The Love Monday Podcast

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Gallup found that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for a manager role 82% of the time. But that statistic only measures manager selection. What happens after someone gets promoted may be an even bigger problem.

In this episode of Love Monday, Ryan Houmand explores why bad management isn’t just a hiring or promotion problem—it’s a management development problem. Too many organizations promote strong individual contributors into leadership roles, give them little meaningful manager training, and then expect them to figure out how to coach, develop, motivate, and lead people.

We look at five places the system breaks: manager selection, preparation, development, feedback, and accountability—and why organizations need to stop treating management like a promotion and start treating it like a profession.

Because 82% may be where the management problem starts. It isn’t where it ends.

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For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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What is it actually like to be managed by you?

In this off-the-cuff midweek episode, Ryan Houmand gives the history of the Manager Mirror™.

Most managers know their intentions. Far fewer know their impact.

In this special episode of the Love Monday Podcast, Ryan Houmand introduces Manager Mirror™, a multi-rater manager assessment designed to answer one deceptively simple question: What is it like to be managed by you?

Traditional employee engagement surveys tell you how employees feel about work. Performance reviews tell you how the organization evaluates the manager. Manager Mirror™ looks at something different: the employee experience of their manager.

Ryan explores why there can be a gap between how managers see themselves and how their employees experience their leadership—and why those leadership blind spots matter for employee engagement, retention, motivation, performance, trust, coaching, and workplace culture.

Manager Mirror™ gathers perspectives from the manager, their direct reports, peers, and leader to identify patterns in areas including coaching, performance management, emotional stability, ownership, integrity, systems, employee motivation, advocacy, and employee growth and development.

This isn’t about labeling managers as good or bad. It’s about giving managers something extraordinarily difficult to get on their own: a clear view of their impact on the people they lead.

If you’re searching for ways to improve manager effectiveness, leadership development, employee engagement, manager training, 360-degree feedback, leadership assessment, management skills, employee retention, workplace culture, manager coaching, leadership blind spots, employee experience, people management, team performance, or manager development, this episode introduces a different way to start.

Manager Mirror™: What is it like to be managed by you?

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For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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Do you know what it’s actually like to be managed by you?

Most managers know what they intend to create—trust, accountability, autonomy, growth—but employees experience leadership from a very different perspective. That gap between leadership intention and employee experience may be one of your biggest management blind spots.

In this episode of Love Monday, Ryan Houmand explores manager self-awareness, employee engagement, leadership blind spots, coaching, feedback, and why great managers need more than good intentions. He also introduces Manager Mirror™, built around one simple question: What is it like to be managed by you?

Plus, three questions you can ask your employees today to become a more effective manager and leader.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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Is AI replacing managers? As companies embrace artificial intelligence, flatten organizational structures, cut middle management, and use AI to automate more workplace tasks, the role of the manager is changing fast.

But companies may be confusing managing work with managing people.

In this episode of Love Monday Like Friday, Ryan Houmand looks at recent business news around AI, layoffs, middle managers, and the future of work—and asks a different question: What if the biggest opportunity for AI isn't replacing managers, but freeing them to actually manage?

Using QWERTY Management™, the Excellence Trap™, and Gainers & Drainers™, Ryan explores how AI can take over administrative work like reporting, documentation, coordination, and information retrieval while managers spend more time coaching employees, giving feedback, developing talent, recognizing great work, and having the conversations that improve performance and employee engagement.

AI can help manage the work. But organizations still need someone to manage the humans doing it.

Maybe the future of management isn't fewer managers.

Maybe it's finally expecting managers to become professionals at managing people.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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AI is getting remarkably good at managing work—analyzing data, tracking projects, documenting meetings, finding bottlenecks, and automating tasks. So what happens to managers?

Maybe they finally get to manage people.

In this episode, Ryan explores why AI could expose one of corporate America’s biggest mistakes: confusing managing work with managing humans. From Meta bringing managers back after years of flattening, to new research showing that employees using AI most frequently may actually be more worried about losing their jobs, the future of work is creating a surprising need for better human management.

