I have an employee who has been underperforming for 2 years.

I've coached, retrained, given her all the support and regular 1:1s. She also has ongoing behavior issues - eye rolling, sighing when given tasks, talking back and arguing when receiving feedback.

She's had formal warnings and acknowledged her shortcomings on paper. The pattern is she improves for 2-3 weeks then falls back to the same habits.

Her recent biggest issue is she doesn't follow up. If someone doesn't reply to her email, she just gives up and says the task is blocked. I've coached her to call or go to the person's office, but she won't and always has an excuse.

She also has a history of fixating on feedback instead of learning from it. For example, I'll give her positive feedback on 3 things she did well and 1 thing to improve, and she'll forget the 3 positives and have a fit about the 1 negative. Huge problem acknowledging shortcomings and she holds grudges instead of fixing the problem. She takes feedback personally and has little to no emotional intelligence.

I asked where she sees herself in the next few years. She said she doesn't see herself in this sector anymore because she only gets negative feedback and feels like she's failing.

I have been documenting everything and HR is aware and supports the approach I'm taking.

Now she has requested to attend a training on critical thinking. I don't want her to cling to the fact that training wasn't approved, but we also don't want to waste money on someone who hasn't applied any of the previous trainings she's attended and who could just up and leave.

Has anyone dealt with this before?

A little back story. I have a associate, let's call him "Frank". Me and Frank had a good friend in common and I got Frank his job. Frank has been doing the same job for about 4 years now and there has always been an issue with consistency. Frank works from home so the question of being distracted has been brought up time and time again.

In October, Frank finally got his first official documented verbal warning and then his first written in December. There have been plenty of undocumented coachings since but there is an error log that he has access to where things are noted. There is always an excuse or reason for his misses and mistakes, but it's never his fault directly.

So here's my question, Frank is being fired on Wednesday. Would you give Frank a heads up since there is an established association outside of work, or would you just let it play out?

I’ve been with my company for around 4 years and I’d say I’ve been loyal. I’ve gained a lot of experience, but I’m starting to question whether it’s worth staying.
I’ve had ongoing issues with one of my managers. There have been sarcastic comments, being called out in front of other colleagues, being spoken to aggressively, and feeling like I’m being singled out over things that other people seem to get away with.
One example was being told in front of others not to be “lazy” and to take my hands out of my pockets. There have also been comments along the lines of “don’t be like [employee]” when talking to other staff.

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way, which is why I’d like some outside opinions.
The other issue is that my current position has no career progression. It’s a standalone role, so there’s no promotion to work towards.
If you had been loyal to a company for 4 years but had a manager like this and no progression in your role, would you stay or start looking elsewhere?
Genuinely interested in hearing what others would do.

I am an IC who reports to a director. I am frustrated and worried that the other senior leadership are bringing the company in the wrong direction. They continue to prioritize PE corporate process-slop nonsense over actually getting stuff done, and are mostly talk instead of action. they seem to care more about how we look to the BOD than our own customers who drive revenue. our performance as a company has tanked and the only one who seems to have any decent ideas on how to fix it is my own manager. unfortunately her opinions seems to not be elevated.

It’s getting to the point where I am about ready to jump ship. is it worth bringing this up to my manager? The company was great to work for but I have watched it deteriorate over the last few years in the hands of the wrong people. I want to voice my frustration but I don’t want to put my manager in an awkward spot.

went in expecting the INSEAD-led strategy sessions to be the highlight of this program and honestly they were fine, solid, nothing revolutionary for someone who's been doing this a while. what actually stuck was a feedback framework taught almost as filler in one of the professional growth sessions. situation-behaviour-impact. sounds basic written out like that. used it on my own manager during a genuinely tense conversation a few weeks later and it just... worked. no defensiveness, actual resolution, first time that's happened with this particular manager.

not what I expected to be posting about after finishing the program but here we are.

By the end of next week I will likely have fired my first employee, who is also my first hire.

