This conversation is going to be your place as a leader, as a manager, to come and have a safe, open, and candid conversation about why it's hard. Get some tools and strategies to try out with your team so that you don't have to feel stuck.
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 up their game. Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. Let's go, let's go, let's go. I think we've all had one of two types of managers in our careers. The kind that gives us ambiguous feedback, kind of picks at all the things that we're doing. We never really know if we're good enough, and we kind of go down this spiral of wondering why am I even here?
Or the kind that believe in us, that, that amplify our ideas, that help us blow past our goals and, and, and think past what we ever thought was possible for ourselves. And when we think about this first camp of managers, I don't think they do that because they want to, like, they're out to get us or something like that. I think it's a skills thing. And a lot of us become managers without a lot of training, without a lot of support, and we're kind of just wing it thinking about, well, what have I observed in the past? Or, you know, how do I just get things done? How do I get people off my back ? How do I, how do I kind of tell people what to do? Or we don't understand what the role's about? I think all of us have the power to be that second category of managers, the ones who lead effectively, the ones who empower, the ones who understand how to give feedback and have hard conversations and do that with empathy, but without the skills, we're not really gonna do a good job at that.
So that's why I created this podcast was because, you know, I think too many of us have had that first kind of manager and have thought, well, do I even belong here? Is this a job that I can do? Is this, do I wanna work in this company? Should I even be in this kind of workforce because of these kinds of managers, we've all heard it. People don't leave companies, they leave managers. And this is something that I strongly believe can be fixed, and that's why I'm here. So a little bit about my story. I spent over a decade in the corporate world working in team operations. So this was about driving programs and processes to help teams operate effectively. And I did this across Bank of America, Microsoft, apple, Google Design agencies, large and small. And as I was doing this work, trying to figure out how to help people work better together, I always saw the same patterns.
It wasn't that when work wasn't getting done, it wasn't because people didn't have the skills or they were unmotivated or, or anything like that. It was always something interpersonal happening. People weren't communicating with each other. People didn't understand clear expectations. People didn't have clear roles and responsibilities. People felt excluded. This was what got in the way of people getting their work done. And these were the kinds of problems that we needed to solve in order for people to feel like, yes, I can do this. I can be successful. And I shared this hypothesis and, and, and many of the teams I was on, sometimes it was received very well. Sometimes I was told focus on the work stuff first and the people stuff later. And I, I just believed, no, the people stuff has gotta come first. And I kept reinforcing that belief and sharing that and improving it out team after team.
And slowly people started to see, oh yeah, when we focus on the team dynamics first, we see everything else come together. And so after doing this in a number of different kinds of jobs, I got really into writing. I was writing a lot about team dynamics and, and wrote my book Unstuck. And the book had come out, which is about the power of reframing and how to help people really reach further their greatest career aspirations by, by letting go of limiting beliefs. I did a TEDx talk and, and I was super excited about getting that idea in the world, how to reframe the finality of decisions I found middle of last year, middle of 2022, I was stuck. I wasn't following my dreams, I wasn't putting this out into the world. And so I left the corporate world and I launched my business, the Workplace Reframe, which is an organizational effectiveness consulting firm dedicated to help bringing out the best in teams, teams large and small for teams in the corporate world.
I dive into a lot of things around manager development, employee engagement, retention of women. So you see, this is where that passion of manager development really, really started to, started to grow. And, and a really big driver for recruiting this podcast was having these conversations, things that I'm hearing as I'm running these programs and, and, and learning more from managers that I'm working with. And then for entrepreneurs and smaller businesses, you know, I thought to myself, well, why are team processes and, and team operations sort of these strategies that are more known and understood in the corporate world, who's bringing those to small businesses? How come, you know, we're not making lives easier for folks that have a smaller team? And so I'm on a mission to help smaller businesses simplify and, and bring ease into how they get work done. And so I have an operations playbook program that I support entrepreneurs with to really take the guesswork out of what are the minimum sort of processes you need to be effective, and then how do you make sure everybody's on the same page about that?
So that's a little bit about some of the work that I do. And, and that's the center of it is about my passion for building effective, inclusive, empowered, motivated, great, great teams because we spend literally a third of our life. Is that the stat? I think it's a third, but I gotta believe it's more than a third . We spend such a big chunk of our lives at work in teams with managers. And man, if, if we don't figure out how to make that feel a lot better, how to make sure people feel supported, then what's the point? And I think it's on all of us, especially leaders and managers out there to help make that experience better. And as I said, there's a lot of conversation around, people don't leave companies, they leave managers. But as I've talked to more and more managers over the course of the pandemic and, and where we are right now, managers are burning out, managers aren't being supported, managers are feeling stuck.
So this podcast, this conversation is going to be your place as a leader, as a manager to come and have a safe, open, and candid conversation about why it's hard. Get some tools and strategies to try out with your team so that you don't have to feel stuck so that you know someone is in your corner on your site trying to make the whole really difficult, often stressful job, but often amazing, fantastic job of being a people manager a little bit easier. So if I can give that to you, then my mission is accomplished. 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 [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn.
See you next time.
