories together, and that you bring people that can help everybody in the nonprofit world. So thank you guys for the work you do.

Thank you. You're one of them. That's helping us

put half of our face with our graphic. You know how we like to start these conversations we we just want to get to know you as a human and a person. Give us some context to your story growing up and what life looked like that led you to this work today.

Thank you for bringing up that I'm gonna text Reagan I feel so proud to say that I was born and raised in Texas. But I also am a Puerto Rican at heart. So I grew up in College Station half my life. I felt like I was living two worlds. So my second half of my life, I moved to the Valley, which is the Rio Grande Valley and Texas is on the very bottom tip. But after that I had the privilege of being able to go to school out of state I had the privilege of living in different places and traveling to different places. And so I was reflecting back on why have I kind of gone on to the stage in my life where I want to make sure that people want to be the best manager that they can be. They want to lead a team as best as they can. And so I was remembering a couple of times more than a couple of times if I'm being honest that I would come back from work, I was super deflated. And I was not understanding why was I feeling so useless? Like, why was I incapable of sending emails? Why did my manager have to check? Every single thing I sent? Why was I not being trusted? Essentially my confidence, my ego was in the dumps. And I didn't understand why I was being underutilized, why I wasn't being trusted, right. I thought I could conquer the world. And then I found myself that I was just wallowing in this negativity. And so these weeks and weeks of wallowing essentially turned into desperation of I need to get out, I need to get out. And I need to figure out how to feel better. And so I was so grateful, I end up getting an interjection to my next job, where I like started coming back, right, I was being seen for the work I was doing, my strengths were coming in, I was able to be trusted to go into the community and connect with people that we were serving in that nonprofit, I felt responsible for community partner relationships, and people were excited of the connections I was making in our organization. And so I realized that people were starting to come to me for support. That was huge. And so a couple of weeks into the new job, I went over to think the person that had introduced me into the hiring manager, and I was kind of starting to pinpoint specific things that were really, that I realized, were based on the manager and the culture and how much of a difference that made, I was just so overwhelmed with gratitude, I started crying in front of her, I was just so thankful. And so it was at that point that I realize just how crucial a manager and culture can be in an organization. We spend so much time in our jobs day in and day out, whether we like it or not some times that it makes a really big difference on how you feel at work, you, you bring it back home, or you bring it back internally, right. And so if you're not feeling great, if you're not feeling seen, if you're not feeling trusted, that takes it takes another chip and takes another chip at you, right. And so I started having more and more responsibilities, I started having a team under me. And I realized that the way I showed up is the way my team is also showing up. If I come in frazzled, if I come in with some negative energy, my team is going to feel the negative energy, they're also going to exhibit those behaviors. If I come in, excited, if I come in with so much energy, positive energy, wanting to connect, wanting to do my job, bringing in some fun into my job, the team is going to feel that way. And so I started thinking, Okay, let's switch words, let's start saying we want to get to this goal, how do we do that, and they come up with their own ingenuity, they come up with their own creativity, right, and they take a spin on something I wouldn't have been able to do by myself. So all of these little things I started learning as I became a manager is things I started just collecting and collecting, collecting. And when I was doing reflective work, I realized that I don't want anybody to feel as awful as low which such low confidence in their ability at work, that I want to make sure I'm building leaders from scratch. I want them to know the power that they have when they walk into a room. Right that the power they have with their teams. And so that's why I'm doing the work I'm doing. I feel so

seen. Do you just like

wrapped? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think we can all relate to this,

we can relate to it. I mean, even as you were talking, I just no references at the beginning. But, you know, I was thrust into a big leadership role when I was 24. And I mean, I might as well have just gone to Barnes and Noble and bought leadership for Dummies because I literally had no clue what I was doing. And I could hear you kind of listing off some of those toxic leader traits, you know, of micromanagement, but also like isolation and not asking, you know, questions and and I can I'm here to confess that I was one of those leaders that would just try to solve all my people's problems. And I love what you're saying about giving someone the agency to solve their own problems and being empowered in that way. And I just think this is a different conversation and level for especially if you're a new manager, if you are young. Maybe you're getting into management for the first time. And I want to talk to you about that like for people that are in new management roles and they're becoming the doer in the guider. I think a lot of people find themselves in this role and we want them to be set up for success. So maybe talk to us about some of the first things leaders should do or maybe even Just think about when they're stepping into a new role.

