How to run better meetings and actually get results

Dealing with culture issues or connectivity issues in your team. I think facilitation can be a much more meaningful way sometimes to deal with that than to be like, we’re gonna throw you into like a workshop on getting along together, and then you’re gonna go to a happy hour and chit chat. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager from conflicts to feedback, to delegating and more.

We will leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it and everything in between. Doesn’t matter if you’re a new manager looking for some tips or a seasoned manager looking up their game. Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am so excited to have Megan Karsh with me. Megan founded the (em) Collective after leading organizations in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cambodia for Stanford University and the un.

She’s inspired to help values-driven leaders and organizations reach their full potential via coaching and facilitation. Megan and I met a few years ago through one of her negotiation workshops. She was teaching at. And I was immediately drawn to both how practical and actionable she made the content. Even as someone who is such an expert in the space and by all of the work that she does to amplify the work of women in the workplace. Megan, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Leah. It’s great to be here. Yeah. So, you know, there’s a ton of places we could have gone with this conversation, and as Megan and I were exploring what to talk about, the topic of facilitation really stood out. You know, managers are having to facilitate so many conversations these days. We’re constantly in meetings. We’re having to influence our teams in meetings, and yet so many of us struggle with how to keep the conversation engaging and impactful as an expert, not only in facilitation, but in teaching facilitation skills.

How meta is that, Megan? I wanted to talk today about how managers can have more influence and impact on their teams through the art of facilitation. Essentially, we wanna talk about how to make you better at doing. So to kick us off, Megan, why don’t you define what is facilitation to you and what does it have to do with meeting? Great question. So facilitation, I mean, what I go to always is just the root of the word facilitation is about facility being facile.

It’s about making processes easier. Facile, you know, obviously means easy. And that’s, I mean, that’s what I’m so interested in. The people piece of work. I mean, I just kind of affectionately call it that. But the how we manage, how we deal with the relationships, how we deal with power, how we deal with, you know, strategy in terms of the people part and all the communications and all of the interests, we kind of have to juggle.

And facilitation’s a huge part of that. It’s about being really strategic and conscious about that people piece. Yeah. And so with that said, where do you see managers getting stuck when it comes to facilitating meeting? Well, I’d say the biggest thing is probably not even being aware that facilitation is. Thing. Yeah. And so not really seeing all of the opportunities to facilitate. That’s the biggest thing. And so that’s why I love teaching it, right? Because it’s like as soon as you bring their awareness to it and say, look, there’s like a whole kind of framework here.

There’s a ton of tools, there’s it. The learning curve is so steep because it’s really just that lack of awareness. That’s contributing to like the, the not facilitating effectively. And it’s also great cause a lot of people have intuited their way into things. So as soon as you say like, what you’re actually doing is facilitation and this is the art of facilitation, all of a sudden, I mean, they could just run with it. Cuz they’ve already, like I said, intuited their way into a lot of the, the principles and practice.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, now we talked about more than ever we are in back to back meetings. If you have a distributed team or hybrid or you’re, you’re facilitating across partially in person and virtual or navigating all kinds of things. Um, I think people are really struggling with how to have effective meetings. And like you say, when you think about it intentionally, you think, oh, there’s actually some. Framework or structure I could put behind this instead of just kind of winging it and hoping for the best.

And I think we all are struggling with finding that balance and with lack of a framework we find ourselves. Just, okay, let’s have a meeting because we we’re used to that, or we know that was what, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But thinking about it with more intention, when are the right moments to do that? How do we wanna structure that? There’s so much more impact we could have and so much better use of our time.

I mean, I think a, a huge thing that’s coming up for folks is being burned out, feeling like they’re chained to their desk. That they’re just always in. Especially, you know, if you’re working from home, you might not leave this one chair for eight hours. You know, and some of those conversations were useful, some weren’t, but how to have actually more structure on that. Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, I think that’s somehow I got into facilitation.

Frankly, I’ve learned to cultivate a lot of patience over the years, but I’m not always my patient person. I like efficiency. I like impact. And so, you know, I’m always kind of observing these like complex like messy interactions, whether it was growing up with my family or you know, in the organizations I was in. And I was like, this, this has gotta be easier. Like it’s gotta be more efficient. And then realizing, yeah, oh, that’s what the art of facilitation is about.

