669: Making More Impact as a Middle Manager with Scott Mautz

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Scott Mautz
Fantastic to be back. I’m hoping to help you be even awesomer-er, I guess. How many E-Rs is that? Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, Pete. Thanks for having me back, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I certainly think you’ve got the goods to pull that off. And so, you’ve got a new work coming out, it’s a book Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization. Boy, that sounds very necessary. Can you tell us, maybe as you’re putting this together, any real big surprises or counterintuitive discoveries that came to light?

Scott Mautz
Yeah. Well, I have more than I could possibly share with you. I’ll do that by opening it up with a story, if that’s cool with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, please.

Scott Mautz
So, it has to do with why the heck did I write this book to begin with, why focus on middle managers when a lot of the publishing industry is so much more focused on C-suite, or if you just started, you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. What about these middle managers? So, I kind of fell in love with the topic, I have to do this, but based on this particular story.

So, I’m keynoting for a client, and I’m going to disguise the fact, to protect the innocent. Let’s say it was in Minnesota, Upstate Minnesota, I’m keynoting in the company’s headquarters and if you’re any good at keynoting at all, people will come up to you and want to talk to you afterwards. So I’m doing that.

And my handler comes up. He comes up and says, “Hey, Scott, I got to get you to the airport so I’m going to pull you away from the crowd. Come with me.” Okay, I follow him.

He winds me through this office he was taking me through a shortcut to get out the side door where the cab was waiting for me, and he says, “Okay. Oh, by the way, I got to grab one more thing. Just stay right here for a second.” We were right by his desk. And, of course, so what would any person do? I just decide I’m going to snoop while I’m standing there at his desk because, what else, I think he went to get water for me or something for the trip.

And on his desk, there’s literally nothing, Pete. It is blank except for three things: a piece of paper, I’m going to tell you about right now, a picture of a monkey, and the number five. So, when he comes back, I got to ask him about this, I mean, “What? Dude, you got three pieces of paper and no work on your table. What’s going on? Can you explain these things to me?”

So, he hands me the piece of paper, and it’s something I want to share with you now, he said, “This is something that’s been distributed to us that kind of encapsulates the spirit of what it’s like to be a middle manager here. I’m going to read it to you.” Actually, this was what they were handed from higher management in his company which shall not be named. It was directives. It said, Middle Manager Directives, “Lead but keep yourself in the background. Build a close relationship with your staff but keep a suitable distance. Trust your staff but keep an eye on them. Be tolerant but know exactly how you want things to function.” I’ll read just one more, “Do a good job of planning your time but be entirely flexible with your schedule.”

I don’t know how this list, of these things that just didn’t add up, these contradictions, I said, “Okay, so that’s what it’s like to be a middle manager.” He said, “Oh, yeah, there’s no doubt.” And I said, “Okay. Well, wait a minute. What about this number five?” He said, “Oh, that refers to a study that I got from Stanford University.” He handed it to me and I was flipping it through it, he summed it up, and he said, “The study shows, it’s actually a five-year study that’s why the number five, and the study shows that taking a middle manager that’s not very good and replacing them with even an average middle manager is more productive than adding a net new person to the team.”

So, the story reminded him of the value of middle managers on the day when it wasn’t going so well for him. And I said, “Okay, that’s great, dude, I’m getting a flavor of what it’s like to be a middle manager in your company. What about the picture of the monkeys?” We’re all waiting for that, the punchline. So, he hands me another study conducted by some researchers in Manchester, in the University of Liverpool where they were watching monkeys, a family of monkeys, or, actually, I think it was over 600 monkeys in total, across different families of monkeys, to study the hierarchy.

And they would study these monkeys and they would code their behaviors, just like either really, really aggressive, which would include like slapping behaviors and screaming and screeching, or nurturing behaviors like cuddling or picking the bugs out of each other’s hair. And then they collected the fecal matter of these monkeys, which I’ll leave that up to you, Pete. That’s not the job for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Fun job.