Why didn't come up with the analogy, but I heard it and I really felt seen when I heard it. And so let's take a step back, let's kind of see what does going from an employee to manager kind of look like. And so if we use the analogy of, you're in a factory setting, right, you were probably super good at this one job you were doing, or you were super proficient in this one area of the factory. And so when you go up to a manager role, that's you taking a step back and going up five steps, and learning how to do the role you were doing before from a different angle. So when you realize that, you still, the job still needs to get done, right, you just have to do it in a different way. I think that helps reframe the way that you think of your new job. And so if we think about a good manager knows the tasks that need to get done, but a great manager knows your team and utilizes the expertise of others in their team to outline the path. And so you utilize your team in order to say, so how do we get to this goal, right? Like how do we get to X, Y, or Z, if this is our, what we're reaching for, and they come up with the, this is what we need to do, maybe we need to bring in this department. And maybe we need to ask for help over here. And so for them to outline their own paths gives them more ownership of the work. And you don't have to be the one giving them all the two dues to do over and over and over again. So knowing what it feels like that you still need, get the job done. But knowing your team and knowing how to utilize your skills in order to outline the path is something I think really helped me understand and kind of reframe my new job because it is a new job. And remind myself that I am when I take those five steps up to this new position, I'm looking at the bigger picture, my job is not to go down the five steps, do the job like I used to and then go back up the five steps, you might need to learn how to communicate, right, you might need to know how to fill in so to do this part, and so and so to do that part and figure out how everybody collaborates together to make that goal or to achieve the task or the mission or whatever it is, but it's learning the new position you're in.

Where were you 20 years ago, Zulian, I could have used all of this, it would have saved me so much stress and feeling like Atlas, you know, that's a great framework.

I love I love that metaphor, an explanation of it. Because I think there's so much power, we talk a lot about just like servant leadership. And just the idea of showing up without ego and really showing up with an open hand is so important. And I think that example is a really great way of that, because it's really easy to like want to just have people do things the way you did them. But just because that's the way you did them did not make them the right way or Piven the best way to do it. And so you're missing out on the opportunity of humans with ingenuity and innovation and different perspective pouring in to do things better than maybe they could have been done. So if you hold clear to that North Star, you know, then you can do that. So how do you really grow in those roles as the doer and the guide? If I'm hearing kind of the two different sides of it's like the doer and the guide? Or how do you suggest people grow into those two different roles,

I think it always goes back to reflection. I was listening to previous podcasts that you guys had. And the topic of reflection kind of just kept coming up and coming up. And I was like, Oh my gosh, when I was prepping for this podcast, I was like I need to remember to say reflection. And it was just so interesting how it came up just the other day as I had already been planning for it. And so it always goes back to reflection. Reflection is part of the job as a manager, it is very easy to get super swept up and all the to dues that you need to do all the tasks, all the fires that you need to put out. But reflection is part of the job, right? Like you're when you're up those five steps, you're looking at the work and a different angle. And looking at the work in a different angle means you're reflecting, you're being able to see the bigger picture. So if you want key points, what you can start doing is during your reflection time, so maybe you should set out 10 minutes on Monday or 15 minutes on Monday and a little bit on Friday to and think about, okay, let's take a breath and take a big breath in and then take it out. How am I feeling? How am I showing up for my team? How's it going for them? Right? Where are we? Maybe somebody's using a different strategy to get the job done? How am I feeling about that and why am I feeling about it that way? And so I think it just really starts with reflections that you can know where to refocus your energy and your focus. And know what's really important so that you don't just feel flustered and need to do all these to dues and lose track of the end goal.

I think you've talked about like the progression. And I think this is a true reality, like when you add leadership responsibility, especially when you've been doing kind of one cog of the work. Now you kind of have expanded responsibility, it's hard to figure out how do you balance completing the roles that you were used to doing? And then adding on management without checking in with a team or kind of coaching and trying to step into some of those new roles? How do you balance that?

