#116 Getting New Managers Started Right

Welcome to the Proteus Leader Show, a podcast for forward-looking leaders driving transformation in their organizations, within their teams, or for themselves. Your host today is a senior leader at Proteus International, a firm that partners with companies around the world to make true transformation easier through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching. If you're looking for fresh perspectives and practical insights, can take back to work today, you're in the right place. Enjoy the episode.

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Noel Massey, and he's the former Vice President for UPS's US Delivery Operations. So before his retirement in 2019, he oversaw 200,000 employees led by 12,000 supervisors. And in this role, he supported and guided UPS's package delivery and logistics services in the US. Noel continues to mentor young leaders and supervisors. And today, we're going to be talking about his new book, Congrats! You've Been Promoted. So welcome to the show, Noel.

Erika, thank you for having me. I look forward to our conversation over the next few minutes.

Yeah, me too. And I think our leaders will find this really valuable. Many of them are new managers, and many more of them support new managers. So I think this will provide some great insights. Noel, from your point of view, why is it so important for new leaders to get started right in their changed role?

The fact of the matter is, Erika, is that there was a position open for a leader, and the owner of the business and the person who wanted to be a leader came to an agreement that they were the right person for the position. But what happens after that is there's no investment in development in the new leader. And what I saw in my 40-plus-year career, particularly when I was president of US delivery operations for UPS, where I had 12,000 individuals leading 80,000 delivery drivers. That being said, derailment would happen in the first couple, 3 years. And I also saw when I ideated the book and talking to other peers, I was chairman of the board of the LA Chamber, so I knew a lot of presidents and general managers. Training budgets were being cut pretty heavily. So I wrote this book, Congrats, You've Been Promoted. Here's the book. It gives the newly promoted leader and the business owner the ability to have congruence. And what do I mean by congruence?

Yeah.

Uh, it's a development position. Congratulations, Erika. I am promoting you today. And a big part of that promotion, Erika, is that I am your coach. Everyone's had a coach. Michael Jordan had a coach. Kobe Bryant had a coach. Because understand, you will run into things that are complicated in leading people.

Yeah.

And I want you to be successful. You were one of my best employees. Now you're gonna be the leader, and success is what I'm looking to help you be so that we're successful. So the book is not just for the newly promoted leader. More importantly, and I've gotten a lot of business owners that have read this book and then they went out and bought 20 copies because they got it. They understood that the book was going to give a frame a path.

Yes.

What happens when you're newly promoted? Situations come up. They're spontaneous. An employee's paycheck is wrong. They come at you hot. They're angry. What do you do in that moment? And the book teaches and coaches that moment. The book also teaches and coaches what the importance of value-based leadership in a very intentional way, right? What do I mean by that? People say that all the time. When I do talks on this, and this is 100% the case. Every time I do a conference talk on this, I talk about intentional leadership. People have heard that forever. They go, what is that? It means you intend to create something. And I use the example, what about intentional chairmaking? Leadership's no different. How you want it to be, how you want it shaped. And the most foundational important principle in leadership is integrity is important. Integrity matters. And once people have no doubt of your personal integrity, they will follow you and even forgive you the mistakes you make. But here's the story, okay? How do you create an environment where everyone gets integrity? It's not hard. You can create that in 3 minutes. You walk through the door and go, hey team, good morning. How's everyone doing? And this can't be a moment because something's bad. It needs to be because they just see you as such. Good morning, team. We're going to have long days, hard days, tough days, and today probably going to be one of those. But we're never having a day that lacks integrity. We're not having a bad integrity day. Remember, that's how we operate, team. We're never having that moment, right?

2 things that you've said so far that I absolutely love and that I really want to highlight. One is the mindset of the coach for the leader. And I think most new leaders and their leaders don't necessarily have that, that I'm your boss, I'm going to be your coach. I'm not just your boss. I'm gonna help you through the hard times. I'm gonna help you figure out how to get better at doing the things that are hardest. That's fantastic. And I love what you just said about integrity. I love you announce it day one and then you follow through, cuz then you're on notice. Then your people are gonna be watching to see if that's actually how you show up, right?

