The New Manager Playbook: How to Lead with Clarity and Confidence

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Lia Garvin: We always have to have set an expectation, otherwise what is the feedback about? And that’s very much the case when it comes to that longer term feedback, like a performance review. Because if someone really didn’t know what they were supposed to be delivering on, it does feel like a subjective conversation. Even if you, the manager, feel like this stuff is like obvious, it’s basic, of course it’s part of the job. But if it’s not totally spelled out, it doesn’t always land that way.

David Rice: Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We’re on a mission to build a better world of work and help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I’m your host, David Rice.

My guest today is Lia Garvin. She is the author of a new book called The New Manager Playbook: A Simple Guide for Leading With Ease, and the host of the Managing Made Simple podcast. We’re gonna be digging into the book a bit and talking about what keeps new managers from driving the results they hope for.

Lia, welcome.

Lia Garvin: Thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here.

David Rice: Absolutely. All right. I wanna start with a question about. The sort of times that we’re living in, if it’s not too heavy. This is the era of embossing at the moment that we’re hearing about, so to speak. Traditional hierarchies are changing fast though. You’ve got a lot of talk around flattening word structures, et cetera. How do you think management evolves over the next five years?

Lia Garvin: Yeah, I think right now there’s a lot of talk around abolishing middle management.

Middle management. The problem I think we probably like, you know. Are both laughing a little bit because I think the problem is not, the problem today I don’t think, is that we have middle managers. I think it’s that we have people in leadership roles who have had no training, or maybe they don’t even wanna do that because the system in many corporate environments, especially like you have to AMAs people under you to get promoted and then grow up the ranks.

So I. What I foresee over the next few years is less layers in companies. But my hope is it’s done really thoughtfully around well, okay, the more layers you move, you have to have more communication coordination, right? Because you have more kind of one to many. And so I think through the use more of, moving some tasks, automation, I think there’s a lot of value in, AI meeting note takers and things like that can simplify it and create more open lines of communication.

I think organizations will flatten somewhat and my hope and mission and probably both is like we do maintain management in the right ways because it also allows people to, be able to rise to their full potential when we utilize management the right way.

David Rice: Yeah, I agree. I was thinking about this ’cause I was appearing on somebody else’s podcast and they were asking this kind of question about how it’s gonna change and.

One of the things I think about is if we eliminate a door to leadership, which oftentimes is management for people, there’s gonna have to be some other way to identify leaders. And I don’t know what that looks like, but I maybe it’s like a rotational opportunity where people can exhibit leadership skills and take on different things and then if they excel at it and they show certain traits and certain aptitudes, then maybe I.

They take on more of these type things and then that’s how they just naturally move into leadership. I don’t know exactly. It’s an interesting time for what the the hierarchy and the assessment of leadership potential might look like.

Lia Garvin: Yeah. Yeah. I do think something I’ve actually thought for a while, especially with Gen Z, characteristically having less.

Valuing different things, right? It’s not only promotion and achievement driven, it’s like more kind of purpose over purse strings or whatever. In some cases. I had felt for a long time that like these traditional mechanisms for performance Ron, did you get the right rating and are you getting the bonus?

This that’s not gonna work anymore. And so what are we gonna have to incentivize people in inside of big companies? That’s a prediction I have. That’s like we are gonna have to drastically change performance structures, as they stand today. What I think that we should do instead. I think we could co-write a book on that about that.

But I think that’s one of the major things that’s gonna have to change. Because if you are not motivated by the thing the traditional assessment is doing, then it’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna keep the troops in line. And so I think we have to redesign that system and I also think there’s gonna be a lot more kind of project based work, instead of working in a company for life.

You come on short term. I.

David Rice: I think like assessment has to change with, so as we get to, and if we do go more skills based with work, right? Then assessment has to change. Is there just naturally an opportunity for certain skills to shine more? I. Essentially, and then just that cloud our judgment of who has leadership potential?

