It's not a people problem, it's a training problem. Gallup puts 70% of the variance in team engagement on the manager, and most managers were promoted for being great at the work, not for knowing how to lead it. They're learning in front of their teams. That's the gap I close.
If you’re here, something isn’t working the way it should. Here’s where I come in.
You’ve been handed the retention problem, the engagement score problem, and the manager effectiveness mandate, and you’ve been trying to solve it. You’ve run programs. You’ve brought in speakers. Leadership still isn’t convinced it’s working. You don’t need another vendor. You need a partner who walks into a room of senior leaders and gets taken seriously, delivers outcomes you can put in a dashboard, and makes you look like the person who finally cracked it.
“I’ve tried to get leadership to prioritize this. I need someone they’ll respect and results I can actually show.”
You need programming that sticks past Monday, and a practitioner who’s been inside the exact problem you’re trying to fix.
Your team has the talent. Something is still slowing them down- communication friction, unclear ownership, a technically brilliant leader who is struggling with people, or a team that cannot keep up with how fast the world is changing around them. You need someone who can learn your team fast, speak their language, and move the needle in a way that doesn’t evaporate a month later.
“We addressed the symptoms. Two weeks later the same conversation comes back.”
You need someone who diagnoses the system underneath the behavior- not just coaches the individuals inside it.
You’ve sat through the debrief where everyone said “great speaker” and you knew nothing was going to change. You’re building a program for HR leaders, team managers, or a mixed audience and you need someone the planning committee feels genuinely good about booking; someone who walks in already understanding your audience, delivers with enough warmth that people lean forward, and sends them back to work with something specific enough to actually try.
“We had a great speaker at our last event. A week later I couldn’t tell you what anyone actually took back.”
You need someone who diagnoses the system underneath the behavior- not just coaches the individuals inside it.
"Lia's many talents, experience, and practical approach to building resilient high-performing teams is unmatched. I've had the privilege to witness firsthand the transformative impact of her guidance, including double-digit increases in employee sentiment scores following her programming."
Four ways to work together- each tailored around your team’s specific context and needs.
Built around Lia’s bestselling book The New Manager Playbook, this is the complete manager training solution you need to equip managers with the frameworks, language, and real practice to lead effectively. Flexible and scalable options for live, digital, or hybrid.
Managers who stop putting out fires and start building the team underneath them.
A hands-on session that goes past team-building into the actual mechanics of how your team communicates, makes decisions, and moves work forward. Built around what your team is specifically navigating- not off-the-shelf content. Teams leave clear tools and actions to apply to their work immediately.
A team that stops circling the same problems- and starts moving.
Lia speaks on team performance, leader effectiveness, navigating organizational change, and building teams that stay together through hard seasons. Every talk is built around what your specific audience is navigating, not a canned version of something she has given a hundred times.
An audience that leaves with something actionable enough to implement on Monday- not just applause.
Lia works with leaders and team members 1:1 to break through plateaus, navigate transitions, and performance dips, building an actionable plan and holding them accountable to achieving it. Through creating safety and rapport, coachees have immediate breakthroughs, and feel invested in by their organization.
From stuck to making an impact, in just a few conversations.
Not sure which is the right fit? Start with a free 30-min conversation.
| What you are looking for | Generic L&D Vendor | Executive Coach | Lia Garvin — The Team Whisperer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real inside experience at scale | Frameworks, not firsthand | Individual focus, no org experience | ✓Decade inside Google, Microsoft, Apple |
| Tools your team actually uses after Day 1 | Slides and workbooks | Insights, rarely tools | ✓Every session ends with a working artifact |
| Addresses the system, not just behavior | Behavior change focus | Individual mindset focus | ✓Diagnoses the structure underneath the behavior |
| Published, peer-validated expertise | Certification-based | Varies widely | ✓3 bestselling books, TEDx, HBR, WSJ, CNN |
| Built around your team's actual context | Off-the-shelf curriculum | One-person bandwidth | ✓Every engagement is custom-built to your team |
From Fortune 500 engineering orgs to fast-scaling startups, professional sports, and legal firms. Team dynamics are team dynamics.