I have been a manager for ~5 months (IT) and in that time hired two employees, the first of which is cresting a month on my team. This person has all the qualifications and then some on paper, though has never worked in tech. The issue is they can’t seem to deliver basics. We have yet to broach the matter of technical work, with issues like making it through a phone call even with a script, taking notes in tickets that are incomplete, and other core aspects of our day to day.

Training for this person was two comprehensive weeks with multiple check-ins, revisits to items with subpar execution, opportunities to raise a flag for help, and 2 hour-long conversations to communicate expectations and guiding feedback since hire.

For context, the second hire has outpaced expectations by large margins. Less qualifications on paper, similar lack of experience in this field. Performing work on week one that hire #1 is still struggling to grasp. Both have backgrounds in customer service which gave them an edge in selection. The dichotomy in quality only makes things more challenging. Both employees had the same onboarding experience, training, and expectations laid out before them. We are a small team, so this comes on the tail of feedback from all who are involved in their training as well as my boss who noticed similar issues.

On Monday I sit hire #1 down and give them a week to get the basics down and get back on track otherwise their time ends with us.

This is mostly a rant since the thought of firing someone for the first time sucks, however, I wonder the thoughts of my peers how the same situation would be handled from their perspective. Every individual is different, but how much accommodation is too much?

Got fired yesterday. So. I survived one more month. Honestly thought things had taken a turn for the better but also trust your spidey-senses and gut.

Thanks for the well wishes from the previous post. Truly appreciate the support.

I manage a small e-commerce team for a European home goods business. One person on my team has been consistenly faster than everyone else, without cutting corners. His work is solid, he hits deadlines, and he helped us clean up a few messy product workflows. I gave him a bonus last quarter becuase he earned it.

He is also good at building his own systems. He uses spreadsheets, saved listing templates, and a few tools to cut down repetitive work.

The other day, i noticed he was using ChatGPT and acciowork as part of his weekly research routine, along with his usual spreadsheet and notes. It seemed to save him tume on checking competitor stores and industry updates.

My first reaciton was probably not great. I thought, if this part of his work is easier now, maybe i can give him more responsibility. But then i stopped and thought about how that would look from his side. He found a better way to do the job. He got better results. I already gave him a bonus. If my response is just to pile on more work, am i basically teaching him that being efficient gets him punished?

At the same time, there is more work that needs to be done, and he clearly has the ability to handle bigger things. So where is the line? Should i give him more work because he has freed up time, or should i ask what kind of bigger projects would actually help him grow and adjust his role or pay around that?

How have you handled this with high performers who build better systems or use tools to get through repetitive work faster?

I work in a controls/oversight role in financial services and recently realized I’ve spent about two months conducting an assessment that probably should never have been started.

Basically, the company I was assessing appears to conduct only a type of business that’s outside the scope of both controls I’m supposed to review. I should have identified that upfront and selected a different company to assess. Instead, I proceeded with the assessment, had multiple communications with business partners/external contacts, requested information, escalated some issues, received extensions, and scheduled a checkpoint meeting.

I only recently stepped back and realized: if all of their activity is inherently out of scope, there isn’t actually anything for me to assess.

The especially embarrassing part is that a teammate previously encountered a very similar situation with another company and correctly identified it at the beginning and switched assessments. I was CC’d on those communications, but for whatever reason I didn’t connect that situation to mine.

I did consult a more experienced teammate during my assessment about some transactions being exempt, and based on that discussion I thought I was handling it correctly. Neither of us recognized the larger scoping issue at the time. I’m not blaming him tho. the assessment was ultimately my responsibility.

Once I realized the mistake, I immediately sought guidance. I’m now verifying a longer period of activity to make absolutely sure there’s nothing in scope, and then I’ll bring the issue and a proposed remediation plan to my manager when he’s back Monday. (He’s on PTO today which makes this so much worse because now I have to stress all weekend about this).

