The reason you lie awake worrying about your team is not that you need a more elaborate task-tracking system. Lia introduces the Snippets Template, a lightweight weekly update tool that gives leaders a bird’s-eye view of priorities, wins, and blockers without micromanaging. This episode is especially useful for remote team leaders, small business owners, and anyone who feels perpetually out of the loop on what their team is actually doing.
This episode is part of the Team Operations, Systems & SOPs series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…when you do these 10 things every single week, your team members are more engaged. They feel more supported. They feel set up for success. And in turn, they do better work at making your job easier.”
“…the more we feel appreciated and seen and valued, the better work we do. There is so much evidence to this.”
“…this is the secret to getting your team members to see their role in building your business. This is how you have people boots on the ground, growing your business, amplifying your message, being brand ambassadors.”
Episode highlights
Why a checklist beats relying on memory
Even well-intentioned leaders get busy and forget the small moves that keep a team running well. That does not make them bad managers. It just means they need a system. Lia built the Thriving Team Checklist down from 20 monthly items to 10 weekly ones, because when you do these 10 things consistently, team members feel supported, engaged, and set up to do their best work. The payoff: fewer communication breakdowns and a job that requires less effort to manage.
Start with yourself: reflect on a win
The first item on the list is reflecting on something you did well as a leader that week. Managing is hard, and it is easy to feel like you are doing everything wrong. Building a weekly habit of anchoring to one win, big or small, creates the resilience to handle the harder moments. Over time, those weekly wins stack into a bigger story that your team is not a mess.
Make feedback a two-way street
Item two is asking a team member for feedback on your own managing. Lia’s move: bring a little “bait” to the conversation. Instead of a vague “do you have feedback for me?”, try something like: “I am really working on delegating more. What is something I could do better with that?” The open-ended framing signals you actually expect an answer, which makes it safer for the team member to be honest.
Give feedback that actually lands: the SBI framework
Items four and five are delivering one piece of positive feedback and one piece of constructive feedback each week, both using the Situation-Behavior-Impact framework. Specific positive feedback tells a team member exactly what to repeat. Specific constructive feedback removes personality judgments and focuses on a single behavior in a single moment, not a character flaw. Grounding constructive feedback in what the person has been working on and how you will support them going forward takes the sting out of the message.
Item six adds a pure thank-you, separate from performance feedback. Lia suggests looking for someone to thank every single day. Gallup, McKinsey, and Lean In all have data showing that feeling recognized is one of the strongest drivers of employee performance.
Show up to your one-on-ones
Item seven is straightforward: show up on time and do not reschedule at the last minute. Lia credits this lesson to Carrie Jacobs, who ran the Leading with Empathy program at Google. Research across thousands of Google employees found that the second biggest driver of feeling undervalued by a manager is the manager consistently showing up late to or canceling one-on-ones. A one-on-one may be the only time a team member gets your full attention all week. If a tough week is coming, tell people at the start of it, not the morning of.
Check the load and clear the friction
Item eight is a load-balancing check-in. A quick Monday standup asking team members to rate how they feel on a scale of one to five surfaces who is underwater before they burn out. Lia recommends listening to what the overwhelmed person says rather than projecting assumptions, then working together on what to shift.
Item nine is removing one unnecessarily complicated process step each week. A client of Lia’s discovered that requiring approval on every purchase was jamming up her inbox and stalling her team. The fix: anything under $500 needs no approval. That is one step removed. Simple, immediate relief.
Connect the dots to the bigger picture
The final item is connecting a team member’s day-to-day work to the company’s larger priorities. This is the foundation of the Ops Playbook: every task should ladder up to a business goal, and it is the leader’s job to make that connection visible. When team members see how their work drives revenue, expands reach, or serves more clients, they become invested in the outcome rather than just completing a task list. That is how a small team scales.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 230: Why your team problems are actually systems problems (and what to fix first). When your team feels chaotic, unclear, or constantly dependent on you, the culprit is almost never the people. It is the absence of simple, repeatable systems that tell everyone how to operate. Lia walks through the real cost of missing systems, two client stories with immediate results, and how to roll out new processes so your team gets bought in from day one. This episode is essential for any owner who says they hate process but secretly hates the chaos more.