It’s a domino effect. One thing impacts the next, so it’s, you gotta constantly kinda get pull back and look at the whole picture and then see where oh, because we changed this, we gotta tweak this kinda thing.

Lia Garvin: Yeah. It’s kind like a systems design exercise, right?

David Rice: Yeah. Alright. I was moving along. I think the theme of 2025 so far, at least from what we’ve been encountering with people, managing people, and the things that we get asked about, trust is one of the big things, right? How to build it, how to maintain it. We get these questions all the time and I wanna start us off with a question about trust, but it’s not organizational trust.

We’re gonna talk about here. Early in the book, you established that we have to trust employees to do their jobs, right? That, as you put it, installing software to monitor keystrokes and eye movement isn’t going to guarantee productivity anymore than sticking a geo tracker in your kid’s backpack is gonna help them choose better friends, right?

So for pretend, I’m a CEO who thinks that if people think we’re watching them, essentially they’ll be more productive. Explain to me why I’m wrong.

Lia Garvin: My friend because when people feel like they’re being watched or over supervised or micromanaged, they find the edges, they wanna exploit the edge because it’s like we feel.

Like we wanna prove it to people. Like we wanna rebel against that. That’s why again, when you’re over monitoring your kids, they hang out with even worse friends or whatever. Or when we say, you people try to exploit the rule. And that’s why I think when we get overly prescriptive, and I talk about this with all the teams that I work with, because I think.

When a manager or a leader feels like, oh, my team’s not, they’re not following through on things. They’re not doing this. I’m just gonna make more detailed processes and rules and handbooks. And as a, person with a, an operational background, I drove team operations within Google, apple, Microsoft.

It’s not about more process, it’s about less making it more clear, talking about the goals. And so I think someone that thinks that you have to. Just tighten the reins. Me watching what everyone’s doing. What you’re gonna see is all of these edge cases that you never thought of pop up over overnight.

This is why you’re seeing people with when folks have to be return to office, having someone badge in for them, right? They wouldn’t just come in the office like, now I’m having, or maybe I drive and I. Just for lunch and I get the free lunch and I leave, or I’m going a few hours, or I have some system I’ve designed, to get around it.

And all you’re doing is having people spend their energy. They would’ve been like productively in their job, like on thinking of a workaround, in many cases. And I think, and we’re not talking about return to office specifically, but I think there’s so much value to having folks in person sometimes, and I think there’s a lot of value in people being able to work.

Also with more flexibility. It’s about finding that balance. And when we. When we don’t trust our team members, when we think that we have to monitor them, it’s that we don’t have clear priorities. We haven’t really operationalized what our values are. We’ve made assumptions based on very limited information, or we haven’t performance managed, and we have people that are not delivering.

They didn’t get the feedback, they don’t know it. They’re still not delivering and we’re mad and think we should monitor them to more closely. Like the needing to micromanage is actually a symptom of a lot of other things that could have been figured out and that need to happen first.

David Rice: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Like I don’t know how many times, whether it’s in history or just in life, like one of the things that I think just is pretty obvious if you pay attention is prohibition as like a method of managing something is never works and. Essentially, if you think about it, monitoring, that’s what you’re trying to prohibit.

Laziness or doing something that you’re not supposed to be doing, but just like it didn’t work in the office, and people would find ways to screw around in the break room or go on walks, do all these other things that wasn’t work, right? It’s like the same. You’re just doing the same thing, so just.

Lia Garvin: If you’re gonna not care about your job, you’re gonna do it wherever you’re located.

David Rice: Yes, exactly. Exactly. You’re gonna do it no matter what the tech does.

Lia Garvin: Exactly. You’re gonna get that little bird that taps on the tap.

David Rice: Yeah, those are the little thing that moves the mouse.

Lia Garvin: Exactly. And like you said, prohibition, it’s. It promotes like some sort of uprising in a different way. And I think the real issue, if it’s about disengagement or people not doing enough right, or whatever productivity being low, which I think they’re being measured in somewhat subjective ways in many ca in many cases, I.

