For me it was "always have an open door policy." Sounded great in theory, but in practice it meant getting interrupted constantly with things that could've waited, and I never had focused time to actually do deep work or prep for the bigger conversations that mattered.

Switched to specific office hours instead, still accessible, but people save up questions instead of interrupting every 20 minutes, and honestly the quality of those conversations went up too since people come with actual thought-out questions instead of knee-jerk ones.

Curious what advice you followed early on that eventually backfired or just didn't work the way it was supposed to. Feels like a lot of "classic" management wisdom doesn't hold up once you actually try it day to day.

I manage a senior individual contributor who makes well into the six figures, yet somehow cannot click a button without dragging me into it first.

Every single routine task turns into a hostage situation on Slack. Yesterday they drafted a two-sentence note to a vendor, took a screenshot of it, dropped it in my DMs, and asked if the wording felt too confrontational. It was literally just asking for a tracking number. They do this four to five times a day. If a ticket has two possible ways to be routed, instead of just picking one and moving on, they schedule a fifteen-minute sync to "align on expectations."

not a single decision gets made without getting my written stamp of approval first. On paper, it looks like they are being super conscientious and communicative. In reality, it is just pure risk-aversion masquerading as diligence. They are transferring every ounce of accountability for their own job description onto my plate so that if anything goes sideways, they can say I signed off on it.

I told them last week to just trust their judgment and stop asking me for permission on basic SOPs. They looked visibly offended and spent half of our 1-on-1 talking about psychological safety. They should of been autonomous six months ago.

Why is it so impossible to get experienced adults to just OWN their basic daily decisions?

I have a team member who **loves** to talk. he’s currently my only report for a small side project so the project meetings are 1-on-1s. Every single project meeting he tries to turn into a chat about his private life like vacation plans etc.

I eventually have to cut him off and redirect the conversation to the actual project plans but at the same time I cannot be overly rude. it’s a challenge.

He‘s also quite inefficient and easily gets sidetracked or stuck with small problems that are easy to solve.

If I entertain his chattiness then he’s happy but he’s not getting stuff done. If I try to pin him down on a deadline he starts bringing up excuses on why he has to delay.

Fellow managers, do you have any tips for managing someone like that?

I recently wrote a post asking for feedback on an interview process we’re working to improve. One section focused on asking questions to determine whether a candidate would align with our company culture.

What interested me most was the response to that specific topic. Several people said that “cultural fit” is often used to hide personal bias; or, frankly, as a convenient way to describe someone an interviewer or leader simply doesn’t like.

That made me want to explore the subject more deeply.

Do you believe culture is genuinely important to a company’s success, or is it often used to disguise bias and personal preference?

Have you ever worked for a company where the culture was clearly defined, consistently modeled, and supported at every level? If so, what made it feel real rather than just words on a wall?

Hi all,

I’ve recently been promoted to manage a small and new team within the business. I’ve never been a manager before in a corporate setting.
Our general workload is helping other business units throughout the UK with project bids and tenders.

Autumn is a strangely quiet time for us, I know there will be work in the coming weeks but during the weeks where no new projects come in, I don’t really know what to provide for my team. Especially my apprentice, who is still in his first year so I don’t feel like I can just throw him into doing menial jobs by himself just yet, he’s still in the learning phase of our methods of working.

I’ve made sure they’re caught up with training, our file systems are still new so there’s not a huge amount to organise, we’ve gone through all the previous projects and talked about how to improve our outputs (we help with providing CAD based solutions for other teams).

I think any advice from managers who have been through this sort of thing would be great. Thank you!

