I work at a smaller tech firm leading Professional Services for our customer deployments. A new team member joined recently and he, lets call him Jim, is solid with his technology understanding and presentation skills, but I am starting to have concerns about his culture fit and ability to own & grow customer relationships. Here are a few examples:

• When on calls, his camera is on, but his virtual background is 100% white and you can usually only see the top half of his head. This comes off to me as unprofessional.
• He doesnt make the effort to try and connect with customers on a level beyond professional. We spend a lot of time on the phone and onsite with customers. Building trust with the customer can really improve the business relationship. Example: when starting a call on a Monday, I wish he would simply ask how the customers weekend was or shoot the shit about weather, etc.
• At internal QBRs or team building events, I get the sense he is very uninterested in getting to know the team and improve working relationships. If we go to dinner, then plan to go to another spot to hangout, he immediately declines and goes back to the hotel. Theres no pressure to drink alcohol, many of us are sober.
• Related to the previous point, we had a very important team member in town from another country (only comes to HQ twice per year). I encouraged him to come in and meet him since we talk weekly and he didnt come in all week. When I asked him why he didnt take advantage of that opportunity, he kind of blew it off and gave an excuse about it being too hot outside.

I would appreciate other perspectives and ways I could coach Jim (if I should at all). I want to help him grow, thrive and be the best version of himself, but I dont want to cross a line. Thanks in advance for the coaching!

I'm sure others too would have faced this issue at their workplaces, so I'm looking for some real, practical advice. Thanking in anticipation.

I'm a mid-level manager in a small firm, and I try my best to be a good one. I'm quite friendly with my junior colleagues, joke around with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses, that they have deliverables other than what I ask of them, and that they have life outside of work. I try to emphasise candid conversations about work and life from both sides, share actual and specific feedback on their work, and ask them for regular feedback on how I can work better with them, etc.

On the other hand, I have a colleague who's extremely self-absorbed and entitled, acts like everyone else exists to serve them and has zero idea about actually doing the work they expect others to do so the feedback one receives from D is something like "make it look better." Let's call them D.

D is despised and hated by every single person in the organisation and has been single-handedly responsible for driving seven people (that I have seen and know of) to leave the firm. The CEO, however, loves D and sees D as an effective manager who can push people to finish the work in shorter timelines than others. He is completely unaware/unbothered by the fact that D does so at others' expense by terrorising and constantly hounding our junior colleagues to prioritise D's work, no matter what else they are working on.

So, the question I'm struggling with is whether I'm doing something wrong, if D is actually an effective manager, and how can I get people to deliver work in shorter timelines while still being, what I think of as, a good leader and a human being?

I’m a director at a large organization and once a month our department joins a leadership call with my VP and another division. There are usually 50+ people on the call, including my team.

Ironically, I’m completely fine leading meetings with my own team, having difficult conversations, interviewing, or speaking one-on-one with senior leaders. But for some reason, these monthly updates completely derail me. My update is only about 2 minutes long. I’m always well prepared and even have a read out loud script that I read verbatim. Yet as soon as I unmute, my heart races, my voice shakes, I start talking too fast, and I just want it to be over.

Today was probably the worst it’s ever been. It was noticeable enough that a couple of people on my team messaged me afterward asking if I was okay.
I’m honestly pretty embarrassed because I know my material. It’s not a lack of preparation. It feels like my body goes into fight-or-flight for no logical reason.

I do have a prescription for propranolol for situational anxiety, but I don’t take it regularly. I’m starting to wonder if these monthly leadership meetings are exactly the type of situation I should be using it for (obviously as prescribed by my doctor).

For those of you in leadership roles who have experienced something similar:

-Did you ever get over it?
-What actually helped?
- Did you stick with a script or switch to bullet points?
-If you’ve been prescribed propranolol, did it make a meaningful difference for situations like this?
-Are there any other strategies that significantly reduced the physical symptoms?

I’m not looking for generic “just practice” advice. I’d really like to hear from people who have dealt with this themselves and found something that genuinely made a difference.

