2519: Effective Management with Ashley Herd

LifeBlood: We talked about becoming a better and more effective manager, the primary roles of a manager, what every employee is looking for, a great question to start asking asap for impact, and how to get started, with Ashley Herd, Founder and CEO of the Manager Method, podcast host, and author. Listen to learn the 3-step framework for creating better connection and becoming a more effective manager! Get your copy of The Manager Method here:https://amzn.to/4qBSICV You can learn more about Ashley at ManagerMethod.com, Instagram, and LinkedIn. George’s newest book is available! Get your copy of The Meaningful Few here: https://amzn.to/4qA26X9 Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here: MyMeaningfulFew.comThanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here:​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcastYou can learn more about us at LifeBlood. Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood. Live. Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee.https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifebloodCopyright LifeBlood 2026.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 01

  Ashley Herd is the founder and CEO of The Manager Method. She is a podcaster. She is an author. Her newest book is The Manager Method: A Practical Framework to Lead, Support, and Get Results. Welcome to the show, Ashley.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Great to be here, George.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal life, some more about your work, and what motivated you to write the book?

• 1:07Speaker 02

  I am currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, but I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and I have worked at KFC, I'd say for KFC, in the restaurant support center. And I started my career, actually, at Subway, being a sandwich artist. And I have worked pretty much all levels of the corporate ladder, from literally being a frontline employee, supporting frontline employees, but also being a legal and HR leader at McKinsey, the world's largest, I think, consulting firm, and saw that, one, people have or seem to have so much more respect for some people based on title. Like, oh, he worked at McKinsey, that's incredible. But I saw before my eyes that there

• 1:52Speaker 02

  were senior partners at McKinsey with so many Ivy League degrees, super sharp. And some were fantastic leaders, but there were plenty that there might be a restaurant manager at KFC that could run circles around them from business and knowing their people and what motivates them. And so I did see that when you're a people leader, you have so much more in common, whether you're working with frontline employees in healthcare, your first line manager through a senior executive. And so I created the book based on a simple framework of what managers can do in any situation and knowing that there are so many people managers that never get any sort of formal training. And manager method is a business, we do provide that. But from a book, it helps give people the tools that

• 2:35Speaker 02

  so many go their whole careers without ever getting.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  It's not obvious, it's not common sense, Ashley. We're not hardwired.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  We're not. And unfortunately, the way it tends to work is someone's really good at their job. So top leadership or their boss or someone says, you know, this person's great. We're going to promote them, make them a manager. They're going to teach everybody else how to do it. Win, win, win, win, win. Until then, you know, that person, especially if you're coming from a function like sales, where you are very much stacked, literally stacked ranked against your colleagues, you're often trying to silo your best ideas and your success. But no matter what your role is, you're flipping and you realize, one, it's a lot different to teach and coach and manage others to do a job as opposed to doing the job. But then aside from all of that, you know, thinking about the work, all of a sudden, your best employee needs to take time off, you know, someone gets sick, they

