You are holding it together for everyone else and quietly falling apart inside. You second-guess your decisions. You swing between micromanaging and completely checking out. You wonder if you even belong in this role. Here is the truth: that is not a character flaw. That is what happens when no one teaches you how to lead yourself before handing you a team to lead. Most leadership problems that look like people problems are actually self-leadership problems in disguise. The missing system is an inner one. These episodes will help you build it.
Why self-leadership is the foundation of every other leadership skill
You cannot give clear direction when your own thinking is foggy. You cannot hold your team accountable when you are not holding yourself accountable. You cannot build a calm, focused culture when you are running on anxiety and reaction. Self-leadership is not a soft topic. It is the load-bearing wall. Every framework Lia teaches inside The New Manager Playbook and The Unstoppable Team assumes a leader who can regulate themselves under pressure, know their own triggers, and make decisions from a grounded place rather than a reactive one. If that foundation is shaky, every other system you try to build will wobble.
The confidence trap most leaders fall into
Confidence is not something you wait to feel before you act. That is the trap. Most leaders believe they need to feel certain before they speak up, make a call, or own their authority. So they wait. They over-prepare, over-qualify, and over-apologize. Meanwhile the team reads the hesitation as uncertainty and starts to lose trust. Real leadership confidence is built through action, not through accumulating evidence that you are ready. The practice is showing up, making the call, learning from it, and showing up again. That is the cycle. There is no shortcut.
How self-awareness changes every conversation you have
Self-awareness is not navel-gazing. It is a performance tool. When you know how you show up under stress, what your default reaction is when someone pushes back, and what kind of leader you are actually being versus the kind you think you are being, you can course-correct in real time. Without that awareness, you are flying blind and so is your team. Lia’s framework The Sit Down is built on this idea: before you can sit down with a struggling team member and have a productive conversation, you have to sit down with yourself and get honest about your own role in the dynamic.
Authenticity versus performing leadership
A lot of leaders are performing a version of leadership they absorbed from someone else. They are doing an impression of a boss instead of figuring out what kind of leader they actually are. Authenticity in leadership does not mean sharing everything or dropping all professionalism. It means leading from your actual values, being honest about what you do not know, and letting your team see a real human being in the room. That realness builds more trust than any polished leadership persona ever will. Inside Unstuck, Lia works directly on helping leaders strip away the performance and find the grounded, genuine version of themselves that the team actually needs.
Regulating yourself when things get hard
The team is watching you more closely than you know. When a project blows up, when a client is furious, when two teammates are in open conflict, your nervous system response sets the tone for the entire room. Leaders who can stay regulated under pressure, who can slow down when everyone else is speeding up, who can choose a response instead of defaulting to a reaction, those are the leaders people want to follow through hard seasons. Self-regulation is a skill. It is trainable. And it is one of the highest-leverage investments you can make as a leader because it pays dividends in every single interaction you have.
All episodes on this topic
- 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.
- Ep 102: How to earn respect from your team (it cannot be forced). Respect from your team is never automatic and cannot be demanded by title alone. Lia lays out two moves that actually earn it: rolling up your sleeves to genuinely understand the work, and operating with integrity by following through on what you say matters. This episode is especially useful for new leaders, founders managing former peers, and anyone whose team has started to tune them out.
- Ep 100: The secrets to being a great manager: lessons from 100 episodes of Managing Made Simple. Great management is built on a handful of fundamentals: clear systems, storytelling that creates buy-in, understanding what motivates each person, and the courage to have hard conversations. Across six guest conversations, Lia and her guests break down the specific moves that separate managers people love from managers people leave. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who wants a fast, high-impact refresher on what actually moves the needle with teams.
- Ep 95: A simple two-part framework for setting goals that actually stick. Meaningful goals cover both what you want to achieve and how you want to feel, so you reach the end of the year fulfilled rather than burned out. Lia walks through a doing-vs-being framework, paired with SMART goals, to help you build a list of three doing goals and three being goals that reinforce each other. This episode is especially useful for leaders who want to use the same framework with their teams to drive retention and genuine fulfillment.
- Ep 81: How reframing productivity as meaning unlocks better results from your team. Productivity is not about doing more in less time. It is about doing more of what matters, and meaningful work is the upstream factor that unlocks performance, engagement, and wellbeing all at once. This conversation is essential for any leader who wants a high-performing team without burning people out.
- Ep 72: How to unlock a high performance mindset as a leader or business owner. High performers get stuck not because of strategy or effort, but because unprocessed subconscious programming keeps them operating in low-level fight-or-flight all day. Mindset coach Danya Douglass Hunt explains how reprogramming your subconscious identity and beliefs is what actually changes your results as a leader. This episode is especially useful for founders and team leaders who feel like they are working harder than ever but still hitting the same ceiling.
