Your leaders were promoted because they're capable.

Nobody gave them a playbook for what comes next.

The New Manager Playbook System gives new and established managers a shared set of tools to build trust, hold people accountable, and lead without burning out or escalating everything to you.

30 minutes to see the system in action and explore if it's right for your team.

Hero Proof Box
When leaders have a system, everything changes
70%
of team engagement is determined by the manager, not the work itself
Gallup
57%
of employees have left a job because of their manager, not the role
DDI
1.5×
the cost of replacing one employee who leaves because of poor leadership
SHRM

Lia led teams inside

THE CONTEXT

The job got more complex.
The support didn't always catch up.

Today's leaders are expected to do things nobody formally taught them how to do.

  • Coach, not just direct
  • Create psychological safety and accountability
  • Navigate conflict and change
  • Develop talent while delivering results

That's not instinct. It's a skillset.

IS THIS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Built for the people closest to the problem.

This is the right fit if...

  • You've promoted high performers into leadership roles and watched them struggle with the conversations nobody taught them to have
  • You're an HR or L&D leader whose engagement scores slip after every promotion cycle
  • You're a department head or founder who keeps getting pulled into situations your leaders should be handling
  • You've tried one-day workshops and watched the behavior change last about a week
  • You need something structured enough to produce results, flexible enough to work alongside what you already have
  • You want your leaders to stop escalating everything and start solving things themselves

Who this is built for

  • HR & L&D Leaders building a leadership pipeline for organizations with 50 to 5,000+ employees

  • VPs & Department Heads with new or newly struggling leaders on their teams, especially after a promotion cycle or reorg

  • Founders & CEOs who have promoted people to lead their business and need those leaders to actually lead

  • Any organization from Fortune 100s to homebuilders, insurance companies, nonprofits, and high-growth startups eager to uplevel their people leaders to meet the challenges of managing in today's workplace

What Leaders Will Learn

Four modules. Twelve power-packed lessons.

The practical foundation they were never formally trained on, covering the real situations they face every week - not theory they'll forget by Friday.

Module 01

Becoming an Effective Leader

Why leading feels harder than expected, and how to build the trust and presence that makes your team want to follow you. The shift from doing to leading, and why that shift is so hard to make without a system.

Module 02

Creating Clarity in the Day-to-Day

How to set clear expectations, run 1:1s that actually matter, and create the conditions where your team can do their best work. Clear expectations before the work starts. Career conversations that keep people motivated.

Module 03

Getting Results Without Carrying Everything

How to give feedback people can use, build real accountability, and delegate in a way that develops your team instead of just offloading tasks. Why accountability is a communication problem, not a character problem.

Module 04

Leading When Things Are Hardest

How to navigate conflict, coach your team through uncertainty, understanding how to fold AI into their workflow, and lead through change without burning everyone out. Conflict before it escalates. Coaching as a superpower instead of a last resort.

Take a peek inside

the program

THE DIFFERENCE

We've all done the click-through trainings.
This isn't that.

Instead of a static course your leaders zone out halfway through, this system builds skills the same way behavior actually changes: over time, with practice, and with accountability built in.

Video

Video Lessons

Videos to introduce each lesson and contextualize the content, with examples drawn from real leadership situations inside some of the world's most demanding teams.

Audio

Audio Deep-Dives

Audios to break down each exercise, with links to relevant episodes of Lia's top-rated podcast, Managing Made Simple.

Practice

Practical Exercises

Tools to download and use with your team the following Monday. Not theory. Not workbooks that sit in a drawer. Tools leaders actually use.

Context

Real-World Application

Insights on today's real leadership challenges: navigating AI & automation, leading through uncertainty, holding people accountable without burning bridges.

Every other training vendor brings a framework to your team. I bring the experience of having actually built the operating system at Google, Apple, and Microsoft. The framework vendors study organizations like the ones I worked inside.

THE ROI

This isn't remedial training.
It's leadership infrastructure.

Organizations that invest in structured leadership development see the results in the work:

  • Fewer escalations that slow project timelines
  • Clearer accountability, faster decision making
  • Stronger engagement scores, higher performance
  • More strategic time freed up for senior leaders
  • Leaders who retain their teams through hard seasons

94%

of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development (LinkedIn Learning's Workplace Learning Report).