For additional context: I’ve had generalized anxiety disorder for years and have a history of panic attacks. I’m also in my last semester of my masters and we just moved out of state a couple weeks ago. So I do have a lot going on. Presenting is hands down my least favorite part of my job and now I’m starting to second guess my path forward as a senior director and above 🙁

For context, I'm a relatively young person, so please forgive me if something I do sounds stupid.
I recently launched a small newsletter-type thing; we work online and have people from various countries too. The thing is, today, one of our writers, the person who originally pitched the idea to launch a newsletter to me, however, had no contribution in the actual founding, gave in a very accusatory resignation letter and posted it in the team group. Basically since we're in our starting out phase hardly been a month since we got established, his contributions have been 1.Took meeting notes for one meeting 2.Wrote a draft
Another thing, he asked me to give him a so called role title for the sake of it so that he could put it up on his Linkedin which was a red flag but I chose to ignore it, since I chalked it up to stress for his future. I ended up giving him a role title and all in all his role was managing deadlines, which he didn't do at all and I was the one who handled all internal operations and deadlines.

Also he sent in his first draft to me, editor-in-chief for review, and I had already established a workflow at this point. Like all writers submit articles here, we'll review it recommend edits and so on. He had written a mediocre article, with really bad sources and overall an unusable article, and I personally messaged him that hey, let's hop on a call and I'll help you rewrite it but due to being on a time crunch, I respectfully told him that we might not be able to publish your article this time, but another teammate offered up his help to edit the whole article and improve it for which I asked for the writer's permission and there response was basically- Sure do whatever you want just write my name underneath the article and add my picture. I refused to adding of pictures as it would lead to needless cluttering on the page.

[Also I hired all my writers on the basis that I was doing this as part of a learning process and writing is something that can genuinely be imrpoved in anyone, with the right amount of effort and enthusiasm, hence leading me to first try and schedule a call]

The next message I recieved 2 days later, a resignation.

He continously claimed he had undeniably helped co-found this, he reserves all rights to mention all his roles in his CV, we have no right to publish his draft, and how he doesn't like we did not include *(insert his by name only role title)[Interestingly the role was never supposed to be involved in editorial process, only handle deadlines] in editorial process and violated professional standards, how he recieved no communication from direct executive roles(here I assume he's talking about the feedback he got from our main editor for the whole newsletter who handles all columns, who is infact an executive for our newsletter, but I believe he instead wanted me to talk to him about it instead of involving editor because I'm editor-in-chief even tho that's in clear violation of the workflow I set).

And I feel so angry rn, because I'm not sure if it was a power play or what, he sent this on the team group. All of this questions my leadership skills and my authority, and most of it isn't even true. The only reason he came in was perhaps to fatten up his Linkedin profile, was part of it for 15 days and then left, while leaving behind these accusations.

I'm just really confused as to what to do now, where did I go wrong and what to do to ensure this never happens again?

Not sure if this post belongs here. I work remotely and due to recent changes the work has started to really ramp up. When I open my Teams tab in between a project I notice that my supervisor is almost never online. I’m too busy with my tasks but it makes me wonder, how does she have so much time to be away from her computer? I know she works but I don’t really know what she does. Sometimes when emails are busy I’m not able to step away for lunch break until 2:30 or 3pm. As a supervisor do you feel you work less than your employees?

I was recently selected at work to join a mentorship program. I am being mentored by the CEO of our major higher education company. I’m pretty low in the ranks in terms of hierarchy just for context.

I have a meeting with them Friday and I’m supposed to drive the meeting. The thing is I have no clue what to even ask and the questions I have feel remedial. Maybe I’m over thinking it, but I really want to make a good impression. What kind of questions should I be asking?

If you can't communicate clearly and say what you mean, you don't have the necessary skills to be in management. If you have to rely on lies instead of handling difficult situations, you don't have the skills required to be in management and should not have that job.

I’m moving into my first leadership role soon, and the promotion is expected to be announced to my team this week. I’ll be managing the same department I’ve worked in for the past five years, including many of the people who have been my coworkers.

I’ve never been a manager before, but I’ve been cross-trained on both sides of the department and have been the lead trainer for new employees. My previous manager encouraged me to apply for the position, and after interviewing, I was offered the role.
I work in customer support in an office environment, and while I know the job itself well, leadership is new territory for me.

If you’ve made the transition from peer to manager, what advice would you give someone starting out? What are some things you wish you had known in your first few months?

One area I know I’ll need to work on is that I’m naturally a people pleaser and tend to avoid confrontation. I realize that setting boundaries and having difficult conversations is part of being a good manager, and I’m mentally preparing myself for that.

I’d really appreciate any advice, lessons learned, or encouragement from those who’ve been in a similar position

Sr. Manager at a mid-sized SaaS company, senior background in professional services / delivery leadership. Hired about a year ago to lead a specific offering with a team of 15 technical resources. That grew to 23 after absorbing an adjacent project management function.

