This transcript (and the audio interview it is taken from) has been edited for clarity, and for length.
Elyse:
Performance reviews were coming up, and I was terrified.
Mat:
How can new support leaders get out of the queue to lead their teams and themselves?
I've talked to someone who's been there, done that, and could bind a whole book about it. Her name's Elyse, and this is The Supportive.
So here's the thing about me. If you're ever on a Zoom call with me and my office is looking super tidy, it's probably because I've just been ages cleaning it instead of working on the article that I'm supposed to be finishing.
Don't tell Hillary.
Who am I kidding? She already knows.
Tidying, though, it's actually important. It improves your life, genuinely.
But you can still do important, even urgent things for the wrong reason and end up failing to achieve your actual goals. And this is a trap that new support managers fall into all the time.
Working in the support queue is always urgent, always valuable. And every time you close another conversation, you get that little dopamine hit of success.
It's so sweet.
But when you're a leader, that's not really your job anymore, or at least it's not your only job. You're supposed to be providing people management, strategizing with other departments, improving support operations.
You probably know all that too, but that gravitational pull of the queue is always there.
You know how to do support well. Your team always appreciates the help, so do the customers.
So how do you get out? How do you make time to be the leader that your team needs you to be?
Well, to help answer that question, I talked with Elyse Mankin, my former colleague of many years here at Help Scout. She is just the best. I always enjoy talking to her. I know you'll enjoy her too. So here she is.
Elyse:
Hi. My name is Elyse, and I'm the head of support at Attio.
Mat:
Attio is a customer relationship management app, a t t I o. I started our conversation by asking Elyse how she ended up in the support world.
Elyse:
Collegiate background is marketing and very quickly figured out that that is just not quite how my brain works. It was a little bit too far away from the customer for me. So my first job out of college was marketing. It did not last very long. I found myself in account management, and then that job kinda turned into a frontline support role, for a small startup that was being created out of that company.
And from there, we used Help Scout actually, so I learned so much from the content team for years.
Mat:
Hey. Me too. Elyse and I actually started at Help Scout right around the same time.
Elyse:
Spot on the frontline team opened up, and I applied. And eight years and a team later, it was a wonderful, wonderful journey. I've learned so much on the front line there, in tier two and then building out what was the product support department. So kind of handling all of the support operations, voice of customer, our support go to market function, as well as all of our technical writing and our self-service strategies.
Mat:
What made you start out in marketing? What did you imagine you were gonna be doing?
Elyse:
Well, I was 18 and had to select an emphasis!
Mat:
Yeah. Eighteen year olds are generally not super qualified to make those sort of life calls. Certainly, I wasn't anyway.
Elyse:
And, you know, I was always drawn to business. I grew up, helping my grandparents in their bookbinding business. So, you know, I was on the front lines with them for many, many years. My grandma bought it when they moved to San Diego, and she worked mainly with all of the universities there.
She would bind theses and things like that, but they did a lot of restoration work too. So my grandpa worked with all of the old leather to restore beautiful old family books or family bibles were a big part of their business.
But, yeah, I was the headband girl, so I glued on little headbands on the books.
Mat:
Okay. I had to look this up. If you've got a hardback book handy, have a look at the spine, the bit where it sticks out beyond the pages on the top and the bottom. The headband is a reinforcing strip. It stops that bit of the spine being crushed, and it can be quite decorative.
So now we know.
But what else did a young Elyse do in her grandparents' bookbinding business?
Elyse:
Yeah. Listened to a lot of soft rock in San Diego with them from the ages of, what, like, 10 to 18 when I left home.
Mat:
Top, soft rock band?
Elyse:
Oh, gosh. Don't make me pick. I am a massive fan of yacht rock. I drag my friends to this concert called Yachtly Crew. Every time they come to town, I know all of the words.
I love it all.
Mat:
Okay. Look. I promise I'm not gonna stop so many times, but I just looked up yacht rock. We're talking soft rock from the mid seventies to the mid eighties.
It's smooth. It's catchy. There's some nautical themes sometimes. So now you can imagine Elyse grooving to “What a fool believes” while working on the customer's precious book.
Elyse:
Very sentimental, especially the rest of their sort of work that they would do. You know, whether they were first editions that they came across or give, like, family books in whatever respect, they were often there was, like, a very big emotional piece to it, for sure.
