When everything feels chaotic, the leaders who keep their best people are the ones who manage themselves first. Lia lays out three concrete moves: check your own clarity on expectations, proactively re-enlist your team, and watch for the confirmation bias that turns frustration into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This episode is especially useful for owners and corporate leaders who sense a gap between how hard they think their team is working and how hard their team thinks they are working.
This episode is part of the Leading Through Change & Uncertainty series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“The more you can lean on getting support from your own managers, from your own leadership team, from the broader company, the more pressure it takes off you.”
“…if your company has a return to office policy that you have to enforce, this is not you and your opinions or you like micromanaging people’s time.”
“There is a lot of magic we can create being in person when we actually approach it with an intention.”
“…when you say you hate it or you don’t want to, you wish it wasn’t happening, it really makes your team members, it makes it hard for them to be accountable.”
“…coming in with a clear point of view, that’s going to get your team members excited. And when they start off excited, it’s such a better situation when they start off dragging their feet.”
Episode highlights
The trap leaders fall into before day one
The instinct to commiserate with your team is real, especially if you personally dread the commute. But when you say out loud that you hate the policy or wish it were not happening, you make it nearly impossible for your team to hold themselves accountable. Their logic becomes: if my leader does not want to do it, why should I? You end up making the transition harder for everyone, including yourself.
You do not have to perform enthusiasm you do not feel. Lia is clear on that. But there is a big difference between “I get it, the commute is tough, and we are going to make the most of it” and “yeah, this is terrible, I don’t want to do it either.” The first keeps you credible. The second undermines your ability to lead.
Anchor to the actual value of being in person
The reframe that makes everything easier: stop thinking about return to office as a loss and start thinking about what you can build with it. The most cohesive teams Lia has coached and worked with all have some form of in-person time, whether that is five days a week, three days, or intentional offsites.
Ask your team: how do we make the days we are together count? That means clustering the right meetings on in-office days, reserving conference rooms proactively, and designing the week with intention instead of just showing up and figuring it out.
Make the logistics work for your people
Small practical moves signal that you are looking out for your team:
– Batch your one-on-ones on a single day, and decide whether that day should be in-office or remote based on what works for your team. – Look into flexible hours so people can arrive early and leave early to beat the worst of the commute. – Plan team lunches or a casual end-of-day gathering so time together feels like a perk, not a penalty. – Find out what resources and amenities exist in the physical office that remote work does not offer, and point your team toward them.
These details show your team that you thought about this, which goes a long way toward getting buy-in.
Get ready for the exceptions
Once return-to-office is real, the questions will not stop. Sick days, dentist appointments, half-days, special accommodations. Every edge case you can imagine will land in your inbox. Trying to answer these on the fly, or worse, guessing, puts you in a risky spot.
Before the questions arrive, get clear on the actual policy. Talk to HR. Talk to your own manager. Understand what exceptions are officially allowed and which accommodations people may be legally entitled to. The worst outcome is refusing something a team member had every right to.
Align with your peers before your team hears about it
If you manage a team inside a larger organization, sync with your fellow leaders before rolling anything out. Nothing erodes trust faster than one team operating on a strict interpretation while the team next door has a looser one. When people compare notes, and they will, inconsistency reads as unfairness.
Aligning across your peer group reduces the stress of the transition for everyone and takes the spotlight off you as the individual enforcer.
This policy is not coming from you, and that is okay to say
One of the most useful reframes Lia offers: if your company has a return-to-office policy, it is not your personal opinion being imposed on your team. You do not need to pretend you invented it. You can say honestly that this is coming from the top and that the job now is to find a good stride together, the same way the team found a good stride with remote work.
Leaning on your leadership chain for support reduces the pressure you feel and keeps you from carrying the whole thing alone. Treat it as an ongoing experiment, stay transparent about what you know and do not know, and keep the focus on making it work rather than relitigating whether it should.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 209: Why your team still feels lost even when you are communicating. When your team feels unsettled despite your updates, the problem is usually a perception gap, not a missing fact. Lia breaks down a two-domain framework for separating what people perceive from what they actually experience, and explains why addressing perception first gets you 80 percent of the way there without changing a thing. This episode is especially useful for founders, executives, and leaders managing managers through ongoing change and uncertainty.