- Ep 61: How reflecting on wins makes you a better manager. Reflecting on small wins is not delusional positivity; it is a practical tool that builds your resilience and keeps your team’s energy stable. Lia’s reframing practice, drawn from her book Unstuck, starts with one question: what is something I did well this week as a manager? This episode is especially useful for leaders who feel like nothing is going right and need a reset before it chips away at their confidence.
- Ep 58: How your personal brand shapes the way you show up as a leader. Your personal brand and your leadership style are not separate things. Hannah Nieves, founder and CEO of HN Haus and This Hudson Studio, shares how authenticity, cross-collaboration, and clear expectations create teams that stay, grow, and actively help build the business. This episode is especially useful for founders and small business owners who want to stop being the bottleneck and start building a team that runs alongside them.
- Ep 55: How self-awareness and authenticity make you a more trusted leader. Authentic leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about knowing who you are, showing up consistently, and building trust through predictability. This conversation with Charlie Ruiz, founder and CEO of CLR Connection, is most useful for leaders at any level who feel like they should have it all figured out by now.
- Ep 40: 20 simple actions to become a better manager this month. Becoming a better manager does not require a complete overhaul. Lia shares the Thriving Team Scorecard, a list of 20 concrete actions organized across three areas (self, team, and company) that you can complete in a single month. This episode is ideal for any owner, founder, or manager who feels stuck and wants a practical, accountability-driven starting point.
- Ep 38: How understanding the Enneagram makes you a more empathetic and effective leader. Most leadership communication fails because we assume everyone is motivated the same way we are. The Enneagram gives leaders a framework for understanding the core motives and fears of each person on their team, so feedback lands, conflict resolves faster, and people actually feel seen. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who keep hitting the same communication walls no matter how hard they try.
- Ep 26: How to make confident decisions using the 5 C’s framework. Confident decision-making comes from slowing down, acknowledging both practical and emotional factors, and working through a structured process rather than rushing to resolve discomfort. Abby Davisson shares the 5 C’s framework (Clarify, Communicate, Choices, Check-in, Consequences) as a repeatable tool for leaders facing high-stakes decisions. This episode is especially useful for founders and team leads who overthink decisions or skip steps when they are under pressure.
- Ep 14: How understanding your brain’s thinking style makes you a more influential leader. The key to more effective leadership, stronger feedback conversations, and better team alignment is understanding how each person’s brain processes information, especially under stress. Michelle King, HR executive and leadership coach, walks through the HBDI assessment framework, the four thinking-style quadrants, and the practice of self-mastery that ties it all together. This episode is most useful for leaders who want a concrete tool for building empathy, improving communication across differences, and inspiring discretionary effort from their teams.
- Ep 2: What is your management style, and why does setting one intentionally matter?. Your management style should be a deliberate choice, not something that emerges by accident after you get contradictory feedback. Lia walks through a framework for setting a clear intention about how you want to show up for your team, so your behavior stays consistent even when tensions rise. This episode is especially useful for new leaders and anyone who has ever received feedback that felt completely at odds with how they thought they were coming across.
- Ep 1: Why Lia Garvin started Managing Made Simple (and what her story has to do with yours). Managing Made Simple exists because too many managers are set up to fail without training, support, or a safe place to talk about what is hard. Lia built this podcast out of a decade inside Bank of America, Microsoft, Apple, and Google, where she watched the same pattern repeat: work stalled not from skill gaps but from broken team dynamics. This episode is for any leader who has ever wondered if they belong in the role.
Also relevant
- Ep 210: How to lead when you are already stretched thin. Leading while depleted is not a sign you are failing. It means you have to train for the hard moments before they arrive, not after. This episode is for new managers, founders, and team leads who were promoted fast and expected to figure it out on their own.
- Ep 207: The simple action that keeps your best people from leaving. Retention is not built by perks or promises. It is built by showing up the same way on your worst day as you do on your best. Lia walks through why consistency in your leadership values is the single biggest lever you have over whether your top people stay or go.
- 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 189: The hidden cost of using AI as a leadership shortcut. Using AI to replace your leadership presence, whether through AI video clones, copy-pasted team messages, or scripted feedback, erodes team trust and accelerates disengagement. Lia’s framework is simple: use AI to brainstorm and prep, but never let it substitute for the human moments that make you indispensable. This episode is essential for any leader wondering how to stay relevant and keep their team motivated in the age of AI.
