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
“…policies really aren’t the right sort of set or description for what we’re wanting here. What we actually want is team norms.”
“…you’re going to start to create a team that feels like this rule book sort of dictatorship that that folks don’t really understand…”
“…you create that personal accountability by having working norms instead of so many stringent policies.”
“You can really incentivize the positive behaviors through working norms as opposed to having feel punitive through having too many policies.”
Episode highlights
When a policy is actually the right call
Policies exist for a specific reason: compliance. Lia is clear that policies belong where there is a legal ramification or a safety concern, think harassment protections, patient safety, or budget approval thresholds. These are the situations where “you do it or there are serious consequences” is both appropriate and necessary. Outside of that narrow lane, reaching for a policy is usually the wrong move.
Why over-relying on policies backfires
When you turn behavioral expectations into formal policies, you create a rulebook culture that confuses and intimidates your team. People start asking, “Why is proactively speaking up in meetings on the same level as not harming a client’s safety?” The policy framing signals immediate termination if broken, which breeds fear rather than ownership. Lia’s point: the more policies you stack on top of cultural expectations, the more punitive and heavy-handed leadership feels.
What working norms do instead
Working norms describe how things are done in a particular team or company. They are not enforced through consequences; they are reinforced through repetition, modeling, and culture. Lia draws the distinction sharply: a policy says “do this or else,” a working norm says “this is who we are and how we operate here.”
The practical move is to frame the expectation as a shared standard. Instead of a policy that says team members must bring solutions, you establish the norm: in this company, when we bring a problem, we also bring one or two ideas for addressing it. Then you reinforce it live, in meetings, in Slack, every time someone comes to you with an issue.
A real example from a CEO who got this right
Lia references a past episode with Justin Benson, CEO of The Bar Agency, who built team values that functioned directly as working norms. One value: “we do what we say we’re going to do.” The corresponding norm in practice: if you committed to a task and something comes up, you cover it. If a deadline hits and you are not done, you stay late because that is what you said you would do.
No policy. No “work turned in late” rule. No punitive language. And according to Justin, people almost never broke that norm because they were bought in. They understood what it meant to succeed there. That personal accountability came from the norm, not the rulebook.
The hybrid work gray zone
Hybrid in-office expectations sit in an interesting middle ground. If attendance on certain days is going to be enforced with real consequences, it may need to become a policy. But if the intent is more about creating natural collaboration moments, structuring it as a norm (“we tend to be in on Wednesdays, we do lunch together, we run collaboration meetings then”) lets people opt into the culture rather than comply with a mandate. The framing you choose sends a signal about what kind of leader you are.
How to audit what you already have
Lia’s recommendation is straightforward: look at your current list of policies and sort them honestly. Legal, compliance, safety: those stay as policies. Behavioral expectations, cultural standards, how people show up and communicate: those belong in the working norms column. Most leaders discover they have far more of the second type than the first, and that means there is a real opportunity to shift tone.
Once you have working norms in place, the job is to reinforce them constantly: name them in team meetings, model them yourself, celebrate team members who embody them. Carrot, not stick. Recognition, not punishment. That is how culture actually moves.
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)
Because if you start rolling out a bunch of policies, present things that are actually more behavioral norms, you’re going to start to create a team that feels like this rule book sort of dictatorship that, that folks don’t really understand, you know, the difference between, well, why is me proactively speaking up in meetings and me not harming a client’s safety on the same playing field, right? So we don’t want to overuse policies. Welcome to the managing made simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease and 15 minutes or less.
I’m Lia 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. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been talking with a business owner or manager and they’ve said, I want to be a better manager. I just don’t know the steps.
Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And frankly, I’ve felt that way too even when I had been managing people for a while because this stuff is hard and it changes all the time. So the last time someone asked me for the steps, I made a cheat sheet. Head to lia garvin.com/scorecard for 20 things you can do this month to be a better manager. This is literally your tell me what to do and I’ll do it.
Steps to motivate your team and get better results. There’s no time like the present. Grab the scorecard or write freaking out. Lia garvin.com/scorecard. Welcome back to the show. If you are finding your team not really following what you want them to be doing or, you know, not really modeling the team culture that you’ve established, or you feel like you’re always reminding stuff, the thing not to do is to start introducing a bunch of policies. Okay, when we’re talking about behavioral change, policies really aren’t the right sort of set or description for what we’re wanting here.