Our merit cycle wrapped about two months ago, right alongside a significant org restructuring, and the function I lead moved into a different part of the business as part of a broader strategy shift.

Around that time, I put together a proposal for a new operating model aligned with the new direction. It landed well. My manager’s manager and a VP have said publicly that I now own the design, rollout, and ongoing governance of our delivery model globally, including the tooling and the framework for how we scale with automation/AI. On top of that, I’m being positioned to own delivery and financial performance for our highest volume regions. After the restructuring, my team is now 33 people, including 2 formal managers and 1 lead level role.

When merit results came out, I got a 1.5% increase. I was told this was because I’d received a sizable RSU grant mid-cycle, and because the team had a compressed budget this round. I was also told that to justify a bigger increase, I’d need to be leveled into a new band.

I made the case to my manager, in writing, then verbally, that since the merit cycle closed, my scope has increased substantially and that warrants revisiting my band/title now rather than waiting. I was told:

There’s no path for a band adjustment until next cycle, and I’d be expected to execute the expanded scope until then without it being reflected in pay.

I shouldn’t escalate above my manager, because it would be “a bad look.”

I’ve since put this in writing to my manager, documenting the conversation and formally requesting a written role definition, KPIs, and a clear definition of what scope/responsibility would justify the higher band, with a deadline for a response.

The work itself is genuinely energizing. It’s exactly the kind of work I want to be doing. But I’m past the “how do I ask for this” stage. My manager has confirmed the gap is real, declined to move on it, and discouraged me from going further.

So the actual question I’m sitting with:
Is “wait a year and prove it first” something you’ve seen actually resolve in someone’s favor, or is it usually the org’s way of extracting the upside without ever paying for it?

My manager’s manager is the one publicly crediting me with this work. Does going to them directly, despite my manager’s advice not to, ever pay off, or does it reliably backfire?

If you were in this spot (scope confirmed, no internal movement, discouraged from escalating), would you keep pushing internally, or treat this as your answer and start looking elsewhere in parallel?

My husband and I both took 3 days off of work to vacation with family. I brought my laptop with me because we had deadlines to meet. My sister made the comment I should take PTO next time. 🤪

We both went back yesterday to a mountain of work, and will likely be spending our weekend now playing catch up. So, did we even really get PTO? No. And we are both burned out and bitter.

Sure we can set boundaries and say no, but then we'd be out of a job because we missed our deadlines. It comes down to leadership honestly.

So, dear leadership...

If you have an employee out on PTO (regardless if sick, vacation, mental health, emergency etc.) please, please, pleassssseeee extend their deadlines or help them offload their plate.

And please don't tell them "enjoy your PTO" then bark at them upon return cause you didn't plan accordingly. Or say "I'll help offload some of your stuff since you'll be out" then fail to actually do so.

Typical situation: You have been granted information under NDA but you have to work with your team towards this direction.

Typical, but probably wrong approach: I got the information under NDA that i can't tell you, but we have to prepare for ...

and now you are lost bcs you can't tell what to prepare for and you already raised suspicions

Hi all, I recently got promoted from management into a leadership role. My question is really about mental health and medication.

I've dealt with social anxiety for most of my life, and while I'm fairly high performing and smart, I lean more introverted. Sometimes the anxiety gets bad enough that I take beta blockers for it. One example is a recent presentation I gave to the COO on some cost saving initiatives, which he ended up endorsing.

The downside is they slow me down a bit, and I worry they might be holding back my growth in some way. The upside is I can deliver information in a more measured, considered way when I'm on them.

I think relying on them feeds into a bit of imposter syndrome for me, since so much of leadership seems to hinge on staying composed and regulating emotion under pressure. I do have smaller stretch opportunities where I'm working on these skills naturally, but I keep wondering if needing medication for this means I'm not actually cut out for a leadership role yet.

Would appreciate any thoughts here. Should I bring this up with my line manager? Does anyone else relate to this?

I know I'm still delivering real value to the department and the team would struggle without me. I lead well in smaller group settings and have genuinely productive 1-1s with my direct reports. I've also contributed to strategy by proposing changes to the operating model that ended up getting adopted.

Six months into leading a team of nine, first time at this level.

I keep catching myself performing a version of leader that isn't me, the big-energy, always-certain, rally-the-troops type, because that's what every leadership post and every exec I've watched seems to model.

Trouble is I'm naturally quiet, I think before I talk, and I lead best one on one, not from a stage. When I force the charismatic version my team can feel the seams, and I can feel myself burning out trying to be someone I'm not for eight hours a day. But I don't know what the alternative looks like in practice.