Mat:
Do you think you learned anything from seeing your grandparents deal with those customers and how sensitive they were about the work that was being done?
Elyse:
Yeah.
I mean, my grandma was always like, she treated it with a lot of, like, reverence as I think that it deserved. And, you know, she is probably where my perfectionist tendencies come from. But she would go above and beyond in every job to make sure that the customer is really satisfied with the work that they were doing.
And so I think that certainly taught me a lot about just customer care and really the art and the fine line of the customer is right. You know, they're not they're not always, unfortunately, but you do wanna treat them with as much care and respect as possible always. And that was something that she always, you know, really made sure to put front and center into any of her customer relationships.
Mat:
I actually could have kept talking about bookbinding all day. I was genuinely fascinated. But for your benefit, I moved on and asked Elyse how she'd coped with transitioning from individual contributor to team leader.
Elyse:
It took me a lot longer to do than I, frankly cared to admit the first time that I did it.
You know, I think that you are so used to working in one degree. Right? You are frontline. You're helping customers day in, day out. You are an active member of the team.
You know, if you are moving into a leadership role, you're most likely more of a tenured member of the team as well, and that comes with, you know, maybe different responsibilities. Right? And so to to move from this, you know, very team centered, very customer facing role, into leading the team, there are so many different factors at play there. You know, not only from yes. Like, do you have to get out of the day to day queues that you can now take on your new responsibilities?
Absolutely.
But what does that really look like in practice? Particularly if, you know, as in my case when I moved into leadership, we were working out of a little bit of a queue deficit, particularly in one queue that I was leading. It was our Tier 2 queue.
We just didn't have many hands in there, and there was a lot of volume. And so, you know, while I knew on paper I had to take over these two leadership roles and responsibilities, it was really hard for me to be like, “okay, team. I'll, you know, I'll see you later. I'm gonna exit out of this queue.”
Even though everyone understood that that is part of that transition, you know, it was hard for me to feel like I was leaving the team and leaving customers in the lurch. And so I think that, leaders even on new teams feel this as well as this kind of part of my onboarding journey I'm in right now of, you have to learn the customers. You have to learn the product. You have to learn the business. And there's no better way to do that than to be directly in the queue.
But it is a balance. Right? And so at one point, you do have to take a step back because the rest of your leadership work is going to suffer. And what you're ultimately doing, especially if you're in a queue deficit like I was many years ago, you're just band-aiding the problem, and you can only band-aid it for so long. And, unfortunately, what happens there is now you've band-aided it most likely for so long, then it's even harder to crawl out of that hole.
It can be kind of a little bit of a gradual transition where you can wrap your arms around exactly what is needed on within your new leadership role, how much time that's going to take you, what the professional development piece of it's gonna look like for you, and then realistically, how much time do you have left to dedicate to the queue? And is there a way to kind of, like, stair step your way to the ideal piece?
So you're, you know, kind of smoothing that transition out for everyone involved.
Mat:
Most new support leaders struggle along for ages trying to do everything, keep that queue under control, also look after the team, also figure out whatever it is you're supposed to be doing as a leader.
That's not sustainable. Eventually, something has to give.
What was that moment for Elyse?
Elyse:
Performance reviews were coming up. And I was terrified because I'd never done them before.
And I, you know, at least in this first transition, I was a peer to my direct reports not even six months ago. And so, there's not only this new dynamic where, you know, as a leader, I am responsible for these folks and for their jobs, and I hold that, you know, very seriously. I don't take that responsibility lightly. I've never done it before.
And we're also, like, you're we're really struggling with, some of the just coverage within the queue right now. So I felt very torn between those things.
And, ultimately it was just one of those things where I had to just pull out one day and say “okay. This big thing is coming up. I've gotta shift my focus over here.”
“You know, do what you can in the queue. We're working on up leveling. We're working on figuring out what that means in terms of getting you guys more help in the queue.”
But, yeah, for me, it was definitely those impending, performance reviews and thinking, oh, no. I feel I don't even feel prepared to think about what performance reviews mean for these people, let alone have the conversation. And it's in a couple weeks.
