In this Coaching Real Leaders session, a leader who has worked in the higher education sector for decades seeks guidance on how to set direction and maintain momentum for her team when so much of their long-term work depends on shifting priorities and partners outside of her control. As she steps into her first role managing managers, she’s unsure how fast to push, how to divide her time, and how to judge progress when the path ahead isn’t fully defined.
Host Muriel Wilkins helps her sort through those questions, identify what she can move forward now, and build confidence in her ability to lead with clarity even when the future is still taking shape.
Key episode topics include: career coaching, career planning, strategy execution, leading teams
- Listen to the original Coaching Real Leaders episode: How Do I Set the Right Pace To Meet Our Strategic Goals?
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AMANDA KERSEY: Welcome to HBR On Leadership. These episodes are case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. I’m HBR senior editor and producer Amanda Kersey.
If you’re leading a team while the strategy is still coming together, or you expect that kind of uncertainty ahead, this Coaching Real Leaders episode can help you get clearer on how to move work forward without outpacing what’s known.
It also gets into how to use your time in a way that supports long-term goals. Host Muriel Wilkins works with a leader who’s managing managers for the first time and trying to set the right pace.
Here’s Muriel.
MURIEL WILKINS: Today’s guest is someone will call Mo to protect her confidentiality. She’s worked in the higher education sector for decades, and she continues to be driven by the work and the relationships she gets to build.
MO: To be able to see students, to get to know them, to get to see how they grow and change during these four years, and then to see them have success as they launch into the world, and then to see that they reach back so quickly to give back and to see the way that our community supports our students as they are navigating, exploring their values and their purpose and what they’re feeling called to do. All of that is just really rewarding.
MURIEL WILKINS: For a long time, Mo was at the director level and managed a small team, but recently there was a shakeup.
MO: We had a new leader of our organization who brought in a new structure, and my role was a part of this structure of this new organization that had never been aligned in this way. So, in the new role, there was an expansion of my duties. The team grew. It’s the first time in my career that I have been a manager of managers as opposed to managing a small team.
MURIEL WILKINS: Mo has taken on more responsibility. She’s energized by the challenge and has ambitious goals, but she reached out to make sure she was approaching these goals in the right way, and to think about ways she can succeed as a first-time manager of managers. I wanted to get a baseline of where she was at. So, I began by asking her how she felt about this new increase in responsibilities.
MO: It’s been exciting. It’s been great to still be in an institution where I still feel called to do this work, while also having the opportunity to grow and to learn. Love to learn. It’s nice to have that expansion of learning. And there were all the areas that now report to me I had a little bit of insight into. I had been an advisor at one point, so that was not something that I had no idea about. Success coaching, completely new. So, to have that report to a person who reports to me has been a new area to learn about. So, I’m now learning about things that were just beyond what my original scope of work was.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so what brought you here? Why are we meeting? What’s going on?
MO: We are meeting because there are some goals we have as a team that cannot be accomplished in a single year or a single semester. They’re going to take years of effort and work. They’re also going to take multiple collaborators. Our team cannot do it alone. So, we’re relying on so many partnerships and collaborations. And so that is a lot to keep track of and also, to know what is the right pace? What is the right amount to get done in one year toward a goal that I can set a timeframe on it and say, we want to have this done in three years, but some of it is outside of our control because of all these multiple collaborators. And so, it’s hard to know what is the right pace to do this work, what is the right timeline to even project and guess might be the right time to allow us to start to achieve some of these goals. And what is the right allotment of my time? So, this is the first time that I have been in this more strategic role as opposed to just doing and managing. And so, I am just still trying to figure out what is the right allotment of my time? What is the right timeframe to put on these goals? And how do we know if we’re measuring progress in the right way? These are the questions that I struggle with almost daily.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. All right. And what does that struggle look like?