But I do know like engagement is low, motivation is low, and people in general feel like, do I want to be here? Like the way to address it is not tracking them, more closely. It’s figuring that out. And actually I think that empowering our managers and the skills I talk about in the new manager playbook actually directly addresses well okay, what do we do instead?

How do we reengage our team members and what skills does a manager need to be able to do that? Because it’s hard if you haven’t thought about it or haven’t tried that before.

David Rice: One of the things you talked about in the book that I thought was interesting was like this idea of pre and postmortems around projects Yeah.

As well of building psychological safety. I think we have to consider like standup meetings or one-to-ones or team feedback loops as ways to do this. I’m curious, like what makes a good pre or postmortem and why is that an effective way to create that sense of safety?

Lia Garvin: Yeah. I love the question. I think for both the pre or postmortem are drivers for psych safety, and I believe Amy Edmondson talks about it in the fearless organization.

So it’s one of the tools that is really widely used for psych safety specifically because it gets a lot of voices into the conversation, right? It’s allowing more people to be speaking and the more people that can share the perspective, the more we’re listening to each other, that does help build psych safety.

But a pre-mortem specifically, which is when we talk about how a project might go before the project, that’s not only a builder of psych safety, it’s an accountability builder because you, when you talk about it beforehand, you can say, okay, what are the risks? What might go wrong? Who is on point for each of these?

You can actually signing owners to each of these things, and you reduce risk so much right out of the gate. And so by doing that, you also beforehand, it also is when emotions are lower. Nothing has gone wrong yet. You know what I mean? So you can get, nobody’s really, nobody invested anything expansive, right?

No one’s screwed it up. No. Wouldn’t miss it. And so you can have these no wrong idea kind of conversation. I. That really helps also build psychological of safety because you’re inviting everyone to be contributing their ideas, right? Say, Hey, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

What’s something that would never happen, but what if, right? And you can give many different ways people can contribute. And so provided that you run that effectively a management skill to citation and not just have one person answering. But there’s a model that I saw work really well in software teams at Google was going around and having, this is for a postmortem three times.

You talk about what went well, each person shares what could have gone better. Each person points the finger at someone else, probably. And then third was the biggest round was like, what will I do differently next time? And when I saw this in action, I was like, oh, this whole meeting was for round three.

So that everybody can take that responsibility. And I think hearing from each other, everyone owning that personally, that also really builds both accountability and psych safety.

David Rice: That’s interesting. And like the sense of closeness that you get from that, right? Yeah. Like being vulnerable and like putting yourself out there in front of people I think is super valuable.

It’s important though, that you don’t like as a manager. One of the things I love that you talk about in the book is the way you go after the idea of the family or friends dynamic that sometimes gets pedaled by like inexperienced managers or HR teams, right? I think most people throw up in their mouths a little bit these days when someone stands up in front of a group of whether it’s a team or the company as a whole, INS says things like, we’re a family, right?

But you take that further and argue that it’s toxic in a variety of ways, and that a manager’s job is to maintain results-based relationships just as you would if you were running a sports team and it was a sports guy. I love the analogy, right? For managers where the line is blurred a bit, I think, is around that.

So what advice would you give for getting back to a results based relationship?

Lia Garvin: So I think one of the reasons it can be blurry, especially on the friend one is a lot of us become managers because we were on the team, we were friends with these people. Now we’re not.

David Rice: Yeah. Happens that you were good at your job. That’s how you got there.

Lia Garvin: Exactly. So this is a huge one. And we actually have to recognize in our own minds, like I have a different job. My relationship with this set of people has changed. By signing up and agreeing to take that manager job. And I know sometimes it’s out of our control if we have to do it to keep the job.

I understand that. But by actually moving into that job, it has fundamentally changed our relationship with our team members. And there can be some loss to that. There can be some now you’re not invited to happy hour anymore, or you’re not, gonna lunch with folks. There can be this, it’s an identity shift.