I think it goes back to knowing your team, right, you need to know who you have on your team and what their strengths are, in order to be able to figure out if you need support in this other area, let's go ask them. If you need support over here, we know Johnny does really good over here, right? So a strategy I like to use is sometimes we have too much in our brain, we have way too much. I have a like I have an ADHD brain. And so I will start one thing, and then I'll jump over here, and then I'll jump over there. And I get really overwhelmed pretty quickly because I don't finish one thing, and then I jumped to the next. And so what has helped me in the past is I wrote down all of the buckets. I said, I'm in charge of XYZ, and you list all of the buckets, kind of all of those projects, or all of those leads, and then under every single one of those buckets, you write down all of the things you do, right, let's pretend you are in charge of your communications department. And you have a campaign going out on that campaign, right? You'll write down answer social media posts follow up with so and so you know, all of the miniscule things or check up on so and so and how this is going do we have data points? Have we put out a survey have we all have those miniscule things so that later you can compare? I'm feeling really overwhelmed? Where is my time being spent? And then be able to pinpoint, oh, maybe I don't have to reply to every single Facebook comment. Maybe so and so can help me with this. Right, you're actually able to pinpoint where you can get support rather than being like, I don't know where to identify why I'm overwhelmed, I just am. And then that's kind of the beginning of identifying where you can get support so that you can be able to manage, as well as do your job.

The reason I love this so much, Julianne, it's just because you're showing that leadership is not just the hard skills, and you cannot go through this work with a roadmap that somebody's creative. This is how to be a leader, because if you're not checking inside, and you're not getting some sort of a litmus test on, how am I doing? How am I feeling? You know, I think that there is really something because we talk about asset mapping all the time, like how do you map all of your assets, and then this is really about like, mapping what's going on inside you. And if you can really parcel that out, I really do feel like you could find incredible bottlenecks and opportunities that exists there. And what a beautiful way to bring people in to like cobuild solutions for that. I mean, that again, inspires a lot more trust. And you mentioned communications, and I just think this is the pinnacle, really, of being a leader is how do you communicate? Where do you communicate? How often do you communicate? What words are you using, because the reason I have the heart for for leaders is because they're really doing two jobs, you have your day to day job. And then you're managing all of these people and all of their tasks, and it's cut, and it's a lot and so all of you leaders out there, I see you and I appreciate how much you're pouring in. So talk to us a little bit about what you've seen, in terms of the really important communication skills that are needed when stepping into a new management role.

I am you're like reading my mind, Becky. i

Our brains are fusing.

I was like thinking back, what have I already said, Okay, what do I really want to make sure people remember and it's to listen, I think we step into managerial roles. And we think, oh, we need to talk we always need to do this, we need to do that. And it's more of like getting things are messages out rather than remembering that we need to take in messages as well. And so one I have a tool that or a template I usually use and so in case anybody wants it, just make sure to connect with me later. But I have this template where you again, ADHD brain I have a lot going on. So I need a place where I just dump all of my ideas. I call it a brain dump. And so I'll write down let's pretend there's a thing. There's a Check in I have with my team member. And there's something there's some actionable items I want to make sure that are done. But I don't want to come in saying we need this, this and this, because that means I probably wasn't listening to them. That means I'm probably telling them how to do it rather than them coming up with figuring out how to do it. And it's probably more work, and they might have already been doing it in a different way. So I dump all my ideas, or I dump everything, I want to make sure that's communicated. But when I come to the meetings, since they're already taken out of my brain, and they're written down, I can listen. And you can ask questions like, how are you? Right? We talked a little bit about making sure you have that connection with your team. How is life? How are you? Really I think Jenna Kutcher says it all the time. How are you really attorney book? Exactly. What is on your brain right now? What are you working on? And you listen, rather than tell them how to do things, what to do where to refocus. So that's one section, right? You listen. And the next section is like, what is coming up for you? And then what is coming up for me? How can we support each other. And there's a couple of guiding questions on that template that really helped me in my team meetings to make sure I was listening first, before I was speaking. And that is a really big tool to utilize first.

