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Managing Made Simple

Managing Made Simple is a weekly leadership and management podcast for people managers, business owners, and founders who want to lead high-performing teams without falling back into the work themselves.

Each week, host Lia Garvin- 3x bestselling author and former team operations leader at Google, Apple, and Microsoft- breaks down the real, everyday challenges of leading teams, giving feedback, delegating, creating team accountability, high performing culture, retention, and more with performance with practical strategies you can implement immediately. Lia’s work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune.

With Lia, you get real talk and actionable leadership insights that make it easier to manage your team and get better results from your people.

If you’re asking leadership questions like:
• How do I get my team to take ownership and accountability for their work?
• Why do I have to repeat myself constantly as a manager?
• How do I know if I hired the wrong employee?
• How do I delegate effectively without things falling apart or micromanaging?
• How can managers tell if team members are overusing AI at work?
• What actually motivates employees today?
• How do I give feedback that actually moves the needle?
• How do I communicate vision, expectations, and strategy clearly?
• What are best practices for performance reviews, compensation, and growth conversations?

How do you lead a team through change, uncertainty, and rapid growth with confidence?

You’ll find the tools, frameworks, and leadership strategies you need to lead your team better, starting today.

Managing Made Simple:
✔ Corporate managers navigating continual change

✔ Founders & Business Owners scaling teams without burning people out
✔ Entrepreneurs balancing business strategy and people leadership
✔ Experienced leaders ready to modernize how they manage teams

New episodes drop every Tuesday, delivering leadership lessons, people management tools, and team-building strategies you can apply immediately.

Learn more at liagarvin.com

Latest Episodes:

Second in command not stepping up? Wrong fit or wrong expectations Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

When your second in command isn't stepping up, it's tempting to decide you hired the wrong person. But most new number twos think the job is to do everything themselves, so they say yes to all of it, get spread too thin, and lose track of what matters most. In this episode, Lia shares how to tell if it's the wrong fit or the wrong expectations, and how to reset the expectation so your successor can start running things the way you hired them to.

In this episode you will learn:

How to tell whether you have the wrong person or the wrong expectations
The biggest symptom that your number two thinks they have to do everything
Why building a leadership bench raises what your business is worth
What a successor should and shouldn't copy from you
How to have the expectation reset conversation with your number two
How long to give it before you make the call

Resources mentioned:

Work with Lia on your number two's role and coaching: liagarvin.com/contact

Connect with me:

Website: www.liagarvin.com
Email: hello@liagarvin.com
Free guide to making hard conversations easier: liagarvin.com/convo
Instagram: @lia.garvin
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/liagarvin

3 things great leaders do, no matter the team size or industry Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

Being a leader people want to work for looks the same on every team, even when the challenge on yours feels like nobody else has ever dealt with it. A team at an insurance company and a team at a creative agency run into the same dynamics, and the same three tools motivate and keep people on both: build trust, be clear, and delegate and motivate. In this episode, Lia walks through the framework from her keynote and how to use it with your team, whatever your team looks like.

In this episode you will learn:

Why the same team dynamics show up in every industry, at every size
How to set an intention as a leader so your team gets the same you on Monday and Thursday
Why trust is the first thing to build, and what happens on a team without it
The question to ask instead of "why aren't they doing it?"
How accountability and The Sit-Down create clarity
Why delegation is a trust issue, not a skill issue, and the three places that trust breaks down
Coaching questions that start with what and how, never why

Resources mentioned:

The New Manager Playbook: liagarvin.com or Amazon
Bring this keynote to your team or event: hello@liagarvin.com

Connect with me:

Website: www.liagarvin.com
Email: hello@liagarvin.com
Free guide to making hard conversations easier: liagarvin.com/convo
Instagram: @lia.garvin
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/liagarvin

How to give a performance review your team won't dread Oct 06, 2026

Show notes

How to run performance reviews your team doesn't dread: a simple performance review conversation, a one-page self-assessment, and feedback with zero surprises. Performance reviews fill employees with stress because they feel like one moment that could decide a career, and leaders dread them too. In this episode, Lia breaks down how to structure the review so your team member leaves with a plan they own, whether your company runs a heavy review cycle or you've never run a review at all.