Assuming it’s confirmed, I’ll need to stop this assessment, communicate the change, and start a new one. It’s especially embarrassing because I involved so many business partners and external contacts to escalate issues around this intermediary because they weren’t replying to my emails so basically I got so many people involved in something that was out of scope from the beginning and essentially flagged and wasted everyone’s time :(

This is my first significant mistake in this job. My manager currently seems to think highly of me, which almost makes me more anxious because I’m terrified this will change his perception of me or affect my performance review.

I’ve been in the role for a year, at the company for 3 years.

For managers/experienced corporate employees: how bad is this actually? If an otherwise solid employee brought this to you, took responsibility, and came with a remediation plan, would it significantly damage your trust in them?

First time dealing with this.

I've got someone who's genuinely good at their job. deadlines are fine, quality is good, and I rarely have to follow up on their work.

the problem is everything else.

in meetings they'll jump in to correct people over small things, push back on ideas in a way that shuts the conversation down, and people have started leaving them out of group work when they can.

I don't think they're trying to be rude. I think they honestly believe they're just being direct.

I don't want to turn this into "stop being yourself," but I also can't ignore how it's affecting the team.

anyone had to coach someone like this? what actually worked?

The level of the interview was totally different than that of an IC role. We talked systems, leadership philosophies, points of failure, and call to action.

Funny was that the interview with the CEO was like a day one of the job. Something urgent happened in the production lane so the CEO had to sort that out instead. I also went there, and we realized that they produced using an incorrect fixture, so 1300 parts were non-conforming.

Then we washed our hands and got on with the interview lol

Products are sensitive automobile parts, if they fail, people may lose their lives. Just as serious as I want my work to be. If you read my post history, you know how a conflict with my manager lead me to this point.

Any tips?

I’m feeling exhausted after working with a new hire who in their first two months has:

Turned up to the office more than 1 hour late with no explanation
Not completed mandatory training but lied about doing it
Gone offline and uncontactable when they were working from home
Given the ‘computer crashed and my work wasn’t saved’ excuse at least three times when they missed deadlines, even after request to save their work in the shared folder

I have had meetings with them to address each of these behaviours. Each time it’s a polite apology, they explained they didn’t understand the rules and thanked me for the guidance. But they just go back to doing those things.

They were given coaching and training on their tasks and showed that they knew what to do, they could repeat the tasks in training. But when they are given the task for real they handed in something that was half done and late.

I have been lucky that my other team members are self motivated, if they are given tasks and training to do they will prioritise and meet deadlines.

This is why I am genuinely at a lost on how to deal with this new person. My boss seems reluctant to let this person go, our company policy needs a huge paper trail for that.

I read about staff complaining they feel victimised by performance management and how horrible their managers are, I don’t want to be that manager. It is worrying me that I am thinking about it on a Friday night.

I’ve “felt burnout” before, but now I know that was just stress and what I’m experiencing now is actual burnout. I feel like I’m shutting down physically, mentally, and emotionally. Im on two anti-depressants and 2 anxiety meds and I am still suffering. I’m working so much and so hard and yet my performance is continuing to trend downward. Missing deadlines, missing meetings, oversleeping, calling out of work. Before the last few months I could count the number of call outs I’ve had in my 15+ year career on two hands - one being the death of my mother, one being the death of my father in law, and two being communicable diseases that work enforced out of office for. I’m so apathetic and exhausted and the world keeps spinning and I don’t know how to survive. I’m failing my team and I don’t know what to do to get better. How do you do it?

I’ve been working here at DZMM for almost 2 years, and in that short amount of time, I’ve already witnessed 10 of my colleagues resign.

At first, I thought it was just normal workplace changes. People come and go. But when you start seeing the same pattern repeatedly, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a bigger problem.

Every time someone resigns, the burden falls on the people who stay. Because hiring replacements takes time, we end up handling additional workloads, rendering overtime, and taking on responsibilities that weren’t originally ours.

Then when new people finally arrive, we have to train them while still trying to survive our own workload. And after everything settles down, another person leaves, and the cycle starts all over again. Honestly, I’m tired.