I gotta change something drastic with how I'm spending my time. You've gotta kind of take a step back and zoom out a bit to see where your time is best spent. As a leader, typically not gonna be on the front line day in and day out.
Mat:
That mental shift, taking yourself out of queue crushing mode and up to a more strategic level of thinking, That can be really hard to do, especially the first time. I asked Elyse what had helped her make it work.
Elyse:
People leadership was brand new to me. And, frankly, this I mean, this was years ago at this point, but this was something that I would have been very hesitant about. I just didn't know if it was something that I wanted to do.
And coming back from an extended vacation, I found myself having a lot of planning conversations with people and really digging into how the process feels. I was more of a functional leader at that point, but I didn't have the people leadership responsibilities.
And we started to just naturally have some of those conversations, and I found them so interesting and so satisfying.
And so I leaned on Abigail, our VP of customers at the time.
Mat:
That's Abigail Phillips, true Help Scout legend, still the leader of our customers team today.
Elyse:
She was a huge resource to me, honestly, of just kind of helping me rewire things a bit.
You know, I also leaned pretty heavily on, in the beginning, what external learning resources I had. I remember Laura Hogan being one that I really enjoyed her, like, new management course because it really truly is a shift in thinking. And so learning about that and having a resource where I could kind of externally, you know, learn and focus my development on, but also internally have a partner to where I could help rewire the pieces together was extremely helpful for me.
Mat:
It's important to remember that that is the job of your boss as well.
Their work is to help you develop. They can't be doing your job. That's your job.
Elyse:
Yep. Well, it's the same thing with hiring a new employee. Right? There is 30, 60, 90. There is an onboarding period into a new role. It really is just learning what their responsibilities are.
And in my case, this was a totally new role, for a totally new team and a totally new department. So we were really kinda building that plane as we were flying it and building things from the ground up. It was really important that I had alignment with her, and her support, and we were kind of doing things in lockstep together, throughout that entire process.
Mat:
I wonder how much of the “I'm not making time for managing” was actually “I just don't know what I'm doing and therefore I'll keep doing the thing that I know how to do”.
Elyse:
It was certainly part of it. And I think the piece for me, was really the delegation piece was hard. And I and I knew that that was gonna be rough for me going into it. And not from a “I wanna hold on to all of my Legos so tightly”. I felt like I didn't want to bother my team by putting more work on their plates.
And it was just, you know, I had all the information in my head. So I was like, “I'll just do it really quickly. That way, I'm not, like, leaving work for anyone in the morning”.
Mat:
This is also why I tied my kids' shoes way past the time when they should have really learned it themselves just to get out the door.
Elyse:
But, unfortunately, what happens there is you take away growth opportunities from your team. Again, you're band-aiding things in a really uncomfortable way, and you become a bottleneck, which can be potentially very costly to the team and to the business.
Or you'll end up with a lot of very ugly Velcro shoes in your house.
You know, and I saw that very much so in some of our processes that I was running that I just didn't need anymore. And frankly, it could have been a lot better if I had just let in some fresh perspective from my team.
For me, what also showed up was this feeling of, one, the leader. I have to know everything. I have to have the answer to everything.
And that's just simply not the case. I'm only one person, and we're a team for a reason.
I have these folks on my team for a reason, and I really value their perspective. They are all so different. They come from different backgrounds. They bring different things to the table.
And so for me, you know, as much as I know a solution that is grounded in multiple perspectives is one that I will usually, you know, 100% more value. It was just really hard for me to match that up with the, like, oh, “but I'm the leader. I should have the answer.” So I felt like I was just falling into that “should” trap quite a bit.
Mat:
You mentioned delegation, and I think that's one area where yeah, your mindset can really help understanding that you want your boss to say, “here's a thing that you can learn how to do.” You desperately want them to give you more things to do and to help you learn more things because you want to evolve. And if you can remember that perspective, it's much easier to delegate things and to accept that maybe the first few times is gonna be worse than if I just did it myself, but that is part of the process.
Elyse:
Totally. And it's a practice too. You know? You get better with these things over time.
And, for me, I think it really kinda comes down to, like, just very clear expectations and communication. And as long as you have those two things or at least the communication piece. Right? Like, the door is open.
We're gonna figure this out together and learn along the way.
You know, I don't think that there is any problem that you can't solve, particularly with the help of your team.
