How can managers be effective when they are expected to manage larger teams? To strengthen relationships with team members and support team cohesion, start with task cohesion.

Al and Leanne Elliott, former guests and the hosts of Truth, Lies and Work join us to explain how uncertainties in the world have impacted business owners, entrepreneurs, and people managers. In episode 340, we explore the reasons behind industry trends of layoffs, flatter organizations, and larger teams. If you’re a manager in need of help or someone seeking to lead a team, Al and Leanne Elliott have practical tips to manage well in a challenging environment.

Original Recording Date: 07-12-2025

Topics – Welcome Back Al and Leanne Elliott, Uncertainty’s Impact on Current Trends, Keeping the Entrepreneurial Spirit, Organizational Flattening, Challenges to Effective Management of Larger Teams, Management and Coaching

2:35 – Welcome Back Al and Leanne Elliott

• Both Leanne Elliott and Al Elliott are back to join us for a special discussion today. They are the hosts of Truth, Lies & Work and have each been guests on the show in the past (but never at the same time).
  • To listen to the episodes featuring Al as a guest, check out:
    • Episode 235 – The Best Bad Option with Al Elliott (1/2)
    • Episode 236 – Having the Vision, Charting the Path, Removing the Blockers with Al Elliott (2/2)
  • To listen to the episodes featuring Leanne as a guest, check out:
    • Episode 237 – The Psychological Transition of Layoffs with Leanne Elliott (1/2)
    • Episode 238 – Managers as Culture Keepers with Leanne Elliott (2/2)

3:13 – Uncertainty’s Impact on Current Trends

• Our discussion with Al and Leanne is to revisit themes of job uncertainty and economic uncertainty and to look at some trends we’re seeing.
  • A few years ago, the job market was booming. Right now, we’re advising people in times of uncertainty. We knew Al and Leanne would have a unique perspective on this topic.
• We tend to have a US-centric view of things and may not have a global picture of economic uncertainty and job uncertainties. What perspective can Al and Leanne share in this regard?
  • Leanne says in the UK uncertainty is a great way to categorize the situation. Some companies are doing layoffs, but many are taking a pause. This pause could mean lack of growth, lack investment, or a slowing of revenue. People are definitely fearful.
  • Business owners in the UK are pursuing what’s called a lifestyle business – a business which provides a blend of the specific lifestyle and purpose that owners want.
    • “Rapid hypergrowth is no longer the number 1 priority.” – Leanne Elliott
  • Al says in the UK, upwards of 90% of people are employed by small businesses. Many people believe the labor government in the UK is not really doing the things necessary to stabilize commerce.
    • “There are big businesses who are frightened as in ‘I might lose my job when a new CEO comes in,’ but the smaller businesses with say 50, 60 employees are frightened going, ‘if I don’t get this right, I’m going to lose everything and everyone’s going to lose their jobs.’” – Al Elliott
  • Is the lifestyle business Leanne mentioned focused more on the business owner, or does it also include the lifestyle of company employees?
    • Business owners Leanne has talked to or heard of through colleagues are mindful of their employees, deciding not to take unnecessary risks like pursuing growth during times of uncertainty. Business owners are focusing on quality, efficiency, and automation right now.
    • In the UK specifically, there have been a number of employment laws made under the labor government which sound great but bring risk for businesses in their execution. Leanne shares some examples like rights to flexible working on day 1 and National Living Wage.
    • While the laws mentioned above do help employees, business owners hesitate when they are unclear on how to embed those laws in their business operations (i.e., lack of guidance, etc.). They might choose to employ more contractors instead of hiring new employees under these laws, for example.
    • Leanne thinks business owner decisions at present are being driven by uncertainty, ambiguity, and fear.