Yes. And I’m a big fan of, you know, always it’s a joke now I think it’s a meme. You know, we’ll give you five minutes back of your life and be like, oh, good. Now I can achieve all my hopes and dreams and career and life goals with that five minutes. But I’m always a fan before you dive into. If you’re done ending early, like the, the questions that come at the last minute of the meeting, I don’t know if there’s a bigger pet peeve I have in my life and like then it’s like, just let it, let, just let me get on with my life.

But anyway. Well, with that being said, pet peeves are mistakes, you know? What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see managers and, and teams make with how they facilitate meetings? Oh, well. Well, this gives me an opportunity to introduce one of the biggest frameworks related to facilitation, which is G R P, goals, roles, process. And I’d say basically it’s like, that’s how to think about. Facilitating a meeting or a decision making process or anything, and where they go wrong is right off the bat with the G.

The goals I see a lot of times managers, leaders, just diving into a process without really taking the time at the outset to set. Smart goals, and I’m sure you know that acronym, but it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely, or time-bound. And so, you know, they’ll kind of be like, all right, well we need to reach this big decision, so we need to get everyone in the room. We need the product managers, we need the engineers, we need, you know, but then they haven’t really, the goal isn’t clear.

It’s like, okay, you need to reach, which, like, what decision are we doing? The interim decision? Are we making the decision about like the long-term strategic objective? Who you know, Are, is it gonna be a consensus decision? Is it gonna be, do we need unanimity? Like it’s not spending that time up front of being like, what does success look like? So then they just dive in and kind of like flounder their way through. And at the end you can’t even really say like, was this meeting a success?

So that’s probably the biggest thing I see. And then that’s. So consequential because the goal is what should determine the roles and the process, the R and the piece. So once you’re really clear on the goals, if you’re like, okay, we don’t need to reach this huge long-term decision, we need to make a decision about the next best step, you might not need all those stakeholders in the room cuz the next step may only pertain to the engineering team.

And then it’s like, okay, actually this just needs to be a meeting and does it even need to be with all the engineers or does it need to be with the lead? You know, then with the process, Like, okay, if this is just a decision about the best next step, does it actually need to be an in-person meeting? Might it be like an async doc that talks about the considerations for the next step? So I just, that’s the biggest thing is like forcing yourself to use the same smart goals like discipline that you do for like a product strategy for whatever your human process.

Yes. Oh my gosh, I love this so much because you know, I think one, this is a teaching moment for managers to use with their teams. I think one thing I see managers struggle with a lot is how to teach their own team members how to run a meeting effectively or get alignment around an idea or reach a decision. And this is the thing that you can use to coach your own team members around, Hey, here is a framework that we use so that you can be successful.

And like you say, that goal setting, I mean, that’s same. It’s where I’ve seen so many people go wrong. Halfway through a meeting, people are going, why are we even here? Or what was the point of this meeting? Or are we supposed to reach a decision meetings then go off track? You have to bring everybody together again. You didn’t realize you were having a decision, and I think especially when we’re managing a group with a lot of senior stakeholders, this allows you to have a lot more control over the meeting.

I mean, I’ve been in so many situations in my career where I was like tasked by the senior, senior executive to make sure we stay on. And then when I try to do that, they look at me like, don’t speak right now, and I feel disempowered, but it’s because we didn’t figure out the goals. Like, Hey, we have to make a decision here, versus we just want to kind of brainstorm versus, you know, we’re here to get an update on a, on a product strategy.

But those are also different and it allows you to better have. You know, control and, and, and to be able to move that agenda along in a meeting. 100%. Yeah. And you said two things that prompted some thoughts for me. So first is it’s one of the issues with the frustration in the room is it’s the R piece. It’s like, yeah, if you’d been clear on the goals, like. Does that senior person need to be in the room?

Like, is this actually not the best use of their time? Like did they need to be brought in later in the process? Cuz all you need is their sign off and they don’t need to see the sausage being made. So that’s just an example of like, it really helps you design the process where probably everyone’s gonna feel a little less like frustrated, a little less angsty. This also made me think though of the opposite problem. So I mentioned the issue.

