When a team member says they are not motivated, that is your problem to solve, not theirs alone. Lia walks through how to identify intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, move beyond pay, and reconnect your team (and yourself) with a sense of purpose. This episode is especially useful for new managers and small business owners who feel stuck when motivation drops.
This episode is part of the The New Manager Playbook Series (book companion) series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…it’s impossible to give hard feedback. It’s impossible to have hard conversations. It’s impossible to even be taken seriously sometimes and actually communicate expectations.”
“I care about you in your professional goals so much. I am going to give you feedback. I’m going to look for opportunities for that.”
“…it’s more of a results-based relationship, like a sports team than a friends and family thing.”
Episode highlights
Why the “be liked” instinct kicks in hardest for new managers
Wanting to be liked is wired into us. Evolutionarily, being part of the group meant safety. In a work context, it can feel like being liked makes the job easier and more enjoyable for everyone. For new managers especially, Lia says, this instinct hits hard. The temptation is to stay casual, stay friendly, and avoid anything that might disrupt the good vibes.
The problem: that approach makes it nearly impossible to give honest feedback, set clear expectations, or have any conversation with real stakes.
When “fun manager” becomes a trap
Lia shares what she noticed in herself early in her management career. When your default mode is light and casual, any shift to seriousness reads as alarming to your team. People wonder what they did wrong. Feedback feels like it comes out of nowhere. The tone mismatch creates friction that has nothing to do with the actual issue.
Her fix: name it upfront. Have a direct conversation with your team that says, in effect, “I am silly and fun, and I also have to have hard conversations sometimes. Those two things can coexist. Do not read seriousness as anger.”
Setting that frame in advance makes it far safer to step into difficult conversations when they come up.
The hidden cost of over-friendliness on a team
Friendly team cultures feel good until they do not. When everyone is too close, no one wants to rock the boat. Disagreement gets swallowed. Feedback stops flowing. Team members cannot tell the leader when something needs to change.
Lia is direct about where this leads: a manager who cannot tell a team member something is not working is completely ineffective. And over time, the team feels it. The “cool, fun manager” eventually starts to feel like someone who cannot actually help them grow.
What people actually want from a manager (it is not friendship)
The relationship Lia describes is closer to a coach or a sports team dynamic than a friendship. It has some of the warmth but a completely different engine behind it.
The core move: show your team members you care about their professional goals so much that you will give them real feedback, look for growth opportunities, recognize their wins, and hold them accountable to where they are trying to go. That is not something you do because you like someone. You do it because it is your responsibility.
When this goes well, you can still have genuinely positive, warm relationships with your team. But without the substance underneath, Lia says, it is just hollow.
The shift: from people-pleasing to trust-building
Lia frames the alternative as a results-based relationship, more like a sports team than friends and family. Three moves:
1. Catch yourself when you are people-pleasing. Ask honestly: am I avoiding this because it is the right call, or because I want them to like me? 2. Set expectations clearly and early, so hard conversations never come out of left field. 3. Build trust through follow-through, honest feedback, and genuine investment in each person’s growth.
This is covered in depth in The New Manager Playbook, which launched January 27, 2025.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 163: The New Manager Playbook is here: what’s inside and who it’s for. The New Manager Playbook gives overwhelmed managers a practical, action-oriented guide to leading with confidence and ease. Lia built it around the real struggles she heard repeatedly in workshops and coaching: managing former peers, never having enough time, and not knowing where to start. It is useful for first-time managers and experienced leaders alike, especially anyone stepping into a genuinely new situation.
- Ep 160: How to stop feeling squeezed from all sides as a middle manager. Middle managers feel pressure from every direction because they are caught between their team’s needs and leadership’s demands, with no playbook to guide them. The key move is setting a clear intention for how you want to show up as a leader, then building trust skill by skill so your team sees stability even while you are still learning. This episode is most useful for new and mid-career managers in corporate environments who feel like they are winging it.
