Claim OwnershipThe Manager Lab
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Welcome to The Manager Lab, where we delve into the increasingly dynamic world of talent management. In each episode, we will unravel key insights, breakdown the most relevant books and articles, and provide actionable tips to optimize your approach in developing and retaining top talent. Stay tuned for a deep dive into the art, science, and strategy of unlocking your team’s full potential. Let’s enter…The Manager Lab.
114 Episodes
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Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we explore how leaders can unlock talent. This episode explains why training is not just a cost but a strategic investment that improves performance and increases retention.
We cover the research-backed idea that training signals belief in employees and how managers are critical to turning training into applied behavior and lasting change.
Listen for five practical actions managers can use immediately: set context, debrief, model learning, create practice space, and recognize growth—so training delivers both performance and commitment.
Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we explore how managers, not policies, shape the day-to-day systems that retain top talent. This episode breaks down an HBR insight: policies state intent, but systems—meeting rhythms, workload allocation, promotion signals—determine whether high performers stay. You’ll learn four practical actions managers can take now: audit the signals you send, make growth visible, protect top talent from burnout, and design the team experience on purpose.
Retention happens locally. By changing patterns in how work gets done and who gets opportunities, managers can build a system people don’t want to leave. Tune in to turn policy into practice and keep your best people engaged and growing.
In this episode of Manager Lab we flip a common leadership myth: the best leaders are also exceptional followers. Great followership means actively contributing, challenging constructively, and supporting decisions for the good of the organization.
We define followership, explain why it improves trust and decision quality, outline core behaviors (situational leadership, loyal dissent, mission over ego), and offer five practical tips managers can use immediately to coach and model followership on their teams.
This episode explores what managers should do when a high-performing employee has nowhere to be promoted, drawing on the Harvard Business Review article by Rebecca Knight.
Listeners will learn clear actions: have honest career conversations, redefine growth beyond titles through enriched work and broader scope, give visible and fair recognition or rewards, co-create a future development roadmap, and support long-term goals even if that leads elsewhere.
In this episode of Manager Lab we explore whether leaders can be "too nice," why avoiding tough conversations undermines performance, and how unclear feedback erodes trust. The host unpacks the common causes—fear of being disliked, misunderstanding empathy, and conflict avoidance—and shows how niceness can unintentionally lower standards and breed resentment.
The episode offers practical guidance: combine care with candor, normalize discomfort, set explicit expectations, and intervene early. Listeners are left with a simple reflection: where might being too nice be getting in the way of effective management?
Welcome to the Manager Lab episode on mentorship, inspired by Andy Lopata's HBR article "Weave Mentorship into the Fabric of Your Organization." This episode argues mentorship should be a daily leadership behavior, not just a formal HR program.
Traditional mentorship programs often fall short because they are time-bound, top-down, and optional. When mentorship is embedded into everyday work—ongoing, peer-driven, informal, and everyone’s responsibility—it becomes how work gets done and how people develop.
Key takeaways: everyone can be a mentor (including reverse and peer mentoring); shift from giving advice to holding development conversations; make mentorship visible and valued in performance and recognition; and create conditions for mentorship by building psychological safety and protecting time to learn.
Challenge: this week, intentionally mentor one person by asking powerful questions to help them think, decide, and grow.
In this episode of the Manager Lab we explore Antonio Rodriguez’s Harvard Business Review idea of the Project-Driven Organization: why projects now create most organizational value and how traditional functional structures fall short.
We cover three key takeaways—translate strategy into disciplined projects, treat project skills as leadership skills, and manage capacity realistically—and five practical actions managers can take today to make projects visible, clarify success, protect capacity, build skills, and sponsor outcomes.
This episode of Manager Lab distills a Harvard Business Review article into four science-backed leadership practices: define your aspirational self, change systems rather than relying on willpower, prioritize a learning mindset over performance, and embrace discomfort to drive change. Practical takeaways help leaders increase impact, resilience, and fulfillment in the year ahead.
In this episode of the Manager Lab, the host shares a personal New Year ritual inspired by Stephen Covey’s Four Categories—physical, mental, social-emotional, and spiritual—to reflect on the past year and set clear, intentional goals for 2026.
Practical tips include reviewing last year’s goals, keeping 3–5 priorities per category, using tools like Evernote to track progress, performing quarterly check-ins, and discussing plans with a partner to build accountability and support.
