Breaking the Circle for Leaders
Breaking the Circle for Leaders is the podcast for frustrated middle managers who feel stuck in the same patterns, working harder but getting the same results, as stress builds. In each episode, Jon Manning, author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed, draws on 25 years of operational management experience at McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Greggs, among others, to explore why conversations spiral, why teams resist change, and why the pressure never seems to let up. Not theory. Not corporate training. Real stories, practical tools, and small shifts in thinking that make Monday mornings feel different.
Breaking the Circle for Leaders
EP07 Why You Rule Yourself Out Before Anyone Else Gets the Chance
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A few years ago I was sat with a coaching client in her early twenties. She'd just moved to a new company, and she'd gone in as a supervisor.
What made that odd is what she'd been doing before. Her manager had been off sick for about six months, and she'd covered the whole department in the meantime. Most of the job, most of the time. When I asked her about it she brushed it off. It needed looking after, so she did it.
So I asked her why she'd applied for a supervisor's job rather than a manager's job.
And she said, because I'm too young.
I asked her who'd told her that. She stopped, and she properly thought about it, and then she said, well, no one. Nobody ever had. She'd looked round at every department manager she'd ever worked with, noticed they were all older than her, and quietly turned that into a rule about herself. She'd been living by it ever since, while six months of evidence sat there being ignored.
I could see it that clearly because I'd done exactly the same thing.
Years before, when I was unhappy in a job and looking to move, I'd read job descriptions like a checklist. Can do that, can do that, can't do that. One or two I couldn't tick and I'd close it down and tell myself I hadn't got the experience. I never applied. And my confidence wasn't there in the first place, so the job spec never caused anything. It just confirmed what I already thought.
Nobody can do a hundred percent of a job they've never done. If you could already do all of it, you'd already have it.
In this episode I talk about the rules we write for ourselves that nobody ever handed us, why the evidence against them tends to sit in plain sight, and a different way of reading a job spec that takes about ten seconds.
Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It
The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed
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Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.
Are you tired of being stuck in the middle? Feeling trapped in an escal. It's time to break free. Time to let the change. Welcome to break in the circle for leaders.
SPEAKER_01A few years ago I was sat talking to a coaching client. She was in her early twenties and she just told me she'd applied for a supervisor's job rather than the manager's role. So I asked why? She said because I'm too young. And I asked Who told you that? And I watched her face while she thought about it. Because the answer was nobody. Nobody had ever told her. She decided it for herself. And she'd been living by it. Welcome to Breaking the Circle for Leaders. I'm John Manning, and if you've ever ruled yourself out of something before anyone else could get the chance to, you're in exactly the right place. You see, she'd come probably for a couple of sessions at this point. Um and it was only booked in for two or three sessions. She'd come really to try and understand for herself where she wanted to go, what direction she wanted to go in. She was just feeling a bit at that point in life, I guess, where she was in her early 20s and she'd been at school and finished and sort of got a job, and just wanted to be clear what was the right direction for her. So often I'll just talk to people about what they've been doing, their current job roles, and the different things they'd done within that role. For her, it was a department store that she'd been working in, so just to find out about what department was, what her role was. And it was almost by accident she happened to mention that for the last six months she'd been running the department because her department manager had been off long-term sick. And I asked her, I said, Oh, why did you do that? And she said, Oh, I just I just did it. It needed looking after. So I just did it. And I'm sure she was asked some, you know, I'm sure someone said to her, Can you can you do this and that? But really, it was no planned thing for her, she just looked after it. She knew what to do. So I asked her what she actually had done over those six months. She had explained to me, she said, Well, I hadn't done the whole role, I'd probably only done sort of half of the job. And then she thought, No, no, maybe I've done 60 or 70% of the job. So, in fact, when she stopped and thought about it, she was thinking, Well, actually, she was doing more of it than perhaps she was giving herself credit for. You see, then the manager came back and she decided it was time to move on. She moved to another department store, and uh there she applied to be a supervisor of a different department. So this was why I asked. I said to her, I said, why? Why did you apply for the supervisor role when um you have been being a department manager you were covering for six months and she'd looked at me and she literally just replied and said, Oh, because I was too young. Oh, too young Who told you that? I asked And she looked at me And she thought And the room was quiet for a moment and then she replied well no one So I said where did