Im a manager at a wholesale retail we get two dry trucks a night and 1 perishable about 50 pallets each. We have a guy whose whole job is the backroom. Trucks only, no aisles, no projects. He keeps saying the truck is too much and that everybody should be putting it up. Problem is I hold my floor guys accountable for their own aisles. Every time I pull them to put up the whole truck I'm kicking myself, because now they have an excuse for why their aisle isn't done and I can't really say anything about it. So my rule is first truck all hands, second truck is his. When I've covered that spot myself it's about 2.5 hours start to finish, tags, unload, put up.
He went over my head and told my boss there's no support from management. Is one 50 pallet truck a night too much for one person, or is that normal at your stores? And how do you handle it when someone escalates over you on something like this?

Here is my situation. I'm working as a Manager with a growing company with about 300 people. I was hired to find existing issues in the company and provide solutions since I was working for a company of 5000+ people and they needed a new eye on the current situation.

Right now the company's structure is client-based and after a few months of research, collecting data and analysis I made a presentation to direction, in this case the Managing director who is the business owner and the director of operations who has been there for 12 years. I showcased exactly how the company is losing a ton and I kid you not, a ton of money by not correctly organizing resources. The solution consists of reorganizing the company by departments rather than being client based, effectively optimizing the work distribution with the existing resources and workforce.

The managing director loved it and told me to start putting it in place. Everything is prepared for the roll out which will be about 6-8 months based on the current activity so as to not disturb the operation. However on the other side I got a meeting with the operations director who is saying that this is a bad idea and I should not focus on it. Instead I should focus on finding immediate solutions to the existing structure to which I explained that these solutions are already being worked on as they would be in parallel to the new restructuring.

Despite all my explanations, he still disagreed with the idea saying I wasn't hired for that etc. Later that day the MD asked me if things are advancing on that restructuring project.

My question is, how do I deal with the conflicting instructions from them? I mean the owner is still the owner but the other person has been there for 12 years and me just 7 months.

Once, it was about 6:30pm and I was writing an email to an admittedly pretty senior group, and my manager made me organize the To and CC fields in order of seniority within the company! Maybe good practice, idk, but to make me do that 1.5 hours after I should have left for the day was infuriating. They didn't last long in that role.

What keeps you going?

I am a first time manager and my team has grown from 2 to 15 in only a few months. The leader of one of my teams wants a promotion and has made no secret of it; he claims my boss hired him to be at my grade and report directly into him but transpires it was a lower grade and reporting into me.

He is very ambitious and assertive and invites himself along to all of my senior meetings and openly contradicts me and tries to lead every single discussion and team strategy event. My other team leader is much more relaxed and willing to be influenced and led. I find the assertive team lead to be exhausting as he is forever briefing my seniors and turning up to my senior stakeholder meetings, trying to progress my strategy work etc.

How can I handle this without destroying his motivation? He is very good at his job, but I fear he will leave as his role is X grade but he is hell bent on achieving Y grade.

I have a development plan in place to help him to get to his next grade but I am starting to dread interactions with him as he is constantly challenging and wanting to reshape every decision.

How can I handle this as a learning point?

You guys were very helpful with my 1:1’s post so now I have another question.

For context, I manage a full office, where 15 team members are my direct reports. (My leadership is based out of our head office which isn’t local, so it’s all me here). The issue is I also work with doctors and I am not their supervisor so I have no authority over them in terms of disciplinary measures.

One of my doctors is extremely argumentative in meetings. Now, there is a difference between constructive or a healthy discussion, and what I’m describing.

A recent example is I had brought up a suggestion for a more accurate way to record communications in a patients file. She immediately, before I finished my sentence, interjected with “how am I supposed to remember that?” I had gently explained it’ll take practice but I think my suggestion will really help the inconsistency we’ve been experiencing but I was open to other ideas. She didn’t have any other to offer, just kept telling me my idea wasn’t going to work, and how even if she does it other people won’t.

I will also bring up general reminders that truly are not directed at anyone and she’ll say things like “who’s doing that? I don’t do that,” or “are you talking to me? I always follow that policy”.

I’m almost never speaking directly to her. And if I was, she’d know it.