Mat: Yeah. If we were thinking about other people, lots of people were going through this. Some of them are probably right at this very moment. Rather than jumping back in to save the day when something is missing or broken or overwhelming for your team who you are supposed to now be managing? Like, what do you do? What's the best practice you can do?
Elyse:
I think “just take a pause” is the biggest piece of advice that I would give you.
Take a pause and think critically about the situation that's going on. Sometimes you may actually have to jump in, and that's okay. That's what a leader is for.
But I think I think about it in, in really, like, a different framework. And I come back to Laura Hogan again because I just love the way that she breaks this out. It's an axis of urgency and importance.
And I don't quite remember all the different quadrants off the top of my head.
Mat:
Alright. So this is a version of the classic Eisenhower matrix. I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
Elyse:
If it's incredibly urgent, incredibly important, you take that on, and the rest are kind of more open for delegation or even for punting.
And so if you really kind of think critically about the situation at hand, think about, you know, how quickly does it get done and how important is it. If it is in that box where you have to do it, just go ahead. But, again, thinking about your team and where they want to grow, at this point, you should hopefully understand, you know, kind of strengths and weaknesses, where folks are focused on, where they'd like to grow, what their passions are. Right?
And so you know all of those things. You have them mapped out, or you're working on getting all of those things mapped out. This is a really good opportunity in that pause to think about, okay, what is the depth of this situation? Is this something that, you know, anyone on my team can do or that they are maybe curious about learning more about or have expressed interest in getting involved in?
And is this something that, again, like, can be passed along? And if so, pass it along. You know, have that conversation. And, again, like, I think the communication piece is really important in delegation, but also just clearly set those expectations and how you are expecting to stay on top of things. And you will get better at it as it goes, but, I think that pause in the very first moment that something pops up is really the most critical.
Mat:
Especially, I think, in support. There's so much of it is reactive to stuff that happens and you have to jump on it straight away.
Elyse:
Absolutely. You know, status events are never fun, and I feel like those are, like, the extreme end of the spectrum. Right? You know, maybe you find yourself in a situation where you just have to do it, and then you retro it later.
Mat:
Retro is a retrospective meeting. This is a term from the agile software methodology where you look back at what went well, what didn't so that you can do better next time, theoretically.
Elyse:
Maybe this was something that, you know, you could pass on the follow-up test for or, you find that the process needs to be overhauled or iterated on in some way, then that's your moment for pause. Right? Like, get through the moment of criticality and then figure out, okay, what needs to happen next, and is this an opportunity for someone on my team?
Mat:
So many great ideas from Elyse, but I really wanted to ask her a practical question. How should people physically make time in their day to get out of the queue and do the leading part of the job?
Elyse:
Easier said than done. I am a massive calendar blocker. If it's not in my calendar, whether personally or professionally, it's likely not gonna happen. So, so, you know, that for me is what has worked. What I do is that every week, I look at what I want to accomplish. I usually look at it Friday and then if anything has changed by Monday, I can iterate, and then you just kind of iterate as you go.
I also think about it on a long term, perspective too just in terms of, like, what projects I might wanna get done on a monthly or quarterly or even longer term basis. Just so I kind of have an idea of the arc of where I'm headed, where the team is headed, and what pieces might be in play. But, yeah, in terms of, like, my weekly schedule, I take a peek at that on a weekly basis really, you know, kind of at a very detailed level. And then I just iterate as it goes. Because in support, as we all know, your time is not necessarily your own. And so, you know, when things come up, you do have to be a bit flexible. But, you know, it's kind of really just coming back to what is the top priority for you and for your team and making sure that, you know, once the, once the fires have passed, that those are what you kind of come back to.
One of the key getting out of the queue challenges is that the rest of the team can feel a bit abandoned when they've got too much work on and their leader isn't visibly in there helping them. So I asked Elyse for her advice.
Lead it with curiosity. You know, if the team is upset that you're not in the queue, why?
You know, right, like, is that a perception, or is it an actual frustration because of any number of reasons? Because they're really feeling the crunch because, you know, maybe other folks are out for various reasons, and maybe that's something to look at as a team.
You know, there's a lot of different causes of that. And I think just really being curious about what's coming up for the team.