That's right. And the same thing applies, Erika, to any value-based foundation. If you run a business, tell me what are the most important things in the business? You know what you're not gonna say to me? Ethics, integrity, fairness. You're just not gonna say those. Those things. That's just human nature. And I tell new leaders, I have a couple really gifted young men in Cincinnati that run a real estate partnership. And when I met them, they had 12 people. Now they have a couple hundred. But Bob and Josh, you know, fit that dynamic perfectly. Hard workers, understood the real estate business. They started off flipping houses together, blah, blah. Now they own 5,000 units or something. But I said, listen, at the end of the day, your business is going to look like your behavior as a leader. Does integrity matter to you? They're like, yeah, of course. Are you ethical? Do you want your employees to be ethical? I said, you both got kids, right? How do you treat your kids? Do their values matter? And they were like, yeah, of course. I said, so how do the values of the 20 people in that room over there, how are you developing their values? Company, you're the leaders, okay? You're not the boss, you're the coach. You're the head coach, just like an NFL football coach. You have to develop your team. And it's something that's not Situational. I said head coaches during games don't go inside and eat a sandwich while the team is playing. Okay? They coach them all the time. Your job as a business owner is to coach them all the time. And if you have a general manager, as the owner, you coach that person all the time. All the time. Not sometimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you give them the opportunity to sit in front of you and be transparent. And get your help and you coach them. I say you can't give criticism, which is the poison, without the antidote. Formative feedback should never be provided to an individual— formative, which is to form a behavior, to coach, to train— without giving motivational feedback. And in the book, I talk about the importance of 4-to-1 feedback and the 4-to-1 feedback model, formative and motivational. But a newly promoted leader is not going to know that.

So you talk about hard days. There's always hard days. There's always hard situations. What would you say are the biggest watchouts, the biggest thing that a newly promoted leader should be careful of and that their boss should help them be careful of?

They need to watch out for a few things, not just one thing. But the first and most important thing is to understand they're being evaluated. You're always being evaluated.

Yeah.

There are no casual moments in leadership. Your people are evaluating you.

Yes.

They're looking at your actions and your behavior all the time. So you don't get to be casual. You're going into a profession of leadership. You're not going into casual.

Oh, that's such a great insight. One of the things I used to say when I was coaching leaders is your behavior is always under a microscope. And you're always talking with a megaphone. Everything you're saying is being heard. Everything you're doing is being seen.

And it turns into things and people are sizing you up.

Yeah.

And the biggest and most important behavior I tell newly promoted, you need to realize you have to always be professional. It is a profession. Let me frame that for you. If you were a professional mechanic and you're working on someone's car, you don't do that casually. You're a professional, right? When you're standing in front of a team, everything you say needs to be aimed at development and outcomes. End of story. Not that you can't talk about the football game last night. Understand, you get to have lighthearted moments with your team, but they need to always see you as a pro. And that means you can't have favorites.

Yeah.

Yeah. You don't get to have favorites, period. I don't care if your best worker is your best worker. Your people need to see you as a fair leader. And you need to say, in our group, fairness matters. Everyone's going to carry their weight equally in this group. There's not going to be any bias, any favoritism in this group. And if you think that's happening, come talk to me. If you think you see me doing that, come talk to me. But you set the terms and conditions, which is the foundation of the book. I talk about the principle of terms and conditions.

Yeah.

Of value-based leadership. And if I were to say, Erika, I want you to write down 5 things that are non-negotiable for you to be in a relationship, any relationship. And you're going to write them down. And they generally look the same: listening, respect. People don't sell you their dignity, right? You don't get to yell at them and dismiss them. And if you keep doing that, you are violating their terms and conditions. Now think about it like this. If you go park in a parking lot, there are terms and conditions to put your car in that lot. We have a no liability clause. If the wheels are stolen, these are the terms and conditions. That's your problem. Okay? If you get a warranty on an item, it has terms and conditions. An airline ticket, an app you buy, there are always agreements to use that. Same thing happens with people. When you hire them, there's an agreement. They're selling you their sweat. They're selling you their energy. They are not selling you the ability to disrespect them.

Hmm.

So I talk about that in the book, the terms and conditions of value-based leadership. And that's actually the talk I give at conferences the terms and conditions of value-based leadership. And it's a real thing.

Yeah. And it's such a practical way to talk about such a critical human element. Because as you just said, we all have those terms and conditions. But too often, any bosses, but especially new bosses, they don't think about that. Are you violating that person's core principles? You're not gonna last long.

Yeah. They're gonna quit you. Because people quit people, not companies.

Yes.

They're gonna quit you. That's right. And the owner's going to go, oh, well, they weren't that good. Good riddance. But all of a sudden, they keep turning over and turning over and turning over.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so this is so great. We always promise practical. So what would you say are some of the key things that a new leader can do starting today to make sure they're the best leader they're capable of being?