Scott Mautz
To measure the fecal matter for stress hormones, and here’s what they found. They found that the monkeys that were right in the middle of the hierarchy in the monkey tree, they weren’t the boss baboon or whatever and they weren’t the youngest little chimpanzee, the middle monkeys were the ones that were the most stressed out and had the poorest physical health by far because they had to manage in their hierarchy up, down, and across. And that really all summed up for me the net of what it means to be a middle manager.

It was surprising to me to learn this, you asked what was surprising, that, in truth, there’s kind of a stigma about it, isn’t it? It’s brought about by shows like The Office, the movie Office Space, the Dilbert cartoon. There’s a stigma to it and I’m surprised to find in my research how many people are yearning for inspiration to say, “Hey, it’s okay for me to be a middle manager,” and pound their chest with pride. That’s why I decided to write the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is powerful, yes, in terms of there’s contradictions, you’re getting pulled in many directions, there’s a lot of stresses associated with it, and then you don’t get respect at times.

Scott Mautz
You don’t get many respects.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what a combo.

Scott Mautz
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, then what is to be done?

Scott Mautz
What is to be done? So many things can be done here. The first thing I would say is, to help your listeners understand, and I talk in the book about this acronym SCOPE. It spells out the categories of unique challenges that middle managers face. The S stands for self-identity problems. The C stands for conflict problems. The O stands for omnipotence problems, the expectation of knowing everything. The P and the E are physical and emotional problems associated with being a middle manager.

I’m just going to pick out one of those because the book goes into depth. But, Pete, most people say, “Well, the difficulty would be in middle managers is there’s so much to do. I have so many hats on that I’m exhausted all the time.” That’s the most common answer of why people believe it’s tough to be in the middle, and there’s truth to that. That’s undeniable. But what people may not know, and I was very surprised to find out in my research, is back to the number of hats that we have to wear as middle managers, therein lies the real reason of why it’s so difficult.

And that’s because when you wear so many hats, it creates a self-identity problem and it creates a problem with micro-switching, what neuroscientists call micro-transitions, whereby, because you wear so many hats, you have to transition very quickly from a deferential stance to your boss, to assertive mode with your employees, to collaborative mode with your peers, sometimes all in the same meeting, and you have to jump into the roles you weren’t expecting to play. Your boss shows up and, all of a sudden, “Oh, I got to go into boss-managing mode.” And you move from these high-power roles to low-power roles back and forth all day long, and it is exhausting.

So, I’m going to tell you what you do about that in a second, but isn’t that surprising to you at all? It surprised me that that’s the real core driver of what’s happening, why it’s so difficult here to be a middle manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I imagine that is one issue, but what’s intriguing is when you get that clarity and that bullseye, like, “This is the thing,” so that’s hugely valuable to come to in the research. So, how do you deal with them?

Scott Mautz
Yes, so what do you do about it? So, here’s what we found. Our research of over 3,000 successful middle managers, Pete, we found that the most successful middle managers had a mindset for how to deal with all the hats that they have to wear that exhaust them because of all the switching. And what we found is the most successful middle managers, they kind of reframe it. They thought of the micro-transitions that you have to make not as segmented but as integrated into one job that you’re uniquely suited to pursue.

Or, here’s another reframe I heard of that I thought was brilliant, so brilliant I wrote it down and it made it in the book. One successful middle manager said, “God, all those roles I have to play, it’s a privilege. My job is to think like an engineer but feel like an artist.” And I thought, “Wow, that makes a lot of sense,” and he went on to explain this, like, “To be a middle manager and effectively manage up, down, and across, you really have to be skilled at being process-oriented and driven like an engineer with detail and follow through in plans and implementation. At the same time, you have to be able to feel like an artist and have empathy for people, and care, because, in truth, when you’re a middle manager, you’re at the intersection of everything horizontal and vertical in the company. And you have the opportunity to be an empathy engine for the entire company.”