• 3:27Speaker 02

  had a pipe leak, oh, you have to have a hard conversation that the past five managers have never had with this person. And so there's just a lot of challenges that are really common and conversations that need to be had that often aren't.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Well, I could speak from personal experience of being that top performing salesperson who then got put into management and I had no idea about any of it. So.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  What did you find hardest when you became a manager?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Well, I was tasked with recruiting and then managing and training as well. The hardest thing was, was holding people accountable.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's super, it's super common. The recruiting one, I actually just had a conversation the other day that sticks with that. But that is, I talked to a manager that was saying, you know, I have to do all this stuff with recruiting. We have a recruiting team, you know, shouldn't they be doing that? And I say, well, sure, but recruiters, you know, they may not know every function, but also flip it and think about the person you want to come work with you. You're telling this person, you know, I'm so busy as a manager, I don't have time to be invested in these things, or I'm too busy. And so you have somebody else in recruiting, and while that's all fine and good, a lot of your top candidates, bless them, people don't love recruiters or HR as much as the world might think. But as a manager, it's about getting involved in that process and, you know, not being there every step of the way, but knowing how much your presence means.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  And I had that conversation a few days ago, a couple of days afterwards. The person had said, I ended up jumping on a call that a recruiter was going to have with the candidate and explain, you know, I wanted to have this instead of the recruiter, you know, da, da, da, da, and how much it meant to the candidate and that sometimes you don't pause and consider what it's like in that other person's shoes. But that's one of the more positive conversations. It can be a lot harder doing things like holding people accountable.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no doubt. It's, I mean, to your point, if we've never been taught, trained to do these functions, then why would I be able to do it? And why would I be comfortable doing it?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  What, what is a manager? How do you, how do you, maybe that's a really stupid question, but just to level set.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Well, no, if, and if I, my book is The Manager Method, I better be able to answer that question, but I'd say, the way I put it in an ideal world is someone that drives results without driving people out the door. I say that because it's oftentimes, especially, it seems like more and more, the focus is on those results. You know, you're supposed to get these results, you're supposed to have things happen. And sometimes you sacrifice getting results in the short time, or short term, for having people that are so exhausted, or they feel like they weren't appreciated. And so maybe they hit this target, but now they're open to work on LinkedIn, or they're having conversations that you don't even realize they're having. And so it really is threading the needle between having the conversations to teach people,

• 6:11Speaker 02

  coach people, when they're not doing well, figuring out if this is the right role for that person or not, because those are the conversations that are tough, but are important to have as well, but doing that in a way that recognizes it's a human on the other side of that conversation.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Which for the time being, it is still a human being on the other side of that conversation.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  That is very, that is a very important caveat.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Do you, did you go into it with the thinking, knowing that these are the things that have to be present for somebody to feel good about the work that they're doing. It's dignity, it's being seen, being heard. Are there sort of like values that you thought about?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot I thought about. I did the research as well. A lot of times, there's a piece of research from UKG, their research arm, from now about three years ago, that says a manager has more of an impact on their employee's health than their doctor, their therapist, roughly on par with their spouse or partner if they're in a relationship. In that, for example, it gets to a lot of those things of the stress, how someone feels. That all goes into how someone performs. And so going into it, there's a lot of research that talks about it. There's autonomy, there's whether someone feels like they can be themselves at work. And one of the things I say in the book is, when you're working with people, people have all sorts of comfort levels of sharing

• 7:37Speaker 02

  personal details about themselves. And you probably see it. You open the podcast, tell me personal life. You see some people that are open book, some people that give you a not so, not so open page, and people are different. But, but nobody should ever feel like they have to share something they're not comfortable with, but also something that they're, they shouldn't be afraid to share. And so knowing as a manager, creating those opportunities for people to fill that container however they most feel comfortable, that can help people really perform the best and want to stay and grow.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  That is such a profound statement and reality that a manager has more impact than the person's doctor. And I just, I just was listening to a podcast and they were talking about how, and this is maybe really, really bad advice or wrong, but having a glass of wine or even smoking a cigarette, if that causes you to relax and calm down, that it's better to do that than to continue being stressed. And I was like, oh my goodness, I'd never really thought about it that way. And then you say that, and I realized that I've had managers in the past that made me physically ill because of the amount of stress and anxiety that, I'm not going to lay it all at their feet, but they were certainly part of it.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Totally. In the book, I talk about my, I'm talking to managers. I'm talking to people who are leaders, even if you're not a people manager. Often, people are trying to get ahead, which is fantastic. But I give a very real example of how my first job, so I worked in, actually, cold calling sales for a couple of years before I went to law school. And I was a lawyer and then had gone in HR. But my first job shifting from a law firm environment to an in-house environment, which is working for a company. I was interviewing with a man who was actually my client. He was a general counsel. It was a publicly traded company. And for all stereotypes, he was a man with a stay-at-home wife. They had a nanny. They had two teenagers. I, at the time, on the flip side, my husband and I both worked. We