And then I think about it in three buckets, like what you completely control, what you influence, and then what you can't, and talk about those in those contexts. So, you know, if there's a queue deficit, you know, maybe consider hiring.
If you can't, then we have to look at process. Right? We have to look at our other pieces.
And it all kind of works together. Right? Like, extra hands are not always the answers. But really understanding with your team where that frustration or that feeling is coming from so you can handle it appropriately, I think, is really important. I like to check on it in a number of different places. One on ones for sure.
I think you get, in some cases, a little bit more, you know, raw answers, which are helpful data points. Right? I think it can kinda be scary to voice your opinion in a large group of people, especially if you're not sure that everyone else is feeling the same way as you, particularly if it's an uncomfortable feeling.
So I really like to save that safe space in one on ones for anything that feels, you know, a little sticky, and maybe unsafe to share in a large group.
But I do think it's important to talk about it as a team as well. So doing the same thing in team meetings, it can be a really interesting place to surface what folks are feeling in the queue, what feels hard, what they wanna celebrate. Right? And really kind of saving that space for us to have those discussions with the team is really important. And then I think too, you know, you can create a lot of different avenues of feedback just with either regular surveying or even having, like, a comment box available. We've done both in the past, I think, to varying degrees of success. Surveys get a little hard, just survey fatigue and everything else that's going on in the queue, but they can be incredibly helpful from a management perspective.
I pore over those every single time that I run them. I think that the information I get back is just invaluable.
But it could be as simple as a comment box too of, you know, if you're feeling anything and you just wanna let, you know, your coach or the team leadership know what you're feeling and what the challenge is, here's a little anonymous comment box where you can leave, you know, your thoughts and feelings and and really what is coming up for you in a way that's actionable for us.
I think one of the most helpful qualities as a people leader is the amount of self awareness that you have.
You're not gonna hate that. Yes.
So for me, it was really about working on myself too alongside leading people and really being aware of, you know, how I show up in spaces and, you know, how I react to things so that I can then respond better to them. You know, so my knee jerk is not necessarily leading, you know, how I am, how I'm showing up for people.
Mat:
Are you fitting in self development as a category of time that you're blocking out?
I do. Yeah. So professional development is one that I block off a couple hours a week for, whether it's reading, whether it's, attending a webinar, or whether it's, you know, kind of keeping up in the different, like, leadership communities that I'm a part of. Because that was another piece of especially moving into leadership that I found really difficult to make time for.
And it was one of those things where it was like, you know what? If I don't just do it, if I don't just block the time off now, this is never gonna happen, and I'm really never gonna keep improving in this area, and I'm gonna get stagnant. Right? So, you know, that pain threshold of, you know, I can only feel like I'm not doing a great job in certain areas for so long.
I certainly hit that and was like, okay. This needs to be like a focus block on my calendar every week where I'm dedicating time to thinking about how I am continuing to develop and grow.
Mat:
Have you got any recommendations for where people can go to start to get into some of that content?
Elyse:
Yeah.
Support Driven is a wonderful community. Elevate CX is another one. There's so many support communities out there that are specifically geared for support people that highly recommend those too. They have been invaluable in my career, going to conferences, even just talking to folks in the Slack channel.
I think I've had a lot of value in the conferences, but being in Slack as well just to ask questions or to follow along, that's really wonderful webinars too. I really love Canopy, which used to be known as your team, the team with Claire Lew. I go to all of the webinars that I can. You know, I just find their content very approachable and just really, really based in, in really, like, in in conscious leadership in, like, the feelings that are behind and the humans that are behind that are running your team.
Right? And really kind of breaking it down into that very human centric way of leading, which I really appreciate.
Mat:
Now there's a lot of people listening to this who come to help scout for content because they are new support leaders or they would like to be new support leaders. I'd be interested in what you would say to them now, having gone through this yourself a couple of times and now doing it again starting from scratch.
What's the first thing that they should think about?
Elyse:
Oh, that's a good question. I and this was, again, like, something that in hindsight makes perfect sense, but one that I didn't quite understand the depth of moving from a teammate to I'm now managing these folks, is really just the shift in power dynamics there. I think that that is not one to take lightly by any means, particularly having been on the team for any number of any amount of time and now you are responsible for these folks and their jobs at this company. It's really important to understand the shift there and really kind of how that breaks out, between, you know, a manager and their direct reports, their ICs. Thinking about things, you know, how your relationships might change. Right? How you interact with the team might shift a little bit in this new role.