Such a great tool. And I mean, I feel like as a new manager, you need these kinds of like things you need these frameworks that you can go back to and one of the biggest ones that I always need is conflict management. Let's be clear, so

glad you're asking this question.

It's not my favorite thing to handle. I just I'm a peacemaker. So I like I like the peace. And so kind of some of us leaning into harder conversation is harder. What do you advise, you know, people that you work with? Like, how do you know when it's time to bring in someone to talk about the conflict? And when is it just something to? I mean, it's not that big of a deal to keep moving?

Yeah, I think, to answer the last part, before we kind of dive into the meat of it, is you need to remember and think of do I need to take a pause and listen and figure out what's going on? Or is it something quick that I can just get out of the way? Usually, at least for me, I don't know about you guys, but whenever there's something kind of big or a little thing, and I just don't say it and it grows and it grows inside and it gets bigger and bigger that and it's just it's so overwhelming. And so if you if there's something small, right, like they're tardy, just bring it up right away, right? If they misspelled something on a flyer or anything kind of small, that's just quick, just say it right then in there, because you don't want that to keep following up with somebody who's always late and always late and really is a value to you, you need to make sure you say it right away, because then it just becomes something much bigger and much bigger than that. Now, when it is something bigger, right, I had a, there was a time when somebody was there were taking out their overwhelmingness in the job in a way that was not productive for the team, and it was spreading into the negativity was kind of spreading into other teams, other departments in an organization. And so we had to figure out okay, was it the, why is this individual acting this way? Right? Like, we didn't know that they were overwhelmed. We didn't quite know what, why they were kind of acting this way. And I went one on one. And we talked a little bit about what is going on, like, what do you have on your list? If if this is you being overwhelmed, let's let's write it all out, right? Let's use that same template. Let's take our ego behind us. Let's just talk clearly. Write down everything that you do. And then we can go from there and figured out maybe you don't need to do this, maybe you don't do this kind of let's let's redirect your focus so that you do this instead, because this is where the team needs you. Right? Remembering that we're a team. We're not just individual employees in our organization. We all have to work together in order to make the mission go forward. We can't just work independently. And so that was one way of doing it, just trying to listen, and then being able to figure out okay, is it that they're overwhelmed? Is it that they're mad about this? Is it that there's a conflict with another team member? And then how do we go about that? So it starts with listening. And then from there if things are not getting better, that is when you've already written it down, right? You've come up with a game plan, you both sat down, you wrote it out, you talked about it verbally, you sent it in an email what the game plan is, if that doesn't work out and things still kind of progressed to the next stage, then that's when you probably want to bring in either your manager or somebody above you to come up with a different game plan of like how do we move forward because we All want to move forward, we all want to feel better, I think we need to remember that we all want to feel better. How do we get there. And so that's where you bring in the next person.

There is something very powerful about just letting someone come in and share what's going on. I don't want anyone to just gloss over the lot, the listening piece and the power of it. And we know the power of listening, you know, maybe better than anybody because of the way that we listen to donors talk about things that really move their hearts. But when we listen to each other, there's something very sacred that happens if your boss someone with more power brings you in and says, I just I'm, I'm worried about you. I want to know what's going on. And I'm just I'm here to listen, and I'm here to help. I want to give you the space and the time to just talk to me about what's going on. And let me know how I can help you. I just think words matter. Tone matters. I don't know that I'm great at conflict management. I've had a lot of people in my career told me that I'm very confrontational. It's true, because I hate conflict so very much that I attack it right away, because I'm in Enneagram, two, and I'm trying to get back to harmony, as fast and as quickly as I can. And I do think that things fester. And man, do we know about Office drama in the nonprofit sector? I bet if I asked, talk to me about the office drama and your nonprofit, I could get a whole blog post from people about all the crazy things that happen in the office. But I do think that there is power and just being a human being and asking someone if you can partner with them to make things better. So thank you for that great example. And, you know, we're big fans of story here on the podcast, if you've listened to it, which you're so gracious to say you have for any length of time, you know that we believe there's such power in generosity and sharing those stories. Do you have a moment of philanthropy that kind of stands out to you that you'd like to share with us today?