• 9:34Speaker 02

  had a young toddler thinking about growing the family. And so for me, there were so many things that stuck out. Like, if I live in Atlanta, sometimes schools or daycares close just because it's cold outside. So, nobody else would say like, "Oh, you can't get into work. Look, it's just cold. Everybody else is at work," it seems like, except for me. And so, those things are so top of mind. But I would never have brought that up. That's a potential interview. I just, I want to get the job. But in the interview, this future boss, epilogue, he was eventually my boss, but he'd said, proactively, you know, there is a pay cut when you go from a law firm environment in-house. You know, oftentimes, consultants may see that type of trade-off as well, go into industry. But he said, "Part of it is a really predictable schedule. You'll work eight to five. You're not expected to work at nights on the weekends. We have a lot of fun. You have a lot of opportunity

• 10:19Speaker 02

  to do what you want." I joined, and I became the third lawyer on a team. At the time, there were 7,000 employees, a billion-dollar company. And I totally worked eight to five. I loved it. I mean, I saw a function legal, which doesn't tend to be a fun function. It can be super stressful. I had such change in my work and my life. And it was literally because of the communication that a leader chose to have. And, you know, there are different realities of different roles. But that was an area that, especially that proactive conversation, changed everything. I mean, I, to this day, would, you know, walk to the ends of the earth for that manager. And so, just showing some of the things, often, communication is the biggest key that managers can take. And it doesn't tend to require budget or approval

• 11:04Speaker 02

  internally.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  And that certainly makes sense as you describe it. I mean, how many functions does a manager have? Like, dozens, maybe hundreds, if not thousands. But when you really boil it down, the critical ones are your ability to communicate, make people feel welcome.

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• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's in that often, the communication to me, the mouth is so much more important than the brain. As far as as a manager, you feel like, especially if you're managing your peers or you're managing all sorts of functions, you think like, how am I going to know everybody's job? But the good news is you really, you're not going to and you don't have to. And people aren't going to expect that to you. Some might at the outset, like, oh, my, why is my manager asking me this question? Shouldn't they know? But when you explain that in a way, say, well, I'm asking you because you're the expert and there's certain things I can control, there's certain things I'll know, but I also want you to have free rein over this. I want to learn things from you. There's things that you can say that show yourself as credible, but also give your

• 13:03Speaker 02

  team members opportunity to really own their experience. And it can completely change the experience for yourself and for your team members and their careers.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And every conversation that we have is potentially unique and well, they're all unique, but at the same time, they're universal rules and frameworks that you've talked about.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in my book, I give a three-step framework because I want to be realist. People may take three words out of my book, maybe four or five if I'm lucky, but a three-step framework I call pause, consider, act. And this is literally the idea that you pause because often you have a gut reaction. Like your manager, someone makes a mistake, you are so pissed. You might be, but you've got to pause to not just react, but have a response. Some of it's pausing. Sometimes that's literally a second, sometimes that's a few days or longer. And then consider, which means think about the other person on the other end of this conversation or persons. Put yourself in their shoes. What are questions you'd want to be asked? Whether it's performance, oftentimes there are questions to be asked before you come in with assumptions. Sometimes I say, think about a loved one.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  I think of my late grandmother, Gigi, who lived a wonderful life to 96 years old. And so in very real situations, I would think, okay, well, you know, Gigi wasn't perfect. If she made a mistake, how would I want that conversation to go? It probably wouldn't be the coming in hot instinct. But then also to act, because one other trap that managers and everyone tends to fall into is you say you're going to do something, you mean to do something, and then a day, days, weeks go by, then you never get back to it because you feel like it's been too late. And so this, this framework that while it's now coming out in the book that's out, but also as I've talked about it before, I've had individuals come up and say, you know, this, I think about this as a people leader with my team, but I also think about it with how I parent or my relationships.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And, you know, however people find it useful, the manager method really focuses on the work context, but I say that the most valuable step of three is often to pause because, you know, we're generally trying to rush ahead, whether it's look like an expert or just get through the day, that pause could be the best time you ever spend.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It's interesting, and I completely agree. As a parent, that's what I was just thinking about, the whole pause, consider, and then act, instead of just violently lashing out at my six-year-old because he did something stupid once again. Not that he does, and not that that's a real scenario that's taking place, but you get the idea.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Is there one that's hardest for people? Obviously, the pause, it sounds like it makes sense that it's the most important. What have you found people struggle with?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  I mean, people definitely struggle with the pause. And I have an 11 and 14-year-old. And so, you know, I'd love to say it gets easier to pause. It seems to get harder, especially when I now have texts coming in asking me for things. But oftentimes, it really is that consider aspect that as a manager, you're not always thinking about the person on the other side of that conversation. I gave the example of when you're hiring a candidate or you're recruiting, think about those people. And I say, you know, you open up a job search. I hear people all the time that, you know, you want to grow your team, but it just seems like another chore as a manager. You said you have a dozen titles. That's the 13th. You're trying to bring people on board. But knowing, you know, let's say you have, you know, you're going to have so many applicants. But let's