In this Manager Lab episode you’ll learn how a simple, structured team wrap-up week helps teams reflect on the year, recognize contributions, capture lessons, and set intentions so they finish with closure and begin the next year aligned and energized.
Practical manager actions and a flexible five-day format are shared to turn reflection into learning, recognition into trust, and endings into momentum.
In this episode of Manager Lab we draw leadership lessons from a record-setting NFL kicker to show that pressure is predictable and trainable. Learn why top performers view pressure as a signal and how preparation beats nerves.
Practical takeaways for managers include building repeatable pre-performance routines, focusing on controllables, practicing under simulated pressure, and separating identity from outcomes to foster resilience and better team performance.
In this episode of Manager Lab we summarize The Octopus Organization and explain why talent development must be a continuous, strategic investment.
Learn practical tactics: embed learning into projects, use micro-learning, plan skills development, enable curiosity groups and skill swaps, and hold regular development conversations to turn managers into coaches and retain top talent.
In this episode of Manager Lab we explore how to balance data with human judgment, based on The Octopus Organization. The host explains why overreliance on data can lead to false certainty and missed context, and shares practical ways to make data more useful.
Key tips include seeking counter-narratives, analyzing granular distributions instead of averages, improving data literacy across roles, pairing metrics with human stories, and embedding analysts into business teams. These steps help turn data into better decisions that account for real people.
Listen for actionable strategies to treat data as a tool—not a replacement for human insight—and to build systems that unlock your team’s full potential.
In this Manager Lab episode we unpack the first part of The Octopus Organization and explore how to stop upholding poor leadership. The host explains why promoting bad leadership harms culture and productivity, and presents practical tactics leaders can use to change: speak last, build a shadow cabinet, connect through shared experience, create multiple feedback channels, stop one harmful behavior, develop self-awareness, and model empathy and vulnerability.
This short episode offers actionable steps to treat leadership as a behavior, not a role, and to cultivate leaders who create ownership, trust, and psychological safety across teams.
In this episode of Manager Lab we examine why employee trust is declining and why trust matters for engagement, alignment, speed, and retention.
We unpack the three trust pillars—competence, benevolence, and integrity—and explain common causes of erosion like poor transparency, inconsistent actions, short-term decision-making, and fear at work.
Finally, the episode gives six practical, immediate actions for managers: narrate decisions, close the say–do gap, share information early, increase accessibility, invite and reward dissent, and follow up quickly—showing how small, consistent behaviors rebuild trust and improve performance.
Welcome to the Manager Lab episode about celebrating wins: why leaders often skip recognition, how neglecting celebration harms motivation and well-being, and the science showing that pausing to acknowledge progress strengthens performance.
Discover seven practical tips—celebrate small and specific, connect wins to purpose, spread credit, honor learning, and build celebration rituals—to boost momentum, clarity, and resilience for you and your team.
This episode explains why psychological safety — the freedom to speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes without fear — is essential for reducing burnout and retaining staff, especially during crises. It reviews large-scale research showing that teams with established psychological safety fare better when resources are constrained.
Listeners get four concrete actions managers can take: model uncertainty and invite input, run regular safe check-ins, reward interpersonal risk-taking with visible learning loops, and align processes and onboarding to support employee voice.
In this episode of the Manager Lab, the host leads a reflective pause on gratitude, exploring nine life categories that shape how we live and lead: health, relationships, work and purpose, growth, nature, daily comforts, freedom, moments of joy and stillness, and spirituality.
The episode offers simple reflections and practical encouragement to reconnect with what matters, helping managers return to their roles with renewed perspective, presence, and purpose.
In this episode of Manager Lab we review John Blakey's HBR article on measuring trust and argue that trust is a measurable strategic asset rooted in observable leader behaviors: ability, integrity, and benevolence.
The episode outlines a four-step process for measuring trust and offers practical actions for managers—baseline surveys, defined governance and metrics, behavior-focused action plans, embedding trust in routines, and transparent follow-up—to move trust from rhetoric to operational reality.
Transformation succeeds when talent is treated as a strategic pillar, not an afterthought. This episode breaks down how to identify the critical roles that drive change, build capabilities from within, and align talent systems—performance, rewards, and career paths—to reinforce the new operating model.
Learn practical steps: map the 10–20% of mission-critical roles, reallocate top performers to those roles, invest in targeted internal development, and audit incentive systems to remove contradictions that block progress.
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