So it comes with some kind of, having to reset. I think the first reason it can be challenging is when we were peers and we were friends, and we actually have to make that shift in our minds and reset the relationship with every team member. And I know this because I screwed it up more than once.

Like when I talk about the book with two examples. One was I wasn’t like close with this peer, but he thought I got the job he was supposed to have for manager. So that didn’t go well. Oh yeah. But the second time it was like my work best friend and I became her manager and it was like. By acting like, Hey, it’s all the same.

We’re still friends. All this. And then I saw that her performance wasn’t delivering and I had to, that was now my responsibility to, to be giving feedback on like that friendship was gone overnight, like whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. And so that’s where I think we really, if we already had a relationship with folks, that friend dynamic is really challenging.

Now, the second one is just if we. Are really in that kind of like conflict averse. We wanna be a peacekeeper, we really want everyone to like us and that whole thing because you wanna be like in the ingroup basically, and not, on the outside there. We can, even if we are new to a team, we don’t know folks before, I think we can fall into this, like we’re all friends here, but.

Like you said, the challenge with the friends metaphor, it’s like it’s egalitarian, right? It’s that, hey, we’re all like, all ideas are right. We’re all on the same page, and it kills psych safety because in a friend group, I think everyone’s trying to keep the peace, and so it’s very hard to have, even respectful disagreement.

Sometimes you just go with it, and then it also. A manager that’s struggling with some of the people pleasing and wanting people to like them, which many of us deal with.

David Rice: Yeah. You’re a human being. It’s hard to not fall into this.

Lia Garvin: Exactly.

David Rice: Nobody wants to be hated.

Lia Garvin: Nobody wants to be hated. And so what I argue in, the book and my podcast, which I’ve also, I’ve actually renamed it to the New Manager Playbook podcast, so it’s all Oh, okay. All aligned. Yeah. But I talk about that people like you better when they have clear expectations and when they. See you as a leader and you’re really helping them achieve their career.

Not just ’cause you were like the cool manager that brought some tequila in for happy hour, like on Friday.

David Rice: Right? Not the one that just took everybody out for beers.

Lia Garvin: Yeah.

David Rice: This is interesting too, because like a key moment in your ability to connect with folks is the one-on-one. It’s just a natural space to like actually get to know somebody.

Actually work on your communication dynamics with that person. There’s a part in the book, you talk about making one-on-ones mutually beneficial. ’cause this is important. I think that sometimes that gets lost. People process it as, okay, I’m one manager talking to one employee.

Lia Garvin: Yeah.

David Rice: But it’s one-on-ones they, it can be much more effective if you know when to talk.

How do approach the human beings sitting next to you and how to make it something people find valuable? What advice do you have for new managers looking to achieve that? So it’s not a one way conversation, right?

Lia Garvin: Totally. I think we’ve all been there. The one-on-one, it’s just status updates. You’re both bored of it or someone you know, my favorite’s Hey, five minutes more, should we cancel?

Just give each other the time back. It’s like nobody wants to have this meeting. And I have had times as a manager when I dreaded the one-on-one, because after about five minutes there was nothing to talk about. And then I didn’t know if we should shorten it or not. And the team members on the other end yeah, no, everything’s good.

And it’s just like the worst possible meeting and you have all this other stuff to do. So like I’ve been there and I think a lot of us, our instinct is this is where I get informed about project status and updates. This is where we’re gonna talk about what’s going on with just the core work in that week.

And if you’re having one-on-ones weekly, it would make sense, right? You’re just getting the updates and you’re talking about yep, everything’s on track. But what’s missed when we talk about status reports and things like just like the status of projects in a one-on-one is you’re not really getting to know that person.

You’re not getting under the surface. So I suggest having a format that says, what are some of the wins and the accomplishments? What are things you’re excited about? And that could be, Hey, this meeting with this stakeholder that I was really nervous about, it went really and they were really happy with the idea.