- Ep 201: What most leaders get wrong when talking about change (and how to fix it). Most leaders either go silent or commiserate with their team during change, and both approaches deepen anxiety and disengagement. The fix is a two-part move: acknowledge the frustration honestly, then share what you know or how you plan to find out. This episode is most useful for founders, executives, and managers navigating reorgs, priority shifts, or any moment when the ground is moving under their team.
- Ep 200: How to lead through fear and uncertainty without losing your team. When fear takes over, managers default to micromanaging, martyrdom, and reactive decisions that drive away the exact people they need most. Lia and leadership expert Megan Karsh lay out why gritty, honest hope outperforms false reassurance every time. This episode is essential for owners, founders, and managers who are stuck in the middle of pressure from above and anxiety from below.
- Ep 180: How to lead through uncertainty without losing your best people. When everything feels chaotic, the leaders who keep their best people are the ones who manage themselves first. Lia lays out three concrete moves: check your own clarity on expectations, proactively re-enlist your team, and watch for the confirmation bias that turns frustration into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This episode is especially useful for owners and corporate leaders who sense a gap between how hard they think their team is working and how hard their team thinks they are working.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
The more you can lean on getting support from your own managers, from your own leadership team, from the broader company, the more pressure it takes off you. Because if your company has a return to office policy that you have to enforce, this is not you and your opinions or you micromanaging people’s time. No, it’s not. 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, and 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. It seems like every single day another company is reporting, bringing folks back into the office. Whether it was remote into hybrid or if it was hybrid into full-time five days a week, this is coming.
And wherever your stance is on it, if you love it, if you hate it, if you want to, if you don’t, we all have to be ready because it is coming. And especially as us managers, it is really our responsibility to set our teams up for success with the return to office, with being in the office, with seeing the value of being in the office. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today. So one of the challenges that I think first and foremost managers can get stuck with is in wanting to empathize with their team, especially if the team’s really not wanting to come back in and you yourself as a manager don’t want to come back in.
Saying like, oh God, we got to go back in the office and like getting on that bandwagon of making it seem like you hate it, everybody hates it. And like, everyone’s just kind of trashing the whole idea. Even if that’s how you feel, it really is as a manager you signed up for, or you’re put in the situation you’ve agreed to, to really uphold the company policy there and to back it up. And I know that can be tough, really, especially if you’re more casual with your team members and you talk about stuff like that.
But when you say you hate it or you don’t want to, you wish it wasn’t happening, it really makes your team members, it makes it hard for them to be accountable. They’re like, well, they don’t want to do it. Why should I have to? It makes it hard for them to get on board. So you’re only making it harder for yourself. Now you don’t have to be disingenuous. You don’t have to say like, I love it.
I’m so excited to be here. And no, you can say, ah, yeah, it is tough. It is a bit of a strain. I do have a far commute and you know, there is a lot of value to it as well. And so we’re going to make the best of it. Right. So you can totally be authentic. But again, I think leaving it with like, we’re going to try to fight it and get out of it is not going to help if that’s where your company is going.
Now, before I move on, I really don’t want to underemphasize the challenges, the complexities that show up with return to office. But this conversation is not about if it’s right or wrong or who it puts a strain on or not, because this is about when something’s coming, what we do about it and how we show up for our teams. Okay. So, you know, I primarily work remotely with my last few years at Google and I was lifted 55 miles away from my office.
It was a great convenience to be able to work from home. And so I really, really recognize that there is a very complicated situation. I also recognize that the best, most cohesive teams that I was on and I have coached and consulted with and worked with, they have folks meeting in person in some capacity. Maybe some are five days, maybe some are three days. Maybe some are just kind of on a, you know, as needed off-sites meeting basis.
