The easiest way to drive higher engagement and retention on your team

What I invite you to think about today is as you approach the end of the year, whenever you’re listening to this, as you approach the next quarter, what are some things that you can do proactively to better support your team? Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant. Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, most of all stress.

Doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes or a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between. Let’s go.

Welcome back to the show. So right now I am flying high because I just got back from an in-person workshop that I did in Miami. And as I mentioned in the last episode, this came about through a listener. So a podcast listener who was really enjoying the content reached out to have me come to meet with her team in person and work through some stuff that was really important to her. And that’s actually what I want to talk about today is this proactivity around building the best possible team.

This is going to be game changing for you in 2025. Like this is how you get a leg up. And first of all, you know, like I said, if you are listening and you’re like, I want some hands on support for my team, reach out, send me an email at hello at leahgarvin.com because this is how you take your team from good to great. You’re listening to the show and you’re getting some strategies and tips. And then we bring this to your team in person and we say, Hey, let’s figure out some working norms or let’s get better at feedback.

Or let’s talk about navigating change. Like whatever is going on with your team, we can address it. And that accelerates the pace of change on your team, getting together folks in person, it’s putting currency in that relationship bank, right? It’s really important. And if you don’t have the budget to do it in person, you don’t have to. Um, but I do recommend, you know, kind of side point, getting together in person at least once or twice a year.

If you can on your team, it really helps go the extra mile around building those relationships on your team. All right. So if you want support for your team, reach out at hello at leahgarvin.com. I love partnering with folks to really shape the work. So I work a lot with HR and folks in the learning and development side and companies to make sure we’re addressing specific things that they’ve identified or with the business leader themselves on that.

So really either way is great. All right. So today we’re talking about that proactivity. So this team reached out to me because it was a new team coming together. Um, they had to hire really quickly. And this leader said, you know what? I really want to establish a strong culture from the beginning. And I thought to myself like, gosh, why can’t every leader do that? Right? Why can’t we all think that way? Because what usually happens is folks wait till things have gotten really bad on their team to where people are quitting and work slowing down and everyone’s frustrated and there’s no accountability to go like, Oh shit, we got to do something about this.

Right. That’s usually when, you know, folks that support teams get the call like, Oh God, the team’s a mess. Help me. And there is a lot we can do at that stage. And I get involved in that stage for sure. But what I invite you to think about today is as you approach the end of the year, whenever you’re listening to this, as you approach the next quarter, what are some things that you can do proactively to better support your team?

And that might be bringing in an external facilitator to talk about some things like I mentioned working norms or, you know, establishing some, you know, talking about psychological safety or, you know, how do we collaborate cross-functionally or how do we navigate change? Right. It can be certain topics like that. It can also be looking at your own calendar. Am I overloaded? Do I have too many meetings? Am I in every single meetings? My team members are in where I’m actually not letting go enough and I’m not delegating enough.

Or is it that, Hey, I’m running from one thing to the next. I’m always canceling one-on-ones I’m always moving one-on-ones and I’m not giving my team that support. Maybe it’s saying, Hey, I haven’t had career conversations with my team members in a while. And I actually realized I don’t really know what everyone’s goals are. So this thinking proactively and doing this on a quarterly basis, if not monthly, this is going to help set you apart from other managers out there, which will help you up-level your team, which will set them apart.

Now this is going to help you perform so much better overall, because essentially the more, the more proactive you are about like, Hey, am I actually doing everything I need to do to build a great team? The more you think about that, your team members start to recognize that. And this is one thing I always say in my workshops with teams, that the fact that I’m here shows your team is investing in you. They want you to be successful.

That’s why they’re bringing somebody in. And so the more you’re in, and when I say that to the teams, they start to kind of nod like, Oh wow. Yeah, that’s true. There’s a lot of things we could spend our time on. There’s a lot of things we could spend our budget on. And they brought someone in because they, they really want to give us these skills and these tools to work better together. And people really appreciate that.

And so you showing you can do this same thing. You can send this same message by asking your team members, Hey, what feedback do you have for me? Or saying, Hey, it’s the end of the year or the beginning of the year, whenever you’re listening. And I’ve really been reflecting on like, how, how can I better show up for my team? And what better to do than ask you? What’s one thing I can do better to support you?