It doesn’t have to be like, I launched a product. Now wins can be very small. What people are looking forward to, you can understand, what they’re excited about, what they’re not. So you can get ahead of a motivation dip. You ask them where they’re stuck, where they need support.

A lot of times with our team members, if we don’t ask them, they’re never gonna tell us where something, they’re stuck. All of a sudden something goes wrong and they’re like you were busy, I didn’t wanna bother you. And then we were like okay. So giving it for for them to share where they’re feeling stuck and then, saying Hey, anything I can problem solve with you, or, even sharing feedback you’re working on, and saying, Hey, here’s, or here’s what you know is going on with the team, having a conversation that’s. You keep the status report stuff out and it’s all about, the person, the highs, the lows, the job itself. This builds trust so much. ’cause you’re asking them about themselves as a person.

It allows you to really see how they think through problems and where they get stuck. And I found, I had a team member that, this was back at Google and program management, like the currency, I talk about performance reviews was having artifacts, documents, your trackers, your one pagers, your decks, all this stuff.

Right? I. I had a team member who was like, yeah, I don’t wanna play that game. I’m not gonna just make a bunch of stuff for no reason. And I was so lucky that I, we had this conversation in a one-on-one because I said, you know this something, yeah. It’s like the whole thing at works a game fine. But like this, having artifacts, this is how you demonstrate the value you’re bringing as a program manager because your job is a lot behind the scenes.

This is how you’re sharing, the thought process, the strategy brought to it, the, how you’re running that postmortem or whatever. And and then in the course of a one-on-one, I could both explain this, share examples of ones that I had built, give her, and really reframe this whole misconception.

Now, if instead I just said are your projects on track? Yes. Good. And I would’ve missed all of that, right? So this is an opportunity to really excavate even where folks are getting in their own way, and that’s through having these regular conversations. One more thing I’ll say I hear a lot in the workshops I run for managers is like.

I’m in meetings with my team members all the time, right? I, why would I need another one-on-one? I’m in project meetings all day, and it’s because of what I just said, right? Is that it’s a totally different kind of meeting, right? We’re really getting to know our team member how they work. So when you take the status report stuff out, you actually really see that it is a uniquely important meeting.

David Rice: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree. And like the one-on-one is, it’s not a performance conversation, but it has like a performance element to it, right? Now the performance conversation, it can be tough for a new manager, right? The first time you do it is a little tense, especially if you’re managing someone whose performance is, maybe not exactly where it needs to be.

It almost feels a little bit confrontational in nature. I think some people struggle with giving feedback already, but if if you don’t do it it often leads to a disconnect where managers employees have very different ideas about what’s actually happening.

Lia Garvin: Yeah, exactly.

David Rice: Especially if you’re not doing it in these one-on-ones.

So my next question is, for new managers, especially those that are new to us, a culture, what’s the best way to prevent that disconnect and maintain that? I guess candor really,

Lia Garvin: yeah. With feedback, performance reviews or any of it. Yeah. I would say you wanna get to know your team members, like what is their motivator, where are they going?

When we get to understand through one-on-ones and career conversations, I. We actually get to know what they wanna do long term, what kinds of work they like to do, what they’re excited about. So that, this starts to not only build trust, it helps us delegate projects. It helps us be able to give feedback in a way that they’re gonna really be able to receive that and action it.

And so I think when we’re joining a team, the first thing we have to do before approaching the performance review or kind of starting to give feedback is start by setting expectations, right? And saying okay, hey, what. With around the work, but also understanding in our mind what this person’s expectation is of themselves.

Before we give any feedback, we always have to have set an expectation, otherwise what is the feedback about? And that’s very much the case when it comes to that longer term feedback, like a performance review. Because if someone really didn’t know what they were supposed to be delivering on it, it does feel like a subjective conversation.

Even if you, the manager, feel like this stuff is like obvious. It’s basic. Of course it’s part of the job, but if it’s not totally spelled out, it doesn’t always land that way. So I always say to folks when they can say, my team member’s not delivering and they’re not doing this, not doing that. I say, okay, what feedback have you given them?