There isn’t clarity on the goals and all the problems that causes a big issue. I see. Cuz I’m brought in a lot of times, as you know, an outside facilitator to help the group. I’ll see that Too many goals, but it’s It’s still not smart goals, right? Yeah, because it’s not achievable. But I’ll say, they’ll call me in and they’ll be like, where are you gonna do a two day leadership retreat? And I’m like, okay, great.

Like what are you trying to achieve here? What are the. They will get me this laundry. They’ll be like, we’re gonna resolve all of our like, conflict and culture issues, and we’re gonna reach a decision about this change in our like mission statement, and we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do, and I’m like, okay. Sh, stop. Exactly. Be really realistic about what’s achievable because human processes like humans, Their process and everything demands its process and you just have to be realistic sometimes about like the time things take and then how to do it most efficiently.

But it’s going to like, especially big weighty decisions like that around like either a mission statement or around, you know, major issues with the culture. That one, it’s two days is only enough to kinda get into one, and then you’ve gotta be like, what are the goals within that one? Yeah, so I spent a lot of time reigning people in about their time. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. On the roles topic, I think this is such an opportunity for managers to empower their team members to have pieces of that decision, and it’s a great moment to push decisions down the chain.

And I talk about this a lot when I talk about micromanagement, is one of the tells that you’re in too many of the details is when you are making all the decisions, when everyone is going to just you. And I think for manager, A lot of times we’re not micromanaging intentionally, but if we’ve inadvertently created a situation or a dynamic where everyone is coming to us for decisions, that is a wake up call that we could be doing better at pushing the decisions down and creating opportunities for others to make smaller decisions.

And so using this framework when you get to roles, you can actually sort of have that almost pre-mortem conversation of who’s taking this piece, who’s taking this, who wants to run with this piece, and create that sense of ownership in a smaller scale. That meeting or that large decision that you have to make. I love that point. I’m all about like, how do we, about empowering but not in this like gestural, ridiculous way. Empowering in the sense of like giving some actual power too.

Yeah. Giving enough resources and structures so people can grow and um, yeah. And. Evolve, you know, and actualize their like influence and power. So just a tool I wanna mention cuz you said it exactly where it’s like, can you carve off a piece, delegate it, then they come to the meeting with something more baked where you know you’re not doing the low level decision making. This is where I love working group. Oops. So sometimes it’s like, let’s say that you know, you’re gonna bring the team together in a meeting, and there’s like interim decisions that have to be made, and the best use of the meeting would be to make the bigger decision.

You couldn’t create little working groups where it’s like, you guys go, you deal with this stream of the decision making process, come present to the group, tell us where you arrived at with that interim decision, and we’ll decide to adopt it or not. But like the thinking has largely been done. Streams and then we can move to the bigger decision, the consequential one. Yeah. And so working groups can be a great, very empowering way to do that.

Absolutely. And working groups can also be a few things. It can be cross pollination of different people to understand different roles. It can be a way to let people, you know, empower people to step up as leaders by kind of mixing up, you know, people of different levels of seniority. People get exposure by being in a working group. I think it’s a great way to build empathy across team members. And I think a lot of. You know, we, we spend all this effort to bring on team members of different backgrounds and then we create no opportunities for them to be getting to know each other and, and learning about each other and, you know, being in this conversations across different kinds of roles.

So you’re really speaking to, you’re speaking straight to my heart. One another reason, I mean, I love facilitation. Cause like I said, very impact and efficiency. But also I have always been someone where I’m. I don’t connect well with people through just like small talk and I connect when we’re like in it together. We have like a short purpose. We’re doing something, you know? So one of the things I’ve always loved about facilitation is this is why I love facilitating like processes and I facilitate some like learning things, but I.

People connect so well when they kind of lose themselves and they are talking about something substantive and they have a shared purpose. Yeah. So if you’re dealing with culture issues or connectivity issues in your team, I think facilitation can be a much more meaningful way sometimes to deal with that than to be like, we’re gonna throw you into like a workshop on getting along together and then you’re gonna go to a happy hour and chit chat.