There is value to being in person. And so that’s what we’re going to anchor to as a manager, the value, right? Hey, these are the things that we are going to do as a team to reconnect, to see why we’re together, having collaborations and brainstorms, right? Figuring out, hey, how are we going to shape our week? Let’s say you’re hybrid, right? How do we make sure that the days that folks are here together, we’re maximizing the time?
You know, a big issue folks share is conference room space. We can’t find, we’re just running from one to the next. We’re always waiting. Working with your, you know, leadership to say, how are we going to fix this challenge, right? How are we going to fix this problem? Maybe you look across your whole team and you map out your day to make sure that everybody has different times that they can be utilizing it. Maybe you are really coordinating.
I really recommend having all your one-on-ones on one day. Maybe your one-on-ones are on an at-home day. Maybe it makes more sense to be in office, right? Being proactive and looking at your kind of planning the arc of the week and seeing what makes the most sense. And then supporting your team members in doing that. You know, there’s the things like social things, right? Having lunch together as a team or having maybe a monthly kind of more casual get-together before the end of the day, right?
So that folks don’t have to stay late and brave that commute even worse. There is a lot of magic we can create being in person when we actually approach it with an intention. We say, okay, how is the weekend look? What kinds of meeting can we really bring people together around? How can I make sure that folks have the right resources when they’re here? Okay. Is there some sort of team related to things that we want to try to do?
Thinking about these things and looking at, okay, what resources are available in the company? What are the things that really exist in that physical location? Maybe there is some flexibility around coming earlier, leaving earlier so that folks can avoid the commute and getting proactive and asking questions about that. And these are the kinds of things that we share with our teams to show them, hey, I’m looking out for you. I’m going to help make this transition easier and we’re going to do it.
And when folks come, I think one thing to prepare for as a manager is folks coming consistently all the time, asking for exceptions. I’m sick today. What does that mean? In a remote world, I would work still, but now should I not? Or how many days do I have? Folks having, well, is this today? I had a dentist appointment in the morning and now I’m going to be in the work at noon. That doesn’t make sense coming from home.
There’s going to be all exceptions coming out of the woodwork. So be ready for that. Now, as a manager, you may not know the answer to that. So ask your leadership team, ask your colleagues, get an opinion about, not necessarily an opinion. It may not be up to you. Understand, well, what is the policy? What are the exceptions? And then how are you going to communicate that to your team so that you’re all aligned? Especially for those folks in the corporate world where you have peers as managers or in any company where you have peers, get aligned so that you don’t have one small team that has one way and another that has another.
And then everyone’s like, well, they’re doing this and they’re doing this. That’s going to help dramatically with the stress of this transition as a manager to make sure that your teams and your periphery are aligned and your teams and your organizational structure so that when you are in office, you can meet with your colleagues and you can collaborate better. And it’s not that you’re the one that has the hard line and your other colleague over here doesn’t because that’s not the point of it.
And so I think the more aligned we can be, the easier it makes to get people rallied behind it. Now, I mentioned the exceptions coming out of the woodwork. Some people will need accommodations and exceptions, and it’s going to be really helpful for you to understand from HR and your own manager, well, what are those? So that you don’t get in a situation where you refuse something to someone that they really are granted or entitled to.
So you got to be careful with this. This is going to bring up some sticky things. And I think trying to figure out alone, as I always say, is not the answer. Guessing is not the answer. Chat GPP is not the answer. Just like kind of winging it. No, it’s thinking about it. It’s trying to think, okay, what kind of questions might I get? I mentioned exceptions. When are exceptions? What’s the policies around exceptions? And what are sort of specific cases?
I mentioned aligning folks across kind of peripheral teams. These are the kinds of things that’s going to make this easier. And again, the biggest thing we want to avoid is really naysaying the whole thing to like rally around it when they think, well, you don’t even want to do it either. So reiterating that there is a lot of value in being in person, getting on board, and also when things come up, talking to your own leadership team about it.