And a lot of times it’s I don’t really, is anything like, okay, start there. Or I’m like what expectation did you set? That’s the real step one. If it’s this is what they were hired to do, then that’s an opportunity in onboarding. How do we do things at this company and in this role?

Or if they, you mentioned the dynamics of work exchange. So if it’s that they got it done, but like they were difficult to work with, or they were really doing everything last minute, talking about some of the behavioral qualities that are the expectation of the team. And so that’s the stuff that you really need to do first when you’re gonna give feedback or then put it in a performance review because.

If the person doesn’t know the expectation, they’re of course gonna feel defensive about it. And of course they’re gonna feel like it’s just an opinion or it’s subjective, or it’s like your way, you like your way better, so I think we can really disarm these situations and reduce a lot of our own fear and anxiety around giving feedback and our own, having a performance conversation where there’s some stuff, like you said we’re correcting or giving constructive feedback on.

When we’ve grounded it to something that they’re like, yeah, like I understand. It’s hard to hear, but I do understand that was what I was supposed to be doing or what you had set up as the expectation.

David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit later in the book, you talk about recognition, and it’s something I think managers have to get good at, particularly during this period where there’s a lot more intention to stay, right?

I think retention is getting a little bit easier in the sense that people are searching for stability right now. And when you’re a new manager, it’s not something that you’re necessarily used to doing, right? Because when you’re like an individual contributor, that’s not really an expectation. It doesn’t come naturally to everybody, I wouldn’t say.

So talk to me about what you think constitutes recognition done well and what new managers need to consider before they look to unleash the praise, so to speak.

Lia Garvin: Yeah, so I think recognition done well, it’s simple, it’s specific and actionable, just like constructive feedback. We use the exact same tools.

So I love situation Behavior impact. Yes, that’s it. Situation, behavior impact as my go-to feedback framework, because it makes us be specific, right? In the meeting you situation behavior, you had a very clear agenda and we were able to get through everything and make a decision in. The impact of that is that, we made that decision and we can get back on track with our project timeline.

That was awesome. Please do that again. So when we give specific and actionable recognition. Not only do we reinforce behaviors that we wanna see more of, but that person really feels seen when we say good job. It’s like for being alive, like for showing up today. What do you mean? Or great work.

Thank you. But I don’t know exactly what you mean by that. So when we’re specific it, it makes it feel more genuine, that’s the really go-to with that. And I think, but before we unleash it, like you said, it doesn’t just mean saying it all the time about nothing specific and concrete.

And we wanna understand, I think one challenge managers can have is that how am I supposed to know when there’s a win or something went well? Or how do I keep track of all that? This was something that I heard a lot of managers struggle with, is I don’t really know what all my team members are working on.

Even if you have us on, or clickup or whatever system you’re using it’s agreeing, but what are the big moments? And so I actually created a resource I wanna share with it here, this simple template where you ask folks to share. What their focus is for the week. What are some of the wins that they landed, and then what are the places they suck?

This is like the one-on-one agenda because when folks are adding to that on a weekly basis, now you have a whole catalog of accomplishments and wins that you can be talking through in the one-on-ones you can be sharing with your executives to help that person get more reach. When you go back to write the performance review, you have all of that logged, and it’s a really great way to capture that, and that’s available to folks at lia garvin.com/snippets. It’s called snippets deliberately because if you ask them to fill out a status report, they’re not gonna do it. They’re going to think you’re tracking their work too tightly. And it’s just something simple, right? And I encourage folks to have each team member have a rolling dock of snippets where they add it every Friday, the end of the week, you can celebrate these wins.

And the way you frame that with your team member of why they’re filling this out is like, Hey, I wanna be able to recognize. When something happens, I wanna be able to share that with our VP or whoever. I wanna know that you’re not spread too thin or focused on stuff that someone else is focused on.