Yeah. Not there’s a time and place for those. But I do think that you can really facilitate to build connectivity between your team and like you said, especially in like somewhat strategic ways where you’re needing to, to create bridges across maybe different divides. Yes. So that’s a huge benefit. I mean, creating more connection and cohesion and collaboration. What are some other ways that Ben, that managers benefit from applying some of these? Well, I think it’s come out, you mentioned kind of hybrid and remote before, and then I know we’ve been talking about that a lot and it’s a really big challenge.

Being thoughtful about facilitation and understanding some of the facilitation frameworks and tools is super helpful for managing a hybrid team because if you. Again, we kind of get that clarity on like, okay, what process are we talking about here? We’re assuming we just need to have a meeting, but like, let’s actually instead look at our goals instead of a singular meeting where everyone comes in together. Is it, if we’re trying to reach these decisions, is it maybe first we do an asynchronistic like Google Doc and get everyone’s input on a thing?

Then is it, you know, we do a series of smaller group Zoom calls and then you. Maybe we don’t even need an in-person, but maybe the in-person comes at the end where, you know, we can get a lot more value out of everyone being there. So I think again, just that thoughtfulness about process design and then facilitating it to best achieve your goals is very important to understand as you’re trying to figure out how to deal with hybrid teams.

I love that. And I wanna, you know, just jump in with, this is a time saver. Okay? Whenever I talk about any of these kinds of tools, and I’m sure when you do, two people might say, oh gosh, well I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time to set the stage. You actually don’t have time for every decision to be reopened because everyone was unclear. You don’t have time for people to be totally misaligned or to have the meeting three or four times because you didn’t get to the point of it, or you get to, didn’t get to that decision or approval.

And so when we talk about these things, the, the intentionality, this is the biggest time saver of all. Thinking about it upfront, being super clear upfront, delegating where you can, empowering people. This is the biggest optimization strategy for time. If I could just be so, like I said, I mean, I’m just someone I think just ever since I was little, like I’ll watch, I’m fascinated by complex. Human processes, whether within an individual, within kind of relationships, within a larger community.

And I’ve always just been like all the trade offs people make, like the short term versus long term gain. Yeah. You know, I think if everyone would just upfront learn some facilitation tools, some strategies and tools around, I. Some strategies and tools around conflict management, we’d be living in like such a different world. Yes. And what happens instead is like no one takes the time to build their capacity in just those things that down the road reduce so much churn and so much friction.

So I mean, I just wanna underscore your point. Like you don’t have time to not learn this stuff. And also it’s just, it’s. You don’t have to get a PhD in it. Like just even understanding some of the very basic strategies, basic principles, and having a few tools in your toolkit is a game changer. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s my goal with this show is, you know, making it simpler, making it easier, making it more accessible for managers because can we recognize it’s really hard right now?

There are so many new things that you have to be thinking about. There’s, even if you were working with a distributed team before, even if you did a lot, you had a hybrid or you worked in a lot of these things. Similar, I think the context is different. Mm-hmm. We have higher burnout than ever. More, more people are, you know, rethinking their purpose. There’s women leaving the workplace at higher numbers than ever because of lack of recognition and career opportunities.

There’s, there’s so much. There’s a new generation entering the workforce, so, There’s a lot that’s new here for managers and recognizing stuff got a lot more complicated. It’s really invaluable to have some frameworks to make it easier for yourself. If I can just make two points. First one, I mean, you said you mentioned about women and about the burnout rates and how frustrated women are. I want to make a point here cause I think it’s so important.

The other reason, I’m so glad that you’re highlighting facilitation. This podcast and giving a name to it is, so what I do notice is the facilitation work that is being done is often being done by women on the team. Even if they don’t know it. There’s a lot of like intuit in their way into it and then doing a lot of that smoothing and trying to like put the. People in place and the pieces in place.

And what’ll happen sometimes is they’ll come to me and they’ll just be like, I had an amazing coaching client where, you know, she came and she’s like, I’m just not sure if I’m not in the right role. I think I’m letting my team down. You know, I feel like I’m working a hundred hours a week, but I can only point to this 20%. And I was like, tell me about your week. Like, let’s walk through it.