- Ep 215: Why your team seems entitled (and what is really causing it). When your team feels entitled, the root cause is almost never attitude. It is a clarity gap, and the fix starts with you asking what role you played in creating the dynamic. Lia walks through two questions every owner and leader should ask before writing off a team member, and explains how operational clarity through an Ops Playbook prevents these friction points from forming in the first place. This episode is most useful for founders, small business owners, and managers who feel like they are constantly negotiating with their teams.
- Ep 198: Why your team asked for training but still won’t show up (and how to fix it). When team members ask for development but skip the training you built, it usually comes down to three fixable problems: they feel too stretched to step away, leaders are not modeling that the training matters, and the content itself has not earned their trust yet. Lia walks through each obstacle and gives you concrete language and moves to address all three before your next training. This episode is especially useful for business owners, HR leaders, and team leads who have already invested in development and watched the room stay empty.
- Ep 177: How to stop waking up at 3am worried about your team (and what to do instead). The reason you lie awake worrying about your team is not that you need a more elaborate task-tracking system. Lia introduces the Snippets Template, a lightweight weekly update tool that gives leaders a bird’s-eye view of priorities, wins, and blockers without micromanaging. This episode is especially useful for remote team leaders, small business owners, and anyone who feels perpetually out of the loop on what their team is actually doing.
Want to go deeper?
The Ops Playbook. Systems and SOPs for teams that need to scale without breaking.
Full transcript (click to expand)
The reason I put this together is because it can be tough to remember all the things we got to do every single day. Give feedback and say thank you and ask for support and all the little things. Even if we’re really, really trying our best, it can be hard to remember because we have a lot of stuff on our minds. And that doesn’t mean that we are a bad manager. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care about our teams.
It’s just easy to get busy and forget about it. And so that’s why I created this. And before you dive in, if you’re at the computer, head to LeahGarvin.com slash checklist to grab this list of things that I’m about to talk through, because this is going to help ground you in what it is and give you that resource so you can start checking those boxes right away. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple Podcast. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant.
Through this show and my signature Ops Playbook, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time, money and stress. It 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 looking to learn the ropes or are 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. Today, I want to talk about making your job easier as a manager, as a team leader, as a business owner. And one of the ways that I can help do that is through a resource I put together called the Thriving Team Checklist or Scorecard.
Artists formerly known as the Scorecard. And the reason I put this together is because it can be tough to remember all the things we got to do every single day. Give feedback and say thank you and ask for support and all the little things. Even if we’re really, really trying our best, it can be hard to remember because we have a lot of stuff on our minds. And that doesn’t mean that we are a bad manager.
It doesn’t mean that we’re, you know, we don’t care about our teams. It’s just easy to get busy and forget about it. And so that’s why I created this. And you know, before you dive in, if you’re at the computer, head to LeahGarvin.com slash checklist to grab this list of things that I’m about to talk through. Because this is going to help ground you in what it is and give you that resource so you can start checking those boxes right away.
So it’s just 10 things. I used to have 20 things to do over a month and I narrowed it down to 10 to do in a week. Because when you do these 10 things every single week, your team members are more engaged. They feel more supported. They feel set up for success. And in turn, they do better work at making your job easier. That really is the goal. That work becomes more. There’s more ease in it.
There’s more flow. It becomes more effortless across the board. Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t do hard work. We don’t work hard. We don’t solve hard problems. It means the little like communication breakdown things aren’t getting in the way. So that’s why I created this list. And I’m going to quickly walk through it and really anchor you into why each of these things are on the list and how they become game changing on your team. All right.
So again, head to LeahGarvin.com slash checklist to grab your copy and then you can you can follow along with me. So number one is reflecting on a win you experience as a manager. OK, this shit’s hard, my friends. And a lot of times it can feel like we’re doing everything wrong. And that’s why the first thing on here is to anchor yourself in what is something I’ve done right? What is something I’m proud of? What is something I can really hang my hat on as a manager?
Because that’s going to help build resilience against the moments that aren’t so easy. And when things are frustrated and a team member gives you feedback that makes you feel shitty. OK, so this is going to be really helpful to really give you that solid foundation as you approach, you know, every week. And when we do this on a weekly basis, we start to build a bigger story of that. Not everything’s horrible. Not everything’s a mess. Not everything’s a disaster.
OK, on our team. So that’s why this one’s important to do weekly. It can be one thing like a win. I a team member came to me and said they really appreciated something I did or I I landed a new client. OK, it doesn’t have to be it can be big or small. It can be I finally got to eat lunch like outside of the office. OK, it can be anything. Reflect on a win. Start to do that on a routine basis weekly.
