Managing Made Simple

Lia Garvin
  • 4.9 (94)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

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

  1. 5d ago

    How to create a sense of urgency without micromanaging

    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

  2. Sep 22

    The tool that pours rocket fuel on employee motivation

    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

  3. Sep 15

    The 3-step conversation that retains your best employees

    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

  4. Sep 8

    The Sit-Down: the conversation that makes feedback and recognition easier

    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

  5. Sep 1

    How to make 1:1s the most impactful meetings of your week

    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

  6. Aug 25

    How to be a great Player-Coach manager

    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

  7. Aug 18

    Revenue goals don’t motivate your employees. Here’s what does.

    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

  8. Aug 11

    The reason your team didn’t follow your plan - and what to do

    You gave your team the full picture: the research, the roadmap, the direction. They said they were on board. Then nothing moved. In this episode, Lia Garvin breaks down the gap between strategy and implementation, why it's the most expensive gap on any team, and what it actually looks like to bridge it. In this episode you will learn: Why giving your team a clear strategy isn't enough to get anyone to follow it The difference between knowing what to do and actually internalizing, owning, and doing it What the behaviors on the surface, the quiet team member, the recurring detail miss, the title question every week, are often actually telling you Why AI has made the strategy side faster and the implementation gap wider What implementation looks like in practice: the conversation, the system, the communication 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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4.9
out of 5
94 Ratings

About

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

Information

  • Creator
    Lia Garvin
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Managing Made Simple
  • Show Website
    Managing Made Simple

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