• 16:19Speaker 02

  say you are hiring or you're interviewing, you know, five, six people, sometimes more, sometimes less. But, you know, you're generally going to have one of those that ends up being happy at the end of it. Hopefully you and hopefully them, you agree on that. But all of those others, they, you are the chief marketing officer for your organization. You are creating a candidate experience that they'll talk about, whether they want to apply again, whether they want to be a customer. And so, the considering aspect of putting yourself in their shoes can be so important. And that's one that I think people don't always do when you pause, is to think about other people's perspectives, and one that can be very, very helpful.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And certainly, if we're not in the habit of doing that, then that is a foreign thing and a skill that must be learned. Are these all learnable?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  I really do think so. And sometimes, I will say as a caveat, that one trap that organizations generally fall into is you do have these paths. You know, someone does a job, over time, they either become a manager, or they become a former employee. Like, there's really not paths. And I am really an advocate of people being able to have a career path that's an expert path, or a doer path, or you can train others without managing others. I think that's really important. But for those that are in the role, and a lot of people I know are probably reading the book, or looking for resources, listening to this podcast because you want to hear tips, I really think they are, because the most important skills are listening, asking questions. I mean, you heard, pause, consider, act.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  None of those things make you get three levels of sign off in procurement. In often the things that you make the most difference, you're creating a culture for your team. And so they really are learnable and often it's having those common questions to be able to then lead the different personalities, people on your team.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  There's so much power in a good question. Do you have a favorite or ones that you really like?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  One that I really like is, is asking others, what do you wish more people knew about your work? And that's one that you can ask your, your team members when you're a new manager taking over a team, asking people that. It's one that you can ask cross-functionally. You know, another trap sometimes managers ended is it feels like there's, you know, you know, a bunch of teams all competing against each other. If you've ever worked in an organization that it seems like these departments, like everyone knows these departments just don't like each other. Well, that's really not productive and it can, it can be absolutely miserable, not just from a business results, but just the mindset. And so when you're building relationships cross-functionally or with your team or otherwise, just asking what's something that you wish more people knew about your work.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  It gives people an opportunity to, to share something they may have kept inside, they may have to think about that. But it's also ways you can really learn what's important to other people and, and build that relationship accordingly.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's an awesome question right there and can uncover so much and give people the opportunity to, again, be seen and feel heard and wow, nobody's ever asked me that. I bet, I bet people say that all the time.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  They, they totally do, but I'd ask you that, George, is what do you wish more people knew about your work, whether it's your work or this podcast you're running in? What would you say?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  What would, what do I wish more people knew about my work? Oof. I don't have a good answer to that question. I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one, Ashley, because what, why do I wish more people knew about what I do? Because I'm pretty outspoken about why I do what I do and the impact I'm interested in having. And there's not a lot of secret to it necessarily, but I think that there's so much power in a good question and just be ready to listen. And all right, I'll tell you this, I think that the greatest gift that you can give somebody else is your undivided attention, especially these days. And so it's such a, it's not an easy thing to do these