And the best middle managers, that’s exactly what they are. Not only are they the backbone of the organization, something to take pride in, but they’re the centerpiece, the epicenter of empathy for the organization as well. I have other best practices and tips. I know on the show, Pete, that your audience really values best practices. Would that be a good place to go next or you want to go someplace else?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. And I just want to simmer with that a little bit.

Scott Mautz
Please, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Think like an engineer and feel like an artist. It’s beautiful and it rings true as something that is necessary. And the micro-switching, yes, that is tricky. And if you’ve got that mindset, I can see how you can do the switching all the more readily in terms of, “Oh, engineer mode. Oh, artist mode. Engineer mode. Artist mode,” as opposed to just a big mess of, “There’s a bunch of stuff I got to deal with now. How do I…? Oh, engineer mode, artist mode.” And so, I want to hear the best practices, and I imagine some of them have to do with, “Well, how do you identify when is the right moment? And how do you make that switch?”

Scott Mautz
Yeah. So, here’s what I thought I would do today, Pete, for your listeners because there’s so much in the book to share. I thought I’d first give a couple overall tips that just kept popping up over and over and over in the research for the most successful managers, then I’ll just share just my one best tip for managing up to your bosses down to your employees and across to peers, if that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Scott Mautz
Two quick overall tips that kept popping in the research. Successful middle managers tell me about the importance of the golden question, which is this, to continually ask yourself, “Am I assisting success or avoiding failure?” because those two paths produce very different outcomes and behaviors, and we can forget. We can mean to assist success but fall into avoiding failure behavior.

So, for example, in the case of assisting success, what does that look like, Pete? Well, that looks like you’re helping people past the barriers, you’re removing barriers, you’re coaching them, you’re investing in them, you’re doing whatever it takes to help people succeed. Avoiding failure, that looks like micromanagement, indecision, conservatism, perfectionism.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, CYA.

Scott Mautz
CYA. And when you ask yourself that question of, “Okay, am I assisting success or avoiding failure?” it forces you to be very intentional and self-aware of the types of behaviors you’re engaging in as a manager of others and people have to manage up and across.

Pete Mockaitis
What comes to mind here is the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, about the chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, and he’s got his park coach and his fancy coach. And the park coach where he’s playing the speed chess wants, I don’t know why he’s stuck with me, but he’s sort of like yelling out to him, it’s like, “You’re not playing to win. You’re playing not to lose and it’s not the same thing.”

Scott Mautz
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And it isn’t. And I think it’s quite natural with our human limbic system defense mechanisms to want to protect yourself and avoid a failure and looking like a fool, or getting into trouble, getting yelled at, and often those are the kinds of behaviors that aren’t creating transformational results that are going to make you promoted and have your team love you and have the rest of your team flourish as well.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, I think that’s very, very well said. And sometimes we don’t see it as avoiding failure behavior in the outset even though everybody else sees it that way. We think of it as, “Ah, I’m being smart. I’m being conservative. I’m making sure I have all the data before I move forward,” that’s really not what that behavior is helping along.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear maybe some potential words and phrases that indicate you’re in the avoiding failure mode. One that comes to mind is when you send an email and then you say, “Please advise.” And that’s fine sometimes. Sometimes that is fine, you really do need that input. But sometimes that comes across as, “I’m not going to stick my neck out to make a recommendation here. I’m not going to take ownership or make a decision. I’m going to do a little bit of a buck pass.”

And, again, that’s a broad generalization. Sometimes you absolutely need other people’s inputs on something, and you shouldn’t go full steam ahead before you get it. But sometimes it’s like, “I don’t know. I think you can probably push this a little bit farther before you pass it over to me to do the thinking.”

Scott Mautz
I think that’s exactly right, Pete. A couple other keywords to listen for – parallel path.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy.

