Manager Maven

A manager I coached had avoided giving honest feedback to a struggling team member for several months. She kept telling herself she’d find the right moment. In the meantime, the rest of the team noticed — and quietly lost respect for her. When we finally worked through how to have the conversation, she came back the following week and said, ‘She wasn’t happy to hear it, but I could tell it landed. She knew what she’d been doing wasn’t acceptable — and for the first time, we h

One of the first things a manager said to me in our coaching session was, ‘Honestly, I keep waiting for someone to figure out I have no idea what I’m doing.’ She had been managing a team of eight for two years, had a strong track record, and was well-respected by her peers. And yet, the doubt was constant. I often hear some version of this from both new and experienced managers. The title may change, the tenure may grow, but the doubt has a way of quietly following people up

A manager came to me frustrated and exhausted. His team had been high-performing six months earlier, and now everything felt like a slog. He had tried team lunches, a new recognition program, even a motivational speaker. Nothing stuck. When I asked him if he had simply sat down with each person and asked what was going on, he went quiet. He hadn’t. That one conversation changed everything. Every manager faces it at some point. The team that used to hum along starts to drag. D

I worked with a manager who prided himself on always having an answer. Whenever a problem arose, he’d swoop in with a solution before his team had a chance to think it through. His intentions were good — he wanted to be helpful and decisive. What he didn’t realize was that he was quietly training his team not to think for themselves. When he finally stepped back and started asking questions instead of giving answers, the team’s confidence — and his own effectiveness — transfo

A manager once told me she dreaded her weekly check-ins with her boss. ‘She’s not doing anything wrong,’ she said, ‘but every time she asks how things are going, I feel like I’m back in my father’s house being interrogated.’ Once we named what was happening, everything shifted. She started showing up to those meetings differently — and her relationship with her boss improved almost immediately. Have you ever felt unexpectedly tense around your boss — even when nothing is obvi

Early in my career, I believed that leadership was something you either had or you didn’t. I watched certain people step naturally into roles and assumed they were just wired differently. What I’ve learned, both from my own experience and from years of coaching managers, is that leadership isn’t a personality type. It’s a set of skills, habits, and choices that anyone can develop with the right guidance and commitment. Becoming a leader in an organization isn’t a single event