And also be able to support you when you’re stuck. So this snippets tool is like the most, my most game changing, favorite tool. So grab it at liagarvin.com/snippets. And it’s really powerful for recognition because you’re getting your team members in the habit of sharing their wins.

David Rice: Oh, that’s perfect.

And yeah especially now when people are. After say like reductions in force and you’ve got managers where the team of managers that they were working with has been slashed. Now they’re managing two, sometimes three times as many people as they were before. How are you gonna keep track of all that? You know what I mean?

Lia Garvin: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s why making sure folks are focused on the right stuff every week. I think a lot of us, especially when we’re new at managing, when we’re nervous or anxious, we grab tighter control and then we’re like, I have to be in every meeting and every single thing.

And another thing I talk a lot about in the book is. Their struggles with delegating because, and I’ll tell you this from day one, as a managers are like 50 years as a manager, like I’ve seen people de struggle delegating at any level. So it’s not unique to new, but I think this feeling of I’m overloading meetings.

I don’t have any time, and this whole thing that we all feel right now is actually just because we’re not delegating enough. What else could it be? Obviously, it’s obviously that. We maybe don’t have people to delegate it to, even as a mom, right? I have a 6-year-old, like when I feel it’s like I would love to be able to have other people doing many of these tasks, right?

Like someone doing. Drop off from childcare like, but it’s I think this is really our time. We can get more time back by delegating and as a manager you have a team, you have a whole bunch of people that can take some of that off your plate.

David Rice: Yeah. I like that you got into the midst of delegation in the book.

‘Cause delegation is one of those things that, it’s tough when you come out as a new manager and you wanna like shine and you wanna prove yourself, right? But you get, it’s one of those things that you get better as you go and you let go of that urge. You realize that like people will still respect you and know that you’re there, even though you have delegated a lot of stuff.

Right? The manager work, it comes thick and fast anyways. If you’re not drowning, you’re a lucky manager.

Lia Garvin: Yeah. You’re an unusual one. Yeah.

David Rice: You’re an unusual one in this workforce. The psychological hurdles though that are attached to delegation and that’s, they’re tough to overcome.

Lia Garvin: Exactly. And I think we, I actually had a episode on my podcast, the New Manager Playbook podcast last week. That was like delegating a fear of delegating is really a trust issue. It’s because we don’t trust ourselves that I actually have a, I have a good sense of the work where I know what to hand off, or I’m gonna do it effectively, or I just get in this intuitive zone.

I, I only know how to do it when I’m doing it. We don’t trust our team members that they’re ready. A lot of it’s like the bulk of the trust issue is like they’re not ready or they won’t do it exactly how I wanna do it. Then we’re not really trusting that. The work product and then with our own managers.

I think a lot of us, what you said is I’m trying to prove my value. I’m trying to prove my worth. If I delegate this, people look over and be like, what does she do here? Yeah and it’s no one’s thinking that, but that’s where I see folks get the most worried. My workshops are managers.

I see this come up a lot when I talk about delegating. They’re like horrified at the idea of it because it’s then what am I supposed to do? They need me, my team wants me in the meetings. And then people are gonna look at me and think, why are we gonna have you here? And it’s again, like I don’t really think that’s typically no one is really thinking about, but that fear is that.

I don’t have another way to prove my value than doing all this or being in these meetings. So then it’s like a role clarity issue that I think is important that we’re establishing with folks before we make them into a manager. Okay, here’s really what your job consists of now.

David Rice: I think you hit it on the head right there. You said, I don’t have another way to prove my value. And it’s what that translates to is I don’t know another way to impact the business.

Lia Garvin: Yes.

David Rice: And that’s a problem for managers because that’s a leadership issue where that hasn’t been communicated down as what is it that we expect from this role and how is it different from what you did before?

And how are you gonna drive success from this seat? It’s a hard thing that I, and they lead. A lot of companies kinda leave you on your own to figure it out and it’s difficult to navigate.

Lia Garvin: Yeah, exactly.