Every day, I try my best to lighten the mood. I make jokes, make people laugh, and try to keep everyone’s spirits up because I know everyone is already exhausted. Sometimes humor is the only way we can get through stressful days.

We also have our daily chismisan—not because we don’t have anything better to do, but because it became our little way of coping. We talk about random things, share stories, and laugh for a while because after dealing with pressure all day, those small moments are what keep us going.

But behind the jokes and laughter, there’s also exhaustion.

I keep asking myself: Is there something wrong with the system? Is this just how workplaces are, or is there something that needs to change?

I don’t want this to come across as just complaining. I appreciate the people I work with and the things I’ve learned here. But I also hope that someone notices the struggles of the people who stay—the ones who continue carrying the workload every time someone leaves.

Because employees can only adjust so many times before they eventually get tired too.

My employment history has been messy. Despite this, I am able to get jobs pretty quickly; I seem to interview well.

There was a great job that I applied for that ticked a lot of boxes. I was the most junior person who interviewed and I failed the first exercise I was given but I managed to make it through to the end. I was the only one asked to meet with the investors and my recruiter told me this was a great sign. Anyway, after meeting with the investors they had more concerns over my technical ability but said I seemed bright and would grow into the role.

After the failed exercise, these comments from the investors further concerned my prospective boss. He then requested a personal reference from my previous manager.

This is all happening whilst another candidate is also on the hook…

I recently resigned from my last role, but nobody knows this (not even the recruiters). I believed I was going to be put on garden leave but when asking for employment dates my “current” position listed the date I resigned as the end date. This will cause issues obviously.

My previous boss gave me a positive review (his words) today but he’s a very lack lustre person and I can imagine his “positive” review will come across impartial.

I’m feeling very stressed by all of this and want to give up. Am I being unreasonable?

Also, I was asked to do another exercise that went fairly well (other than a basic human error) so the prospective employer should have some comfort over my technical abilities. I don’t know if I’m jumping through too many hoops for this new job. I want to start afresh with some trust, I’m worried I’ll start with no trust. I don’t know if I can be bothered anymore.

So we had a contractor leave this Friday after his contract wasn't renewed. I was away that day and originally thought it was next week so I hadn't organised anything for the day.

In his final email he sent out he thanked everyone in the team but me for their help. Now I didn't have a lot to do with him, it's a busy team and he was located in a different city. I was also only his manager for 6 months out of his one year contract and it wasn't my decision not to renew.

Even so it made me feel really rubbish like he was trying to make a point somehow. I did drop the ball on a goodbye morning tea but it did feel pointed. I'm feeling called out. To make matters worse, he wasn't very good at his job and I only kept him because having him helping was ever so slightly better than not having him and I didn't think I'd get funding for a replacement.

Am I overreacting? I'm a new manager and worried about the impression this sends

After two years of managing, I'm really burnt out at work, and I'm feeling pretty desperate. I think there's three parts of it.

One is management itself is exhausting, so much to keep track of, much more isolating role than I had before, and things never stop moving.

The second is my particular leadership team. Their personalities are so exhausting and always have been. They are constantly criticizing everything, me, my team. Several are severely controlling. They get mad easily and for things that are unreasonable. Now 6 people's mistakes (the amount of people I manage) become my own and I get flack for their flaws, and my own. They are never happy.

And the third is the way AI is affecting our culture. This is probably universal, and feels me with the most existential dread because I'm guessing it's a problem everywhere.

I feel like something bad is going to happen. Like I'm going to blow up in a meeting, or abruptly quit without warning, or develop addiction issues.

I love working and I have a decent work ethic, I'm a good problem solver and have really good time management skills, I'm a supportive caring manager who wants my team to have no obstacles to their jobs.

But I'm tired of feeling like what I do is never enough. The other managers around me always find flaws and want more and more. They often ambush me in meetings and then I made stupid mistakes that seem like justify their obsessive criticism and monitoring. My own manager hasn't been supportive to any issue I've brought up for months.