- Ep 184: Are managers really the easiest role to automate? Here is why that gets it wrong. No, managers are not the easiest role to automate. The tasks that can be automated, like assigning work in a project queue, are not actually what great management is. Lia argues that the irreplaceable core of leadership is human: communication, cross-functional influence, conflict navigation, and knowing how to read and motivate your people.
- 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.
- Ep 179: How to overcome imposter syndrome as a new leader (and get your team’s buy-in fast). Imposter syndrome does not go away, but the best leaders stop letting it run the show. Lia shares a three-step framework, setting your leadership intention, owning the reasons you were chosen, and re-enlisting each team member around their goals, that can turn a skeptical team into bought-in collaborators in as few as three conversations. This episode is especially useful for first-time managers, newly promoted leaders, and anyone stepping into a peer-to-manager transition.
- Ep 172: You got promoted. Now what? The truth about leading for the first time. Becoming a manager is not the same job with extra meetings. It is a fundamentally different role that requires a deliberate mindset shift, a defined leadership intention, and the confidence to own your new title from day one. This episode is essential for anyone who was just promoted, is leading former peers, or is still figuring out what kind of leader they want to be.
- Ep 167: What to do before giving feedback (so the conversation actually lands). Before you say a single word of feedback, you need to regulate your own emotions first. Lia walks through why showing up emotionally charged derails even the best-prepared feedback conversation, and how taking inventory of what you are carrying before you speak makes the difference between feedback that sticks and feedback that blows up. This episode is essential for anyone who has ever given feedback and walked away wondering what went wrong.
- Ep 162: How to lead a team outside your area of expertise without losing their respect. Leading a team outside your expertise backfires when you over-apologize for what you do not know and forget to lead with what you do bring. Lia’s move is to name the limitation once, then immediately lay out a concrete commitment to each team member so they see your value from day one. This episode is especially useful for new leaders stepping into cross-functional roles or anyone promoted to manage a discipline they have never practiced.
- 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 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.
- Ep 140: Your team has feedback for you. Here is how to ask for it.. Asking your team for feedback is just as important as giving it, and most leaders never do it well because they ask yes-or-no questions that put people on the spot. Lia’s fix is to lead with a specific example of something you are working on, frame it as an open invitation (now or later), and keep reopening the door. This episode is especially useful for any leader who wants to build psychological safety and stop getting only indirect feedback like turnover and disengagement.
- Ep 129: How to prevent a tough feedback conversation from going off the rails. Even a well-prepared feedback conversation can spiral, but the right in-the-moment moves keep it from escalating. Lia walks through four concrete techniques: regulating your nervous system before you walk in, refusing to get pulled into a defensive debate, holding space for strong emotions, and calling a timeout when things heat up so your team member can return with a real plan. This episode is essential for any leader who has ever left a feedback conversation feeling like it made things worse instead of better.
- Ep 123: How to receive feedback as a leader without getting defensive. Receiving feedback is harder than giving it, especially when your team members are missing context. Lia walks through a three-part approach: listen with curiosity, digest before responding, and weigh the feedback as one data point among many. This episode is essential for any leader who has invited team feedback but struggles to stay open when it lands.
- Ep 111: How to inspire peak performance and human brilliance on your team. Peak performance comes from setting crystal-clear expectations, genuinely caring about your people, and creating conditions where everyone feels like an owner. Shaun Peet, NASCAR Pit Crew Coach and Chief Culture Officer for Trackhouse Racing, shares the frameworks he used to build the best pit crew program in NASCAR on half the budget. This episode is for any leader who wants a high-performing, culture-first team without a massive budget or a complicated system.
- Ep 92: You have a team, so you are a manager. Now what?. If you have people working for you, in any capacity, you are a manager, and that identity comes with real responsibilities most business owners never stop to claim. Lia walks through three foundational moves: defining how you want to show up, getting intentional about where your time actually belongs, and investing in the support that collapses your learning curve. This episode is especially useful for founders and owners who have grown a team without ever thinking of themselves as a people manager.
- Ep 86: How to reframe delegation so it saves you time, money, and stress. Delegation stops feeling like a burden the moment you reframe it as a tool for scaling your business and building trust with your team. Lia walks through the three mindset blocks that keep owners and leaders stuck, then maps exactly what changes when those blocks are removed. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leaders who know they should delegate more but keep finding reasons not to.
- Ep 82: Stuck in a rut as a leader? How to identify what is really going on and get unstuck. Feeling stuck as a manager or owner usually means burnout, boredom, or a real resource gap, and you have to diagnose which one before you can fix it. Lia walks through a two-part framework: carve out daily time to recharge yourself, and invest in the help your business actually needs. This episode is especially useful for owners and team leads who are close to making a big decision (quitting, pivoting, cutting staff) while running on empty.
