New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics

Lucas and Luna break down what new managers need to know ahead of their first performance review cycle as a reviewer. They cover three specific pitfalls: the recency bias trap, the anchoring effect from your own rating history, and the danger of averaging good work into a mediocre score. Lucas shares a concrete framework from a tech company's calibration session where managers revised initial scor...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into one of the hardest new-manager challenges: shielding your team from organisational chaos without becoming a bottleneck. Using the example of a director at a fast-growing SaaS company who lost her best engineer because she protected him from every distraction, they explore the difference between 'covering for your team' and 'buffering strategically'. Lucas...

Episode 80 of New Manager Conversations tackles one of the hardest tasks a new manager faces: terminating a team member. Lucas and Luna walk through a real-world scenario—a manager at a 50-person SaaS company named Maya who had to let go of a low-performing employee who was also well-liked. They discuss pre-termination documentation, the actual conversation script, and how to handle the aftermath...

Episode 79 tackles a tough new-manager scenario: when a high-performing team member tells you they're exploring a move — either internally or to another company. Lucas and Luna break down a real situation where a first-time manager at a mid-size SaaS company learned that her senior engineer was interviewing elsewhere. They walk through how to respond without overreacting, how to keep the conversat...

Lucas and Luna tackle one of the trickiest transitions for new managers: moving from peer to boss while maintaining relationships. They discuss the 'friendship-to-authority' spectrum, share concrete language for setting boundaries without damaging trust, and walk through a real scenario involving a former teammate who keeps texting after hours. Lucas cites a 2025 study from the Center for Creative...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna tackle a situation every new manager dreads: leading someone who is more technically skilled or experienced than you are. They explore why this dynamic is common, especially for first-time managers promoted from within, and discuss practical ways to shift from being the expert to being the orchestrator. Using the example of a software engineer turned team lead at a...

Episode 76 of New Manager Conversations tackles a subtle but defining challenge: receiving feedback from the people you now manage. Lucas and Luna break down a 2024 study from The Journal of Applied Psychology showing that managers who solicit upward feedback in their first 90 days retain team members at 40% higher rates. They walk through the concrete script for asking 'What should I stop, start,...

Episode 75 of New Manager Conversations with Fexingo dives into the single most underused tool in a first-time manager's kit: the weekly one-on-one. Lucas and Luna walk through a concrete case: a new engineering manager at a mid-size SaaS company who inherited a team of six and initially treated 1:1s as status updates. They break down why that fails, the three-question framework that replaces it,...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna tackle a topic many new managers dread: office politics. Drawing on a 2024 survey by the Center for Creative Leadership showing that 60% of new managers feel unprepared for political dynamics, they explore how to navigate relationships with peers, senior leaders, and stakeholders without compromising integrity. Lucas breaks down a framew...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna break down the skip-level meeting — a one-on-one between a manager and their direct report's direct report. They explain why skip-levels matter for building trust, gathering honest feedback, and identifying blind spots. Lucas shares a concrete structure: open with a broad question about what's working, ask about blockers, and end by aski...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why most new managers' weekly one-on-ones are wasting time and how to fix them with a structured sync. They discuss the 'manager sync backlog' — the hidden cost of unaligned expectations — and offer a concrete framework: the 'Three-Item Agenda' that centers on priorities, blockers, and feedback. They also touch on research from Harvard Business Review showin...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the trickiest challenges for first-time leaders: onboarding a new hire when you're remote and they're remote. They break down a specific case: a new manager at a 200-person B2B SaaS company hires a senior engineer who lives three time zones away. Lucas shares a three-phase onboarding framework he picked up from a GitLab man...

Episode 70 of New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: Lucas and Luna tackle a challenge most new managers miss — how to establish a culture of honest, continuous feedback before you even face your first tough conversation. Using Amazon's 'narrative memo' practice and Bridgewater's radical transparency as real-world anchors, they walk through one concrete tool: the weekly feedback loop. Lucas expla...

In episode 69 of New Manager Conversations with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the toughest challenges for first-time managers: earning trust fast without resorting to authoritarianism. They break down the 'trust battery' framework from Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, then contrast it with a real-world example from a mid-sized tech company where a new manager turned arou...

Episode 68 of New Manager Conversations with Fexingo tackles the hardest transition for first-time leaders: learning to delegate without turning into a dumping ground. Lucas and Luna break down why delegation often fails, using a concrete case of a marketing manager who handed off a campaign launch but kept checking every detail. They discuss the 'task-shift trap' where managers offload work but n...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna tackle imposter syndrome among new managers, using a 2025 study from the Harvard Business Review that found 67% of first-time managers report feeling like frauds in their first six months. They discuss why this is so common, how it manifests as overworking or hesitating to decide, and offer three concrete tactics: pre-mortems, asking 'what would my boss tell me?', a...

Episode 66 of New Manager Conversations tackles one of the least-taught but most critical skills for first-time leaders: running a project post-mortem that doesn't devolve into blame or vanish into a drawer. Lucas and Luna walk through a real example from a mid-market SaaS company where a new manager named Priya turned a botched feature launch into a repeatable process — cutting rework by 40% in h...

Episode 65 of New Manager Conversations tackles a delicate balancing act: keeping your boss informed without flooding them with irrelevant updates or revealing vulnerabilities too early. Lucas and Luna break down the concept of 'information diet' for your manager, using a real-world case of a first-time engineering manager who reset her skip-level relationship by categorizing updates into three bu...

Giving feedback is one of the hardest skills for a new manager. But there's a framework that makes it easier: the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) model. In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down SBI with a concrete example — an engineer who keeps derailing team meetings with off-topic tangents. They walk through how to prepare the observation, how to deliver it without triggering defensiveness, a...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna explore how first-time managers can build a personal operating system to stay organized, reduce overwhelm, and model intentional work habits for their teams. Rather than generic productivity advice, they walk through a concrete framework: structured weekly planning via time-blocking, a decision log to track and learn from daily choices,...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the trickiest challenges for first-time leaders: building influence when you don't have formal authority. Using the real-world example of a product manager at Microsoft who led a cross-functional team of engineers, designers, and marketers without being their boss, they break down three specific tactics — finding the 'pain...

In episode 61 of New Manager Conversations with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna tackle a challenge most new leaders face: building a reliable personal operating system before chaos sets in. Lucas breaks down the story of Mira, a first-time engineering manager at a mid-size SaaS company who realised her calendar fragmentation was costing her team 8 hours per week. They walk through three concrete layers —...

In Episode 60 of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna tackle a challenge most first-time leaders overlook: how to build a simple decision-making framework for your team. Lucas walks through a real case from a marketing team at a mid-size B2B SaaS company where the manager used a 'decision tier' system — separating low-stakes, high-speed calls from high-stakes, consensus-driven ones. They disc...

In this episode of New Manager Conversations, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the trickiest situations a new manager faces: coaching a direct report who is underperforming without falling into the micromanagement trap. Using the case of a marketing manager at a mid-sized SaaS company named Priya, they break down a four-step framework: diagnose the root cause (skill vs. will), set a transparent 'get b...

Episode 58 of New Manager Conversations tackles the most dreaded hour on any manager's calendar: the weekly team meeting. Lucas and Luna walk through a specific case — a first-time manager at a 200-person logistics software company who inherited a 90-minute status-update marathon that left everyone drained. They break down the three structural fixes that turned it around: changing the agenda forma...