The Let Them Theory, from Mel Robbins’ book of the same name, makes you a better manager by releasing the need to control what your team thinks, wants, or feels motivated by. Lia breaks down three specific manager situations where applying ‘let them, let me’ instantly reduces frustration and builds more trust. This episode is especially useful for leaders who over-invest in team members who aren’t reciprocating or who exhaust themselves trying to fix everyone’s motivation.
This episode is part of the Self-Leadership & Mindset for Leaders series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…your team can tell when your vibes off, even when you’re faking it really good.”
“…it’s the collection of small wins that’s going to make you feel stronger and it’s going to help you bring more of a sort of stable, positive, optimistic front to your team.”
“…hope is very, very powerful in driving motivation. It’s very, very powerful in driving engagement on teams because people read how you’re feeling.”
“…what is something I did well? What is one win I can celebrate as a manager today or this week?”
Episode highlights
The pressure cooker problem every manager knows
Whether you are a corporate manager fielding competing priorities from executives above and team members below, or a founder juggling clients, investors, and a small team, it can feel like you are always behind. That constant pressure creates absolute thinking: nothing is ever right, nothing is ever enough. Lia names this pattern directly and calls it out as the thing that keeps managers stuck.
Why absolute thinking blocks what is actually possible
The words “always,” “never,” “everything,” and “nothing” are the tell. When you are locked into absolutes, you literally cannot see other options. Lia connects this to the central theme of Unstuck: the power of reframing, which means looking at a challenge through a new perspective and asking, what else is possible? What else might be true? That single question opens the door out of the spiral.
The one practice to build into every single day
Stop at some point today and ask yourself two things. First: what is something going well on my team right now? Second, and this one carries more weight: what is something I did well this week as a manager? Lia gives concrete, unglamorous examples on purpose. Responding to a team member within 24 hours when it usually takes three days. Having a hard feedback conversation instead of avoiding it. Taking a day off before burning out completely. The win does not have to be big. The habit of noticing it does.
Small wins add up to a fuller picture
This is not about building a delusional reality when things are genuinely hard. Lia is clear on that. It is about collecting data that gives you a fuller picture so that when things get tough, your brain has evidence that it is not always this way. In a season of layoffs, budget cuts, and doing more with less, that evidence matters. The collection of small wins is what makes you feel stronger over time.
Your team reads your vibe whether you like it or not
Leaders carry the emotional weather for their teams. Lia compares it to kids at home: they know when something is off even when you think you are hiding it well. The same is true for your team. Practicing appreciation and celebrating wins is not just a feel-good exercise; it is how you show up as the stability your team needs. You are not pretending everything is fine. You are showing there is hope, and hope drives motivation and engagement in a real, measurable way.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 228: Why ‘I shouldn’t have to deal with this’ is keeping you stuck as a leader. The ‘I shouldn’t have to’ mindset is one of the most common traps leaders fall into, and it quietly poisons every hard conversation before it even starts. Lia’s reframe is simple: shift from ‘I have to’ to ‘I get to,’ and watch how your team responds differently. This episode is especially useful for business owners and founders who never set out to be people leaders but now find themselves managing a team.
- Ep 217: What are you avoiding right now? The question that unlocks your leadership. The single question that separates high-performing leaders from struggling ones is: what am I avoiding right now? Lia walks through three common avoidances, making a necessary hire, giving hard feedback, and actually doing the leadership fundamentals, and shows how naming each one makes the fix surprisingly straightforward. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who feel stuck, behind, or like the same problems keep resurfacing.
- Ep 205: Your team is watching how you react. Here is why it matters.. When leaders visibly vent frustration, teams lose morale and disengage before the work even begins. Lia walks through the self-management moves that keep your team steady, including how to acknowledge a hard situation, celebrate effort, and get ahead of setbacks before they knock everyone off course. Most useful for founders, executives, and team leads who set the emotional tone for their people.
- Ep 166: How the Let Them Theory makes you a better manager overnight. The Let Them Theory, from Mel Robbins’ book of the same name, makes you a better manager by releasing the need to control what your team thinks, wants, or feels motivated by. Lia breaks down three specific manager situations where applying ‘let them, let me’ instantly reduces frustration and builds more trust. This episode is especially useful for leaders who over-invest in team members who aren’t reciprocating or who exhaust themselves trying to fix everyone’s motivation.
Want to go deeper?
Unstuck. Get unstuck in your career and your leadership.
Full transcript (click to expand)
Your team can tell when your vibe’s off, even when you’re faking it really good in a great way to get that vibe back on track to get in that high vibe space is to be practicing appreciation, celebrating the wind, a little bit of gratitude and asking yourself, what is something I did well? What is one win I can celebrate as a manager today, or this week. Welcome to the managing made simple podcast, where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager from conflicts to feedback to delegating and more.
We will leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing kind of hate it and everything in between. Doesn’t matter if you’re a new manager looking for some tips or a seasoned manager looking to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. Let’s go. As a team leader or business owner, you’re no stranger to wrestling with some of the toughest situations that come up as a manager. But sometimes you need a little bit more support and you don’t have the time to spend researching on the internet or taking a bunch of canned trainings.
That is why I am so excited to share the Managing Made Simple Hub. Your one stop shop to everything you need to be a great manager. The Hub is an interactive community offering a monthly live Q&A Ask Me Anything call where you can bring up anything that’s top of mind. Along with curated resources and tools, monthly challenges, exclusive discounts on my services, and conversations with experts. Best thing is, there’s no long term commitment and you can hop in and out anytime.