Well, for selfish reasons, I'm going to say, Reed, congrats. You've been promoted.

That's good. Good advice.

Yeah, I sincerely believe It gives a lot of, more than a lot of experiences I had. I talk about the things I did wrong in this book when I was newly promoted. There's not an in-the-trenches kind of book for the person on the front line. And in the trenches, you could be in the trenches in an office environment. You are.

Yes.

You know, you, you could be running the customer service operation for Home Depot or something with people on phones all day. That's in the trenches. So the book is about being in the trenches. In teaching that. But I would say the newly promoted leader needs to understand this: their personal leadership development is owned completely by them.

Mm, that's fantastic. Yeah.

They own that. Yeah, they own— the one thing they get to control every day is their own behavior. You get to control your own behavior. And the minute you start blaming other people for not developing you, you are the problem.

Oh.

How much do you read? How much do you listen to? It's a craft. How are you applying yourself to your professional craft of being the leader of the customer service phone center or being the leader of the forklift drivers or the leader of the warehouse workers? How are you developing you to do that? And how are you interfacing with your leader, your boss, to say, it's important to me to be developed?

Mm-hmm.

It's important to me that you develop me, my soft skills, my leadership skills, my dialogue, how to role-play a conflict situation, you know, how to handle that employee whose paycheck is wrong and they came at you hot. In my book, I talk about how to de-escalate that moment. There's a technique called the 4x5 method that I want the new leader to learn. And if they learn the 4x5 method, They will know how to de-escalate that hot moment. They will know how to do that. They will know how to train a person using the 7 steps of effective training. They will understand what the BEST principle is. B-E-S-T. Be specific, expect the best, stick to the objective, test commitment is a principle that you use.

Oh, I love that. Can you say that again? That's very powerful.

You use the BEST principle when you train someone how to drive a forklift. It's called The BEST principle. The B stands for be specific. We are here, Erika, today so that I can help you be successful learning how to drive a forklift. Expect the best. And I expect that you really want this job.

Yes.

And you say positive reinforcing statements when you use the E. Stick to the objective. Now, we're going to work on this forklift till you're fully certified, and I'm not going to step 6 till I know you know steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. And then, Test commitment. And when we're done, Erika, I'm going to ask you to repeat to me as though you're training me how to drive this forklift. Oh, that's fantastic. So the BEST principle helps a new leader have a frame in order to have conversations on training, coaching, performance reviews. It's a really sticky principle and it works.

That's lovely. And I love the underlying thing that you're saying, which is for new leaders to understand that they are responsible for their own success.

Yes, 100%. Their development. I like to say it that way. Not so much just success, but their own personal development. I just taught a workshop to 30 attorneys in the city of Chicago, a day-long seminar. And I said, okay, raise your hand. Tell me how many of you want to be average leaders? Raise your hand. Nobody does. Okay. All right. And I said, so now you don't want to be average. I said, the average person spends almost no time on personal leadership development. So if you're not average, tell me how you're not average on personal leadership development content that you read this week. You sat down with someone under you this week and you read it together, or you have a plan and it's on how to handle conflict resolution, how to create fairness in the workplace. So tell me, if you didn't raise your hand on the average question, then I'm going to go around the room and I want to hear you explain that to the group. And then I go, never mind. I'm not going to do that. I made the point I'm making. The whole point is, as we get going today, I want to start in the right place. That yes, you are average. And what that means is that the average person doesn't do that. And if you want to be better than average, it means you're going to do that. And that's how we kicked the day off. And of course, then it went really well and they had some amazing reviews from those 30 attorneys of what they got out of that day.

Yeah, this is so great. And I know we're just scratching the surface, but I really appreciate you sharing such great, practical, real-world And listeners, you can find out more about Noel at noelmassie.com, and you can buy Congrats, You've Been Promoted at Amazon. It's at a lot of independent bookstores. And to find out how Proteus supports leaders and their teams, just go to proteusinternational.com. So thank you so much, Noel.

Thank you, Erika, for having me today. I really enjoyed our discussion. Thank you.

Yeah, this has been great. And thank you everyone for listening. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.

Thanks for listening to the Proteus Leader Show. We hope you're leaving with ideas you can put to use on your team, in your organization, or in your own career. To learn more about how we support true transformation through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching, visit us at proteus-international.com. Until next time.