Yeah, I think I learned early on that. And it was I've been privileged enough to be able to travel a lot. And I'm so thankful for it. Because the more I travel, the more I realized that usually the people that have less give the most. And so it was back. I was dating my high school sweetheart, this was long time ago. And we were at a stoplight. And so there had been a man that came up to us and was asking, was asking for support in order to be able to eat with his family at the end of the day. And my boyfriend at the time took out a $20 bill and gave it to him. And I was like, What are you going to do for groceries because I knew like you usually spent around 40 to $50 on groceries per week. And I was like that is almost half of your grocery bill, like, what are you going to do? Everything was fine. But I was just so I guess in all that he was willing to give up almost half of his grocery bill to support the mela he doesn't even know. And so time and time again, I've seen people's generosity, and how impactful it can be, especially the people that have the least right. Either they give their time when they don't have any time, right when they have a busy family busy job of busy everything. And they sit down for an hour to talk to you and be able to mentor you, right, or some people that don't have any money. And then they give whatever they have in order to support you, because that's just who they are internally. And so as we kind of go through our lives, either our finances go up, or our life gets busier, or whatever it is, we want to go back to the idea that we can always support somebody else. And we will be okay. So I kind of go back to, don't forget that the less you have, the more you give, because it comes back

around. What a beautiful message. And I even think just applying it to a young manager to you know, I think just that view of how we invest in each other and believe in the best in each other is just such a generous place to come from. And so you know, from listening to the podcast, as we round this out, we're going to ask you for your one good thing and you've given a ton of great advice and frameworks today to think through but what's a piece of advice you'd leave us with today?

Let's go back to reflecting. Making sure that you've set time to reflect how you're feeling what you're thinking about, and being able to set time apart and not just get rushed into the two dues. Usually the two dues are sometimes longer on Friday than what they started on Monday. And so being able to remember to reflect because not only does it bring you a little bit more calmness, knowing what you're striving for it yes, yes. Um You're able to kind of feel feel less burnt out, to be honest, you feel more accomplished, because sometimes by the time you get through Friday, you're like, What did I do this whole week? Like, I know, I was working like a crazy person, but like, what did I do. And so those times were reflection make you feel more of an accomplished person. I helped you remember, oh, Wednesday was really busy, because but I was able to connect with so and so we were able to do this because I connected with so and so this next project is coming in, or this next big donor is coming in the door. But if we don't reflect that, oh, I sat down with so and so for 15 minute coffee. And that led to this conversation. And then they connected me to so and so we think oh my gosh, I just went through so many meetings and what did what came of it right? We need that time to reflect to center ourselves, feel accomplished and know the direction that we're going to be going in.

And if I can piggyback on that. I just want to say reflection is self care y'all. Like I want nonprofit professionals to build in more time to care for themselves. And this is such a good and easy practice, that only yield growth and in ourselves, but it allows us to celebrate our wins, to be grateful to sit in gratitude. And sometimes the gratitude is I'm so glad that project is behind me and I never have to look at it again, the relief of that. So please reflect. Because as a practice, it really is going to help you care for yourself better and be a more whole human being. So we have loved this conversation. I love that you have developed this niche within the sector. And so tell people, how they can connect with you. How can they connect with Zika, Nika, and tell us where you hang out on socials, and we web dresses as well.

You can connect with me at either Sudan crusius on LinkedIn, or you can connect with see as Econic that either on LinkedIn or on Instagram. And so that's where I'll be able to post all this wealth of knowledge and you'll be able to read more articles or be able to join a membership that I'll be starting in July. And so I would love to connect if you guys want the template on how to be able to have those one on one team meetings. Just connect with me I'd be happy to send it over

new leaders. I hope you feel seen today. You are loved and cared for you have got this be a great human and trust yourself and trust your team. You've got this

grateful for you my friend. Thank you.

Thank you guys.

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