Olivia: Most new managers fail for the exact same reason: they try too hard to be liked. They think they're empowering their team, but they're actually setting them up for a slow, painful disaster. And today, we're talking about how to avoid that trap. Jackson: Wow, starting with a gut punch. I like it. That sounds like a lesson learned the hard way. Olivia: It’s the central, and kind of brutal, truth at the heart of Rachel Pacheco's book, Bringing Up the Boss. Jackson: Pacheco... she's the one with the wild background, right? Not just a business author, but a Wharton PhD who's also been in the trenches with startups all over the world, from Dubai to Kazakhstan? Olivia: Exactly. And she won a silver medal at the Axiom Business Book Awards for this, because she combines that real-world grit with serious research to explain why so many teams are just 'Teams in Name Only.' Jackson: A TINO. I think I’ve been on a few of those. Maybe I’ve even led one. Olivia: We all have. And it all starts with this fundamental mistake managers make, which Pacheco calls the 'disappointment guaranteed' principle.

Olivia: She shares this fantastic quote from a friend: "An expectation unarticulated is a disappointment guaranteed." It’s the idea that new managers, terrified of being seen as micromanagers, become incredibly vague. Jackson: Okay, but hold on. Telling someone to 'be more proactive' or 'take more ownership' sounds like empowering advice. It sounds like you trust them. How is that a trap? Olivia: That’s the paradox. It feels empowering, but it's actually abdicating responsibility. Pacheco tells this perfect story about a manager named Diane who is pulling her hair out over her employee, Lalit. She complains that he isn't proactive. He doesn't follow up on leads, he doesn't bring new ideas to meetings. She's told him a dozen times, "Lalit, I need you to be more proactive!" Jackson: And I'm guessing it didn't work. Olivia: Not at all. Because Diane never once defined what 'proactive' actually looked like to her. Does it mean he should email clients within an hour? Does it mean he should come to meetings with a written list of three new ideas? Lalit is left guessing, and Diane is left frustrated. He’s not a mind reader. She set him up to fail by not being explicit. Jackson: That is painfully familiar. It's the corporate version of 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.' So the solution isn't to be vague and hope for the best, it's to be almost surgically precise with expectations? Olivia: Surgically precise. And that leads directly to the second mind trap: avoiding direct feedback because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings or be the 'mean boss.' Pacheco has this unforgettable chapter title... Jackson: Don't leave me hanging. Olivia: "Feedback Is Like Underwear: It’s a Gift You Need, Maybe Not One You Want." Jackson: To... underwear? Okay, you have to explain that one. Olivia: It's essential, but maybe a little awkward to give and receive. She tells this story about a VP named Justine who had a new hire, Vit, who was underperforming. For three months, Justine said nothing. She was afraid of upsetting him, of being seen as mean. She just hoped he’d figure it out. Jackson: Oh, I can see where this is going. Olivia: The CEO eventually noticed Vit's poor performance and they had to let him go. And Vit was completely blindsided. He was shocked and hurt, and his final question to Justine was, "Why didn't you just tell me?" The kindness she thought she was showing by staying silent was actually the cruelest thing she could have done. She denied him the chance to improve. Jackson: Wow. So the attempt to be the 'cool, hands-off manager' actually leads to unclear expectations, and the attempt to be the 'nice, conflict-avoidant manager' leads to people getting fired without ever knowing why. These aren't personality flaws; they're tactical errors. Olivia: Exactly. They are traps that well-intentioned people fall into every single day.