Scott Mautz
If you’re using that word, that means you’re creating two ways to approach something which means you’re doubling the amount of resources you’re burning and, frankly, you’re just not making a decision. You’re running a parallel path of, “Should we go route A or route B?” And if you hear the key word of permission, “I’d like to do this, I got to get permission from my boss and see.” Listen, business builders don’t have to ask for permission on everything. Homeowners and homebuilders rather, homebuilders have to ask for permission on everything not business builders so you got to watch out. And you bring up a good point. You got to be really intentional about the language you’re using because that reveals which indications of when you’re engaging and avoiding failure versus assisting success.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, please continue.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, here’s another overall tip and then I’ll go into kind of up, down, and across, just one quick best tip. I hear this a lot, and I’m assigning the words to this concept. I never heard these words exactly but this is what a vast chunk of successful middle managers are doing. And, believe me, we’ve talked to well over 3,000 of what companies determine are their very best middle managers in their organization.

And I see them practicing the 50/50 rule, which is this. When things are at their craziest, Pete, when you feel like, “I’m overwhelmed and it’s so busy, I don’t even know where to turn my focus,” you practice a 50/50 rule which happens a lot to middle managers, that kind of busyness. 50/50 rule says, “In those times of chaos, spend 50% of your time on pragmatism, 50% on possibilities.” 50 plus 50, equals 100, which means you have zero percent of your time left for focusing on spiraling down and, “Pity, poor me, I’ve got so much to do.”

And here’s what so powerful about this. When you say, “Out of all my time, only 50% of it is going to be dedicated to pragmatism,” that means you now have a half of a half of your time to prioritize and focus on priorities, right? So, that means you can’t accept other people’s urgent, you can’t take in every single fire alarm that’s going off and put out every fire. Only half of your time now, half of half of your time, in some ways to think about that, could be spent on pragmatic choices.

The other half should be spent on possibilities, looking for the opportunities in the middle of all the chaos and all the input and stimulus that you’re getting, because research shows us, one of the most common traps we fall into in our busiest times is we tend not to focus on the possibilities and the opportunities right in front of us. Why? Because we’re so busy just trying to cross things off our to-do list, just trying to jump from everyone else’s urgent to everyone else’s urgent back and forth. 50/50 rule, does it make sense to you, Pete? Could you see that apply?

Pete Mockaitis
I totally can. And I’m thinking now, we had a guest from FranklinCovey talk about a mantra from an executive who said, he ran some in the hotel bit space, he said, “Hey, if you want to keep your job, just keep things running. You got plenty to do and you’ll stay employed. But if you want to get promoted, bring me an improvement. Like, show me a few points of lift on customer satisfaction or occupancy rates.”

And I think that there’s a lot of wisdom to that. It’s always more urgent to deal with whatever is in your inbox and whatever someone is yelling at you about but it’s less urgent but also important to see, “How are we getting better? How are we producing some results so that we stay relevant and we get to exist as a premiere hotel chain in a world of Airbnb and new disruptors and all that stuff?”

Scott Mautz
Yeah, you’re right, Pete. And if you look back on people that are great successes in their life, there’s a lot of data on this. This isn’t just my opinion and my personal experience, there’s a lot of data that says a core success factor is the ability, in the midst of chaos, to spot opportunity when other people are just running around taking care of their to-do list and answering everyone else’s urgent. So, I think that’s really powerful. The 50/50 rule is a really powerful thing to kind of take into your activities at work.

With your permission, Pete, I’d love to share with you one very quick tip for leading up, down, and across. Would that be good?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Scott Mautz
Let’s do it. So, here’s how I’m going to do it because Leading from the Middle is packed with so many tips. I’m going to focus on the most frequently asked questions to me on this front. And the most frequent question I get with, “How do I manage up to my boss? How do I do that well?” because that’s tricky.

The most important thing I can tell you on that front is to understand what’s asked of you, to get crystal clear on expectations. And I share that, Pete, at the risk of it being too obvious because, despite it being obvious, we’re not so good at it. Check this out. We conducted, we’re almost up to over 300 now, different boss-subordinate pairs that we’ve been interviewing in focused groups and through questionnaires and through all kinds of different datapoints, to find out, “Okay, with this boss-subordinate pairing, did they really understand what one expects from the other?”