Tell me everything you were doing. And as she described it, I was like, you’re your entire orgs like facilitator. Yeah. I was like, all you’re doing is facilitating processes, influencing stakeholders, aligning everyone. And I was like, the issue isn’t that you’re not getting the job done. I was like, we need to rewrite your per feedback. Yes. So that you Job description. Yeah. So that you’re naming these incredibly critical skills for the org. And as soon as she did, I mean, she was promoted like a year ago.

Oh my God. But it was so I think a lot of people are doing this work, but not able to name it and claim it. Yes. So I think also there needs to be much more awareness around facilitation and like influencing strategies cuz of that. Cuz I think a lot of that work is unseen, but it’s invaluable. Yes, absolutely. And now that’s a preview to another conversation we’ll be having on this show about owning your accomplishments and that’s, this is something I would love to talk more about with you is like, yeah, I do a lot of work with women on, you know, shaping that narrative and really owning some of these things and how strategic they are instead of downplaying.

You know, that’s nothing, or that’s just not part of my job or, or whatever of this thing had this impact moving from the what to the, so, So I think that’s a whole other conversation. I love. Yeah, I’ll save it for that. But just what facilitation is and that that’s what you’re doing. Yeah. The other thing I was gonna say was just around the time piece, I wanted to give an example cuz you were saying, you know, you can’t afford to not do this.

So let me give an example. Let’s say that you have a. Really big involved decision making process and you’re like, we don’t have time to stop and like think of a whole process design before this. So you dive in and you end up, you’ve got everyone in the room and you’re like, we have to reach this important decision about the product, right? Then you spend the next, however, who knows however many hours, right? Where you’re just trying to reach a decision, but you haven’t defined, again, is it consensus, is it unanimity?

Like what are we optimizing for? If you had stopped at the outset and been like, First, let’s have an initial meeting before the big meeting where we come to agreement about what the criteria are, what are we optimizing for, and then we, you know, sit there after and through an Async doc, we all decide what the priority of criteria are. Then we come into the room and we say, okay, how are we giving more weight? Like are some people’s decisions being prioritized more?

Okay. No, everyone has the same one, but are we just, is it a free for all? Well, we’re all gonna say what we wanna do. Let’s say instead you use this tool called.voting dot voting’s. Cool. You say, okay, everyone’s gonna get this page of stickers, these dot stickers. You all get 10 sticker. And we’ve now decided what the criteria are. We know we have our four options. You have your 10 stickers where you get to vote on the four options.

You can either go all in and put all 10 of your stickers on one option, or let’s say you’re on the fence and you put five, your stickers on one option, five stickers on another, and at the end we’re gonna see where like the majority of the stickers are. Do you see how like much more efficient you’ve had? One half hour meeting about criteria, one hour meeting of.voting as opposed to this long, conflictual, drawn out thing.

Absolutely. And it’s so much more equitable, like you said. I mean, when everyone, especially if that’s first, obviously as you said, it requires categorizing decisions, but also even if this is just a prestep to figure out, well, where is people’s heads at? Where are people gravitating? Even if they’re not ultimately making the decision, this is so helpful for communicating to your teams of, Hey, we surveyed folks. We know where people are at. We we’re hearing from you.

Mm-hmm. I use the same exercise with the stop start, continue of talking about things we wanna start doing, keep doing, you know, stop doing and using the.voting around different ideas of, hey, where are we kind of landing as a team on, on the things that we wanna change or do differently or, or keep doing. And so that tool you’re talking about, It’s such a powerful strategy to bringing more voices, to have, making sure that, you know, we’re not just aggregating to the loudest person in the room or the more senior person in the room.

And again, it doesn’t have to be the way you reach a final decision, but it’s a, it’s a beautiful way to, to collect inputs and perspectives along the way. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing, I mean, I just love how we’re, we keep tying this to things about culture and inclusivity, cuz I do think that that needs to be kind of the lens on so many things. Yeah. Just one more point, it’s you don’t end up then just defaulting to the loudest voice in the room, but also it’s much more inclusive of people’s.