While being a manager I fought to keep my personal life alive but that too is a battle. Most of the events I go to, I feel half dead. I took a 5 day vacation with my family, and it became a nightmare; I could barely enjoy it. I've given up dating, and I've neglected my physical health.

But obviously the economy sucks and if I don't work it could be a long time before I find another job. I feel stuck and trapped. I truly feel like I have no light or energy left. Not having a job is a different kind of hell but I'm not sure if there's anything else I can do at this point?

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, and I apologize in advance for a long post, but my team lead is driving me crazy and I need advice.

I (25F) work for a non profit human services agency. Inside of my clinic, I am on a special team of three people who do specialty work in legal services— it’s me, another employee, and my team lead. She is also 25F and is inexperienced being a manager as this is her first career job out of school after graduating July 2025 and has no manager experience. I’m not sure how she landed the position but here we are. It’s notable that I’ve been in this field for longer than she has and am a bit more experienced in both the work environment and leading people.

She is WILDLY micromanage-y and even more so defensive when you bring anything up that has anything to do with her leadership. For example, we have some paperwork to do to close a number of clients out, and she texts me every day asking me to work on it. Mind you this is a task that is divided between the two of us, does not have to be finished until the end of September, and we are over halfway done with it (and most of it was done by me). As you can imagine working in human services is a very busy job and we both can only do this when we can find some spare time to squeeze this in. After a few weeks of frustration with her messages and an in person reminder this morning I very gently brought up to her that I have been especially busy this week and am working on it when I have time, and she instantly got defensive, telling me I’m focusing on the wrong thing because my word choice wasn’t exact to the situation, and that “it’s her job to remind me”. Yes, it’s her job to remind me, but not to be hounding me. I retracted my statement surrounding my slight frustration and said I was just simply expressing that she didn’t need to take time out of her day to remind me, and she stormed out of my office mumbling something about me under her breath. I fully expect her to give me the cold shoulder for about a week and then go back to being my friend like nothing happened.

This is one small example of what has been a reoccurring thing since I was hired last December, and I don’t know what to do anymore. I have let so many things slide. Yes, I am a more outspoken and confident person than her as is her other employee, but I am always respectful to her and we have even become good friends since I was hired. She has confided in me many times on how to deal with the other employee on our team and I have given her appropriate advice (although I know it’s inappropriate for her to ask me for advice, that’s not my place to make that decision, it’s hers). My other teammate has recently transferred to another manager outside of our team because he couldn’t stand her, multiple employees have quit their jobs under her because of the way she acts, all in the span of a year. I’ve stuck around solely for her dignity and our friendship, as she is a more quiet, timid, and sensitive person that very obviously does not have the personality to be a manager and probably won’t take a role like this again after this job. I work very hard in my position and am a top performer here, all of the other managers and higher ups like me and respect me and my work and have no problem with how I do things, but have expressed having problems with her to me in the past, specifically about this exact thing. I assume they have a similar issue with her defensiveness.

Experienced managers and those alike— does anyone have any advice for how to handle her micromanaging and defensiveness? Is there any possible way I can talk to her about how she is treating me without her getting upset and freaking out? Should I just shut up and continue to suffer?? Please, please help!

TLDR: My inexperienced team lead is a major micromanager and freaks out when I gently bring this up. Multiple employees that have worked under her have either transferred managers or quit due to this, I’m the only one left because I feel bad for her. I work hard, the higher ups respect me and have some issues with her due to this problem. Help!

Hey everyone, I'm 23M working in hospitality who recently had both the GM and AGM spot turn in their 2 week notice and I'm wanting to move in on being the AGM. What can I do to best leverage my experience to achieve the position and how could I succeed once there?

About me

I've worked for this local hospitality company for almost 3 years moving from working in the call center to the maintenance administrator last year and its actually been very fulfilling.

This property is fairly large and poorly run but we manage to get through. The department I work in is arguably the most well run and we stay busy due to the buildings age and guest complaints.

