The Manager Lab

This episode explains how to handle a team member who underperforms but is protected by relationships, legacy, or embedded knowledge — creating an accountability gap where you own outcomes but not the leverage to change them.It offers five practical moves: diagnose the type of protection, test your boss with a small concrete ask, redistribute control through structure, decide what you will carry (and document it), and hold the line so standards apply to everyone.

Somewhere on your team, someone may be using AI to surface concerns they don't feel safe raising directly — a phenomenon called "safety by proxy." This episode explains how that behavior is a signal about your culture and introduces four patterns (workaround, equalizer, testing space, mirror) that reveal different safety dynamics.Greg Gillum summarizes four managerial actions: diagnose the pattern before reacting, use AI as a deliberate mirror, don't outsource judgment to tools, and make speaking up safe in the room. The episode ends with a practical challenge: run a "strongest case against" test and bring the findings to your team.

This episode explains how managers should use progressive discipline as a tool for correction, not just a checklist toward firing. It walks through the four steps—verbal coaching, written warning, final warning/suspension, and termination—plus when to skip the ladder for serious misconduct.Listeners get practical guidance on documenting conversations, being specific about expectations and timelines, staying consistent across employees, involving HR appropriately, and five key takeaways to protect your people, your culture, and your company.

New research tracking 200 employees at a tech company shows AI often increases workload rather than freeing time. Workers moved faster and took on more tasks, leading to longer hours, blurred boundaries, and more multitasking that caused fatigue and mistakes.Managers should create real norms—intentional pauses, deliberate sequencing of tasks, and human check-ins—to manage the extra capacity AI creates so it doesn’t default into more work and burnout.

This episode summarizes Harvard Business Review research identifying three behaviors that make leaders inspirational: the Visionary (connect work to a meaningful future), the Exemplar (model calm, competent behavior under pressure), and the Mentor (combine support with stretch).It gives practical actions you can use right away: spend 90 seconds on the "why" in meetings, stay deliberately calm in high-stress moments, and in one-on-ones pair specific praise with a stretch challenge. Leadership is a skill—pick one behavior to practice this week and take one concrete action.

This episode explains why charismatic candidates can still become toxic leaders and shares a practical six-step hiring process to expose unsafe leadership before you hire.Learn how to define observable leadership behaviors, use behavioral interview questions, set red flags, probe for patterns, score candidates objectively, and validate findings across sources so you hire for fit, not flash.

This episode breaks down Pamela Meyer’s HBR piece "Five Ways to Wield Influence When You Lack Authority," showing how managers can get results from people who don’t report to them.Listen for five practical moves you can use in your next meeting: spot hidden influencers, use temporary back-channels, time your asks, make genuine connections, and read the room’s pulse.

This episode argues that many so-called "AI layoffs" are actually cost-cutting rebranded as innovation and that true AI transformation requires redesigning work, not merely cutting roles.It lays out a practical playbook: break roles into tasks, identify where AI genuinely improves performance, and redesign processes to combine human judgment with machine strengths — plus essential guardrails like aligning to strategy, preserving accountability, and iterating with regular reviews.

This episode revisits a 2020 Harvard Business Review article that argues Organizational Intelligence (OQ) — the ability to move a system of people, incentives, habits, and politics — is the critical leadership skill most leaders lack.It breaks OQ into five practical competencies: communicate priorities relentlessly, shape the team’s unwritten rules, decide without full consensus, stage symbolic moments, and visibly lead change. The episode ends with a simple action: pick one competency to practice this week.

This episode explains that strategy wasn’t simple because ideas were scarce, but because human bandwidth is limited—AI can generate and stress‑test thousands of options and keep market views live.It advises managers to pair AI with proprietary data, integrated workflows, and faster execution, and gives three practical moves: cast a wider net before narrowing, retire static models for continuously updated competitive views, and use AI to routinely challenge plans before sign‑off.Result: more robust, faster strategic decisions—are you planning like options are scarce or like they aren’t?