Thought processes and decision making processes. Yeah, because what also happens a lot of times the way we do decision making or meetings and work is just oriented it, it can disadvantage people who are neurodiverse. It can disadvantage introverts, it can disadvantage people who kind of need to take the information, synthesize it before they’re ready to definitely before they’re ready to speak to it sometimes before they’re ready to take action. So even just processes that, let people work with the info as they’re getting like in different ways and at different paces.

Yeah. It can be much more inclusive. Yeah, absolutely. One last question I think before we start wrapping up is I’d love to connect this to feedback because feedback is is one of those difficult meetings, difficult conversations that managers often struggle with. And I mean, I feel like there’s so many connections here between how you can apply these frameworks, especially the, you know, G R P framework to having an effective feedback conversation. Absolutely. So again, I mean, I love that we’ve kind of focused in on meetings, cuz I do think that’s such a pain point for managers right now.

But going back to your first question about what facilitation is. Facilitation again, Making any process easier. So actually sometimes I even talk about like facilitating processes for ourselves, like facilitating my own, like personal development. It’s just, it’s about, again, that process design based on the goals. So it can absolutely be applied to a feedback process where, you know, you sit in there, let’s say you’re a manager, you’ve gotten back the results of a performance review process, and you’re figuring out what now.

And so you kind of have to say, well, what’s the goal? And it’s like, okay. To improve my direct reports like performance and especially in this direction that the evaluation would indicate. So the goal is related to growth or capacity building, right? There’s another framework that I’ll introduce when that’s your goal. We’ve got a great framework, K S A. Knowledge, skills, attitude. So you might sit there and be like, okay. So for them to get from where they are now to where we all see they could get to first, I have to make sure they wanna get there.

So that suggests your first conversation, Hey, what’s your vision? What are your goals? Like, are we aligned? Do we understand where you’re trying to get to? Okay. You wanna get to the same place we’re assuming. Great. Here’s what it means in terms of knowledge, skills, attitude. What does that mean in terms? Should we set some goals together, some benchmarks? Should we design a way that we can, I can best like mentor or coach you? So that’s just again, like I’m not giving, but that’s a way like you’re using a facilitation kind of model or and facilitation tools to think.

Feedback and being a more of a coaching manager. Yeah, absolutely. And it makes a difficult conversation where you might feel like, uh, like I don’t even know where to begin with this. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. You start with that and now you can organize your ideas, how you wanna support them, organize what you are telling versus coaching, versus holding them accountable for it. It just helps you, like you say, facilitate, make easier, this whole situation.

And I think, you know, a lot of what I talk about in my workshops and with managers is around. Career conversations, the importance of, you know, really understanding what people’s own goals are so that you can find opportunities and, and be proactive and support them through that. But when we haven’t really thought about how to approach these conversations thoughtfully, we often have career conversations with people and feedback conversations about career development. That are like, oh, what, you know, what are you interested in?

Oh, I don’t know. Okay. Like, you know, they just like, they literally don’t go anywhere and they’re painful for everybody involved. Oh God. It, it’s so awkward. But I think this is a great, this is actually a really good thing to start to wrap up on cuz the commonality with everything. I mean, we’ve been talking about facilitation, but we’ve now touched on influence, we’ve touched on feedback, we’ve touched on, you know, growth dealing with. Intentionality. I mean, that’s what I’m all about.

That’s what these skills are all about, is can we bring an intention to, again, that sort of messy, awkward, complex people piece that is so integral to work and like you can’t wish it away. It’s we’re people and we’re in these endeavors together. And so like the people piece is part and parcel and it’s like, can we get more intentional about. And can we kind of design for the realities of it and to be most impactful and most efficient.

And I think one thing I love when I teach facilitation tools, coaching tools, negotiation tools, people find it so empowering cuz they’re like, just like you said, they can explicate what they’re doing and they can kind of say what their intentions are and there are. Guidepost then. Yeah. And if you set, like, especially if you use like a facilitated framework and say to your team, okay, so this year when we do our, you know, coaching conversations after performance evaluation, here’s how it’s gonna go.

