There’s More Than One Way to Whisk the Batter
On curiosity, different ways of working, and knowing when our approach needs to adapt.
A few weeks ago, I shared an experience from earlier in my career that changed the way I think about what it means to make someone feel valued.
I was managing a talented employee named Colin, and I wanted to make sure he knew his contributions were appreciated. So naturally, I recognized his work publicly and encouraged him to step into the spotlight when he'd earned it…whenever I could. After all, those were the kinds of accolades that made me feel valued.
Despite my best intentions, and thanks to an enlightening group assessment readout, I eventually realized I had been recognizing and encouraging him only in the ways I would have wanted to be recognized and encouraged. I promise my intent was positive, but the impact of it wasn’t so great for Colin.
You can read the first part of my story in my recent blog "The Leadership Lens I Didn’t Know I Was Wearing." What happened next became an important turning point in how I approached leadership…and looking back, I think there’s a clear change management lesson in it, too.
Once we realize something isn't landing the way we intended, what do we do with that information?
That’s a question leaders face well beyond employee recognition, too. A new process may make perfect sense to the people who designed it, or we may have a very clear picture of how someone should adapt to a new role or way of working. That is, until people respond in a way we didn’t expect.
Their response doesn't always mean our goal is wrong, but it may tell us something about the path we're taking to get there.
The excerpt below, adapted from my chapter in Valued: The Power of Investing in Others, picks up when I gained some new information about my own leadership style…and had to decide what I was willing to do with it.
The Apology: Leadership as Responsibility
Now that I was equipped with revealing insight into how Colin might be feeling, I had a duty to take action and explore this new opportunity he and I had to improve our working relationship. Especially as his supervisor, I had the duty to initiate the conversation and to apologize for any discomfort that my singular perspective may have caused him in the past.
It’s not always easy for a leader to be vulnerable, but it was exactly the right starting point for me to repair any damage I may have caused.
I didn’t wait until our regular weekly one-on-one meeting to broach the topic with Colin. He was agreeable to making time for us to explore our assessment profiles more deeply and to have an open conversation about any adjustments that we might make in how we communicated, organized our work, and balanced process with creativity.
In that conversation, I opened by acknowledging my assessment “a-ha” moment and my realization that my efforts to shine the spotlight on his achievements in public meetings or to directly invite him to share his ideas in groups may have made him uncomfortable. I went on to explain that my own strengths and behavioral tendencies, left unchecked, can sometimes steamroll my best intentions, and they caused me to assume that his silence meant disengagement.
Although my intent was positive, the impact of it was not. Through this early experience working with Colin, I learned to reflect more on the potential outcomes of my intent on those around me, and to resist the default urge to defend my intent. After all, impact eats intent for lunch, and humility was proving to be a strong bridge to credibility as a leader.
I sincerely apologized to Colin and I asked him how he would prefer to be recognized in the future. Not surprisingly, he affirmed that his preference was to avoid public recognition and instead talk one-on-one when acknowledging his achievements. He was more than gracious with the whole situation, though he did indicate that he really appreciated the conversation and looked forward to us right-sizing our approach for each other’s behavioral profiles moving forward.
From that point on, rather than defending my own intent, I instead shifted my focus toward defending work settings and protocols that allowed my team to do their best work and to be authentically seen.
I often reflect on the leadership lessons I learned through that specific experience as I have continued to encounter individuals who have similar hard-wiring to Colin throughout my career.
Have the courage to be vulnerable in the leadership seat, and know that this stance can help foster psychological safety across your whole team.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to be clear with others on expectations and concerns. When you need to have a conversation, don’t put it off or avoid it. As Brené Brown has said, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
Your direct reports are not your mirror image when it comes to their preferences, motivations, and beliefs. Don’t make assumptions; get to know them and ask them what they think and prefer.
As a result of this experience, trust between Colin and me deepened. It felt authentically sturdy for the first time from that experience forward. In fact, I hadn’t realized it wasn’t sturdy until I suddenly was shown true sturdiness.
The Unexpected Returns
Following this experience, Colin and I started having more robust one-on-one meetings, as we had reinforced the foundation of our working relationship using the insights and shared language of our assessment profiles. I even noticed him trying new things such as volunteering to work our booth at a conference where he’d interact with prospects.