MO: It looks like just a constant wonder of, am I getting this right? Am I spending my days in the right way? Should I be doing more? Should I be doing things differently? The inability to feel confident that the way that I am arranging my days and weeks and months is the correct and accurate way to get us where we are trying to go as an institution and as a team.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So lots of unknowns for you around how to map out the future, not only for your team and the strategy and as you said, the pacing and the timing to be able to reach your goals, but also, for you personally, in terms of being the leader of this team, how you should be allocating your time. And as you put it, am I spending my time, the “right way”. Okay. So how would you know it’s the right way?
MO: Great question. That is what’s so hard to know. Will I only know it in reverse? Will I only know it at the end of a year when I look back and say, “Oh, we accomplished X or Y?” Am I supposed to know it at the end of every month? Because we were able to set a goal and we achieved it that month. That’s what I’m struggling with.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.
MO: Because the things that we’re trying to do cannot be accomplished in a single year. It’s so far out. It will take so long to know that we have moved the needle towards success. That it’s hard to know working backwards, okay, was this a good week? Did we get things done the right way? There are some goals, right? I could say have one conversation a week with a potential collaborator or partner.
MURIEL WILKINS: To what end?
MO: But what if it took three conversations to actually-
MURIEL WILKINS: What if it took three?
MO: Right? What if it took five?
MURIEL WILKINS: Got you.
MO: I don’t know.
MURIEL WILKINS: All right. I hear you. You’re looking for the formula.
MO: I am.
MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t know if there is a formula, Mo. Okay?
MO: Okay.
MURIEL WILKINS: I think you’ve got to create your own formula, and it’s a hypothesis, right?
MO: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: So, let me ask you this, right? Sounds like you’ve worked directly with students–
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: –as well. And you articulated that what you love about the work that you’ve done and the community that you’re in, is that it’s in support of these students being able to launch. Now, I presume when these students come in, they’re four years out from that launch?
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.
MO: Call it one to four.
MURIEL WILKINS: So, for those that are four years out, how did you in the past, determine what was the right way to spend your time? So that the ultimate goal would be that they launched successfully in four years.
MO: So, if it was an individual conversation with an individual student, giving them some of the tools and resources and giving them some ideas of experiences that they should be having along the way, was the way to help them think about reverse engineering a successful launch following their degree.
MURIEL WILKINS: So, you gave them the information so that they could reverse engineer and say, “Oh, so what do I need to do along these four years to be able to get to this ultimate point?”
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So, what would it look like to reverse engineer the goals that you’ve set for your team?
MO: Yeah. I think painting a picture of what success… What we hope the outcomes are and the impacts are, and what our hopes are for just pick a time. Whether that’s three years or four years or two years and then follow my own advice and reverse engineer it. And so, if we say, okay, if we want to have this specific number of courses that embed career readiness, just to pick a number and buy a specific date and then figure out, okay, if that’s the number of courses, then how many potential collaborators would we need to speak with? Knowing that not everyone’s going to say yes, not everybody’s going to buy in. Then figuring out, okay, do we think that half the people will, or do we think that a third of the people will? And just like you’re saying, a hypothesis, make that guess and start working toward that.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. I do think there’s a bit of a reverse engineering. So, I think there’s two parts to it. There’s the, how do you get your team tracked and pacing? And then there’s the, how do you spend your time within that? So, let’s tackle the team piece. And it sounds like you already have goals that are established. The question is, when are those goals supposed to be met by?
MO: Right. Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So, while you can create a hypothesis, it needs to be informed, and then you want to test it. And so, my question is, where did these goals come from? What’s the context of these goals? Are they in support of bigger goals for your institution? What is the container that they’re in that might give you a better sense of what the time range is?
MO: And we’re in a bit of a transition period. So, the leader who created this new division that I’m a part of, departed, and we’ve had an interim leader, an acting leader, and now, the new leader is going to arrive and begin work. So, there will be a little bit of a discernment period and a goal setting period and a strategic planning process that our work needs to support.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. All right.