7:41 – Keeping the Entrepreneurial Spirit

• Does the fear Leanne mentioned crush the entrepreneurial spirit? Entrepreneurs may be leading some of these small businesses that they’ve founded.
  • This calls back to Al’s story in the episodes shared above.
  • “I think true entrepreneurs…they live for challenges. And when things are going well, that’s when they normally mess it up.” – Al Elliott
  • Al thinks entrepreneurs react well to challenges in the first 3-4 years of starting a business but may struggle to be effective beyond that. He feels the current climate is just another challenge to the entrepreneur.
  • Al highlights the UK’s IR35 and its rules for hiring contractors. As a result of legislation like this, entrepreneurs and business owners might find it simpler and less risky to hire contractors over full-time employees.
    • There was a trend of focusing on hiring full-time employees in the last 10 years, but that may be halted or turned in the other direction because of the current climate and additional governmental rules placed on hiring full-time employees.
    • Al highlights for us that in certain European countries, firing a full-time employee requires a business to pay the employee 6 months of salary.
  • In Al’s opinion, entrepreneurs are more optimistic people by nature, but the decision about how quickly to scale a business by hiring more people requires careful consideration due to the current climate we’ve discussed.
    • “I think it’s remembering that…globally and in the UK as well, it has been relentless for business owners since 2016…. There’s been so much disruption and so much change that I honestly think entrepreneurs, business leaders are exhausted. They’re burning out…. An entrepreneur wants to keep fighting. They want to keep going, but it’s how they invest their energy…. So, during this period where the business may be fairly stable, they’re finding other ways to fill that entrepreneurial need and that meaningful work they are currently lacking in a business that isn’t in a growth stage, which is hard for an entrepreneur.” – Leanne Elliott
    • Leanne mentions change of government in the UK, the pandemic, and other changes in the context of the impact to business leaders and entrepreneurs.
    • Business owners in the UK who have chosen the lifestyle business approach are spending more time on side hustles and diversifying what they are doing with their business. This is more about the individual business owner / entrepreneur than the organization as a whole.
• John asks Leanne and Al if the laws apply only to businesses of certain sizes? In the US, for example, certain laws might only apply once a business reaches a certain number of employees.
  • Leanne’s understanding is the size of the business does not matter, so the laws would apply as soon as the first employee is hired. It is a drastic shift and a high risk for small businesses, and they are choosing not to focus on growth right now.
  • John thinks in the US there is additional risk in growing a business past a certain size. Some owners may want to take lessons learned and start multiple businesses below that threshold to diversify instead of running just a single company. Differences in laws across countries and even states might create microclimates of opportunity for businesses (i.e. venue shopping).
  • Al says there are conditions that allow businesses to employ and fire people easily without having to pay a large severance upon separation from the company (i.e. contract employment). This can make entrepreneurs feel more at ease about recruiting people because it lowers risk.
  • Leanne thinks it is a fine balance. In the UK there used to be probationary periods for employees that would provide full benefits and rights at the end of that period, but now employees have the same rights on day 1 as employees with a long tenure at the company. There’s been this weird shift of power and rights between employers and employees over time (before, during, and after the pandemic).
  • Leanne highlights a conversation with psychologist Rose Soffel from Truth, Lies and Work about the trust crisis.
  • “We’ve had so much push and pull and power swings over the last year years… I think with the changes in laws, geopolitics…there’s so much conflict in every sense of the word… in society and in our workplaces. People are just lacking trust – trust in their businesses, lacking trust in their leaders, lacking trust in their colleagues. We’re seeing massive increases in what we call workplace incivility at the minute, which isn’t bullying or harassment. It’s a level down from that but equally problematic…. It’s infighting. It’s gossiping. It’s withholding information from a colleague. That’s on the rise because there’s this issue with trust. So, I think having these laws come in are great on paper…. While it’s great on paper and comes from the right place…how does this same law apply to a business that has 10 employees…expected to meet and work to the same expectations and laws and legalities as a business with ten thousand employees? …The idea is in the right place. The execution…they haven’t quite got right.” – Leanne Elliott

16:16 – Organizational Flattening

• The trust crisis and scale and workplace incivility at scale falls in line with the layoffs we continue to see in the tech industry (and in others). Why are so many organizations choosing to flatten their management layers and increase the manager to individual contributor ratios? This is a byproduct of a lot of these layoffs.
  • Leanne mentioned these things are cyclical, and we’re swinging back toward having less hierarchy as a trend. This is perceived as more startup-like and better for innovation and collaboration by some.
  • In the last 18 months, the lack of sufficient training for people managers has been highly publicized. Many people take on manager roles because it seems like the “next step” in their career. Leanne read a statistic recently that only just over 40% of managers ever had formal training.
  • “More than half of our managers aren’t equipped with the skills they need to lead our people…. The managers have the single biggest impact on employee performance, motivation, engagement, outcomes, productivity.” – Leanne Elliott
  • Organizations looking to make cuts might decide to fire managers that are inefficient instead of training them because they are also seen as expensive resources.
  • “For me, if you have great managers, they are the people that drive the success of your business…. The last time we talked we said that managers are culture keepers…and they really are. I think it’s naïve to think that removing a manager is going to solve all these problems. It’s not.” – Leanne Elliott
  • We need managers to help bridge the distance between the lowest levels of a company and senior leadership.
  • Leanne says people also think the flattening is intended to make organizations more agile.
  • Al says it’s difficult to attribute revenue directly to a manager. It’s much easier to attribute it to a resource on a production line or an individual contributor.
  • “It’s difficult when you’re looking at a spreadsheet to see the impact of what a manager does…. If you live in spreadsheets and you’re making the decisions based on numbers, it’s a no brainer…. What they don’t understand is that the IC produces ten thousand, a hundred thousand dollars a week in revenue because they’ve got an amazing manager.” – Al Elliott
• Nick mentions if you’re one of the managers without training and you stay / are not impacted by a layoff, you may get more people to manage as well.
  • John is hearing of managers getting teams of 15 and even 20 people at times. As a people manager, John would schedule regular 1-1 meetings with each of the employees on his team. But then there are all the other upstream / lateral meetings a manager has to attend in addition to these.
  • “I’m sure these managers aren’t given more time to manage with a bigger team. They still have to do everything else they need to do in terms of their administration or their job in general. They just now have more people to manage, so we’re not freeing up time…. We’re setting up our managers yet again for failure.” – Leanne Elliott
  • Leanne mentions a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships in the workplace and teams in the workplace, citing the work of Daniel Priestley about the 13th hire being a kind of tipping point for small businesses. This blog post cites an example from a startup. We can easily apply that to the size of a team underneath one manager.
  • Nick mentioned failure as a manager of a large team might make it even more difficult to get back to a manager role someday.
    • Leanne tells us impostor syndrome comes from an inability to internalize our achievements. Humans are much better at internalizing our failures.
    • Going through the experience as a manager and the potential failure is what we call a workplace trauma (with a lowercase “t”). It can be devastating to one’s career and self-efficacy.
    • “It’s psychological harm we are causing potentially to these managers by not giving them the tools and the resources and the support that they need. It’s highly irresponsible from organizations to take this approach.” – Leanne Elliott