Because we knew how to communicate more transparently, friction that I didn’t know was once there subsided, allowing us to more easily align our individual roles and goals for the team’s benefit. As new opportunities and responsibilities presented themselves (which is par for the course at a startup), we discussed them and then made a plan that suited our individual strengths and motivations.
Longer-term, our improved output was greatly increased thanks to how we learned to collaborate and honor each other’s preferences. However, the real hero was the transformation of our working relationship and the trust that it forged. Output was just the ripple effect.
Through this experience, many unexpected personal returns revealed themselves to me. As I look back years later, I can reflect on the incremental gains that have shaped my leadership experience and that first appeared in my working relationship with Colin.
I learned that I’m a better leader when I practice curiosity and a willingness to “not know something.” I don’t have to make assumptions to appear knowledgeable about everything just because I’m the leader.
It was freeing to let go of my internal “head trash” that said others on my team needed to operate just like me and follow the same steps to get to the best result. That evolved mindset helped me design a team culture that didn’t only reward people who acted like me.
Slowing down to make sure others feel seen quiets the ego and increases emotional intelligence. Please know that it can take time to develop this practice.
My working relationship with Colin was just one chapter of many that I had with different team members there and elsewhere. I learned to see the whole system and to recognize that my preferences could unintentionally influence the reward structure for others if I wasn’t mindful. Reexamining my own assumptions and the extent of their impact was a powerful exercise in improving all of my direct report / supervisor (and supervisor / direct report) relationships from that point onward.
Investment in others requires curiosity, restraint, asking before assuming, and sometimes shrinking your own spotlight. I’m pleased to report that Colin and I continued to strengthen our working relationship and respect each other’s working preferences for five years before I pursued another opportunity outside the organization.
There’s More Than One Way to Whisk Batter
Long before I ever worked with Colin, I spent the very early part of my career with an organization for over seven years—holding many different roles in a company that grew 1000% in headcount in the first few years. We were all young (the founders included), had virtually no leadership experience across the organization, and were often figuring processes out as we went.
Eventually that organization grew enough to have the resources to hire a few experienced executives from outside the company. One of those senior leaders was a woman I will call Teri.
She was decisive, intelligent, and had a good sense of humor—exactly what the team needed at a time of explosive growth with such an inexperienced staff. Nevertheless, I was a little intimidated by her because of all of these strong qualities. I didn’t know if my own leadership style would ever measure up; she always seemed to know how to handle challenges.
I wasn’t in Teri’s department, but our teams worked together frequently. I admired her back then because she embodied the cool, collected, and successful facade that I wanted to project to my teammates. She was probably fifteen years older than me, was a mom, and had navigated many work experiences with different organizations by that point—compared to my whopping two companies.
Teri was a high achiever, and she had high standards for herself. That was ideal because our organization was fast-paced and, honestly, running on steam at times. Frequent turnover with the sales representatives in her department was a constant strain due to the difficult nature of that “hunter” sales role—and within a very unforgiving industry. But Teri took it in stride.
Thinking back to what she dealt with—the strong personalities of her team, the high stakes rewards in a lucrative sales role, and working with such a young leadership team—I know I would not have been equipped to lead with the grace that she did at that point in my career.
I remember meeting with her one day. It was a small group of us: Teri, a couple of other emergent leaders like myself, and me. My peers and I were relaying a recent story to Teri about how we were frustrated with another teammate’s approach to resolving a client issue that deviated from how each of us would handle the same challenge. Additionally, it was not yet clear whether the outcome would be positive, neutral, or negative with the client.
At the time, I expected Teri to “take our side” in the conversation and to give us advice about how to handle the situation should it turn out unfavorably. After all, she was revered for being decisive, competent, and a supporter of strong customer service. However, in that moment, the way I felt about Teri dramatically changed. In fact, she became more human, relatable, and approachable to me.
She told a story about how she was making cupcakes with her 8-year-old son one day at home. It wasn’t their first time doing so, as they regularly enjoyed baking together. Given Teri’s aptitude for efficiency, leading, and—I’m guessing—minimizing cupcake batter mess, she proceeded to “correct” her son’s batter whisking style. She felt strongly that the best and most efficient way to mix the ingredients was to adapt a circular motion to scrape the sides of the bowl with the whisk.