That number means your retention strategy runs through your managers. Not your perks package. Not your PTO policy. When leaders have the tools to develop the people underneath them, those people feel it- and they stay. The most direct path to that outcome is giving your managers what they were never formally taught.

Meet Lia, Your Instructor
Google
5+ years leading team operations
Microsoft
3 years · Bing, HoloLens
Apple
Human Interface · iPhone X, Siri
Author
3× Bestselling books on leadership
TEDx Speaker
300K+ views
Media
HBR · WSJ · CNN · Forbes

I help organizations build leaders people want to work for.

I spent nearly a decade embedded inside Google, Microsoft, and Apple not advising from a distance, but accountable for making the work actually happen. Crafting OKRs and the systems to hold people accountable to them. Operating cadences for some of the highest-stakes product teams in tech.

Manager development programs that moved sentiment scores in measurable ways.

I saw the same pattern everywhere: high performers promoted into leadership without the tools for what came next. Not the theory of leadership. The actual conversations. The feedback nobody wants to give. The accountability that keeps slipping.

Every framework in this system came from a real situation, with real people, where getting it wrong had real consequences. That's not a credential. It's why this works."

THE SYSTEM

This isn't a training program,

it's a system

THE BOOK

The New Manager Playbook

#1 Bestselling

The tool to equip all managers with superpower skills to lead with confidence and ease. Perfect starting point or companion to the program.

THE PODCAST

The Managing Made Simple Podcast

TOP 2% GLOBALLY

The weekly reinforcement layer. Real scenarios, real solutions between sessions so nothing learned in training goes back on the shelf by Monday.

THE SYSTEM

The New Manager Playbook System

DIGITAL OR LIVE

The behavior change engine. Every lesson and session turns framework into habit, with practice, accountability, and direct application to what managers are navigating right now.

THE RESULT

Managers Who Thrive in Today's World

LEADERSHIP INFRASTRUCTURE

Equipped with the book, podcast, and training, managers are ready to handle the changes of leading in today's world- reducing turnover and delivering better results.

WHAT LEADERS ARE SAYING

From leaders who've worked directly with Lia.

"Through her Manager Development Series, Lia has been an incredible partner in guiding us through major changes at our firm. She thoughtfully adapted her program to meet our growing needs, helping us not just navigate the changes but truly thrive through them...Lia has become an essential part of our success."

Erin Long-Scott

Sr HR Manager · Harrison LLP

"Lia and I focused on strengthening my skills around people management and giving difficult feedback. Her coaching helped me delegate responsibilities better, saving me hours of time in my own work, and turn around the performance with a struggling team member into a star employee."

Alison McElwee

Head of Accounts · SKONA

"Lia's many talents, experience, and practical approach to building resilient high-performing teams is unmatched. I've had the privilege to witness firsthand the transformative impact of her guidance, including double digit increases in employee sentiment scores following her programming. I can't think of a better way to elevate your organization and find deeper enjoyment in your work."

Jason Lawrence

Engineering Director · Google

Flexible Options

Three ways to bring the system into your organization.

Based on your cohort size, your timeline, and how much live support you want alongside the digital curriculum.

Option 01

Digital System

A self-paced format to deliver the system at scale, on your team's timeline

  • 4 modules, 12 self-paced digital lessons
  • Video lessons, audio deep-dives, and exercises
  • Peer discussion framework and worksheets
  • Progress tracking and completion reporting
  • Start within 1 week, complete in 6-8 weeks

Best for: Organizations that want scalable, flexible access for multiple leaders without fixed cohort timing.

Most Popular

Option 02

Digital + Live

Live facilitation that deepens the learning and builds accountability across the cohort

  • Everything in the Digital System
  • Live kickoff session to set the foundation
  • Live closing session with hot seat coaching
  • Cohort accountability built into the rhythm
  • 8-week structured rollout from start to close

Best for: Cohorts of 8-100 leaders who want accountability and live facilitation. The format most likely to produce measurable behavior change.

Option 03

Tailored Support

A fully custom engagement for organizations that need a partner, not a vendor

  • Custom curriculum and session design
  • Additional live sessions & executive reporting
  • Full implementation & stakeholder alignment
  • Integration with existing L&D infrastructure
  • Timeline and content built to your organization

Best for: Large organizations, specific industry contexts, or companies that need Lia to learn your world before a single session begins.