• 20:09Speaker 01

  days, but it is more important than it ever has been. And being an active listener, and now I'll keep talking because I sort of got the idea here. You form such an interesting relationship with somebody when you're on a podcast, because it really is 20 or 30 minutes where there's no interruptions necessarily. And so you're really able to lock in. And so that's transferable. And it's really with this framework that you're talking about, that's really what you're doing, or that's part of what you're doing, is you're asking a good question, you're actually listening and you're engaging in a way that maybe somebody hasn't been engaged with for a while. So terrible answer to your question, but you know, I sort of landed the plane eventually.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  No, I think it's great. Also, but it's an important thing. Like when you ask people that question, I mean, one thing I say as a manager sometimes is the power of whether it's surveys or giving people a heads up on the conversation you're going to have, because it does sometimes it feels, you know, oh gosh, what am I going to say? And your team members can feel like that in the moment. And one of the questions, reasons I asked the question, would you wish more people knew about your work? Is because instead, if you say, what do you wish more people knew about you? I mean, that's something that sometimes you ask one on one, but you may have those team members that say, like, I don't really want to feel comfortable sharing that. So when you peg things on work, over time, people might share things about themselves personally, but sometimes being thoughtful in that, but knowing it's, it's hard to answer some of these questions in the moment. So you can

• 21:32Speaker 02

  always come back to it as a manager. And in saying that, so George, I'm happy to come back if you ever have additional thoughts on that as well. Come back.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yes, 1000%. We will definitely do that. And I'm not, I've never been a person who I am.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Whether I'm a thoughtful person or not, or I'm just not very smart, I do prefer to know what questions somebody has of me, especially if they want a thoughtful answer, to be able to think on something. And not everybody's obviously that way. There's probably plenty of people who can come up with a good answer right away.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It's true. But if you think about work, that's why I say with interviews in particular, things like that, rarely at work are you going to be called on the spot for something. And sometimes, but giving people advance notice and giving time to consider, sometimes that can get the more thorough answer and see more realistically how people work.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? Who should be engaging with you? And where can people get their copy of The Manager Method?

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Thank you, George. Well, I don't want anyone to feel like you can't engage with me. You're everyone welcome. You can find me on social media at Manager Method on pretty much all the platforms. ManagerMethod.com is my website. And from there, you can go to my book. And if you do get my book, then you can go there and get a free self-reflection guide or a book club guide, whether you want to read it on your own or as a team.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Well, I love everything about that. I see this as a wonderful opportunity for certainly any leadership team within an organization, but 1,000% the HR team to do a book club about this, because just what a great way to sort of promote the ideas that you've just been talking about in a fun and accessible way. And I imagine you do workshops, too?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Do workshops, and we have a real scalable leadership training platform that does. It really puts HR at the center. I am a firm believer that I'm not just having someone externally teaching things, but having that blended and have HR be a function that's not just how can I reset my password and my paycheck's incorrect by helping people do their work and having the questions to ask other people. And so we really, whether it's our book club guide or our Manager Method leadership platform, we do put HR at the center of that. So always happy for people to learn more.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, so Ashley, your appreciation, share today's show with Fred, who also appreciates good ideas. Go to ManagerMethod.com. Ashley, is that what it is?

• 23:55Speaker 02

  That's it. It is. This website's ManagerMethod.com. But hopefully by the time this goes live, I'll go ahead and just make sure that moves over, either way you put it.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Excellent. And then pick up your copy of The Manager Method, A Practical Framework to Lead, Support, and Get Results. Get in touch with Ashley if you are interested in in Workshop or just learning more. So thanks again, Ashley.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Thank you, George.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best.

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