Going into my first retreat as a leader, I did just feel like, oh, I represent the company and the team in a very different way. And that means something. And, you know, your words hold weight, your actions hold weight. And that's really it's really important to be cognizant of how that is impacting not only your team, but the other teams around you and how you're showing up. It's a big thing to think about, but I think that is one of the most important when you're thinking of going from, you know, a peer on the team into one of those leadership roles.
Mat:
If you were a peer to somebody and you said, “hey, got a second….”
Elyse:
Perfect example because yeah. I mean, we are all human. In the absence of context, we will go to the most negative story. That is something to really be cognizant of as a leader of, you know, where there was the lack of context. Right? And how can you provide clarity along the way so that those brains aren't just zapping straight into, you know, worrying or that, you know, most negative scenario that, you know, may not even be close to what you are trying to communicate.
Mat:
Do you have any fear of being away from the customers too much when you're a leader?
Oh, not today.
I certainly did when I moved into this role.
And backstory on I think why it was heightened for me too is the team that I was leading was responsible for customer feedback. And so my brain broke a little bit thinking, “wait, but I'm not gonna talk to customers, but I still need to know what's happening. How, why, like, how is this gonna work?”
And so, you know, I think that that is it it's certainly a practice of, a, looking at your processes. How are you reporting? How is extracting that information from the queue, really working as best as it can for you?
There's a lot that can be done within your reporting and within your data structures to make sure that you can still have your finger on the pulse of what's happening with customers in a very easy to digest way. Might have some leg work up front, but I think that's really important to make sure that you have the structure in place for that. And again, like, leaning on your team in in that scenario as well. I think that's perfectly acceptable for, you know, gut checking what you might be feeling with your ten percent in the queue with the larger team.
Mat:
What has been the biggest surprise to you in becoming a manager?
Elyse:
I think it was really the emotional side of people leadership wasthe biggest surprise. It was one that I just hadn't calculated. And so, you know, learning to be there for your team, and to really show up for them in a way that matters without taking on the emotional burden and the feelings, especially in some situations can be really hard. When things are going smooth, it's great. You can celebrate all day long, but that is unfortunately not people management. It does get challenging sometimes. And so, you know, really learning how to ride that wave in a way that I can.
And that, you know, is really sustainable and feasible for me to still continue to show up in the way that I want to. Yeah. I think the work behind that was something that was quite surprising to me.
Mat:
As a new manager of people, what's your one piece of advice that you would give to somebody?
Elyse:
Talk to people. Just get in there, talk to people, start talking to customers, learn the product as quickly as you can so you can get in that queue. And it's kind of counterintuitive to everything we've been talking about, I realize.
But as that new leader, there is no substitute for talking directly with customers in learning the product, in learning how your customers operate, in learning how the team is functioning.
You can feel it. And it might take you a little bit of onboarding to get there, but I think that that, you know, initial being part of the team is really crucial for understanding where the team can go next and where we can help customers maybe in a deeper or a different way, or where we can be connected to our friends across the business in a different way. Don't be afraid of getting in the queue.
Just make sure you've got that exit plan kind of mapped out so you can get into the meat of your role and your and that work.
Mat:
I always get such value from talking to Elyse. I bet you did too. Make sure you visit the web page for this episode. You'll find it on the Help Scout site or linked in the notes in your podcast app. I'll link up all the resources she mentioned, plus I'll give you some yacht rock to listen to.
But here's what I took away from the conversation.
The first change that you have to make to escape the queue is a change of your mindset. You'll have to grasp what success in your new role actually requires from you. And if you have self awareness, that will make everything much easier.
You should also learn how to delegate and practice delegation.
And why not try time blocking in your calendar to make space for leading and learning? And finally, you don't wanna get too far away from the customers, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do tons of direct support.
Great stuff from Elyse there. Thank you so much to Elyse for chatting with me. And if you'd like to know more about her or connect with her in any way, you can find her on LinkedIn.
And if you have a moment to rate or review The Supportive on Apple Podcasts, that would also be a massive help. Thank you for listening.
See you next time.