And you’re going to see that you have more resilience for whatever’s thrown your way. Number two, ask a team member for feedback. OK, so this is another one that gives you information on what’s going on. And when we ask for feedback, we show that feedback is a two way street. We demystify feedback. We make it less scary to talk about feedback. And in this situation, I know I’ve mentioned before, I love to ask for feedback by giving an example.
So saying something like, hey, Sarah, I am really trying to be delegating more and getting a little bit more out of the weeds. And I love your feedback on how that’s going. Anything you know, anything I can do better to improve or what’s something that I can do better? I’m sorry. I always stay away from yes or no questions. So what’s something that I can do better with that? So when we give a little bit of bait, as I call it, this makes it easier for a team member instead of saying, can you give me some feedback?
And they’re like, I don’t know what I should say. And then they get uncomfortable. OK, so we want to bring a little bit of bait with us to the conversation. Anchor it. And then you could say, hey, anything else that would be helpful to you? Or I did it again. I said yes or no. What else could be helpful for you? Now, real quick, the reason I don’t say, do you have feedback or anything else where it’s a yes or no, is because a lot of times a team member will say no because they don’t want to think of anything when they actually do have feedback.
And so saying what’s something I could do shows that you are expecting to get something that you know that there is something to improve, that you’re not just hoping they say no and walk away. All right. Item number three on the checklist is set clearer expectations for a task responsibility where a team member is getting stuck. Now, I say clearer, not clear expectations, because the assumption is that, yeah, you set expectations and you thought it was clear.
But when someone’s getting stuck, when someone isn’t moving at the pace you think they should or they seem frustrated, we got to go back in there and set them again. OK, and so the way that I frame this is saying, hey, I want to make sure the same page. I know we talked about this, but let’s just make sure, you know, are there what questions do you have? How can I better support you? You know, how is this project going?
Getting getting that to the surface so that you can make sure you’re framing it around how they can be successful. Number four, deliver a piece of positive feedback. OK, another way to demystify feedback is to give positive feedback routinely. And in the checklist, I suggest using the situation behavior impact SBI framework because this makes sure we get really specific. When we say good job on on working, OK, like someone’s like, OK, what what should I keep doing showing up every day?
No, that doesn’t land well when we say, hey, I really, you know, great job in that client meeting. I really appreciated how you walked through a wide range of services that we could pair together to better support their goals. And as a result, they ended up signing on with a new contract of a whole new area that we hadn’t been supporting them in, resulting in more revenue for the business. So thank you for doing that. That’s awesome.
And please keep that up. That specific positive feedback shows your team member exactly what to do next time. OK, and it doesn’t have to be big like that. It can be, hey, thank you so much for sending that email after hours last night. We really needed to get that to a close. And I really appreciate you staying late. OK, so it can be a big thing, a small thing. We just want to be specific. Next one, number five, deliver a piece of constructive feedback with the SBI framework.
Same framework, situation behavior impact. This helps us get specific and really remove any personality judgments, any biases. So that we get really tight on. We’re talking about the behavior, not the person. We’re talking about that. This thing happened in one instance. It’s not all time. OK, and this is how we take the punch out of constructive feedback. And I like to ground this in, you know, some of the stuff that’s going well. So, you know, hey, hey, Steve, I know you’re really working on your leadership skills and your presentation skills here on this team.
And unfortunately, in the client pitch presentation, you missed a few important elements, which resulted in the client being confused about the services you provided and not moving forward. And, you know, I know you’ve been really working hard on dialing in those communication skills. And so I’d like to ask that we can go through your presentation first the next time so that you’re fully ready. OK, again, I grounded it to it was, you know, I know that the presentation skills are important to Steve.
He I know that he’s been trying on it. There was this one moment where it didn’t go well. And here’s how I’m going to support you to get to get back on the horse. OK, and that’s why I like that framework, because it’s not like, hey, Steve, you blew it with the client. You’re out of here. You’re a loser. You’re dumb, right? That’s the kind of stuff that runs through our heads when we get feedback. So we want to really make it safe.
Number six on the checklist. And hey, if you’re listening halfway through, get that checklist. If you want to follow along at leahgarver.com slash checklist and you can keep following along with us or you can grab it at the end. OK, number six, thank a team member for something awesome they did, big or small. Now, this is related to that positive feedback. But a lot of times the positive feedback is related to maybe some kind of like work related thing.