Jackson: So these individual mind traps—unclear expectations, no feedback—are like cracks in the foundation. If you have a whole team of people dealing with that, I'm guessing the entire structure is unstable. Olivia: That's the perfect segue. Pacheco argues that's how you get a TINO: a Team In Name Only. It's a group of people who have the same manager and show up in the same org chart, but they aren't a real team. She uses this brilliant analogy of building a beach house. Jackson: A beach house. Okay. Olivia: You spend all your time and money on the beautiful decorations. You pick the perfect subway tile for the kitchen, the most luxurious white linens for the beds, a custom chandelier for the living room. The house looks incredible. But you forgot to invest in a strong foundation. And the first time a big wave comes, the entire thing washes away. Jackson: And the decorations are the people you hire? The star performers? Olivia: Precisely. We spend so much time finding the 'perfect' people, the all-stars with amazing resumes. But we don't build the structure to hold them together. So when real pressure hits—a tight deadline, a project failure, a conflict—the whole thing collapses into finger-pointing and chaos. Jackson: Okay, so what is the foundation? If it's not just hiring smart people, what are we supposed to be building? Olivia: This is where the research comes in, and it's so fascinating. Pacheco points to Google's massive internal study, Project Aristotle. They analyzed 180 of their teams to figure out what separated the great ones from the mediocre ones. And it had nothing to do with the things you'd expect—not the collective IQ, not whether they were introverts or extroverts, not how senior they were. Jackson: So what was it? Olivia: Two things. The high-performing teams all had two ingredients: Explicit Norms and Psychological Safety. Jackson: Explicit norms? Like, 'Don't heat fish in the microwave'? Olivia: (Laughs) That’s a good start, but it goes deeper. It's about making the unwritten rules, written. How do we make decisions on this team? Is it by consensus, or does the leader decide? How do we disagree? Is it okay to challenge each other in a meeting, or should that happen one-on-one? Who needs to be CC'd on this email? It's the boring, logistical stuff that, when left unsaid, creates constant friction and misunderstanding. Jackson: And the second one? Psychological safety? Olivia: That's the big one. It was first defined by psychologist Amy Edmondson, and it's the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks on a team. It means you can ask a 'dumb' question, admit a mistake, or offer a crazy idea without fear of being humiliated or punished. Jackson: This is where I wonder about a critique I've seen in some reader reviews. A few people mentioned the book's style can feel a bit... 'infantilizing' or cutesy. Does talking about 'feelings' and 'safety' in a high-pressure business context feel a bit soft to some people? Olivia: It's a fair question, but Pacheco would argue it's the hardest, most crucial work there is. She points to the most famous, and tragic, example of a lack of psychological safety: the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The engineers at Morton Thiokol knew the O-rings were likely to fail in the cold weather. They had the data. But in the room with NASA managers, they didn't feel safe enough to pound the table and say, "This will explode." They presented their concerns, but they were pressured, their data was questioned, and they ultimately deferred. The lack of psychological safety wasn't a 'soft' problem; it was a mission-critical failure with catastrophic human consequences. Jackson: Huh. When you put it that way, it’s not about being nice, it’s about getting the truth on the table when the stakes are high. Olivia: Exactly. It's the foundation that allows a team to handle pressure, to innovate, and to tell the truth. Without it, you just have a collection of talented people in a house waiting for the first wave.

Jackson: So it's a two-part formula, really. At the individual level, as a manager, you have to conquer your own fear of being clear and direct. You have to be explicit with expectations and feedback, even when it's uncomfortable. Olivia: Right. You have to manage your own mind traps first. Jackson: And then, at the team level, you have to build this invisible architecture of norms and safety so that everyone else can be clear and direct with each other. You're not just managing people; you're managing the space between them. Olivia: That's a beautiful way to put it. Management isn't a promotion; it's a completely different job. It's less about your own output and more about being the architect of an environment. The book's real power is showing that this architecture isn't built with grand gestures or expensive off-sites. It's built with small, consistent, and often uncomfortable conversations about expectations, feedback, and how we all agree to work together. Jackson: So for anyone listening who just became a manager, or is about to, the first step isn't to create some grand vision. It's to sit down with your team and ask: 'How do we want to communicate? How will we disagree?' And actually write it down. Olivia: I love that. Make the implicit, explicit. That's the first block in the foundation. And we're curious to hear from our listeners. What's the best or worst piece of an 'unspoken rule' you've had to navigate on a team? Let us know on our social channels. We'd love to hear your stories. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.