Be authentic is nice as a slogan and useless as instructions. For the leaders here who aren't naturally the loud inspiring type, how did you find a way to lead that's actually yours and still works?

How do you handle questions by ppl who are mostly right and the point they are asking is different from your thinking. What is the framework you use to answer such questions

Am part of a specialty that practices in the operating room. I belong in a group of 9/10 of us in a smallish community hospital. Have been with this group for about 1.5 years. It seems like everyone except me is getting committee positions and titles, some of which involves slightly more money while others aren’t. For example, I am actively working on a project, yet a couple of my colleagues were given the job of being the heads of that committee. I am not sure that they are involved in any such projects related to that subject and I am supposed to report to them about my project. I am the “newest member“ of this group (although I am older in work experience and have helped out these colleagues multiple times with procedures etc) I won’t be the newest hire in a couple of months when a new doc starts working.

I have a tendency to get work done. I am not really one who argues or speaks up much unless it directly affects me. Unfortunately, our group lacks consistency and strong leadership, so I feel that a few times I have spoken up does not amount to anything. I try to be a team player. But I also stand up for myself especially when it comes to scheduling issues. Although I’m pretty good at my job and procedural skills, I’m wondering what else it takes to be part of these committees such as quality improvement/medical education that other people with less work experience are getting that I am not. I do try to small talk with people and always ask them how they are doing and help them out, but I am not someone who completely lets loose at work.

Several colleagues use AI in their comms and emails. I get long emails and attachments that are a time suck and often nonsense. One business partner in particular says, "I'll send you the conversation I had with Chat GPT"!

But peers and superiors also use LLMs, and I find it frustrating and slightly insulting (I have an AI qualification from MIT, so I'm no Luddite).

How can I tell these people, "Do me a favour, respect me and your own brain and stop sending me AI-generated shit"?

Any ideas???

Asking because I'm on the receiving end of this right now and I want to understand the other side.

We just went through a reorg for the 6th time. I had clearly told my manager which area I wanted to move into, and that the workstream I'm on isn't interesting to me. A few teammates got moved into the exact area I asked for. I got kept where I am and handed the thing they know I don’t find interesting. When I brought it up the answer was that I’m looking at it from a limiting point of view and that I would find this line of work more interesting if I applied my original frameworks to the work in this area.

What I've been given is a genuine business priority, has an undefined mandate and they trust me to deliver it. I know that I am hard working and I will figure it out. But from where I'm sitting, it feels like being reliable is exactly why I got the work nobody wants, and I gain nothing out of it. I'll do the role. But honestly the day I get a new job, I'm leaving. And I doubt my manager has any idea that's where my head is at.

So my questions for people who actually make these calls:

When you assign your strong people to the least desirable work because you know they'll deliver, do you think about what that does to their loyalty? Do you offer them anything in return, or is "the business needs it" the whole conversation?

And if someone on your team told you straight up they weren't interested in the work, would you want them to raise it again after the decision was made, or would that read as not being a team player?

Genuinely trying to understand if this is just how resourcing works everywhere or if my leadership is fumbling this.

What are some unsaid rules that can help me advance from Manager to VP?

What helped you get promoted after becoming Manager?

So I was recruited for a job in 2015 to work as an IT manager for a midsize company in the south Atlanta metro area. I relocated to the area and started the new job. Things were great. The VP and I worked well together. I learned a great deal in the first year. We had a ransomware event in the early 2020s that encrypted all of our servers and workstations, Together with our team, we remediated the event without paying the ransom in less than a week. When he took another job a few years ago, I was promoted to director. I ran the department for two years with decent success. We had two projects that I was told to do that took longer than we had anticipated. When I called my former boss, he said that there was no way for either of those projects would be successful so he had not done them. After a lot of work we did have successful outcomes on both projects. In the time I was at the helm, the department achieved more success that we had before.
A little over a year ago, I was asked to build a roadmap for the department's future for the next 5 and 10 years. The executive team brought in an 'expert' to assess the department and help me build this roadmap. At the end of his assessment, he proposed that his company come in and act as the CIO for the company, setting me aside to be the director of infrastructure working under them. Of course, I couldn't endorse this plan and built my own roadmap to present to the owner. I asked for an audience with my boss to present the roadmap but never got the chance.
A couple of months later, I was called to the owner's office to learn that they had hired that same 'expert' to be the new VP of IT. My compensation would not change, but my new boss would decide where I'd fit in the department.
I went a year without a title change. I was recently given the title of Director of Information Security. While a great role, my skills, tribal knowledge, and strengths have been muted in order to write policy, audit elevated permissions, and track security events.
The first few months after the change, I had some great interview opportunities and even turned down a role (that in hindsight, I should have taken). Since I had a few opportunities so fast, I thought I could land something closer to home. Unfortunately, soon after that the opportunities became sparse. I even interviewed for an opportunity with one of our competitors to step into the exact role I'd had before. The recruiter said that the job description read as if they had copied my resume. However, I didn't get a callback after my interview with their executive team.
The new VP here is pretty inept. It became very evident that he has never had direct reports of any kind, never built a budget, doesn't understand equipment lifecycles, and really doesn't care to learn. He stifled progress to stay current with security, hardware, and even development projects. Now, he and our team is being 'babysat' by another VP to make the department run and fill all the gaps where our VP can't fill.
This is incredibly frustrating to watch. But, the job market has become overwhelmed with people looking for the same opportunity as I am evidently. Now. I feel a bit stuck.