that belief come from And she just thought about it and thought Well really it was more about my observation No one had actually told me but all managers I've ever seen have always been older than me So therefore I presume you had to be older So in her head she'd made this rule you see she'd convinced herself and told herself the rule is I'm too young I did ask how old do you have to be to be a manager and she wasn't sure of that answer either. What she was sure of was the rule said I was too young just because that's what she'd seen. There was more to it underneath and I think what it was was the fact that if she told herself that she was too young she didn't have to find out whether she was good enough. So this was to protect her. She was stopping herself to protect her, but this was causing a fight within herself, within her own mind, because she wanted to progress. She wanted to progress but didn't know how to progress or where to progress to because she was actually telling herself that she was too young to progress. You see, what makes this really hard to spot for ourselves is because when we're having this argument, we're only having it in our own minds. We're not having it with anyone else, so we don't have anyone else to point things out for us. Because she hadn't realized that nobody had said it to her, because this was a belief that she had that she was taken and carrying with her. She had evidence to say she could do the job, the next role up, the department manager role. She had the evidence for six months she'd been looking after a department, but she still didn't believe that she could be that department manager because she was too young. You see, sometimes we try and protect ourselves, but we can actually get in our own way as she did. I remember going back oh thirty years, and I had to go for a license, an alcohol license for the pub that I was running, and I ran it for my brother-in-law, and I was going to the magistrates in fact with my sister, and we were going for a joint licensee, and on that day the magistrate wouldn't issue a license to my sister because it was a second license for her, she already held a license, but issued it to me, so it actually meant that I was a sole licensee. I learnt probably 20 years later that I was the youngest sole licensee in the UK for many years, it was unusual in the UK to be issued a sole license at 21. But for me it wasn't a problem because I didn't know, I didn't really understand the legal implications, the responsibility of holding that license and everything that it involved. I soon did after I had the license, but I didn't at the time, it was a it was a straightforward answer. We needed a license, and the magistrate was issuing it, so that was fine. You see, for me, I didn't need to hit the ceiling because I didn't know there was a ceiling there, so therefore it didn't stop me. You see, sometimes what we learn is actually what ends up stopping us. Just like she had learnt that she was too young and that ended up costing her. So here's a bit I need to be honest about. The reason I could spot this so quickly was I could see it about me years before. I used to do the exact same thing. When I looked to move on to new roles, I would look at the job spec and I'd look at the job role, and I'd use it like a a checklist, and I'd go down and I would find two or three things that I didn't think I could do on the list, and that would be enough for me to say I can't apply for that role because I can't do it. I'd already written myself off before I gave myself the opportunity. You see, my confidence wasn't there in the first place. You see, the job spec didn't cause it, it just confirmed what I already thought. Because we often can see what we want to see. We play with confirmation biased all the time and only really pay attention to what fits our picture or our image or our beliefs. You see, but the thing I would now be telling people that were sitting in front of me and asking for coaching, I would be saying you can never do a hundred percent of the job spec. You can't do a hundred percent of that role because if you did you would be doing it. So, this is about what you'll need to be able to do and work towards a master, it's not about what you need before you even apply. But I find that easy to tell people, but to tell myself was much harder. You see, often it's just about changing the phrase and the word that we're telling ourselves, and just reframe it. So here's the practical bit. Next time you're looking at a job spec or a project or looking to step up of some kind, stop reading it as it's a test. You either will pass or fail. Because that's what a checklist is, and that's what it does to you. And I did it to myself for years. Read it in a different way. Ask yourself which three of these things can I already do? And is that enough to start? Because that's the honest question, and the answer is usually yes, and then have a think about the things you've ruled out for yourself. Not the big the big stuff, not the big life-changing stuff, the ordinary things that you've quietly decided isn't for you. And ask yourself who told you that because I never did find out what she went on to do. I only know that on that afternoon she found out the rules she'd been living by wasn't anybody else's. Nobody had handed it to her. She'd built it herself out of looking around a room and noticing everybody was older, and she'd never once checked it. In the show notes below you can get hold of my free guide while your conversations keep going sideways, and the one shift that fixes it. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Circle for Leaders. I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode and subscribe to make sure you get next week's too. And as always, I'm rooting for you.