We’ll explore how AI changes Skill-Will-Fit™, Gainers & Drainers™, the Excellence Trap™, employee engagement, coaching, and career development—and why using AI simply as a headcount reduction strategy may be exactly the wrong move.

The question isn’t whether AI can replace managers.

It’s whether AI can finally free managers to actually manage people.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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What if the problem with management isn’t that companies have too many managers—but that managers are managing the wrong thing?

As companies flatten organizations, increase spans of control, and turn to AI to automate more work, we need to rethink what management is actually for.

In this episode of Love Monday Like Friday, Ryan explores the critical difference between managing work and managing people. Managing work means coordinating tasks, schedules, workflows, deadlines, metrics, and outputs—the kind of work technology and AI are becoming increasingly capable of doing.

Managing people is different. It means understanding human performance, motivation, strengths, energy, development, potential, and fit. That isn’t administration. It’s a craft.

We’ve spent decades promoting great individual contributors into management and then burying them in meetings, reports, approvals, projects, and administrative work. Meanwhile, actually developing the human beings on their teams becomes something they’re expected to squeeze in around everything else.

Maybe it’s time to change that.

People management shouldn’t be something you do because you happen to be responsible for six chairs. It should be a profession practiced by people who have developed expertise in human performance and development.

Ryan connects this idea to the Excellence Trap™, Gainers & Drainers™, Skill-Will-Fit, the Coaching Cycle™, and Manager Mirror™ and asks a bigger question about the future of work:

If AI and technology can increasingly manage the chair, what becomes possible when managers can finally focus on the person sitting in it?

Stop managing the chair. Start managing the person.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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Private equity doesn’t usually show up because everything is working beautifully.

It shows up when organizations have left value on the table—and too often, that includes the value locked inside their people.

In this episode of Love Monday, Ryan Houmand explores why employee engagement surveys, 360 feedback, and tools like the Love Monday Manager System™ shouldn’t be treated as HR exercises. They’re early-warning systems.

They can tell you where managers are struggling, where employees are disengaging, where performance is leaking, and where the employee experience is beginning to break down—while leaders still have the ability to do something about it.

Because if you wait until someone else comes in to “create value,” the decisions may no longer be yours.

Measure it. Get curious. Coach it. Improve it—while you still can.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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Why do employees stop speaking up—even when leaders say they want honesty?

Emotional safety at work isn’t created by an open-door policy. It’s created by what happens after someone disagrees, asks a hard question, makes a mistake, or shows some personality. Employees are always reading the room and calculating whether honesty will be useful—or expensive.

In this episode, Ryan explores how leadership behavior, vague standards of “professionalism,” status, and subtle corrections can quietly destroy psychological safety, employee engagement, and trust. Because when people no longer feel safe being honest, the organization may still get their attendance and compliance—but it loses their candor.

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

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Everybody needs a coach—even coaches.

When LinkedIn rewarded one of my posts with a single impression after eight hours, I declared, “LinkedIn is dead.” Then Adam, a LinkedIn coach I had worked with before, reached out and asked one simple question: “Do you want to talk?”

What followed wasn’t a lecture or an elaborate LinkedIn strategy. It was exactly what good coaching should be: timely perspective, a few useful reminders, genuine curiosity, and the encouragement I needed to get back in the game.

In this episode, we explore why everyone can benefit from a coach, how to find a career or leadership coach who truly resonates with you, and why great coaching isn’t about monologuing or dispensing endless advice. It’s knowing when to ask questions, when to offer guidance, and when someone simply needs to hear, “You’ve still got this.”

Link to my coach, Adam Gray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamgray/

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday" 

Send us Fan Mail

•  Why nearly every employee starts with optimism. 
•  How managers unintentionally turn dream jobs into jobs people dread. 
•  The everyday leadership behaviors that slowly erode engagement. 
•  What great leaders do to keep people excited about coming to work. 

Support the show

For more information on how to love Monday just like Friday, got to: LoveMondayLikeFriday.com. Find more information from Ryan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-houmand/

Get the book! "A Passion for Monday"