You’re the Boss, Now What? with Desiree Petrich | Leadership and Team Development for Managers and Team Leaders
A leadership podcast for managers who want stronger teams, less drama, and more trust at work.
If you are a manager of people, this podcast is your playbook for the real challenges of leadership!
Each week, your host Desiree Petrich shares practical tools and frameworks from Working Genius, DISC, and The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team to help you:
- Hold employees accountable without micromanaging
- Handle conflict at work before it turns into drama
- Build trust and respect as a confident, credible leader
- Fix a toxic culture and create a team that takes ownership
- Lead effective team meetings that inspire engagement and action
Whether you’re leading a small team or an entire department, you’ll learn actionable strategies to create better communication, deeper trust, and a workplace people actually enjoy showing up to.
You’ll also get quick takeaways from bestselling leadership books, so you can skip the fluff and apply what works!
You’re the Boss, Now What? is your weekly dose of coaching for managers who want to do more than manage, they want to lead.
Popular Topics Include:
One-on-one meeting frameworks, handling team conflict, addressing passive-aggressive behavior, rebuilding trust after drama, navigating difficult employees, setting expectations without micromanaging, improving accountability conversations, fixing toxic communication patterns, leading effective team meetings, delegation strategies for overwhelmed managers, increasing team buy-in, coaching underperforming employees, giving feedback that lands, managing impostor syndrome at work, and creating a healthier, more human-centered culture.
You’re the Boss, Now What? with Desiree Petrich | Leadership and Team Development for Managers and Team Leaders
Leadership Tips | Eat The Lemon
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You've heard it your whole life. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
And most of the time? That's good advice.
But in this week's tip, Desiree challenges the idea that you always have to find the positive spin — and introduces a concept that might give you the permission you didn't know you needed.
Sometimes the most self-aware thing you can do is just eat the lemon.
In this episode, you'll hear:
Why forcing positivity can actually be a form of avoidance — and what that costs you as a leader
The difference between reframing a hard situation and actually moving through it
Why skipping the disappointment doesn't make it go away — it just shows up later
What it looks like to feel the hard thing on purpose so you can move forward with honesty
This one is short, personal, and hits differently if you've ever been in a season where the silver lining just wasn't what you needed.
This podcast for managers is here to help you:
• Grow your leadership development
• Navigate team management with confidence
• Learn how to handle conflict at work
• Apply real, practical leadership tips
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Desiree (00:01.688)
Hey friend, this is your weekly leadership tip from Desiree. One small idea to carry with you into your life and leadership this week. And the tip this week is to eat the lemon. Now I'm gonna preface this by saying it's not actually a tip this week because what I want from you is help. I have had this thought going through my head, this concept, if you will, and I would love to talk it out at you, but then I want you to reach out to me and help me.
understand if this is a concept or not that is helpful to you. So I was supposed to get surgery last week on Wednesday. Ended up getting a really bad cold and wasn't able to get surgery. They had to postpone it out at least 28 days. And I was going on a walk thinking to myself, how can I make lemonade out of this? Right? Because when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. My thought process, my desire to always be in a state of growth
Immediately had me thinking, how can I put a positive and optimistic spin on this experience? But another part of me was nagging, and it said, you don't need to. You don't have to find the positivity in this. You can be annoyed for a minute. You put in all the work. You made the appointment. You cleared your schedule, you had everything figured out for the kids. You did the work. You get to be annoyed for just a moment that it didn't work. So here's
The concept I need help with. Eating the lemon, that moment of sitting in frustration, that moment of being uncomfortable, of recognizing the hard season or the hard circumstance, is that part of the process of making lemonade? If at the end of the day you're able to say, yes, I was able to find some positivity in this, I made lemons, lemonade out of lemons, is that part of the process? Or is it something different?
Is saying I'm gonna just eat the lemon for a while. A different concept altogether. Let me give you a work example with this that I've been thinking about because I have a client who got some really hard feedback from her boss after not getting a promotion that she felt she deserved. And some people had been trying to tell her, use this as an opportunity, right? Make lemonade. Use this as an opportunity to go back.
Desiree (02:25.653)
Follow the feedback that she gave you, get better, do all the things. And she was not in the mood. She's like, I just want to be mad for a moment. I felt very prepared for this. I felt like I deserved it and I didn't get it. And not to mention the fact that I just had an annual review two months ago and none of this feedback was shared during that review. I get to just be mad for a minute. I get to just eat the lemon and sit here with a sour face and be annoyed and be frustrated.
And that needs to be okay, because that's where I am. And I agreed with her. I didn't feel the need to push the positive and optimistic spin on this thing at the moment, knowing that it will come later. Even a year down the road, she might look back at this moment in time and say, I'm so thankful I didn't get that job because I got a different opportunity. Or I was able to
Do things in a different way and got the next job, which was even better. Or I was able to use this experience to mentor someone else later, right? I can foresee a lot of lemonade being made. I can see a lot of that positive spin. But in that moment, if we're trying too hard to put a positive spin on something, we miss it. We miss that opportunity. We bypass the hard feelings. And it's almost like we put.
Yeah.
Desiree (04:06.537)
It's an intentional type of wallowing, if you will, so that we can feel what we're feeling and then move through it, as opposed to moving it around it and forcing positivity, which can be avoidance sometimes. And then we wonder why hard conversations and why giving feedback and all these things are so hard. It's because we've avoided all of our negative feelings up until this point. We've never just sat and ate the lemon and been uncomfortable and
muddled through these really hard feelings. You don't always have to resolve it immediately or reframe it or find the lesson in it right now. You will find the lesson. I can almost guarantee you there will be a lesson. Even my son being in the NICU or my mom passing away, there was a lesson in it. There were positive things that came from it. But in those moments, there is absolutely no way I could have made lemonade. I needed to sit in that for a moment.
So this is my question for you. This is my ask of you this week. Send me a message on LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever, and let me know your thoughts on this eating the lemon versus making lemonade. Is it all part of one process and we just tend to focus on the positive part because that's the part that sounds better? Or is eating the lemon a separate concept from making lemonade?
Been thinking a lot, is it a season type conversation? Is it a day like a one circumstance type conversation? I'm gonna continue to flush this out and talk to you about it more because I think there's something there, especially if as I've been working with new leaders, with individuals who are trying to get promotions or they're trying to lead up people who are in really uncomfortable conversations. I think there's something there with this. But just
Remember that the entirety of this conversation still comes down to this concept of self-awareness. It's all knowing the difference between when we need to put a positive spin on something and when we need to sit and feel what we're feeling so that we can move through it and not around it. It always and always will come back to self-awareness. So thank you for sticking with me. Send me a message. I want to know what you think on this. And until next time, I hope you have a great week.
Desiree (06:28.063)
Make some lemons or
Desiree (06:43.736)
So do what you gotta do, eat the lemon, make the lemonade. Doesn't matter to me, but I will see you back here either way next week for another tip on life and leadership.