This product team was growing fast and their engagement scores showed it. Inclusion and belonging were slipping, even admidst all of their efforts to build a great culture. Through a targeted effort around the lowest scoring questions, we surfaced the actions that would move the needle the most. The survey numbers the following year told the story.
14-point and 21-point increases in favorability on the two targeted survey questions
Demanding workloads had managers in survival mode, not development mode. We worked through time management norms, feedback skills, and a four-part Manager Development Series. When a major acquisition hit shortly after, the firm had the foundation to lead through it instead of just react.
Managers had the tools and clarity to lead their teams through a major acquisition.
Bringing the experience of having built team operation systems within Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
Most consultants study organizations from the outside. Lia ran team operations at four of the world’s most demanding ones — not as an observer, but as the person responsible for making those teams actually function. She built the manager development program inside Google AR/VR that produced measurable sentiment score gains. She ran design operations across YouTube Shorts during the most competitive growth period in the product’s history. She designed the operating model for how Health@Google would think about AI. When she walks into your organization, she has been in the room where your problems live. That is a fundamentally different vantage point.
Lia Garvin spent nearly a decade running team operations inside Google, Microsoft, and Apple- not as a consultant observing from the outside, but as the person accountable for making those teams actually function. She built manager development programs. She ran operations for teams scaling faster than any existing playbook could keep up with. She was in the room where decisions were made, and in the room where the fallout landed.
When she left to launch her consultancy, the approach came with her: go inside the team, find what’s actually broken, fix the system. Three bestselling books, a TEDx talk, and features across HBR, the Wall Street Journal, CNN Business, and Fast Company. She’s the expert organizations call when they’ve tried everything else and the problem is still there.
You don’t need to know which service fits before you reach out. Tell me what’s going on with your team and I’ll help you figure out exactly what they need, and whether this is the right fit.
Most L&D vendors bring a curriculum and deliver it to your team. Lia builds every engagement around your team’s specific dynamics, using her experience running ops inside some of the most influential companies in the world to identify what is actually getting in the way.
While Lia does offer executive coaching, coaching focuses on the individual. Lia’s work focuses on the team system itself: how work flows, how decisions get made, and the operating model underneath the behavior you are seeing. One person’s mindset does not change a team’s structure.
HR and L&D leaders are among Lia’s most frequent partners. She works closely with People teams who are building manager development programs, trying to move engagement scores, or need programming that senior leaders will actually respect. The work is designed to offer relief and make HR’s efforts land harder, not replace them.
Training that does not stick usually addresses behavior without addressing the system that produces that behavior. Lia’s work starts with diagnosis. The tools she builds are specific to your team’s actual structure, not generic frameworks delivered to a room of strangers.
Yes. Lia has worked with legal firms, financial services organizations, insurance agencies, professional sports, aerospace, and nonprofits. Team dynamics are team dynamics regardless of industry.
For keynotes, 8 to 12 weeks advance notice is standard. For workshops and offsites, 4 to 6 weeks allows enough time to build content specific to your team. If you’re working with a tighter timeline, reach out — Lia will be honest about what’s possible and what isn’t.
Having designed workshops for teams of 10 and 1000, Lia’s content scales to meet the needs of your company or event, without sacrificing engagement. Keynotes scale to any audience size. The New Manager Playbook System scales from smaller cohorts of 15-25 managers, to teams trying to train 500+ managers at a time. If your situation is outside those ranges, start a conversation — Lia has worked in all kinds of configurations.
If something isn’t working- engagement is slipping, the same problems keep resurfacing, or you’re not sure your leaders are actually leading- that’s exactly what I do.
Tell me what’s going on and I’ll tell you honestly whether and how I can help.
The situations that come up most often, with everything said on each across the archive.