In this episode you will learn:

The two things every performance review covers: looking back and looking ahead
How long a performance review meeting should be
How to set up a one-page employee self-assessment, and what to ask for in it
What a team member's self-reflection tells you about their future on your team
How to give specific feedback in a review that reinforces what you've already discussed
Why your team member should own the follow-ups, and why skipping reviews costs you your best people

Resources mentioned:

The New Manager Playbook: liagarvin.com or Amazon
Owning Your Impact workshop: liagarvin.com/contact

Connect with me:

Website: www.liagarvin.com
Email: hello@liagarvin.com
Free guide to making hard conversations easier: liagarvin.com/convo
Instagram: @lia.garvin
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/liagarvin

How to create a sense of urgency without micromanaging Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

Creating a sense of urgency on your team starts with the ask. When employees don’t follow through, the handoff was usually missing something. You ask for the client email, the deck, or the vendor follow-up, they say “on it,” and a day later you’re doing it yourself and wondering if anyone cares. In this episode, Lia breaks down the three pieces of a handoff that turn “on it” into ownership: a deadline, the reason behind it, and a two-minute check that it’s doable.

In this episode you will learn:

Why “on it” is an incomplete handoff, and how to fix it inside the ask
How to put a deadline on a request without it feeling like micromanaging
How to share context so the deadline matters to your team member, even when the reason is your own workload
The questions that get your employee to own the urgency and flag risks early
How to tell a delegation problem from a performance problem

Resources mentioned:

Work with Lia on mapping how work gets done on your team: liagarvin.com/contact
Tell Lia how the three steps went with your team: hello@liagarvin.com

Connect with Lia:

Website: www.liagarvin.com
Email: hello@liagarvin.com
Instagram: @lia.garvin
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/liagarvin

The tool that pours rocket fuel on employee motivation Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

What to say instead of good job: "great work" and "nice job" are comments anybody could get, and specific employee recognition is a completely different tool. This episode breaks down acknowledgement, naming a quality you see in someone out loud, and why one sentence from a leader can change what a person believes they're capable of. Lia shares the sentence a manager said to her at a conference that changed the trajectory of her career, and the two-step method for doing it with your own team this week.

In this episode you will learn:

Why "I think you're good at this" undoes the compliment, and the two words to use instead
The two-step method for recognizing your team members: pay attention first, then name it out loud
Where to find hard evidence of what your people are great at when you're not sitting next to them all day
What to say when someone pushes back and tells you no, they're not good at that
The three rules for naming a strength in an employee: it has to relate, it has to make sense, and it has to be true
Why the people who are best at something are usually the last to know it's rare

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

The 3-step conversation that retains your best employees Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

How to keep employees from quitting rarely comes down to money. Gallup found 42% of voluntary employee turnover is preventable, and most of it traces back to one conversation that never happened. In this episode, Lia breaks down the retention conversation to have with your best person before they start looking, and tells two stories from her own career where 30 minutes would have kept her in a job she loved.

In this episode you will learn:

Why the person about to quit almost never tells their manager first, and what they do instead
What made a promotion conversation at Google land as nothing, and the version that would have kept her on the team
What to say when the answer is no and you can't change it, so the no doesn't end the relationship
The 3 steps of The Sit-Down applied to employee retention, including the words to open with
Why waiting for your team to raise a concern first never works, even for approachable leaders
The signals a good employee sends for months before the resignation lands

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

The Sit-Down: the conversation that makes feedback and recognition easier Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

The hard conversation with an employee you keep putting off has a structure. Giving feedback to an employee does not have to become a whole thing. In this episode, Lia breaks down the Sit-Down: one thirty-minute conversation, three steps, that works for the missed deadline, the behavior nobody has named out loud, the change your team did not ask for, and the person doing great work who has not heard about it in six months.