- Ep 154: The secret to building trust with your team as a new manager. Trust is the root cause of most managing problems, from micromanaging to accountability gaps, and building it comes down to consistency and relationship building rather than waiting for people to prove themselves. Lia walks through how trust flows in both directions, why assuming competence is the starting point, and the specific behaviors that make trust grow faster. This episode is essential for new managers stepping into a team for the first time.
- Ep 152: How to motivate your team when they just are not feeling it. When a team member says they are not motivated, that is your problem to solve, not theirs alone. Lia walks through how to identify intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, move beyond pay, and reconnect your team (and yourself) with a sense of purpose. This episode is especially useful for new managers and small business owners who feel stuck when motivation drops.
Want to go deeper?
The New Manager Playbook. Lia’s bestselling guide to leading a team for the first time.
Full transcript (click to expand)
Welcome back to the show and our next installment of Inside the New Manager Playbook. So we all want to be liked, right? I mean, it’s human nature to want to be a part of something, a part of a community. Evolutionarily or anthropologically, whatever it is, we had to be liked. We had to be a part of the group. This was safety because we had to rely on each other to keep us away from predators. 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. Now in an office setting, wanting to be liked is sometimes more of an ego thing, but it also has to do with safety. If people don’t like you, then no one’s really advocating for you. You could feel like your job’s at risk.
So naturally this comes up. For new managers, it comes up real, real hot because I think a lot of times we go into this role and we feel like it’ll be easier if people like us, right? We feel like it’ll be more fun. It’ll be more enjoyable for everyone. And we can fall in this trap of people pleasing and wanting to be everyone’s friend. And again, it’s kind of human nature, so we all understand why this happens.
And I know when I first became a manager, this was something I really wrestled with. It was like, everything’s great. I’m still friends. We’re still good. But then when you jump into that mode too early and you act like, no, no, it’s all good. Just like, is this good? Is this good? And you’re kind of like performing to get people to like you. What happens is it’s impossible to give hard feedback. It’s impossible to have hard conversations.
It’s impossible to even be taken seriously sometimes and actually communicate expectations because it’s like, whoa, that came out of left field. And I noticed what happened to me. And I’ve talked to some other managers about this, and this is something that can happen. If you come across more casual and fun, then you’d be serious. And people are like, ah, what are you mad at me to do something wrong? And people get really thrown off. And I’ve had to learn over the years that actually kind of setting a tone with folks and saying, hey, this is me.
I am silly and fun. And I have to have permission to be serious. If I have to have a hard conversation and things are going to get more serious, that needs to be okay. I need to feel safe. And I’ll do that respectfully. But if I am not just silly all day or I’m like, hey, let’s have this conversation and it turns a little serious, not to be alarmed. I’m a human. I don’t have to be kind of like always laughing to not be mad at you.
And this is something that I’ve wrestled with. And I don’t talk about that specifically in the book, but that has come up a lot with managers lately. So I felt like it was worth mentioning. You know, you are allowed to be serious. You’re allowed to have a hard conversation, even if your kind of default mode is a little bit more kind of fun and light and chill. It doesn’t mean it’s either or. And your team members should, you know, it’s not okay for them to like say, ah, you were being harsh.
You were being mean if you weren’t being mean. But it’s important to also recognize that might be how it comes across. So my tip to you would be to have a conversation up front and say, hey, let’s talk about how we have hard conversations. Let’s talk about how, um, you know, when stuff has to get serious, I want to, I want to recognize this is something that has come up for me in the past. Now, when I do that, wow, now I feel a lot safer having these hard conversations.
And I do talk about that, how to have harder conversations in the book, but this recognizing when this shift could be jarring for folks, I think that’s worth more of us kind of including in these harder conversations. But what I want to talk about today more was about this trap of wanting to be liked, wanting people as friends. And one thing that I’ve noticed in a lot of teams where everyone kind of is more friendly and it’s, it’s like people hang out for work is a lot of times that makes it harder to have hard conversations.
It’s harder to disagree. It’s harder for someone to speak up when something has to change or, or go a different direction because people don’t want to rock the boat. And when you’re in that space and that’s, you know, when you’re a manager and you feel like you can’t tell a team member, hey, like this thing didn’t go as well. And when we got to shift that, then you’re like completely ineffective. So that’s why we can’t get stuck in that place.