And we are finding that, despite up front, those both sets of people, the boss and the employee saying, “Yeah, yeah, we’re clear,” in over 80% of the cases, it turns out there were material breaches in understanding, they’re understanding of the basics of what one expected from the other. That lines up with what Gallup research shows us as well. Gallup shows us that 50% of employees around the globe have no idea what’s really expected of them. So, how do you solve that?

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that’s so fascinating and it rings true. Can we zoom in on some examples of, “Oh, I thought you expected this but, in fact, you expected that?”

Scott Mautz
Oh, yeah. For instance, a perfect example, there was one boss-employee pairing, and the boss said, “Okay,” it was a sales position and he expected his employee to engage in sales leadership in a certain way.

Pete Mockaitis
Sales leadership, okay.

Scott Mautz
Yes, sales leadership, that included…

Pete Mockaitis
You got a few ways.

Scott Mautz
“Okay, I want you to follow this selling process. I want you to teach your fellow salespeople,” because this was the number one salesperson he was working with, “I want you to teach your fellow salespeople how to employ the selling techniques that you’re employing as well.” And, yeah, he listed basic expectations. Then when I asked the employee what was expected of him, none of that stuff was on his radar screen.

He thought his job was to protect the secrets of how he was selling so that he could personally rise up the chain and continue to be the number one person and that his boss would never have expected him to share that knowledge. He thought that the way he had devote selling was the right way to go, and he had totally ignored the company-preferred method, and there was a darn good reason the company wanted him to follow this method, so he was doing his own method.

That turns out was creating some problems on the backend, some customers weren’t so satisfied afterwards given all the things this kid had promised because he wasn’t following the standard procedure. So, in something that’s basic is like, “This is how we expect you to sell at this company,” there was a gap in understanding.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And sales leadership can say, “Okay, got you. I’m going to continue to be a more rock star sales leader, a leader in sales, by selling more by the things that I’m doing that are working so well.” Certainly. So, what are the best practices then to surface those misunderstandings and get them cleared up?

Scott Mautz
Yes, so powerful. It’s to develop what I call a good-to-great grid. Here’s how it works. We’ve all heard that book Jim Collins’ Good to Great. This is a different kind of use of this. So, just picture this, I want your listeners to picture this. Imagine a simple chart and it has three columns in the chart. On the left-hand side of the chart, that column, that’s metrics that are important to you at your job.

So, let’s say you work in company XYZ, and leadership, risk-taking, and taking initiative are three really important things you get measured on. You put that in the left column. The next column is the good column, the next column is the great column. In the good column, you sit down with your boss and you define, let’s pick one metric, let’s use leadership, “Okay, boss, let’s you and I, together, write down on paper what good leadership looks like.” Then in the next column, “Okay, boss, let’s you and I agree to a definition of what great leadership looks like.”

And what happens is that you force your boss and yourself to get crystal clear on what just good is and what great is. And what happens is most often we get lazy when we set expectations and we just assume that everybody knows what our idea of great is and, in fact, they’re delivering good at best. And the person that’s delivering the good, they actually think, “Oh, I’m doing great,” and they’re not clear on what great really looks like, and you can’t get to that without specificity. You need tension. That tension is the difference between good and great, defining the difference between good and great. And when you could do that, it forces specificity and clarity, makes sense that it’s a powerful tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that is nice. And so, could you give us an example of something a boss-subordinate pair might agree to on a good picture of leadership versus a great picture of leadership?

Scott Mautz
Sure. Here’s one of prioritization. This is from an actual good-to-great chart that I developed with a team years ago. So, imagine you got this chart, and on the left-hand side you have prioritization, priority-setting as an important thing. In the good column, what if you wrote this? It’s called Trash Compactor Management, and what that means is, you know what a trash compactor is. It takes trash and it squishes it into a cube. Imagine if you thought of your workload that way, and what good would look like is you say no every once in a while, so your work cube gets a lot smaller. It gets squished down into a smaller, more doable work cube.