In this episode you will learn:

The three steps of the Sit-Down, and why leaders skip the first one
Why "hey, can we talk" makes people brace for bad news, and what to say instead
The exact language for recognizing a high performer so it lands as a career plan, not a compliment
What to say to the employee who keeps saying "I'm on it" and never finishes the work
How to follow up in writing so you have documentation without making it feel like a case file
How the same three steps work when you are announcing a re-org or a change nobody asked for

Resources mentioned:

Free guide, the Sit-Down across five sticky team situations: liagarvin.com/convo

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

How to make 1:1s the most impactful meetings of your week Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

One on one meetings are the first thing leaders cancel and the one that costs the most. The fix isn't discipline, it's your one on one meeting agenda. In research run across Google, the top two behaviors employees named when they didn't feel supported by their manager were both about this meeting: canceling it, and showing up late. Lia breaks down why this is the most impactful meeting of your week, why yours feels pointless right now, and the four-part agenda that fixes it in fifteen minutes.

In this episode you will learn:

Why canceling and rescheduling one on ones lands harder on your team than you think
What you only ever find out in a one on one, and never at the coffee cart or on a client call
How your next delegation decision surfaces in this meeting
The three reasons one on ones get canceled, and the fix for each one
The four-part agenda: highlights, lowlights, blockers, and feedback
What to ask when you get to the end and there's time left over

Resources mentioned:

The New Manager Playbook, which has the one on one agenda template: liagarvin.com/newmanagerplaybook

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

How to be a great Player-Coach manager Aug 25, 2026

Show notes

Player coach management breaks down the same way every time: the player work wins and the coaching slides. If you lead a team and carry your own deliverables, you already know how the week goes. The player work has deadlines and escalations. Coaching has none of that on a Tuesday, so the one on ones come off the calendar first, starting with the people who seem fine. In this episode, Lia breaks down what that costs you and your team, and the three moves that get you back into the coach half of the job this week.

In this episode you will learn:

Why the player half of the job always wins when you're spread thin
The high performers most at risk while you're heads down on your own deliverables
How to make one on ones survivable at 15 to 30 minutes every other week
Why status updates don't belong in your one on one, and where to put them instead
The one question to ask about every piece of work that lands on your plate
What it means when the answer to that question is no, every single time

Resources mentioned:

Weekly team check-in tool: liagarvin.com/snippets
Advisory and manager training: liagarvin.com/contact

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

Revenue goals don’t motivate your employees. Here’s what does. Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Revenue goals don’t motivate employees. The fix is one metric per role that each person can control, a number their own daily work moves. In this episode, Lia Garvin explains why the big number on your slide lands as “somebody is taking that home and it isn’t me,” and what to put in front of your team instead.

Your team can name the company goal. They can name their task list. Nothing connects the two, so they nod in the meeting and nothing changes on Tuesday. Lia walks through how to name an individual metric for every role, why explaining the cost of running your business backfires, and how to build the raises and bonuses around the numbers people actually control.

In this episode you will learn:

Why a company revenue goal demotivates the people you need most
The one sentence every person on your team should be able to finish out loud
What the metric looks like for a front desk role, an injector, a creative team, and a project manager
Why walking your team through the P&L makes the disconnect worse
What changes about a month in, when people start solving for their own number
How to structure bonuses, commissions, and raises around a metric each person controls

Resources mentioned:

Work with Lia (Ops Playbook for business owners, advisory sessions for corporate managers): liagarvin.com/contact

Download my FREE guide to making hard conversations with your team easier at liagarvin.com/convo

Looking for support for yourself of your team? I've got you covered.
Explore manager training, leaders keynotes & offsites, and 1:1 advisory, or my 90-Day-COO program for business owners who want simple systems that actually work.

I transform teams from cost centers to profit centers with practical tools and research-backed strategies that make managing EASIER.

Get all the details at: www.liagarvin.com
Contact: liagarvin.com/contact
Email: hello@liagarvin.com

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lia.garvin
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lia.Garvin

--

© 2026 Lia Garvin / Managing Made Simple

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