22:46 – Challenges to Effective Management of Larger Teams

• Even in a challenging environment, is there a way that managers who care about doing a good job and have the willingness can be effective?
  • Leanne would say to focus on the relationships with the people on your team, but that’s going to be a challenge with such a large team whether you are a new or experienced manager.
  • “My advice to any manager in that situation is to focus on task cohesion, which is much more transactional and much easier to get right…. What’s the workflow? Who’s doing what? Who does what in what order? How does that contribute to the overall outcomes we’re trying to deliver? …If we can build in the systems and the processes that mean that task cohesion is really strong, then that means that over time we’re going to build team cohesion as a byproduct of that….” – Leanne Elliott
  • When you work with a colleague who makes your job easier, it’s natural to want to have a conversation with them and get to know them. This kind of thing breeds workplace civility – mutual respect and appreciation (which came about due to task cohesion).
  • Once task cohesion is in place, a manager can nurture the team cohesion.
  • Part of the work is building the team charter for what good looks like and the acceptable / unacceptable behaviors. But there is a step beyond this that Leanne calls a “check-in” with team members that can help you spot the issues and things that are bugging people on the team.
  • “It can be a 5-minute phone call on a Tuesday afternoon saying, ‘how are you doing? Anything making your job harder today? What can I do to make your job easier as a manager? What’s really bugging you?” – Leanne Elliott, on the manager’s check-in
  • The check-in can be a more time effective way of troubleshooting the fires to put out as a manager. Some managers may do formal 1-1 meetings, and that is great. Leanne encourages taking the approach of genuine care and seeking to make your team members’ jobs easier.
  • Al mentions the Pareto Principle and thinks maybe it’s more about pointing yourself at where the problems really are within the team using the targeted check-in approach rather than feeling the pressure to do a 1-hour 1-1 meeting with every team member once per week and everything else you need to do.
  • Leanne says the check-ins should be a phone call. Sending an instant message or e-mail adds one more task to a team member’s plate that they will worry about it.
  • “Pick up the phone. I know it might not always feel the most comfortable thing to do, but honestly once you get into the habit of it and once your employees get into the habit of…more vocal check-ins, it’s much more time efficient and less emotional load potentially.” – Leanne Elliott
  • John highlights that a connection task may not make a quality connection, and he likes Leanne’s suggestion to strive for quality. He also mentions every member of a team does not need the same amount of time from you as a manager. That equal spread may not serve everyone effectively.
    • Leanne says consider placing some intention toward reaching out to team members who are a bit more challenging. If you don’t want to reach out to specific members of your team, it signals that a conversation needs to happen.
• If you’ve worked somewhere that has had multiple rounds of layoffs, an unexpected call from your boss creates some anxiety. A manager getting right to the point when they make a call can help ease this trauma people may have.
  • Al mentions if we get PSTD or an anxiety spike when our manager calls, it may be a sign our manager isn’t talking to us enough. A great manager checks in regularly as part of their role.
  • Leanne was laid off (or made redundant) in 2015, and it was incredibly difficult to go through. She had a great relationship with her manager leading up to the layoff event. Managers should strive to create relationships where a call to be laid off is the last thing on people’s mind, but our current climate plays a role in affecting people.
  • Leanne recently saw a LinkedIn post from a manager who remained at a tech company after layoffs happened. He was describing the support he was offering to the people who were leaving the organization (i.e., pointing them toward open roles, etc.) as well as to those who remained. This manager had to navigate survivor’s guilt just like other employes who remained at the company.
    • “I think it’s managers like that that you’re never going to be afraid to get a phone call from. Because even if it is the worst, they’ve done everything they can to protect you in the lead up to that moment.” – Leanne Elliott
  • Al mentions in the case of Leanne’s phone call when she was laid off, her boss got right to the point. Because the relationship was there, Leanne knew despite her devastation that her manager would help her figure out how to move forward.
    • Leanne was told she had to lay off her entire team and would then be laid off as well.
  • Nick thinks there are 2 sides to the coin. We want to have a great relationship with our manager so that we don’t immediately think the worst when we get a call, but each person has their own level of trauma / PTSD they bring to the situation that they also have to fight.
  • John thinks this might be a cultural shift. Thirty years ago, telephones were the way people communicated, and getting a phone call was not a traumatic thing. Even today, when John’s family members call him instead of sending a text, he gets a spike in adrenaline and thinks something might be wrong.
    • Maybe if managers are trying to establish a rhythm of calling people to check in, they can send a quick message ahead of time to let the person know the purpose of the call.
    • Once the pattern of check-in calls is established as normal process, each call is less of a triggering event.
    • Leanne agrees and emphasizes the need for absolute clarity.
    • “Everything’s good. Nothing is wrong. I’m just going to give you a call at this time to check in.” – Leanne Elliott, an example of being very clear about a phone call to a direct report
    • Leanne says she heard about a manager who told their employees they would be receiving a call regularly from the manager just to check in (i.e. every Tuesday at 2 PM, etc.).
    • A manager can also let the first 5-10 minutes of a team call be informal conversations. It shows that this is part of the team culture and way of working.
  • “Why shouldn’t you be the manager who just does things differently?” – Al Elliott
    • Being the manager who does things differently is ok. You will develop a reputation within the company for operating that way and doing check-ins. It only takes a few phone calls to put people at ease about the process.
    • Leanne says the calls have to be made with some intention. It’s not just asking people if everything is alright. Consider using more coaching type questions.
    • “It’s almost digging in a little bit more and finding a specific thing to talk about which every good manager does anyway in terms of giving any type of feedback. It’ll be very specific and rooted context. It’s the same for these causal phone calls. If you’ve got something rooted in context, it’s going to help that conversation flow. It’s going to start to breed that…psychological safety that so people will actually feel they are able authentically open up…. It needs to be, ‘I’m going to phone you. We’re going to have a conversation because I’m generally interested in how you’re doing, what’s going on in your work world, and if appropriate, beyond that.” – Leanne Elliott