Frankly, Pete, a lot of us aren’t even good at that. We’re not even good at saying no to stuff that comes on our table. So, if you could start by saying no, that’s pretty good in priority-setting but that’s not great. Great priority-setting is not Trash Compactor Management; it’s Accordion Management. Accordion is a musical instrument that you play that you kind of move your hands in and out to play the instrument. It puffs wind out and you get different notes.

Imagine your workload was like that now. You contract it like an accordion at times when you know you’ve got a lot going on, you’ve got a big sales call coming up, a big presentation to the CEO, but then you contract it in between so people can breathe. You’re not always adding work and expanding the accordion, you’re contracting it so you can learn from a big meeting, so you can take training, so you can enjoy, so you can celebrate. Then you expand the workload back out again when things get busy. In and out all the time like an accordion. Now, that’s great priority-setting.

And the things is, for your listeners, Pete, I hope they don’t agree with any of those definitions, that they might say, “Well, yeah, yeah, Scott, I hear you. I think good priority-setting is this and great priority-setting is that.” Actually, I hope they don’t agree and that they come up with their own definitions sitting down with their boss because that’s the power there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. It’s funny, as I’m thinking about this and the 80/20 Rule, I’m thinking, “Now, great prioritization is I can name for you the one, two, three things that I fully expect to be 16 times as valuable per hour of my time than the other things.” Like, oh, wow. Okay, that’s what great means. And I love that specificity. What’s coming to mind for me is back in the day, consulting at Bain & Company, there were three things that were important, and it’s probably the same today, and I’d say that Bain frequently does well in the Best Places to Work list, and I think this is one of the reasons.

So, they say, ‘Hey, there’s value addition, there’s client communication, and there’s team. These are the three things that really matter.” But then they break it down in like 20 something competencies. So, under value addition, we have, “Achieves expert status.” And this is what I expect from a consultant within the first six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months that they should be able to do. And on your review, if you look like someone who’s been at the job for 18 months doing those kinds of things at six months, we’re going to go, “Wow, you are frequently exceeding, or consistently outperforming on our expectations.”

And I thought that was pretty cool. It’s like, “Okay, so you achieved expert status in the early days” might mean like, “Oh, I’ve got the Excel sheet and I really know the numbers and what’s in them. And in the latter portion, it’s sort of like, “I understand more about this thing than the client does and I can explain it clearly at the drop of a hat.” And so, you say, “Oh, okay, I see how that’s different.” And one of them is certainly elevated to the other, and that’s powerful.

Scott Mautz
It’s that specificity that sets you free, right, Pete? It forces you to engage in the discussion of what good versus great looks like which is why so many of us are not clear on what good or great looks like because we never had that discussion.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so that was fun with priority-setting. Let’s hear another one because I think this is so important, and people are like, “Yeah, I know, I know.” But I think there’s maybe another layer of specificity we need to drill into. So, that’s priority-setting. Let’s hear another example.

Scott Mautz
Let’s keep going. Well, this one, maybe it’s too generic or whatever. But it’s one that I hear an awful lot on, “What does good leadership versus great leadership look like?” You and I, Pete, could debate this all day long but this is an example from an actual client of mine who they defined good leadership was doing the right things, always making the right choices on prioritization. Then they said great was, and I thought this was pretty wise, doing the right things at the right time for the right reason.

And the distinction was, if you just say, “Good leadership is doing the right things,” well, that means is that, in your mind, what you think is right in that time, in a tunnel, in a vacuum, in an echo chamber, “Yeah, we’re going to do the right things,” and they didn’t mean like, “Do the right thing morally.” They just meant, “Prioritize well.” But when you add on “at the right time, for the right reason,” that brings two different degrees of specificity to the table.

For the right reason, what they meant was they want leaders to be acting according to the company values and principles. Doing them at the right time meant they don’t want them to get ahead of themselves, they don’t want them to be making ridiculous decisions without the proper data, or they don’t want them to be waiting around forever to jump on an obvious opportunity. So, that’s straight from a client, I thought that was a pretty powerful and simple way to discern the two things.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And as I think about the clarity, it would be awesome to have some particular examples from recent work, like, “Hey, for example, recently you did the right thing associated with this but it was not quite the right time because we were still waiting on this important thing.” And it’s like, “Oh, okay.” And so, then it’s extra crystal clear.