What we actually want is team norms. So that’s why today I am talking about what is the difference between policies and norms and really how to enact team norms that are going to help your team members take responsibility, feel personally accountable, and create that culture that you want. Okay? So first, let’s talk about what is a policy? You know, policies are things that signify compliance is needed. And if compliance is needed, it’s typically that there’s some sort of legal ramification if that policy is violated, right?
So large companies and small use these for, you know, discrimination and harassment policies to make sure employees are protected. Um, maybe a company that’s doing something with, with the medical field, they’re using it for protections for patients. Okay. Jim or a med spa is doing it for safety, right? So. Policies come into play when I think there’s, again, there’s, there’s a legal ramification, there’s a safety concern, but it’s not about team members just like showing up and like participating in meetings.
Okay? That’s not a policy. Because if you start rolling out a bunch of policies for things that are actually more behavioral norms, You’re going to start to create a team that feels like this rule book sort of dictatorship that that folks don’t really understand, you know, the difference between, well, why is me proactively speaking up in meetings and me not harming a client’s safety on the same playing field? Right? So we don’t want to overuse policies.
Because policies often also signify like it, you’re immediately terminated if this thing’s broken. Right? Because again, safety, legal, all these things are at play. So what do we use instead? Well, we want to set expectations, I say it every week, and we want to establish working norms around these things. So this actually came up a few weeks ago in an entrepreneur’s group I’m in, one of the folks asked, Hey, I’m trying to get my team members to step up more proactively and come forward with solutions, not just problems.
You know, should I establish a policy around this? And I thought to myself, no, policy is not going to address this because that makes someone think like, well, what does it mean proactive? What if I have a problem and I don’t have a solution? All that creates in my opinion is, is a culture of fear and creating a policy whenever we’re not seeing something we like. But like I said, for things that are more around behaviors or, you know, cultures that you want to create on your team, we really want to use working norms.
So for that exact example, let’s talk about what I suggested in that moment. Well, I said, Hey, what you’re wanting is to create a norm around how we do things in this company. In this team, in this company, we proactively bring solutions forward. When we have a problem, we also come with one or two ideas of how we might address it. And when we have that working norm, now you can create a culture around it. So when you’re in a meeting and someone asks a question, you can say, Hey, you know, I’d like to hear what’s one, you know, what’s one way you think you might address that.
If it’s in Slack or a group chat in, in someone says, Hey, I’m really stuck here. You know, saying, Oh, we always, we always volunteer one or two ideas with that. So you can create a repeatable pattern where folks start to catch on that. This is how we do things. Now, another example that’s come up a lot in the recent past is. You know, with hybrid work, okay, should I have a policy of three days in the office versus a norm?
Now, this one is a little bit more subjective, okay? If you are going to be enforcing that folks have to be there a certain number of days per week, then yeah, it does potentially become an employee policy. If you’re saying, Hey, we like to be in the office, you know, every Wednesday or we three days a week or whatever, because we can collaborate, but we really are more flexible first, then maybe it’s a norm and you get everybody other when you have lunch on Wednesdays or you have collaboration meetings or you have some incentive there, but it’s not necessarily a policy.
Um, vacation days, right? That’s a policy having to record your vacation days, you know, in some sort of tool or ask in advance. Budget approvals, how much money you can spend without an approval, things like that, these are policies, but I really strongly believe that the best way you are going to create the culture that you want to have of accountability, of proactivity, of collaboration. Is by establishing, this is how we do things here. And we take pride in that work and we want to do that.
And we’re all here bought into the same thing. And when a recent episode I did with the CEO of the bar agency, Justin Benson, he talked about how he established team values that essentially became working norms. And I love that approach because you talk about, this is who we are, what we believe in, and this is how we work. And they’re all aligned. So your values influence your working norms and they influence the culture that you create.
So he had an example of, we do what we say we’re going to do, okay, that’s the value. The norm and the behavior is, hey, if, if I commit to signing up for a task or if that’s my job, let’s say I have to miss a day and I’m out, I make sure to cover that thing. Or if we have a deadline, I stay late that night because I said I was going to do it. And that is our norm and our value around it.