36:03 – Management and Coaching

• As a result of the above, Nick thinks managers should be good at interviewing people beyond job interviews to begin and continue good conversations. Is this a skill a job candidate should highlight if they want to be a people manager?
  • Some people have fallen into communicating that they are a manager and therefore very important because they got a promotion at work. It’s partially what they have seen others do.
  • “They just think that’s what being a manager is because they’ve seen the loud mouths who have been managers before and are really important people who run around with papers in their hand. And they don’t know that being a manager is almost the opposite. It’s being quiet, not loud.” – Al Elliott
  • Leanne thinks it’s probably less interviewing and more about asking coaching questions. It’s about asking questions that are generally inquisitive or help someone though a thought process / something that is troubling them.
  • If you want to be a manager, look at skills embedded in coaching like listening skills. A listening skills course or a coaching course could be highly beneficial to anyone.
    • Coaching courses can be transformative in terms of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, engaging and interacting with other people without agenda or judgement.
    • “That’s what I’d say is to highlight those skills – your curiosity, your ability to coach, your ability to listen. I would snap up anyone, even if they had no experience at all. I would snap up anyone with those skills into a management role.” – Leanne Elliott, on the skills of a manager

Mentioned in the Outro

• If you’re a manager listening to this who is not getting trained, you can find that training outside your company in the form of books, podcasts, seminars, and formal training courses. In fact, Leanne recommends courses on coaching or active listening.
  • Remember also that it’s ok to be a manager who does things differently to make an impact.
• If you want more resources for dealing with uncertainty, remember to visit these pages:
  • Our Layoff Resources Page with the most impactful discussions on the topic of layoffs with experts like Leanne Elliott and technologists not so different from you.
  • Our Career Uncertainty Action Guide with the 5 pillars of career resilience and AI prompts to help you work through overwhelm, financial planning, and a layoff scenario
  • Remember to subscribe to Truth, Lies and Work

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney
  • Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman
  • Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_
  • Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.
• If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.