Scott Mautz
And the good news here, Pete, for today, is that I put together, I’ll mention this again at the end, I put together a toolkit for your listeners, and I’ll give the address for the toolkit at the end here when we’re done. But in the toolkit of free tools is going to be a completed good-to-great grid with probably 15 examples on different metrics of what good versus great looks like on leadership, priority-setting, risk taking, vision, you name it, that’ll be available for your audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Beautiful. Well, let’s see, we’ve covered some great stuff here. I also like to get your take on when I think about middle managers, when there is that tension, that up, down, sideways, all over the place, like how do you really get something done in a big organization? What are some of the best practices, insights, takeaways, in pulling that off?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, maybe this one will surprise you, maybe it won’t, and it’s tied to…I also wanted to offer up the best tip that I get for leading down in an organization when you have employees, and this is tied to your question. And this is the question I most often get, by far, for people, new managers of others, I bet you can even guess it, Pete, is, “How do I give feedback and do it well?” And we know that also correlates with productivity in an organization because every manager knows they have to give feedback, everybody knows that. When you’re a boss of others, that’s part of the job.

We’re wired to not do it well. And the ability to get things done, if you don’t want to just do it yourself and burn yourself out, it has to come, of course, through others. But if you want to do that well, you have to be able to correct and mold that and do that through feedback. So, the two things are intertwined.

And what I always tell people is, “The rules are pretty simple.” And I go deep into this in Leading from the Middle. But if you want to master feedback, Pete, here’s a couple of simple rules. You got to be specific. My grandpa used to say, “White bread ain’t nutritious.” Feedback is the same way. Meaning if it’s generic and bland, no one is going to get any value from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Take more initiative.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, right. That’s right. Right. If it’s more like whole grain bread, your feedback, if it’s filled with nutrients and it’s specific and granular, people are going to appreciate that and grow from that. Your feedback has to be sincere. If it comes from the heart, it sticks in the mind. It has to be calibrated. When you give people that feedback, if it’s corrective feedback, Pete, they’re going to assume the worst from it if you don’t put it in context.

For example, let’s say, Pete, I’m giving you feedback on your podcast, and I say, “You know, Pete…” I’m making this up, “…your microphone levels are always too low,” which is not true. You have incredible sound but let’s pretend I’m telling you that. Now, I could just leave it there and then you, as a podcaster, what you most likely are going to do, like most human beings, is take that to the worst place possible, “My mic levels are too low, which means I’m a loser, which means no one will listen to my podcast.”

Like, if I don’t calibrate you on that and say something like, “Now, Pete, where you are in your life in podcasting, it’s very normal to have your mic levels too low. Lots of podcasters make that mistake, so just work on getting the mic levels right.” Or, if I really want you to get the message, I got to calibrate you and say, “You know, Pete, you got to understand, if you don’t fix this right away, we’ve talked about this before, you won’t have a podcast show anymore.” Those are two different ways to calibrate the feedback.

And if you don’t provide that context, people will go to the worst possible scenario. Another important rule…

Pete Mockaitis
And to that.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, please. Go, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love it, we’re talking about specificity, it could really be potent if you say, “Hey, man, negative 20 to negative 16 LUFS is the standard. And if someone’s listening to your show, and then another show, they’re going to have to be fiddling with the volume, and that’s not a great listener experience.” And so, I can really see, like, “Oh, who cares? You just crank the volume. It’s all good.” It’s like, “Here’s kind of the implication of what that means, why it matters, and why we are even bothering to talk about it.”

And I think that’s huge too in terms of really, really hitting that. And you’re right, we can take it to the worst place possible, and if we’re not feeling like an artist and solely thinking like an engineer, “Out of specification, hmm, rectify,” then you can totally blow right past that, and now you realize you’ve devastated somebody.