Sign up today at liahgarvin.com/hub and I cannot wait to see you in our next live Q&A session. Welcome back to the show. It is the middle of summer, the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, we have record heat waves all over the country and world, and today, I wanted to talk about something a little bit more upbeat. Okay, a lot of times we talk about things that we’re wrestling with as managers and there’s a time and a place for that.
But there’s also a time and a place to talk about what is going well. And today I want to talk about the importance of recognizing wins, of, of continually making space to acknowledge the things that are going well. Because as managers, we’re always getting it like from both ends, right? If we are in the corporate world, we got our team members and maybe we have our own managers, our stakeholders, our executives, changing priorities, asking for different things all the time.
If we’re small business owners, entrepreneurs, we have our team members and then our clients and our investors and whoever else that’s breathing down our necks for things. So it can always feel like you’re in this pressure cooker. And when you’re in a pressure cooker, well, let’s be honest, it can feel like nothing you ever do is enough, nothing’s ever right. And it’s in thinking in these absolutes, always, never, everything, nothing, that, that get us stuck because we don’t see what else is possible.
So today I want to remind us of one of the most powerful tools that I use in my work. It is the central theme of my book, Unstuck, which is the power of reframing or looking at a challenge through a new perspective and just asking yourself the question, what else is possible? What else might be true? What else is out there for me? And today I want us to use those open ended questions to ask ourselves, what is going well right now?
So that’s the question I want you to stop. Close your eyes. If you’re driving, do this later. But I want you to stop today at some point and ask yourself, what is something that’s going well right now on my team? And hopefully it’s something that you are involved in. Okay. So let’s turn up the heat a little bit. And I want you to ask yourself, what is something that I did well this week as a manager?
Ooh, that feels kind of good thinking about, right? It reminds us there’s something, even if it is something little, like responded to my team member within 24 hours, when usually it takes me like three days. Or maybe it’s had a really, really great feedback conversation or maybe it’s took some space for myself, took a day off when I was feeling run out. That was the best thing I could do for myself as a manager and really for my team reflect on something.
And I want you to build this into your every day reflecting on what is something that I did well as a manager. And this is not just kind of building up some like delusional reality if things aren’t going that great. It’s about reminding ourselves that even when stuff is tough, there is always more to the story. And this more to the story, this is going to serve as data of giving you a fuller picture so that when things are hard, it doesn’t feel like nothing’s ever right.
And I’ll tell you like right now in a time of, you know, doing more with less, we’re understaffed, budgets are tight, all the things, cutbacks, layoffs, blah, blah, blah. Like all that stuff, all that uncertainty, all that stress. It can feel sometimes like literally what is going right. I need a win right now. And I want you to get in the habit of recognizing the small wins because it’s the collection of small wins. That’s going to make you feel stronger and it’s going to help you bring more of a sort of stable, positive, optimistic front to your team because that’s part of being a team manager.
That’s part of being a leader is being that stability. It’s not having rose colored glasses or telling everybody, everybody, everything’s fine. If it’s not, no, we don’t do that. But we do want to show that there’s hope and hope is very, very powerful in driving motivation. It’s very, very powerful in driving engagement on teams because people read how you’re feeling. Just like, I don’t know if you have kids at home and you, you’re one day you have a really rough day and that kid, they can tell your vibes off.
Same thing with your team. Your team can tell when your vibes off, even when you’re faking it really good and a great way to get that vibe back on track to get in that high vibe space. It’s to be practicing appreciation, celebrating the wins, a little bit of gratitude and asking yourself, what is something I did well? What is one win I can celebrate as a manager today or this week? So that’s all I have. This was a shorty for this week because this is really on you.
I want you to go and practice right now, wherever you’re at, take a minute to think about it because this practice building this into every single day. This is going to be transformational in how you show up for your team. I assure you it allows you to actually better celebrate your own teams and recognize wins across other parts of your life and in your work. So this is going to be really game changing. If you are feeling stuck, we’re going to reframe that question, that thought.
Nothing’s going right. This always happens to me. This never goes well. Stop those thoughts in that tracks. And we’re going to say, what else is true? What is possible? What is something that I did well as a manager? Get after it, my friends, and I will 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.
I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at LiaGarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why should managers take time to celebrate small wins?
When you're in a pressure cooker as a leader, it's easy to fall into thinking nothing is ever right or enough. Recognizing small wins regularly gives you a fuller picture of reality. It's not about pretending everything is fine. It's about collecting evidence that progress is happening, even when things are hard. That collection of small wins builds your resilience and helps you show up with stability and hope for your team, which directly drives their motivation and engagement.
How do I stop negative self-talk as a manager when things feel overwhelming?
When you catch yourself thinking in absolutes like 'nothing ever goes right' or 'this always happens to me,' stop those thoughts and ask yourself: what else is true? What is something I did well this week as a leader? Even something small counts, like responding to a team member faster than usual or taking a day off when you were burning out. Reframing the question interrupts the spiral and reminds you there is always more to the story.
Does my team actually notice when I'm stressed or having a bad day?
Yes, your team picks up on your energy even when you think you're hiding it well. Just like a child at home can sense when something's off, your team reads your vibe. That's why practicing appreciation and reflecting on wins matters. Getting yourself into a more grounded, positive headspace isn't about faking positivity. It's about genuinely building yourself back up so you can show up as the stable, hopeful presence your team needs from you.
What's a simple daily habit that makes you a better manager over time?
At the end of each day or week, ask yourself one question: what is something I did well as a manager? It could be a small thing, a good feedback conversation, giving yourself rest when you needed it, or simply being responsive to your team. Building this reflection into your routine trains you to see the fuller picture of your own leadership, helps you celebrate your team more genuinely, and creates a more optimistic and stable presence that the people around you will feel.