Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations

optimize their working experience, often through developing new leaders to ensure they

master the basics.

And if I've learned anything over the years about leaders, it is this.

Most of them want to do a great job at supporting their teams.

And when they show up as less than ideal, it's almost always because they just don't know what

awesome looks like.

Because, listener, while they need to be the expert on a lot of things, only we are the

experts in what leading us well

looks like and feels like. They need our help in managing them to better manage us.

You know, a good friend of mine is a doctor at a renowned children's hospital. She's one of the

best in her field, and she has worked really hard to get where she is.

Also, she's a single mom, and she is super proud of that.

Recently, when a big opportunity popped up in her world, she decided she was going to go for it.

But before she could get her hat in the ring, her boss told her the job had gone to someone else.

He said, I know how much you're balancing between the job and your kids, and I just didn't want to put that

pressure on you. My friend was devastated. Her boss met well. He really did, but his good intentions

left her feeling really down. He made assumptions when he should have been asking questions.

And I see this kind of thing all the time. Our bosses mean well, but they often aren't asking

the questions that they should. And so we can accept that along with the consequences,

or we can step into the driver's seat and help them to manage us as we'd

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