The Manager Track

Many capable leaders hit a ceiling not because they lack skill or experience, but because their thinking lives only in their heads. In this episode of The Manager Track, Ramona breaks down one of the most overlooked strategies for leaders who want to increase their impact, improve how they’re perceived, and position themselves for a promotion.  This is all about building your own framework. Y...

Setting big goals feels productive. It gives you a hit of clarity and a sense of control. But most goals don’t fail because you lacked clarity or motivation. They fail because you built them on the wrong foundation. This week on The Manager Track, we’re unpacking two practices that change the entire goal-setting game: identity-driven goal setting and the pre-mortem.  One helps you stop r...

This episode is a re-release of Ep 274, one of the most popular episodes of The Manager Track podcast. We'll be back with a new episode on January 6, 2025. But when you’re the one staying late, fixing mistakes, and picking up the slack, that “helpfulness” becomes a leadership trap. And if you don’t catch it early, it’ll quietly sabotage your team’s growth. In this episode of The Manager Track podc...

This episode is a re-release of Ep 264, one of the most popular episodes of The Manager Track podcast. We'll be back with a new episode. Ever feel like you’re doing everything right as a manager, but the broader company culture is off and it impacts your team.   Maybe leadership talks about values, but what actually gets rewarded tells a different story. Or your team is caught in the middle o...

This week, I sat down with Brady Pyle, former HR leader at NASA and now CHRO at Space Center Houston. Brady spent nearly thirty years building teams, leading major organizational shifts, and shaping how one of the most high-stakes institutions in the world develops its people. He has lived through large-scale transformation, resistance to change, cultural resets, and the pressure of maintaining ex...

Review season can feel like another task on the calendar, but it’s actually one of the most valuable leadership moments of the year.  When done well, it gives your team clarity, strengthens alignment, and it sets the tone for the next year. The real opportunity lies in how you approach it. Most leaders focus on the conversation itself, but the real impact comes from: How well you distinguish...

The promotion feels like a win, and it certainly is. It means people see your potential. But it also kicks off one of the hardest transitions of your career. We often assume that because we were great individual contributors, leadership will come naturally. But being promoted doesn't mean you are prepared. In fact, statistics show that  60% of new managers underperform in their first two year...

Many leaders still treat high performance as the destination.  They double down on output, visibility, and achievement, convinced that hitting those marks means they have arrived. The reality is different. And maybe you can relate. Maybe you, too, ask yourself what the achievement is really all about when you still don't seem satisfied despite all the success..  That's because for m...

​Too many managers walk into their year-end review hoping their work speaks for itself. But it rarely does. The meeting moves fast, details get lost, and ​much is about the past, not the future. When that happens, the conversation stays tactical instead of helping your manager understand the value you created this year and the direction you want to take next. This week’s episode of The Manager Tra...

This week on The Manager Track podcast, we're talking about one of the biggest role misunderstandings in management. Most managers think their job is to organize, divide, and execute the work. It feels productive and responsible, but it also keeps them stuck operating way below the level where real leadership value is created. Because the true job of a manager is not just delivering output. It is...

If you've ever tiptoed around a leader's ego, reworded feedback ten different ways, or held back a good idea just to avoid a blow-up, this episode is for you. We're pulling back the curtain on executive ego fragility: what causes it, how to spot it, and how to deal with it without losing your mind (or your voice). Here's what you'll take away: The root causes behind fragile egos in leadership (hin...

We all want to be seen as kind leaders. But too often, we confuse kindness with niceness. In this week's episode of The Manager Track, I talk with leadership strategist and executive coach Andrea Wanerstrand, founder of A3 Culture Lab. Andrea spent more than 25 years inside Microsoft, Meta, and T-Mobile studying what helps leaders earn trust and build strong teams and what quietly erodes it. We un...

This week on the Manager Track podcast, we're tackling a moment nearly every leader will face: receiving hard-to-hear feedback. Not the kind you can brush off or fix with a quick tweak, but the kind that hits a nerve, stirs up emotion, and sticks in your head. What you do next matters more than you think. In this episode, Ramona walks through what happens in your brain when criticism lands, and wh...

