The title of this post actually comes from a song from the incredibly successful Broadway Musical Dear Evan Hansen that opened on December 4, 2016 at the Music Box Theater. The show begins with two moms from very different families, each desperately trying to connect with their teenage son and feeling ill equipped to do so. Each of the moms sings in turn:
Does anybody have a map?
Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this?
I don’t know if you can tell
But this is me just pretending to know(“Anybody Have a Map?” from the Dear Evan Hansen original Broadway cast recording)
You can listen to the entire song here.
Becoming a manager for the first time can feel like this. Or any promotion for that matter. For me, it was when I was first promoted to my current role of IT department head for a large nonprofit after working in IT for more than 15 years. My boss left unexpectedly, and because I had been working for the company for five years, continuing to increase my skills and getting promoted along the way, the organization looked to me as the next logical person to run the IT department. I felt honored and excited about my new promotion until I realized that I had no idea how to run a department. I had never run a department before nor did I have any formal training in budgeting, strategic planning, or all of the other things that you are supposed to be good at for this job.
And because I wasn’t sure what to do at this point, I actually started to doubt my abilities or that I even deserved this most recent promotion. There’s actually a name for this. It’s called “The Impostor Phenomenon”. According to an article in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, “individuals with the Impostor Phenomenon experience intense feelings that their achievements are undeserved and worry that they are likely to be exposed as a fraud.” And this doesn’t just happen to a few of us. Research has shown that 70% of people will experience this at least once in their lifetime. It also doesn’t discriminate. Research sees this phenomenon manifest in both genders as well as a variety of different occupations and cultures.
To help me deal with all of this uncertainty, I reached out to my boss who connected me with a professional coach. In my first meeting with her I said that I didn’t know what I was doing. Her advice? Stop saying that! The team and the organization had trusted me to run the department and by doubting my ability to do that I was questioning their wisdom in putting me in this position. Over the next several months we worked together to develop a plan for me to move the department forward under my leadership. This coaching experience also put me on a journey of leadership development that continued for several years.
If you have found yourself in this position as well, don’t panic! You got here because of your accomplishments and can continue to learn and grow into your new position. I know because I’ve done it and you can too. In this blog, I’ll share what I’ve learned over the years about leadership, technology, and other stuff. I’ll discuss insights from other leaders, concepts from books that I’ve read, and my own stories around leadership. I’ll also talk about technology that I’ve discovered along the way to help me in both my professional and personal life. Hopefully others can take something from this blog that will help them write their own map if they feel like they are making things up as they go . . .