MO: So that’s why it’s hard to say, okay, should we just say we want to accomplish some of these goals within two years, but what if our new leaders’ strategic priorities are a little bit different and we need to step back and figure out a way to sort out those priorities? So, we’re in a little bit of a holding pattern.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. So, what if that happens?
MO: Then we adjust. We adjust.
MURIEL WILKINS: Exactly.
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: I think you’re leading in a state of ambiguity. That’s what’s exacerbating this, right?
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: You’re trying to make things known in a situation that is unknown. So, in fact, your feeling of I’m not sure what the future is going to look like is on point because it is unsure what the future is going to look like because the future leadership isn’t here yet. The strategic planning process hasn’t happened. And so, you’re trying to make these decisions around goals for your team in a vacuum.
MO: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: Right.
MO: Right. Exactly. And yet, I want to do a little bit of strategic planning ourselves in a very draft form so that when the new leader arrives, we have some things for that leader to react and respond to. The leader may say, “Nope, none of this.” Or the leader may say, “This seems good.” And so that we are not just waiting, but that we are ready to respond and to show, okay, this is the value based on the strategic ideas that you will bring. Here’s the value that our team can bring in support of this new leader’s vision.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. All right. So, you’ve articulated two options, and you’ve got to choose one.
MO: Right. Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: You’re either in a holding pattern, which is, you know what? We’re not doing any planning. We’re not doing any goal setting; we’re not doing any of that. We’re just going to wait until new leader provides clarity. Or you decide that you’re going to head towards some destination, right? Not quite sure which one yet, but you’re going to figure it out, which means you’re going to do your own interim planning process and start working towards those goals. What you can’t do is be in a holding pattern and head towards your destination at the same time. It’s physically impossible. So, I think what I’m hearing around what you’re struggling with is not necessarily the timing of marching towards the goals, but you need to take it to step one, do I even want to claim these goals and own these goals and make a plan against them and do the work? Or do I want to wait?
MO: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so which one are you leaning towards?
MO: I’m leaning towards still planning because the leader who is coming, is known to me. This is a leader who actually hired me to move into the role that I was in prior to this new expanded role. And so, I know a little bit about what matters to this new leader, and I think that the work that we are doing will be in alignment with his goals.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.
MO: So, I would love to have some things ready for response, even if we have to set us aside and say, “that’s not it.” No… no. Wrong goals.
MURIEL WILKINS: Wrong goals.
MO: Remake them, right? Recreate them. That would be okay.
MURIEL WILKINS: You’re okay with that?
MO: Completely okay with that.
MURIEL WILKINS: Great. So that’s where your confidence is going to come from.
MO: Okay.
MURIEL WILKINS: Your confidence is going to come from or is coming from, no matter what happens, I’m okay with it. If these are the goals that this new leader agrees to, yay. If these are not it, that’s okay. We keep it moving.
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: What it sounds like you’re not okay with is just being in this holding pattern and not doing anything.
MO: Right. That’s hard, right?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.
MO: Most of us want to-
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. I see your face all scrunched up.
MO: Right. Most of us want to feel like we are moving toward goals. So yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Most of us. Although this morning I was sitting there, I’m like, I don’t want to move. I just want to be still. Can I just be still for a while? For a while. But I hear you. Mo started off this conversation by sharing how excited she still is by her job, how much it energizes her, and that she had some concerns about knowing some of the things she wants to accomplish, but not sure if she’s pacing out goals correctly. As a first-time manager of managers, she seemed a bit overwhelmed by the set of challenges she was facing, which she first articulated as her goals being dependent on other stakeholders. As we spoke though, we teased out a few related issues that we’ll dive deeper into. First, we learned in terms of the specifics that it isn’t just that she’s leading a newer, bigger team, but also, that there have been shakeups in the leadership ranks above her, meaning setting a strategic vision is even trickier. That feeds into the problem she articulated around not knowing if she was pacing work and goal setting correctly. She’s leading through some ambiguity here. And when that happens, I like to coach people through possible approaches or options to see how the different scenarios might play out, which got us to the question around whether she should take initiative to set a strategic plan, knowing it might change or wait until a new leader is in place and she’s able to make that decision based on something she’s confident in, that if she does move forward and the direction later changes, she’ll be able to pivot. The first step is deciding on the destination, and then we can work through her planning process on how to get there and how to time it correctly. She can reverse engineer it. Let’s dive back in as we start to think about that process and how much of her work depends on other stakeholders as I ask her, how big of an impact could her collaborators have on her timing?