- Ep 68: How to beat burnout and build a more resilient team. Burnout is not a productivity problem, it is a nervous system problem, and regulating your nervous system is the foundation for showing up as a clear, calm, effective leader. In this episode, hypnotherapist and somatic success coach Corene Phelps walks through breathwork, somatic orienting, and a personal sustainability audit as concrete tools for getting there. Most useful for owners, founders, and leaders who feel like they are sprinting a marathon with no end in sight.
- Ep 62: How knowing your team members makes you a better leader. Knowing your people as whole humans is the foundation of effective leadership, not a nice-to-have. Lia and Vashti Boyce walk through trauma-informed leadership, building inclusive teams, and the practical moves that turn that knowledge into retention, motivation, and trust. This episode is essential for any leader who wants to move beyond transactional management.
- Ep 53: How to bring out the inner superhero in your team members. Every team member has unique superpowers, and the best leaders make it their job to spot, name, and amplify those strengths instead of waiting for people to volunteer. Cory Charles, founder of The SuperHero Mindset, shares how leading with authenticity, human connection, and genuine belief in your people creates a championship-caliber team. This episode is especially useful for leaders who want to build belonging, drive retention, and stop managing through fear.
- Ep 49: How to build the company you actually want to work for, with Bridgitte Mallinson. Building a company worth working for starts with trusting your gut on hiring decisions, delegating to people who can do the job better than you, and pairing tactical strategy with genuine inner work. Bridgitte Mallinson, founder and CEO of GutPersonal and a business mentor, shares the frameworks she used to scale two seven-figure businesses in under three years. This episode is especially useful for founders and small business owners who feel like they are holding everything together alone.
- Ep 46: How to ask your team for feedback (and actually get useful answers). Asking your team for feedback works when you stop asking vague yes-or-no questions and follow a three-step framework: set the tone, plant a seed, and consider the value. Lia walks through exactly how to scope the conversation so team members feel safe enough to be honest, even about hard things. This episode is especially useful for managers who want feedback to flow both ways but keep getting silence or deflection.
- Ep 27: Feeling burned out as a manager? Three moves to get your footing back. Burnout as a manager does not mean you are a bad leader, it means you are responding to real pressure from every direction. Lia walks through three concrete moves: adjusting expectations, managing up, and asking for help the right way. This episode is especially useful for managers who pride themselves on handling everything and are starting to feel the cracks.
- Ep 22: How to lead with empathy in a way that actually sticks. Leading with empathy is not a soft skill or a nice-to-have. It is a business imperative, and the behaviors that make team members feel included are far simpler than most leaders expect. Kerri Jacobs, creator of the Leading with Empathy program at Google, shares the data-backed signals that make people feel valued and the small, daily habits that change retention, performance, and culture. This episode is essential for any leader who wants to understand why tiny behavioral adjustments create the biggest impact.
- Ep 20: Three assumptions that make giving feedback harder than it needs to be. Feedback goes sideways not because you lack skill but because you walk in with assumptions already made. Lia breaks down three specific mental traps, generalizing by identity group, projecting your own preferences, and letting one bad experience write the story, and shows what to do instead. This episode is especially useful for managers who feel stuck or anxious before feedback conversations.
- Ep 18: How asking thoughtful questions makes your team stronger with Albert Shum. Asking thoughtful questions is one of the most powerful leadership tools available, signaling trust, building buy-in, and drawing out the best thinking on your team. Albert Shum, former Corporate Vice President of Design at Microsoft, shares a practical framework for communicating change that moves from listening to reflecting to re-recruiting your team around a shared direction. This episode is especially useful for leaders navigating organizational change, building cross-functional alignment, or trying to shift from telling to empowering.
- Ep 6: How to give difficult feedback without freezing up or making it worse. Difficult feedback lands better when you lead with empathy, take responsibility, and spell out a clear path forward. Lia walks through a four-part framework: get your head in the right headspace, make time, match your tone to the weight of the message, and commit to supporting the person in closing the gap. This episode is especially useful for managers who know they need to have the conversation but keep putting it off.
- Ep 5: How regulating your nervous system makes you a better leader. A dysregulated nervous system locks you out of the parts of your brain you need most as a leader: empathy, strategic thinking, and creative problem-solving. Nervous system expert Laura Larios shares two quick in-office exercises to move out of fight-or-flight and into peak performance mode, plus the HRV metric that lets you actually measure your progress. This episode is essential for any leader feeling stretched thin, reactive, or on the edge of burnout.
Want to go deeper?
Unstuck. Get unstuck in your career and your leadership.