I think it is still an experiment in the workforce as a whole, right? I think there’s a really, really big push to have people back in the office, kind of back full time. I’m seeing it in finance. I’m seeing it in tech. I’m seeing it in retail. I’m seeing it in a lot of different industries. Some of you listening are like, well, I never wasn’t in office. Okay. You already are there, right? You get it. But there is a push of folks that went fully remote to hybrid to now full return.
And we also have new relationships with time and work and distance. So I think it’s also okay to treat it as an experiment and to share with your teams like, hey, we’re going to see how this goes. And the more you can lean on getting support from your own managers, from your own leadership team, from the broader company, the more pressure it takes off you. Because if your company has a return to office policy that you have to enforce, this is not you and your opinions or you like micromanaging people’s time.
No, it’s not. It’s outside of you. So it’s not like throwing your hands and being like, well, it’s not me, but it’s saying, hey, listen, like we all got to figure this out. This is coming down from the top. We’ve all figured out a good stride in the previous. And now we’re going to have to find out a good stride here, right? So there’s a real balance to strike. And I think if you’re struggling with specifics around, you know, how to talk about this, how to support your team, again, check in with your managers, get the specifics from HR, also reach out.
I would love to brainstorm for your specific team, for your specific, you know, whatever your business is about or your output is or your product or service or, you know, whatever functions team people perform. What makes sense for how to communicate that to them? How to make the most of that time? What are things you can do throughout the week? If you’re struggling to figure this out, reach out because really coming in with a clear point of view, that’s going to get your team members excited.
And when they start off excited, it’s such a better situation when they start off dragging their feet. All right. So if you need support, reach out. Hello at LeahGarvin.com and I cannot wait to help you through this. Remember, the more on board you are, not in authentically, but saying, here we are, we’re going to do this and I’m going to help you through it. The more your teams will be, and that is going to make the transition easier for everyone.
All right. See you next time. 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. 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.
Questions this episode answers
How do I support my team through a return to office if I don't want to go back either?
You don't have to pretend to love it, but you can't openly trash it either. You can say something like, yes, the commute is tough and there is real value in being together, so we're going to make the best of it. When you signal that you want to fight the policy or get out of it, your team members have no reason to get on board. Your job as a leader is to uphold the company direction while still being honest, and that balance is what keeps your team moving forward instead of digging in their heels.
How do I handle all the exceptions and special requests when my team returns to the office?
Expect a flood of edge cases, sick days, dentist appointments, partial days, and more. Before they start coming in, go to HR and your own manager to understand what the actual policy is and what exceptions are allowed. Don't guess, don't wing it, and don't try to figure it out alone. Also align with peer leaders so your team isn't getting a harder line than the team next to them. When everyone operates by the same rules, the complaints drop and the transition gets a lot smoother.
How do I make in-office days actually worth it for my team instead of just more commuting?
Plan the arc of the week with intention. Cluster the right meetings on in-office days, like collaborative brainstorms and team syncs, and consider putting one-on-ones on remote days. Address logistics like conference room access ahead of time. Add a team lunch or an end-of-day casual get-together so people feel the social payoff of being there. When you show up with a clear plan that makes the time feel useful and not wasted, your team starts the transition engaged instead of resentful.
How do I talk to my team about return to office without coming across as the bad guy enforcing a policy I didn't create?
Lean on the fact that this is a company-wide direction, not your personal preference or a way to micromanage anyone's time. You can say directly that this is coming from leadership and that your job is to help everyone find a good stride with it, the same way the team found a good stride working remotely. That framing removes the personal pressure from you and reframes the conversation around figuring it out together, which is a much easier place to lead from.
What should I do before my team's return to office starts to make the transition less stressful?
Get clear on the policy details before your team starts asking questions. Talk to your manager and HR about exceptions, accommodations, and flexibility options like adjusted start times to help with commutes. Then align with other leaders at your level so no one team has a completely different experience. Come to your team with a concrete plan for how in-office days will be structured and what the week will look like. Showing up prepared signals that you are looking out for them, and that goes a long way toward getting people on board.