Most of us enter leadership with a quiet script already playing in our heads. Be calm. Be confident. Be likable. Never micromanage. Always have the answer. We carry those ideals with us until reality shows us that they don't always work. And in some cases, they do more harm than good. In episode 284 of  The Manager Track , Ramona Shaw challenges the assumptions many first-time managers carry...

Have you noticed the widening gap between how we expect leaders to behave in the public sphere versus in corporate organizations? In episode 283, Ramona Shaw tackles two timely and important questions:  What is happening to leadership and how do we keep our standards intact? From headlines of public leaders dodging accountability to viral social media figures equating leadership with dominanc...

You want to grow as a leader, but your team can’t function without you. You’re stuck in the weeds because delegating feels risky. You know you should make space for creativity, but the urgent stuff always comes first.   Sound familiar?   This week’s episode is all about  deliberate leadership  and why it’s the non-negotiable factor in company success.   Larry R. Armstrong,...

You reschedule a meeting and feel the need to explain exactly what happened. You set a boundary, then wrap it in 3 paragraphs of justification. You say no to a project and immediately start listing all the reasons why.   Sound familiar?   This week’s episode is all about overexplaining, including why we do it, how it shows up in subtle ways, and how it chips away at our leadership presen...

When two equally capable managers get very different outcomes…   We’ve all seen it (maybe lived it, too). Two people with: Similar skills Similar résumés Similar results Yet one gets tapped for the big meeting, lands the promotion, and becomes the go-to voice in high-stakes moments while the other gets a pat on the back and stays in the same position.   This week's episode is about the i...

When the “real meeting” happens after the meeting…   We've all been there (likely on all sides of this story):   People nod along in the team meeting. No one pushes back. A decision gets made.   Then, moments later, Slack lights up with doubts, hallway chats surface all the real concerns, and suddenly progress slows.   This week’s episode is about those team patterns we all kno...

We don't talk about it much, but most leaders eventually feel it:   That shift in team dynamics after your promotion. The conversations that stop the second you walk into the room. The heavy pressure from above that you can't share with your team.   It's not about needing more friends. It's the unique isolation that comes with leadership.   In this week's episode of The Manager Trac...

We don't like to admit it, but every leader has been there:   That Friday afternoon email from your boss. The team member who “forgets” a deadline. The rising heat in your chest right before you snap.   As much as we wish frustration and anger weren't part of leadership, they are. The real question is: What do you do with it?   In this week’s episode of The Manager Track, we share:...

Executive presence isn’t about faking confidence; it’s about sending the right signals. And no, that doesn’t mean standing like a superhero before your big meeting.  In this episode, we talk with Dr. Scott Hutcheson about how biology, not bravado, drives leadership impact. His argument? Leadership isn’t about personality or charisma. It’s about biology. And the good news is, biology can be in...

You were confident in your role as an engineer solving problems, writing code, and being the go-to person when things broke. Then the promotion came, and the work changed. More meetings. More people decisions. Less hands-on time with the code you know so well.   In this episode of The Manager Track , Ramona Shaw shares the four shifts that often make the move into management feel harder than...

But when you’re the one staying late, fixing mistakes, and picking up the slack, that “helpfulness” becomes a leadership trap. And if you don’t catch it early, it’ll quietly sabotage your team’s growth. In this episode of The Manager Track podcast, Ramona dives into the sneaky habit of self-sacrificing managers who end up doing everyone’s work under the disguise of being “helpful” or “collaborativ...

You’re succeeding on paper... rising through the ranks, trusted by leadership, seen as reliable and driven. But under the surface, there’s fatigue, maybe even frustration. Why does it feel like the more you give, the more is expected? In this episode, we peel back the layers behind high-achieving discontent.   In this episode of The Manager Track , Ramona unpacks a quiet leadership dilemma: w...