Scott Mautz
That’s exactly right. And even, by the way, the last point on giving feedback, even if you have to give that kind of harsh piece of feedback, it can be devastating, like you say, Pete, if you don’t put the right context around it. You also have to remember, kind of the last straw I’ll share today is being proportionate about it. Research is now showing us very clearly, Pete, that for every one piece of corrective feedback you give somebody, you got to have five pieces of reinforcing and positive feedback.

Now, the exception to the rule is if you’ve been working with somebody forever one-on-one, and you have trust to the gills, filled, and you can say anything to each other, you probably don’t have to follow the five-to-one rule but that’s not most of us. It’s a pretty powerful thing to keep in mind in influencing down.

I have one power tip for leading across. You tell me if you want me to go there next or if you wanted to take a pause.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it, yeah.

Scott Mautz
Okay. So, because I promised I would give your listeners one tip up, down, and across, the final is across. How do you lead from the middle, Pete, when you don’t have authority over people but you want them to do what you want them to do? How do you do that with no formal authority? And to do that, I want to share the golden rule of influence, incredibly powerful. It’s what I branded it, and I first learned about the concept, the general concept from another author by the name of Dan Schwartz, and I took it and ran with it, and I think of it as a golden rule of influence because it’s so important.

And to teach that to your listeners, we’re going to do a little test with you right now, Pete. So, I want you, Pete, to think of somebody in your life that has been very influential, had a ton of influence over you, preferably in the professional range for now, but you didn’t report to them, they weren’t your boss. All right. So, let me know when you have that person roughly in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve got him.

Scott Mautz
Okay. Let’s take a test now. Did that person, were they so influential because they did any of these four things? Did they care, listen, give, and teach? How many of those four apply?

Pete Mockaitis
All four, yup.

Scott Mautz
That’s what we find out is usually the case. If you want to have influence over people, over whom you have no formal authority, Pete, you care, you listen, you give them something, you teach them something. I promise you that will be influential to them. And if you serve that, you don’t have to worry about the rule of reciprocity, that they will then give you what you need back, they’ll feel compelled. They’ll want to not on reciprocity, just out of the fact that so few people do those four things for their peers and for their teammates.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful especially in a world where there’s too much to do. And how do you choose? Well, if there’s someone that goes, “Hey, that guy is just awesome to me. They all look the same to me but it’s coming from someone who’s been great to me, I guess I’ll do that first.”

Scott Mautz
That’s well said, Pete. Well said. So, they have an up, down, and across, man. That’s just a few tips to help you lead from the middle.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Well, let’s hear a few of your favorite things now. How about a favorite quote?

Scott Mautz
Oh, my favorite quote is probably “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” Love that from author Charles Swindoll.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Scott Mautz
My favorite book is, I’m not allowed to say my own, or I’m not going to because that’s just kind of ridiculous, but I have to admit I’m still a big fan of Good to Great by Jim Collins. It influenced the creation of the good-to-great grid I was talking about earlier, and I still find that to be a watermark, watershed book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Scott Mautz
Oh, my favorite habit, by far, is actually killing an old habit, which is it used to be that I would compare, too often, Pete, to make irrelevant comparisons to other human beings. We know that 10% of the human thought goes towards comparisons most often to other people and to irrelevant comparisons that don’t matter that force us to beat ourselves up. So, my favorite habit now is when I catch myself comparing to others, I simply say to myself, “The only comparison that matters is who I was yesterday and whether or not I’m becoming a better version of myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Scott Mautz
ScottMautz.com. And I mentioned before that I put together a toolkit for your listeners, Pete, to help them lead from the middle, to help them influence up, down, and across the organization. If they go to ScottMautz.com/freetools, that’s all one word, freetools with no space in between it, they can get that, all that valuable stuff – ScottMautz.com/freetools.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Scott, this has been a treat. Thanks so much for coming on back and good luck with all your leading.

Scott Mautz
Right on. Thanks a lot, Pete. Thanks for what you do. It’s a great show.