David Rice: I could talk about this stuff all day with you, but.

Lia Garvin: Oh, me too.

David Rice: Before we go, I want to give you an opportunity to, plug anything that you want. Tell people where they can connect with you, find out more about what you have going on.

Lia Garvin: Yeah, so I’d say couple places. My website, liagarvin.com. You can find all about working with me. Grab a copy of the New Manager Playbook there, or on Amazon or wherever you get books. That snippets, the template I mentioned is liagarvin.com/snippets. And then my podcast, the New Manager Playbook podcast is a great place to get a lot of detailed information on the tips and tools of stuff we talked about today.

The way that I support teams from companies big and small, from Fortune five hundreds to small business owners and founders is through workshops. I have training programs directly related to the new manager playbook. We do offsites team and individual coaching. Really kind of anything when it comes to building a great team and great managers, it’s areas I support.

So if you’re like, yeah, I think I need a little love here it’s a struggle ’cause we’re all struggling and then absolutely do reach out. I’d love to support.

David Rice: Excellent. The last thing is we have a tradition here on the podcast. Before we sign off, I give every guest a chance to ask me a question, so I’m gonna turn it over to you. Ask me anything you want.

Lia Garvin: So I like to ask folks either, I’ll give you an option, a quick example of your best or worst manager that had the biggest impact on you. So not just a bad manager, that sucks. You never thought about it again, what manager, good or bad, had the biggest impact on you?

David Rice: I always like to go with the good and the one that had the most impact on me. He was a manager. I had, when I worked in an organization where I was, we were working in higher ed and it was a difficult space to navigate and he was a. Like a former editor of a newspaper and I was a former journalist, and so he was teaching me how to navigate the corporate world instead of the newsroom.

Right? And so he was really good at that, but he was also just really good at challenging me to see things in different ways and look at an opportunity as, yeah, we could do that. Let’s still do that actually. But as part of that, we’ll develop like a whole new thing and. One of the things he did was he challenged me in ways that like, it got me to try new creative things that I’d never tried before, which then opened up new doors.

So for example, I, prior to that time, I had done a a sports podcast with some friends, but I had never made like a corporate podcast and I didn’t even know how I would start, and he was like try it. Let’s see. And then it turned out to be a thing that I did really well and I ended up launching a bunch of other podcasts.

We also realized like maybe the people management route, like the traditional manager route wasn’t the right fit for me in that org. It’s not that I couldn’t do it, he said to me, he is you can totally do it, but wouldn’t it be better if you were like managing the process of launching new things?

Wouldn’t that be more interesting? Because we didn’t have an opening. There was no route forward for me in people management at that time, and he was like, but we need to progress your career forward. So let’s try to be more creative about how we do it. And even just saying that to me was like, I felt really invested in, I felt like this person sees me and they see like my talent and my effort.

And that’s, when you’re an employee, you’re like, I like it here.

Lia Garvin: Yeah. Yeah.

David Rice: That makes you wanna stay. And I did until he wasn’t there anymore. Yeah. Then it was. I’m not really seeing it as much once he wasn’t there, but it was, yeah, it was one of those things like it’s very enlightening when you experience that.

And that’s the kind of thing I took into when I started managing people. I was like, okay, let me apply that same type of thinking and logic and how can I challenge them And yeah.

Lia Garvin: Love that.

David Rice: It’s been great having you on today. I really enjoyed the discussion.

Lia Garvin: Yeah, thank you. Me too.

David Rice: Listeners, if you haven’t done so already, head on over to peoplemanagingpeople.com/subscribe. Get signed up for the newsletter, you’ll get podcasts, all our latest articles and newsletter sends and everything straight to your inbox. So check that out.

Check out Lia’s podcast. It sounds really good. Do check out the book. I’ve given it a read and it’s not a difficult read by any means, and it’s definitely informative and thought provoking, so you just wanna check that out.

And until next time, learn how to delegate.

Lia Garvin: Yes!