First we’re gonna give, you know, have a chat about your goals. Then I’m gonna go through this and then we’re gonna put it in terms of a coaching plan in terms of ksa. Like then everyone knows where they are and you’ve voiced it and it takes away some of that like awkwardness cuz you’re just now walking through a. Yeah, absolutely. I love that because I think a lot of times, not all managers are comfortable with those kinds of conversations, but then direct report might be at a disadvantage because one manager didn’t, you know, have that framework versus another one, like you said, that just came more naturally.

So I think this is why I loved to remind people, listen to this show, these tools, these, these this conversations are not for new managers specifically, these are for any level of managers. Cause at any level of seniority, these are the types of things that you’re wrestling with. Well, and I think one thing that happens a lot, I mean, we all know it. I see this often someone will be like a subject matter expert, or they will be, you know, an absolute top performer in terms of the like, technical or again, substantive aspects of their job.

So what do you They keep getting promoted. Yeah. And what it means is then they have more and more responsibility in terms of this people piece. And they’ve maybe never received any training, any guidance. And it may not be one of their areas where they’re very confident. So sometimes I think it’s the most senior people. Yeah. Yeah. Where it. Kind of taking a pause and leveling up on this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Is really key. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much.

This has been such a fun conversation and I got a feeling it’s gonna be one of many, so I hope so. It has been really fun. Anything you’re working on that you’re excited to share with the audience? Actually, funny enough, I’ve been stepping back a little bit, not much, but from the training these skills and doing more of ’em myself, I just, I do think it’s really important to not ever get too far from doing the work like you need to be in it.

So, You’re constantly refreshing and updating your knowledge. So I’ve been doing some more facilitation myself lately, both on the professional development and personal development front. So I’ll just, I’ll talk about two projects that have been exciting. One, I’ve been doing more like leadership retreats, so designing for kind of longer development processes. So I’ve been working with the UN Senior Women Talent Pipeline, which is really fun. It brings together this group of incredibly diverse, just like rockstar women.

And we’ve been doing these five day. Leadership retreats. They use this model kind of, of intrapersonal leadership in mastery, so self then interpersonal, organizational, societal. So that’s been a lot of fun. And then personal development, I’ve been having a lot of fun designing some of those retreats. So hosting some around, you know, issues of like energy burnout, prevention and things around like power and. So yeah, just keeping myself Yeah. In the work and keeping that inspiration going.

So then when I am kind of coaching and teaching it, it’s from a very place that’s close to the work. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Well, I will include links to that, whatever you have to share in the show notes so folks can check it out as well. Thank you. Anything you wanna leave us with before we wrap up? Yes. Just to reinforce the point, you made it a couple times. But using this term that I, this is very casual, but the people piece, the people piece doesn’t have to be so hard.

It really doesn’t. I just wanna say that I think that’s the part that causes people so much angst at work and where people feel sometimes the least confident and they just kind of feel like they’re flailing around. And what I can say is like, there are some just, it doesn’t take that much. It’s like first recognizing what a big piece. Validating for yourself, like why it feels so overwhelming. You probably never receive training for it. We don’t kind of teach people these things.

Then having like a mental model or a way of thinking about it and then just learning some of these very kind of key skills and you don’t have to become an expert in ’em. Just learning some of the basic principles, basic tools can be such a game changer. I’ve seen it so many times, like with my coaching clients and just even 90 minute workshop participants, like it’s a steep learning. So just know, like it doesn’t have to be so hard and there are a lot of resources out there for you.

I love that. Thank you so much. And like you say, it’s about making your own job and life easier as a manager and giving it better experience for your team. So it, it truly is a win-win. Totally. Well, thank you so, so much for being on today. This is such a fun conversation and cannot wait for folks to be able to try these onto their team. Same. Thanks so much, Leah. If you are not yet on my text list, what are you waiting for?

Text the word manager to 415-234-5716. This goes right to me so you can send me any questions about anything we talk about. On the show, you will get exclusive access to things like my Q&A sessions hosted over Zoom and my manager tip of the week to get on that list text manager to 415-234-5716 and I cannot wait to hear from you. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.