MO: That’s challenging. And I’m thinking a lot. They completely control the impact on timing because some of the collaborators that we most need to buy in have a lot of independence and control over their work. And so, it is completely, they hold all the impact of this timing because there could be people who say, “Absolutely not. I don’t want to be a part of that.” And so, the search that continues for the people who might say yes, and then once the people say yes, it might be, okay, but that’s not going to work for this upcoming semester, but I can see doing that a year from now. And so, the timing is completely out of our control.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So, it’s out of your control. I didn’t ask you though whether the timing was in your control or out of your control. I asked you, how can you gauge how much of an impact these collaborators can have on the timing? Meaning, how are you going to know how to time things given the collaborators?
MO: I think that’s where I’m stuck.
MURIEL WILKINS: So, let’s imagine you’re the collaborator and somebody else is working on something and it’s using resources or needs the resources that are under your control. How would you want them to relate towards you as they’re planning something out, which clearly you have skin in the game?
MO: I think I would like them to relate to me by recognizing that maybe that it aligns with my goals too. So being in alignment on what we both hope to achieve, but then also, just having enough notice to be able to start working on it and to do it well.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. You used the word getting buy-in from your collaborators, which is part of what you’re saying in terms of aligning and goals, and then how is it executed? So how much gaining buy-in is going to be part of your process in planning towards your team’s goals? Or how much have you already done? I’m not sure.
MO: Yeah. So, some relationships have already been built that I think will lead to buy-in. Just last week, a member of the team and I started talking about where do we think our strongest allies are and who might be in a quick yes so that we could start working together. So, some of that is already done. I think it’s just a matter of sharing this vision with some key allies and potential partners to see if we can get a yes from them. And then once we get a yes, what is the timing that works for them? I think that’s where I have been stuck is, all of this takes typically one-on-one conversation, and it may not take just one conversation. There may be follow-up conversations. And so that is what has been a challenge, is to not know if I have four conversations in a week, is that enough? If I have four conversations in a month, will that be enough? So, I guess the best way to figure it out is just to start. So maybe you set a goal, which would be maybe set a goal to have two conversations a week and see what is the yield? Does that yield one person who says, “Yes, let’s keep talking.” Or does that yield one, “Yes, let’s do this.” Or does it, for the people who I talk with that week, where they’re zero takers on potential collaboration and that could therefore inform the hypothesis of how many conversations it might take.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Look, I think you’re looking for this magic number, and you don’t have a track record yet, which is really where the source of discomfort is. You don’t have something to say, this is what you right should do, and it will guarantee that you get to these results.
MO: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: There’s never a guarantee. All you can guarantee is the effort that you’re putting in, and you want to make sure that that effort is aligned with the overarching goals that you’ve set for yourself or for your team. What’s interesting to me is that you’re focusing on the number of conversations, the quantity of the conversations, rather than the quality of the conversations. And I would say that alignment, gaining alignment is a function of both.
MO: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: Quality and quantity, with probably a higher index on quality, because that’s where the meat is. That’s where you can align on objectives. You can find out what’s going on with them, what are they willing to do, et cetera. So, when I say that, the focus on quantity versus quality, how does that land with you? What does that make you think of?
MO: I completely agree. And yet, when I look at my schedule in the week and trying to figure out where do I put these conversations, how many do I even try to sq