But saying to someone, hey, you know, I really appreciate like the enthusiasm you bring to your work every day. Really creates a positive atmosphere in the office. Thank you. Or, hey, thank you for really being diligent on that. Copying on that and that document. I know we went back and forth a bunch of times, and I really appreciate your patience on it and just kind of bearing with me. This was a stressful situation and it was helpful to have your eyes on it.
OK, thanking someone. And this one, I know all these things are things to do weekly. I would suggest to find something to thank people for every single day. Try to find a team member to thank every single day, because the more we feel appreciated and seen and valued, the better work we do. There is so much evidence to this. There is so much research around the importance of recognition and gratitude. Gallup has a ton of data on it.
McKinsey and Lean In have a ton of data on it. Feeling recognized, feeling appreciated. This is what helps us show up at our best to work. So again, you want to maximize the output of your employees. You got to be saying thank you a lot more often. Number seven, show up on time to your one on ones and do not reschedule them last minute. This is one of the lessons that I have quoted many times that I learned from the amazing Carrie Jacobs, who ran the Leading with Empathy program at Google and now is doing that externally.
The importance of showing up to your one on ones and being there on time, you know, a one on one meeting might be the only time that your team member gets your captive attention. They might have been waiting all week for the last two weeks, however frequently you have them to be able to talk to you. And when we reschedule it and we show up late, it shows them, yeah, I don’t really value you, shows them.
This was like the least important meeting in my day. And even if you don’t mean that, even if you’re bumping them because you have a great relationship and you know they’ll be OK with it, it still hits hard. And Carrie shared, and I’ll put the show notes which episode it was, that when she did research of several thousand team members across Google, she found that the second biggest thing that makes someone feel undervalued by their manager is when their manager was continually showing up late for one on ones and rescheduling them.
So that’s why I have this on the checklist. This is like such an important piece. Just show up. And if you’re going to have a tough week or have to reschedule, tell people at the start of the week. I’ve done that before when I was managing a big team. I said, hey, you know, this week we have all these, you know, we have an offside, we have all these different things. I’m going to I want to keep our one on ones, but just bear with me.
If I have to change them, it’s it’s not on purpose. It’s just going to be this one week. OK, you can tee that up or you can say, hey, got to cancel one on ones this week because of X, Y, Z. It’s just the last minute thing or the showing up late. That’s what really rubs people the wrong way. Number eight, have a load balancing conversation with a team member who’s feeling overwhelmed. And what I like to do in this situation and you may think that, oh, I don’t know if weekly someone’s feeling overwhelmed, but just checking in with your team members is the first way to go.
And you can do this in like a morning on a Monday morning, like stand up in person or virtually like, hey, everyone, how are you feeling on a scale of one to five? One being, oh, I’m pretty scared for the week or five being like ready to go. If you’re in a virtual meeting or in person, you can do, you know, hold up a finger of what you know, one to five of how you’re feeling. And for the folks that are around a one or two checking in saying, hey, what’s going on?
What do you need support with? And in hearing them explain what’s going on is going to be really important when someone says they are overwhelmed or their feel underwater or they’re feeling burned out. That’s a very personal feeling and we don’t want to project our assumptions onto them. So the episode I linked to in this item on the checklist kind of talks about how to unpack what’s going on and then have a load balancing conversation there.
Number nine, remove a step for a process that is feeling overly complicated. Oh, well, this is my favorite. You know that because this is what the office playbook is all about. Simplifying the way things work, simplifying the hell. And so, yeah, on a weekly basis, it’s, it’s, it’s worthwhile thinking about what, what are things that slow down my team from getting things done? Do I have a budget approval process that doesn’t really need to be there?
Like I have a client who found that she was approving every dollar amount for everything except was getting stuck in her inbox. People weren’t able to move forward things. You said, okay, let’s remove that step. Anything under $500. You don’t have to ask me. I trust you with that. Okay. That’s an example of removing a step simply. Or, you know, saying, Hey, you know, our time sheets are feeling overly complicated. Everyone’s putting different levels of information.
Let’s agree. We’re going to bill in, you know, we’re going to track time and I don’t know, 30 minute increments and we’re going to add just like one sentence on what the works about. Not a whole paragraph, not one word. Okay. Sort of simplifying complicated is something that we always can be thinking about. And this is really what I can support you through the playbook is, well, what are the things across your whole team that are feeling harder than they need to be where people are getting stuck and how can we remove steps and make things more clear?