And so he didn’t have a policy that said you can’t have work turned in late or you stay at work late if you can’t finish something. No, because that feels so punitive. Right. Or it’s, it’s confusing. Like, well, what about this? What about that? People will come up with all these scenarios because they’re afraid because the policy is like, you do it or you’re fired. Now as it values a working norm, he shared in the episode, he’s never had folks really break that norm because they’re bought in.
They believe in it. They understand how to be successful there. So you create that personal accountability by having working norms instead of so many stringent policies. So again, I really encourage you to look at if you have a long list of policies. To look at them and say, okay, which ones are related to legal, to more of a compliance thing to safety, those, yeah, policies really make sense. Which ones actually are more behaviors that I want to instill in a very different way that I want to get people more bought in and feel like they’re brought along the way around.
That’s where I would switch it to talking about those in terms of working norms and expectations around how we do things in this company. So you might find you have a lot fewer policies and a lot more working norms. And then you reinforce those by bringing those up all the time. You talk about them in team meetings, you, you model those behaviors. It’s always got to start with you. You, maybe you have like team awards and you, you celebrate when people really are modeling those behaviors themselves.
Right? So there’s a lot more that you can do with celebrating and kind of like the carrot versus the stick analogy. You can really incentivize the positive behaviors through working norms as opposed to having feel punitive through having too many policies. All right, and you’re going to figure out what makes the most sense for your business and your team. Now, if you’re in a corporate setting, then you maybe aren’t, don’t have the space to establish a bunch of policies.
So you do have to rely on working norms and I think that’s okay. But again, if you do have the ability to create policies to not get trigger happy because it can feel heavy handed and punitive. As always, if you have any questions, email me at [email protected]. Reach out on LinkedIn. If you have things that you want me to talk about on the show, I love, love your questions, whatever way I can help because this stuff’s complicated.
I always say it. Managing your team is the hardest part about working in general, running a business, being a leader, all of it. Yeah. It’s tough because we’re dealing with people. So the more support you can get, the more, the less alone you feel, the better you’re going to do and the better you’re going to support your team. 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
What is the difference between a workplace policy and a working norm?
A policy signals that compliance is required, usually because there is a legal or safety consequence if it is broken. Think harassment policies, patient safety protocols, or budget approval thresholds. A working norm, on the other hand, is about how your team operates day to day: how people show up in meetings, how they communicate problems, how they collaborate. Mixing the two up creates confusion because team members cannot tell why speaking up in a meeting is treated the same as a safety violation.
How do I get my team to proactively bring solutions instead of just problems?
Skip the policy and set a working norm instead. Say clearly: in this team, when we bring a problem forward, we also bring one or two ideas for how we might address it. Then reinforce it consistently. When someone raises an issue in a meeting, ask what one idea they have for solving it. When it comes up in a group chat, remind the team of the norm. Over time that repetition builds a pattern, and people start doing it naturally because they understand it as just how things work here.
Why do too many policies create a bad team culture?
Policies carry an implied threat: break this and there are serious consequences. When you apply that weight to everyday behaviors like collaboration or proactivity, it creates a culture of fear. People start looking for loopholes or worrying about edge cases instead of simply doing good work. Lia puts it plainly: the more you reach for policies every time you do not like something you see, the more your team feels like they are living under a rulebook dictatorship rather than a team they are genuinely bought into.
How do working norms create more accountability than policies?
When people understand a norm as a shared value, they hold themselves to it rather than waiting to be policed. Lia points to a CEO example where the team value was 'we do what we say we are going to do.' The norm meant covering a task if you had to be out, or staying late to hit a deadline you committed to. Because team members were bought in, they rarely broke the norm. Policies create compliance. Working norms create ownership, and ownership is what actually drives accountability.
How should a small business owner decide what stays a policy and what becomes a working norm?
Go through your list and ask one question for each item: is there a legal, compliance, or safety consequence if this is violated? If yes, it belongs as a policy. If it is really about a behavior or cultural habit you want to build, reframe it as a working norm and describe it in terms of how we do things here. You will likely end up with far fewer policies and far more norms, which you then reinforce by talking about them in team meetings, modeling them yourself, and celebrating people who embody them.