WANT TO TAKE A PEEK FIRST?

See what the system teaches in the first week.

Check out a preview of Lesson 1 and see exactly how The New Manager Playbook System works in practice: the framework, the language, and the specific situations it's built to navigate.

What's inside the PREVIEW

  • Why managing feels harder than expected, and why that feeling is completely normal

  • The fundamental shift that happens when you stop being responsible for your own output and start being responsible for everyone else's

  • The three traps new managers fall into without realizing it, and how to start sidestepping them

Trusted by HR leaders, L&D professionals, and department heads at organizations from 5 to 50,000 people.

Check out a preview of Lesson 1

Free. No spam. You'll be added to my list receiving weekly podcast drops and insights on leadership development, unsubscribe anytime.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Everything you need to know before the demo call.

My leadership is going to ask me to justify the spend. What do I tell them?

The math is straightforward. Replacing one mid-level employee costs 1.5 times their annual salary. A manager who can't give feedback or hold people accountable is typically carrying two to three people performing below their potential. At a $90K average salary, that's $270K in underutilization. This program costs a fraction of that. We also establish pre- and post-measures at the start of every engagement so you have concrete data to bring back to leadership: confidence scores, peer feedback, and engagement score movement.

We've done leadership training before and nothing changed. Why would this be different?

That's the most common reason organizations come to us. One-day workshops don't change behavior because behavior change happens over weeks, not hours. The 8-week structure with peer discussion and the option to add live facilitation was specifically designed to close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it the following Monday.

How do I get my managers to actually engage with this, not just go through the motions?

This is exactly the right question to ask. The design does a lot of the work. The 8-week structure with peer discussion creates accountability between cohort members, not just to an assignment. The live sessions give them a place to bring real situations they're navigating right now, not hypotheticals. What we hear most often from managers after going through this: "I wish I'd had this sooner." When content speaks directly to what they're dealing with, engagement takes care of itself.

I don't want my managers to feel like they're being called out. How do I position this?

Frame it as an investment, not a remediation — and the program supports that framing from the first session. This isn't about fixing broken managers. It's about giving capable people the tools they were never formally given. Most managers go through this and feel seen, not evaluated. The most common response is relief: someone finally acknowledged how hard this job actually is and gave them something real to work with.

We're in the middle of a reorg right now. Is this the right time?

Reorgs create clarity gaps: unclear expectations, uncertain roles, teams waiting to see what happens next. That waiting period is exactly when strong leadership either holds teams together or accelerates attrition. Organizations that invest in their managers during transitions retain more people and recover faster. The companies that wait for the dust to settle find it doesn't settle on its own.

How much time does this actually take? My managers are already stretched.

The Digital-Only version is self-paced, meaning teams can get through it as quickly as they like. Going through the digital content + practice takes about one hour per module (4 modules total). Digital + Live format runs 8 weeks, with one live session at the start and one at the close. Between those, managers work through lessons at their own pace, again at about 60 mins of practice per module. That's the time investment for a program that changes how they run every 1:1, every difficult conversation, and every accountability moment for the rest of their career.

How does this work alongside our existing L&D program?

It complements your existing infrastructure, it doesn't replace it. Most HR teams use it as the go-deeper layer: the specific language, rehearsed scenarios, and peer accountability that makes training land in real situations. Your L&D program gives them the framework. This gives them the words for Thursday's hard conversation.

What cohort size works best?

The system is modular to scale to organizations of any size. Live sessions can be facilitated multiple times to accommodate time zones. We'll recommend the right format for your headcount on the demo call.

Ready To See It in Action?

Booking a demo is the easiest way to find out if this is right for your team.

In 30 minutes you'll get a walkthrough of the full system, see exactly what your leaders will experience, and figure out together how to structure it for your organization.

30 minutes. No pitch. No pressure.

The New Manager Playbook Logo

The New Manager Playbook

by Lia Garvin Consulting LLC

A modular leadership development system for newly promoted leaders. Built on frameworks developed from the inside at Google, Apple, Microsoft, and YouTube.

© 2026 Lia Garvin Consulting LLC. All rights reserved.  |  newmanagerplaybook.com