And the truth is people like you, maybe initially because you’re all fun and cool, cool, fun manager. But, um, eventually they start to feel like, are you even effective? Because I feel like I can’t grow with you. I feel like I don’t know if I’m doing well or not, or, you know, I’m not being challenged. And then people actually start to kind of resent that. So it doesn’t last. And I think the real kind of middle ground we want to find is not just like doing everything in people pleasing, but, you know, building a relationship with our team members, creating trust, like I talked about last time, right.
And having conversations and really showing them like, I want you to be your best. I care about you so much. It’s very different than a friendship. Maybe there’s some overlaps, but this is a different model. I care about you in your professional goals so much. I am going to give you feedback. I’m going to look for opportunities for that. I’m going to say, Hey, let’s try this. Let’s adjust this. I’m going to give you recognition and praise because I am sort of upholding these goals that you have.
And I am with you, helping you get there. And again, maybe some of your friendships have that or don’t, but it is different. And we’re not just doing that because we’re friends and we like the person we’re doing it because it’s our responsibility as a manager. Now, a lot of times when that goes really well, we can have very positive, friendly relationships with our teams and that’s awesome, but it’s got to have, you got to put some, you know, meat behind it.
Otherwise it’s just very hollow. Okay. So just want to do a short one today. That is my tip is recognizing when am I falling into people pleasing? Am I really wanting to be liked? And I talk about this at length in the book. So don’t worry, I got you covered. And what do we do instead? Got to build trust. We’ve got to set expectations. And it’s really, it’s more of a results-based relationship, like a sports team than a friends and family thing.
And again, I talk about it in the book. All right. So to get on the list for exclusive updates and bonuses related to launch, head to LeahGarvin.com slash new book, and you can sign up and get all those updates there. And it will be coming your way on January 27th. I am so excited. And if it’s already past January 27th, pick it up on Amazon. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why does people pleasing make managers less respected over time?
When you lead with being liked rather than being effective, team members may enjoy it at first, but eventually they start to wonder if you can actually help them grow. If they never get real feedback, they don't know where they stand, they aren't being challenged, and they can start to resent the relationship. The fun, casual vibe feels hollow without substance behind it. Respect comes from being the person who helps your team get better, not just the person everyone likes hanging out with.
How do I give hard feedback without my team thinking I'm suddenly angry or harsh?
Have the conversation upfront before a difficult moment ever arrives. Let your team know that when things get serious, that doesn't mean something is wrong or that you're upset with them. If your default mode is light and fun, a shift in tone can feel jarring unless you've named it in advance. Saying something like, 'I want us to talk about how we handle harder conversations,' creates safety for both of you and makes it much easier to be direct when the moment comes.
What's the difference between being a friendly manager and being a people-pleasing manager?
A friendly manager can have warm, positive relationships with their team while still setting expectations, giving honest feedback, and holding people accountable. A people-pleasing manager avoids hard conversations to keep everyone happy, which actually makes them less effective. The goal is a results-based relationship, more like a coach and athlete than a friendship. You care about your team members' professional growth deeply enough to challenge them, and that caring is what makes the relationship real.
Why is it so hard for new managers to stop trying to be everyone's friend?
It feels easier and safer. New managers often think that if people like them, the work will go more smoothly and the team will be more cooperative. There's also a real fear that if people don't like you, no one will advocate for you and your position could feel at risk. But when you lead from that place, you end up unable to have hard conversations, unable to set clear expectations, and your team starts to see the feedback or direction as coming out of nowhere because there's no foundation of honest communication under the relationship.
How do I shift from people pleasing to actually leading my team well?
Start by building genuine trust, not just likability. Then set clear expectations so your team knows what success looks like. Move toward a results-based relationship where you're invested in your team members' goals and growth, giving feedback, recognizing good work, and redirecting when something needs to change. That's the job. When you do it well, you can still have a positive and warm team dynamic, but it's grounded in something real rather than just keeping the peace.