Okay. And last but not least, on our checklist is to connect the dots between a team member’s work and the priorities of the company. This is the bread and butter of the priorities work that we do in the ops playbook. And this is the secret to getting your team members to see their role in building your business. This is how you have people boots on the ground, growing your business, amplifying your message, being brand ambassadors by showing them how their work fits into the bigger priority.
And this looks like talking about, Hey, their job, their individual responsibilities, their task list, their to-do list and framing it in terms of how this drives forward the agenda of the business, how the supports revenue growth or expanding your footprint or serving more clients. And this is something that we can do with any kind of task, any kind of responsibility, because all of it, if it’s happening on our team, it should ladder up to the bigger priorities and goals, right?
So it’s all there. We just have to connect the dots for our team members. And again, if you’re having, if you’re stuck on that one check out the episode I linked to in the checklist there, or reach out because this is really the foundation of the ops playbook is really making sure everyone’s aligned around priorities, that priorities match expectations, that expectations and priorities match performance. And we have that whole kind of flywheel humming along. People are doing their best work.
And then again, your job is easier. So as I talk through all these 10 things, I hope you’re seeing that it’s not a huge lift. It’s not a huge lift to do these things every week. And on the other side of it is a team that feels supported by their manager. They’re getting recognized. They’re getting that feedback they need in the moment. It’s specific. It’s actionable that they are not stuck when they feel overwhelmed, that you are meeting with them on time, that you’re asking for feedback, that you’re making things smoother and more seamless on the team.
Boom. Like this is how we scale. This is how we grow. And when we have all this in place, you have higher retention. Okay. Cause people are happier. They see that you are trying hard to show up as for them. So it doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It doesn’t mean that you don’t make mistakes, but it means you’re here in it doing the work. All right. And that’s all you can do. So again, to grab that scorecard or checklist, head to liagarva.com slash checklist.
Try to get through each of these every single week and see how your team starts to transform. 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. Okay.
Questions this episode answers
What should I do every week to keep my team engaged and supported?
There are 10 habits worth building into every week: reflect on a win you had as a leader, ask a team member for feedback, set clearer expectations where someone is stuck, deliver positive feedback, deliver constructive feedback, thank someone for something they did, show up on time to one on ones, check in on workload with anyone feeling overwhelmed, remove a step from a process that is too complicated, and connect a team member's work to the bigger priorities of the business. None of these are a huge lift individually, but together they create a team that feels recognized, supported, and set up to do their best work.
How do I ask my team for feedback without getting an awkward silence?
Bring a little context to the conversation instead of asking a vague open-ended question. For example, say something like, 'I have been trying to delegate more and get out of the weeds. What is one thing I could do better with that?' Giving a specific example, or 'bait' as Lia calls it, makes it easier for the team member to respond. Also avoid yes or no questions like 'do you have any feedback?' because people will often say no just to avoid having to think of something, even when they do have thoughts to share.
Why does showing up late to one on ones affect my team so much?
A one on one might be the only time a team member gets your full, undivided attention. They may have been waiting all week, or even two weeks, for that conversation. When you reschedule last minute or show up late, it signals that the meeting was the least important thing in your day, even if you don't mean it that way. Research across thousands of employees at Google found that a leader continually showing up late to or rescheduling one on ones was the second biggest reason team members felt undervalued. If you know a tough week is coming, give people a heads up at the start of the week rather than canceling last minute.
How do I give specific positive feedback instead of just saying 'good job'?
Use the situation, behavior, impact framework. Instead of saying 'great work,' name the specific situation, describe the exact behavior you observed, and explain the impact it had. For example, you might say, 'In that client meeting, the way you walked through a range of services matched to their goals led them to sign a new contract in an area we had not supported before. That drove real revenue and I want you to keep doing that.' This tells the team member exactly what to repeat, which a vague compliment never does. The same approach works for small moments too, like thanking someone for staying late to send an urgent email.
How do I help a team member who feels overwhelmed without projecting my own assumptions onto them?
Start with a simple check-in, like asking everyone at a Monday standup to rate how they are feeling on a scale of one to five. For anyone who signals they are struggling, follow up with questions to understand what is actually going on rather than assuming you know. Feeling overwhelmed, underwater, or burned out is personal, and the right move is to listen first. Once you understand the situation, you can have a load balancing conversation to figure out what support they need and what might need to shift to help them get back on track.