This proactivity shows your team. Wow. Like they’re not just here like thinking I’m just doing the grunt work so they get paid more. Right. Or, or that like, you know, I’m just here to check a box. People start to be more invested. And one thing that I get questions a lot about is how do I motivate my team members? I think anybody I talk to, whether you’re a manager or a leader, a business owner, or, you know, an individual contributor, I always just hear the same thing.

I’m not feeling motivated. Like, how do I get motivated? How do I motivate my team? Everyone’s just kind of like in a malaise. This is something that’s being talked about all the time on Gallup, right? You know, I always quote Gallup research because it’s it’s super comprehensive. They, they survey thousands of people and they keep saying year after year, quarter after quarter employee engagement is going down. I just saw there was an article recently about this kind of great detachment.

People are feeling detached from work. Well, we feel way more attached to our work when we know that someone’s looking out for us, right? We know that our team members are looking out for us, or our manager, excuse me. We know our manager is looking out for us. And then as team members, we then start to feel a little bit more invested. We say, okay, well, you know, when I do good work, it’s recognized. When I put in a lot of effort, you know, my career grows.

When I have a conversation with my manager on my career goals, they start to proactively look for opportunities for me to get closer to achieving those. So this productivity, like I said, whether you, you know, bring in a facilitator or do this on your own, there’s a lot you can do every single day to actually demonstrate to your team that I am proactively working to build a better culture. And so, like I said, a few of those things are just to kind of rattle off a little to-do list for you is asking for feedback, asking, how can I show up better for you?

What’s one thing I can do? Um, sharing. I always like to give this example when asking for feedback, sharing something specific that you’re working on, right? Scoping it and saying, Hey, I’ve been really working on getting out of the weeds lately. And you know, I know it’s always something I could do better. What’s one thing I could do to get better at it? Or what’s something that you feel like, you know, I could do to better help you with that.

Right? So framing that feedback so they don’t think like, Oh, I’m afraid to give my manager feedback. What if I say the wrong thing? Framing it around something that you’re working on. It shows humility that you’re aware that there’s something to be working on. It makes it a little bit easier for folks to share. Okay. In team meetings, you know, asking people to share personal wins. That’s another way to proactively show your team members you’re invested in them and you’re interested in them, right?

Hosting a holiday. If you’re in person, maybe you host a holiday potluck and people bring in a favorite dish. Don’t need a budget for that. Maybe you handwrite everyone a card. Maybe you make a digital card if you have virtual team and, or you make kind of like a fun photo collage or something, right? There’s a lot you can do to proactively show your team. I’m really invested in building a great team, building a strong culture and making sure you feel supported.

And so that is one of the lessons that I learned from this workshop this week. This was a manager with a really high functioning team. They’re doing really well. They’re crushing it. And I have another client in big tech. That’s the same thing. They are a team that is still hiring in, in a space that’s been kind of flat with hiring. They’re growing, they’re crushing their deliverables. They’re featured in the media because their work is so, you know, it’s, it’s landing and making a huge splash and they’re actively investing in their team on a regular basis.

This is something I don’t see every day. So I like to shout it out because that proactivity of making a great team, the best possible team, that’s actually where you get this kind of unstoppable situation. Of course you can always, it’s always worth investing when there’s some bumps along the road and there’s some struggles to get that team from a little bit strained to good, to great, to best possible. Okay. We can always do that. And if you have a really high functioning team, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth investing in because that can change quickly.

And that’s the thing I’ll leave you on is, you know, a players, 10 Xers, your stars. Sometimes if they don’t feel invested in, they start looking, looking towards the exits. They’re like, well, this manager is kind of coasting on my coattails. Sometimes people can start resenting it. Sometimes your star players are actually like looking for a better deal and they’re always going to be a star player. So they’re not going to back off their great work, but they’re wanting someone that shows up for them, right?

And star players want to be around other star players. And so when you’re showing I’m investing in you, I got my eye on this team. I want to build the best possible team. People want to be on the best possible team, right? And so that is my message for you. Bring that proactivity. Like I am here to be a great leader. I’m here to build a great team. And you will see, even what you thought was 10 X, you’re going to get a little edge above that.

It also builds so much resilience when the work gets hard, when the deadlines are piling up at the end of the year, the beginning of the year, when it’s end of a fiscal, whatever you’re dealing with, this is what helps create that sense of we are in this together. Proactively invest in your team and I promise you they will show up so much stronger. All right. See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning into 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.

With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.