Her son was relatively patient with her demonstration, pausing to let her finish and inspect the outcome. It differed from his own exploratory—and perhaps more creative—whisking approach, which was a bit of a chaotic figure eight motion.
Then he said, “Mom, you know there’s more than one way to whisk batter … and that’s okay.”
As Teri recalled this story to us in our small group meeting, she remarked that it was a lightning bolt moment for her—not just for parenting, but for leading in general. She shared that, after a centering moment while on the verge of tears, she had calmly replied to her son to affirm that he was "absolutely right.” Then, she sincerely thanked him for opening her eyes and gave him a big hug.
Even though I wasn’t personally present to witness this sweet moment and inflection point in Teri’s life, just hearing that story was incredibly impactful and reassuring for me. It just took some additional reminders through my later experience with Colin, and throughout my career, to become more practiced at honoring different paths to accomplish great things.
Questions for the Emerging Leader
The longer I am in my career, the less time I spend trying to know the answer to a question and the more time I spend trying to ask better questions—of myself and of others.
We have the greatest return on our investment to change someone when that effort is directed inward: toward the person in the mirror.
In my opinion, reflective contemplation starts with asking yourself thoughtful questions that plainly reveal how you consistently approach different life situations. Here’s a list to get you started:
How do your own strengths distort your expectations of others?
Which types of recognition would energize you? Which would drain you?
How do your preferences shape the rewards you bestow onto others?
When have you mistaken your own story for someone else’s truth?
What motivates you most? How do you know it motivates your team?
What assumptions might you be making about someone else's intrinsic motivation?
When have you justified intent despite its expense to impact? How did you know?
What story are you prematurely telling yourself about someone’s behavior?
Have you asked this person directly about their behavior?
The most meaningful return in this real-life leadership parable wasn’t just Colin’s eventual ability to flourish in a way that respected his preferences. It was also the moment I realized leadership isn’t about creating replicas of ourselves. Ironically, that realization led me to instead replicate the behavior of asking better questions, embracing that there’s more than one way to whisk cupcake batter, and having the humility to scrap justification of my intent in the interest of collaboratively improving outcomes.
True leadership is about making it safe for others to partner with you and to co-create conditions that allow different strengths to thrive. Leadership has given me the gift of becoming more than my own internal hard wiring.
What has it given you?
There’s an element of this story that I see differently now through the lens of change management: we spend a lot of time thinking about how the people affected by a change need to adapt.
Do they understand what’s changing?
Are they willing to try the new process?
Have they developed the skills they need?
Are they adopting the new behavior?
Those are important questions, but the people leading change need to be willing to adapt, too.
A team struggling with a new workflow may need another reminder or more training. Or, they could be showing us that the handoffs don't work quite as expected. We don't know which until we're willing to get curious about what we're seeing.
That's one of the lessons I took from my experiences with Colin and Teri: when someone approaches a task, a process, or even change itself differently than I would, my first job isn't necessarily to correct their “whisking technique.”
That doesn't mean outcomes don't matter, as leaders still have to set expectations, make decisions, and be clear about what success looks like. But there can absolutely be more than one way to get to the desired outcome.
This is where curiosity becomes especially useful in change leadership because asking questions creates a little space between what we observe and the conclusion we're tempted to draw from it.
Someone who isn't responding the way we expected may be resistant, may not understand, or may need more training. On the other hand, their response could just be telling us something we don't know yet.
Looking back, I could have learned that lesson a lot sooner if I'd simply asked Colin how he preferred to be recognized (ahem…in week one of his employment). Eventually, I did ask. Once I understood what he needed, I changed my approach without changing my goal because I still wanted him to know his work mattered.
I think that distinction is important in change management, too. Adapting our approach doesn't necessarily mean compromising the outcome we're working toward. Sometimes it means we've learned something that gives us a better chance of getting there.
So, once we realize something isn't landing the way we intended, what do we do with that information?
Before we rush to correct, convince, or train, we can get curious. We spend a lot of energy during change helping other people adapt to new expectations, processes, tools, and ways of working. But their reactions can also hold up a mirror to the people leading the change.
And sometimes what we see in that mirror is that the next adjustment isn't theirs to make…it's ours.