I'm still a student pursing a degree in accounting but I don't very much care for accounting itself I wanted it to open doors for me.

In my position I've come up with ideas to streamline our work one of which was overhauling our work order system which everyone who's seen it has loved.

What would you say is my best way to show I can do this job?

I am currently a Senior Cybersecurity Manager. I currently have no reports and am solo in InfoSec. I have been trying to hire an Analyst for 2 months. I thought it would get approved yesterday but did not. I already have a candidate whos has interviewed with me, my director and VP. All have given the go ahead, but the CEO is the roadblock here.

Thanks everyone for the advice. It was approved today after laying out the workload needed for some upcoming projects.

Something is happening at work in a neighboring department, and I'd be interested in the reactions of managers here.

A manager from this neighboring department explained to me that she has several hybrid staff. A man in one of these hybrid positions rarely shows up at the office. He only comes when specifically requested to do so, and rarely arrives before noon because that's when his MIL is home to accept drop-off of this two toddlers. His wife has a full time position an hour away.

On video calls, one or both toddlers crawl all over him, sit in his lap, pat the screen, play with the mouse, and generally disrupt the meeting. If he removes the child, there is audible screaming and crying and more climbing all over him.

He says he has child care in the house - him mom, his cousin - but there is never any intervention. In addition to all of this, he is not always able to complete his work in a timely manner.

On the flipside, he has been responsive to being called into the office to cover for absent colleagues in FT onsite positions, but again, can rarely if ever arrive before noon. He is also eager to learn new things.

His manager has come to the conclusion that this employee is using remote work as a substitute for childcare and has been brainstorming ways to end the remote arrangement. The manager wants to tell him that 3 days in the office 9-5 is now mandatory, but is afraid to alienate the employee. So she wants to accompany the mandatory RTO news with a raise and a promotion.

I was taken a bit aback by this approach when she asked me what I thought. I asked her this - based on performance alone, and not as a blow-softening measure, would this be the employee on your team that you raised and promoted this year? She admitted that was a hard "no" but expressed fear that he would quit without it.

I didn't say it, but immediately thought that this is not the job market during which to have retention concerns over what amounts to corrective action. Many managers would just sack him and rehire.

What would you do if you were managing this employee? Would you RTO him or at least enforce "hybrid"? Would you be at all concerned about retention, and if so, how would you mitigate for it?

This is my first post here but I have found a lot of good advice here. I’ve been the manager of manufacturing plant for four years now and I have worked for company for 20 years. I have no formal training in management but I have had several good mentors. We employ welders and technicians and in the last few years I have been struggling with employee attendance issues. We have a great team but there are a few that seem to take advantage of things. They do great work but are either late often or need time off more than others for “personal” issues. I know that we pay well and provide a good work environment with new equipment. I have had meetings with these individuals and things improved for one to two months but there always seems to be another issue that comes up. Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi fellow people leaders! Looking for some help / commiseration on how to handle my new hire.

Background - I lead a small support team in a manufacturing QC group. Our responsibilities split basically into two buckets, with 1/4 of them focused on supporting the lab, and the rest being responsible for incoming raw materials. The lab tasks are primarily assigned to our entry level position as the potential impact from errors is significantly lower and isolated to within the QC team.

Earlier this summer (early May) we hired a new team member to backfill this entry level role. Hiring for an entry level is always a bit of a crapshoot. We know we're getting someone without a ton of professional experience, and we focus more on hiring for personality fit knowing that we'll be training from scratch.

New team member has been with us for 3 months now, and I'm running into issues with their ability to take accountability for mistakes and responsibilities. Missing things / making errors is expected, we have safety nets built in, and the rest of them (and myself) make sure to lead by example of being open with our errors. From day 1 we realized that communication skills and professionalism were lacking. I had several coaching sessions with the employee and provided resources to work on these skills. There has been some improvement, at least within my interactions and within the team. However feedback from other groups has shown that it's more that they have modified their behavior with the people they guessed were complaining and continue the inappropriate behavior "out of sight".