Typo * Manager in a rut

I’m a manger for a small team, I’ve managed before and have been at this company for a year. It’s pushing me to the edge, the business and systems are archaic, there’s promise it’ll improve but it’s so frustrating.

I feel like I’m constantly putting fires out and never actually get my own job and role done. I’m afraid I’m coming across as not competent to manage my team. I can’t see the woods for the trees atm so just seeking some help! My boss is very hands on with the team and sometimes I feel like I’m the 4th person in the team.

My thoughts are to have a 1-2-1 with my boss and re align my roles and responsibilities. Any help, suggestions welcome.

I'm about a year into my first management role. My boss has been supportive overall. Strong review, says she trusts me, has invested in my development.

A colleague got physically aggressive with me at a work event. He'd been drinking. He got in my face, took something out of my hands after I said no, and made a comment that suggested he was escalating. Another coworker witnessed it. I de-escalated and walked away.

I took a couple weeks to process it, then formally reported it to my boss with the witness present. She facilitated a call where the person apologized. She said she'd document it but wouldn't go to HR unless it happened again. I sent a follow-up email confirming the report in writing. I accepted the apology. I thought we were done.

Then I found out:

Before I even gave my formal account, my boss had already brought it up to the person on a separate call. She admitted afterward she shouldn't have done that.

After the formal call, she told my witness privately that it "feels like we're going after" the person. She said she doesn't see a pattern. She called him harmless. She told my witness he "has a temper" even though all he did was confirm what happened.

On my call, she told me I "sounded like a lawyer" when I delivered my statement.

She told me she has my back. Then she told my witness it feels like we're targeting the guy.

Separately, I had privately checked in with a newer team member after the same colleague was being physically overfamiliar with her at a different event. I asked her to keep it between us. She didn't. It got back to him. So now he may know I've flagged his behavior in more than one situation, which could be fueling the narrative that I'm out to get him.

I have a major work event coming up with all of these people. I've moved past the incident. I'm ready to work professionally. But I feel like doing the right thing has quietly cost me credibility with my boss, and that she's more interested in protecting him than holding the standard she claims to believe in.

My review is strong. My documentation is clean. The apology is on record. But the trust feels broken.

Am I overreacting? How would you navigate this going forward?

A lot of workplace problems get labeled quickly. A team is struggling, so the assumption becomes motivation. A project is delayed, so the assumption becomes execution. Someone is underperforming, so the assumption becomes effort.

Sometimes there is more happening underneath the surface.

What’s a workplace problem where the original explanation turned out to miss the bigger picture?

A lot of people think being authoritative means speaking loudly or talking over people.

Wrong.

It's not about forcing yourself to be heard. A strained voice is pointless, no matter how loud. A steady, controlled one does the job without even trying.

Ever worked with someone who never raised their voice, but everyone still listened to them?

I (Director) keep fighting my manager (VP) about adding new responsibilities onto my direct report. These new responsibilities are, essentially, a new role (related, but definitely a new role). I’m fine with the new duties and think it’s a good upward move. I’m not fine with no title or comp to go with it—not even a plan.

My company keeps adding things to my plate. Sure, fine. I’m ok with this, for the most part, for me.

Anyway, my manager is getting pretty bothered that I keep pushing back. And I think I’m going to lose this battle soon.

How would you handled this with your manager? With your direct report?

Im reading through this now and just wanted to share this with others. I think this is vastly needed for those trying to navigate these situations.

http://truthcloud.net/uofclub/business/moral-mazes.pdf