Jim Immel joins us on the podcast this week to talk about being a middle manager. It can be outright difficult to know exactly how to support your team when you are new to a managerial position, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. Listen in here!

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Transcription below (typos may occur...)
Jim: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] When I was 30 years old, there was a manager that we always said, he really thinks about what have you done lately? Cause it's almost like what you did 10 years ago really didn't matter, but what have you done lately? And the joke became he's actually, he's so forward focused.

It's he doesn't even care what you've done lately. What are you doing tomorrow? And that's the world we're living in. What are you doing tomorrow? What are you doing tomorrow? And What I believe is very effective is take a few minutes and look back before you go forward. Keerstyn: [00:00:58] 

welcome to the podcast, Jim. I am really [00:01:00] excited that you're here today to talk a little bit about what you do and who you are and how you help people in the past and the present. do you want to just give us a brief, intro of who you are, what you do and then what your mission 

Jim: [00:01:10] is?

Yes. Thank you. what I do today is I'd love to develop those who influence others. How I got here has been a long journey. I came out of college. First job was selling insurance right away. And so I was using what I like to call the people's skills right away. Being able to connect with, Prospects clients and be able to help them meet their goals and objectives.

And over the last 40 years, my business has evolved, but it's always been the same. It's been connecting with people and helping them get what they want. And so what I do today, the last 21 years, I've been introduced as a business coach and primarily working with. small, medium sized businesses that believe that they can get better.

And many [00:02:00] of my clients are looking for how do I transition the business to the people who have helped me build this business? So I get introduced, via succession planning, helping people be able to transition their business to others. 

Keerstyn: [00:02:15] Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting, especially because that transition is oftentimes the younger people, those middle managers that are now meeting the rise up into the executive roles or those type of seats as C-suites spots, what are, what's some advice that you would give those people when they're in that transition phase?

Jim: [00:02:37] it's interesting, there's, when you take a look at the generations and then who is rising up to be leaders, first of all, I look at people in three different ways and they can be all three, but, there's leadership, leading people, there's managing a lot of people are introduced as managers and what they do is they manage processes and.

[00:03:00] Procedures and goals, but really at the end of the day, if you're a good manager, you're also a good leader. You're influencing others and encouraging them to grow, take on more. And then there are top performers. There are people, that are just really good at what they do. And you want to put them in that playground where they're able to do what they do, not necessarily managing other people, but what's interesting is.

Everybody in a small, medium sized business is leading. you show up with a, an attitude every day. You show up with positive or negative emotion, and we all lead by example, people pay attention. And so I just really like to approach it as everybody is in leadership. It's what kind of leadership are you providing?

but the managers, what's very interesting in my practice today and I've shared this with other business coaches, I'm in a network with some other people and I'm [00:04:00] calling it the missing generation because 2008, 2009, a lot of people who would be in those. Upper management positions, went to bigger companies and that's what the security was.

And I'm calling it the missing generation because it's like the upper fifties are transitioning to the 30, 35 year old, sometimes 38. And there's a missing generation, which is a great opportunity for a lot of young people and to work on their skills and leadership abilities. And, there's another generation coming up and I've talked to other people about is a lot of people in their twenties and early thirties that are actually providing, I like to call it leadership from within they're impacting and influencing the company just by their, what if we did this?

Have we ever thought about this? Just the passion that they have as [00:05:00] they approach their work. And so there are a lot of talented young people, when I'm coaching, the business owners are saying, are you paying attention to this person? 

Keerstyn: [00:05:09] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What is missing in those? I guess you call it the missing generation.

Is there something that's missing that, we could see in this younger generation that we could help them coach them to, 

Jim: [00:05:23] to stair-step real quick and jump over a couple of steps. Yeah. again, I have a practice, I'm not. Coach and a bunch of other coaches, I have a practice, but in my practice, there are a lot of people that have ended up in that. They're now 55 where they're now 50 years old and they were in their prime getting ready to step up.

And then 2008, 2009 came along. And what I'm saying is that there are a lot of people that are staying safe. In those roles, we've always done it this way. No, we tried that back 10 years ago. [00:06:00] there's a little bit of, what I like to call a fixed mindset. There's a book called mindset by Carol Dweck, which is a.

Awesome book for anybody to read. and it talks about the difference between growth and fixed mindsets. And there honestly, there are a lot of people that have that fixed mindset who have found themselves into management roles and they're being safe today. The world is changing fast and there are a lot of creative people, innovative people that your business is competing with.

and so I really try to encourage my clients that are in leadership and management roles to bring that out, get that innovation out, let them know that, it's OK to, strategically go into a new idea. the managers now can help them by asking them questions to develop their critical thinking skills, because there's a.

There's a little bit of a paradox. These people have all this talent, but they've grown up with Google. And 10 [00:07:00] years ago, Google is not a search engine. It's an answer engine. And There's a, one of the things in a lot of my projects, the business owners are saying, how help this youth help this talent develop critical thinking skills.

And so just get into that state of wonderment of what if, I wonder if, and, have the courage to keep moving forward, but that's a big part of the managers. You will influence how much of that you get out of people, or you will. stifle that type of creativity. And what's really interesting is if you don't connect with them, if you don't really know the people you're leading.

And if you're just more about what are we going to do today, and here's the process, boom. If there's a low connection, but there's a high challenge in what they're doing. People can get frustrated. And so it, for the people listening, if you just think about these four [00:08:00] quadrants, if you go from low connection to high connection on the horizontal and then the vertical, if you go to low challenge, high challenge, What...