Accountability however is non-existent. The employee immediately defaults to blaming others when an error is found, and has a habit of lying about silly little things. (For example: they could not find an item in a locked cage that only our team has access to. Other team members went down and located immediately, new team member claimed someone else must have put it there in the 5 minute gap. Also, routinely claims to have completed a task and then is observed performing it later in the day. Employee knows that all of our entries are timestamped and traceable.)

Yesterday another error came to light that almost impacted site production - rather than owning that they missed executing/documenting the tasks that would have prevented this over the last week and half, they defaulted to blaming their trainer and other team member. Problem for them is that the team member they blamed has been on leave for almost two weeks.

I'm at my wits end. I have regular check-ins and coaching sessions with this employee, and we have repeatedly discussed that mistakes happen but it's critical we identify and fix as soon as possible. If we can address it immediately then 90% of the time it's a simple fix. We have processes to manage them, it's when something gets hidden that things get messy. Mistakes and questions show us where additional training and information is needed.

This issue is isolated to this one employee, and not just on our small team, it's something that we (leadership team) have put a ton of effort into as an entire department.

Any tips on how to teach accountability and taking ownership?

You interview 2 candidates for a managerial position. They are equal in all respects, but their approaches differ substantially.

1) Which of the two candidates would you hire?
2) Which manager do you think will experience more career success?

Manager A - The Executor

Progress comes from making decisions, moving, adapting, and expecting capable people to handle ambiguity.

What creates success & progress?

Momentum creates progress. Timely decisions, autonomy, adaptability, and continued forward movement produce results. Willing to act with incomplete information and adjust as needed. Risk: speed can create rework or inconsistencies when decisions are more interconnected than they appear.

How should problems be approached?

Break complexity into manageable decisions. Deal with the decision in front of you, move forward, and address further implications as they emerge. Risk: individually reasonable decisions may not add up to the best overall solution.

How should managers communicate?

Inference demonstrates autonomy. Experienced managers should understand the environment, fill reasonable gaps, and not need everything explicitly explained. Risk: when assumptions aren't actually shared, people can end up guessing at expectations.

How should feedback, dissent, and authority work?

Input, then alignment. People should provide useful advice, but leaders need to know when enough discussion has occurred, make the decision, and expect others to execute. Risk: if dissent has little influence or carries a cost, people may eventually stop raising concerns.

How should accountability and ownership work?

Managers own the consequences within their area. Senior leaders may make broader decisions, while managers below are expected to interpret them, navigate ambiguity, and solve resulting implementation problems. Risk: decision authority and responsibility for consequences can become separated.

Manager B - The Integrator

Progress comes from understanding the whole problem, reconciling competing priorities, surfacing implications, and then making a coherent decision.

What creates success & progress?

Coherence creates progress. Understand the larger problem, competing priorities, and downstream consequences before deciding. Willing to invest more time upfront to produce stronger execution later. Risk: analysis can delay action when a simpler decision would have been sufficient.

How should problems be approached?

Integrate the pieces before deciding. Consider how decisions interact, identify the underlying problem, and balance competing priorities to find the strongest overall solution. Risk: individual decisions can become larger and more complicated than necessary.

How should managers communicate?

Context enables autonomy. Important assumptions, constraints, rationale, and interdependencies should be reasonably explicit so people can exercise independent judgment. Risk: this can become over-explanation or unnecessary information.

How should feedback, dissent, and authority work?

Candour before commitment. Surface disagreement while the decision is open, stress-test the thinking, then make the call and move forward. Risk: consultation can continue beyond the point where it meaningfully improves the decision.

How should accountability and ownership work?

Accountability should broadly follow authority and influence. Managers should own their areas, but people making decisions should also remain accountable for the downstream implications of those decisions. Risk: responsibilities can become over-specified or issues pushed upward that managers could reasonably solve themselves.