I can see her shake her head, roll her eyes, or she sighs extremely loudly. Last week she got up ten minutes before we were done, announced “I have an appointment” and ran out the door.

I don’t expect everyone to give input. Some of the staff is quiet, and some genuinely have great ideas or present issues I hadn’t thought about. This one particular woman is so disrespectful during these meetings, and I can’t do anything about it.

I am not great at leading meetings and I’m trying to build my confidence. How do I hold my ground on this? She also does not read the minutes (I use Google Docs so I can see who views the file), yet when I ask for suggestions she sends me a fully written agenda of her own issues (never ideas, just complaints like the clock in the waiting room was seven minutes slow on Tuesday).

It is exhausting and I need help redirecting the energy and having an actual productive meeting. I wish I could tell the doctors not to come but then she’d complain she has no idea what’s going on, and I genuinely appreciate the other docs perspective on things. Help.

We'll be mixing people from different teams and specialisms, and the aim is to:
Build stronger relationships across teams
Better understand each other's roles and challenges
Encourage new connections and collaboration
Create a shared sense of purpose
Leave with practical actions, not just conversations
We'd also like people to reflect on:
What they want to get from the day
What success would look like by the end of it
How they can work more effectively across the Directorate
Has anyone run a successful leadership team-building day? What activities, icebreakers, or challenges worked particularly well for senior leaders?

I've been in retail/brand management for a few years now and recently started reporting to a female VP after a reorg. She is a younger elite B-School alum with startup experience and new to organised retail.

I am in my late 30s with more than a decade of experience in retail/brand management. Most of my pushback on category decisions is not seen as coming from experience, but rather as an older male employee not wanting to report to a younger female employee; my ex-boss has moved on to a more global role and is no longer involved in Indian operations. I asked for his advice, and he asked me to ride it out, saying she won’t be here for long.

When cross-functional teams want to involve me, she purposely shuts me out of interaction by removing me from email chains; I am worried her inexperience will cost me dearly. She is also on very good terms with the COO, they are friends and she is his referral, I am unsure on how to manage this situation, I don’t think riding out will help as some decisions by her will come back to bite me. Anyone been in a similar situation, most of my attempt to have one on one conversation with her are met very coldly. A colleague told me she wants someone else to be a part of her team hence she is behaving this way with me. I have built credibility at this organisation for years and overall happy with the pay and work but I don’t know what to do with her.

Any advice?

My team manages a system where employees can submit reports.

With the rise of AI, we’ve had a major issue with AI written reports that include hallucinations or irrelevant word salad. Sometimes these include unfilled templates or accidentally pasted prompts.

We’re experiencing senior ICs making 8-12 paragraph AI escalations that mostly do not contain the reporter’s own words. AI manufactures a long list of “requested actions” that often do not relate to our team’s functions.

We are consistent with saying we investigated + do not see violations/relevancy, but we often get an 8 paragraph AI re-litigation response.

It’s frustrating my team to experience this from other employees, especially as it zaps time.

I’m tempted to create a template that says, “Please tell us in 3-5 sentences, in your own words, what your report is” but I know that’s hostile when I don’t intend for it to be. Some escalations may have merit but are word-salad-ed to a point we can’t find the core report.

I want to avoid saying AI is disallowed because I’ve seen some say they use it for accessibility or language barriers.

Where would you start?

Hi all,

I’m hoping for some advice here. I manage 2 teams of staff in two departments, 22 staff in total.

For the most part both teams are a pleasure to manage and although we have obvious run ins I’m well respected and have pleasant interactions with all of the team on every level.

There is one team member however who is inherently a difficult person, he has been in the company longer than I have by about 5 years and as I started in a junior role, he seems to have no respect for me or other senior members of staff who he has seen ‘develop’ throughout the company. When I took over his department, the old department lead pre warned me that this member of staff could be ‘deeply unpleasant’ and that he would do all he could do to ‘take the piss’ at every turn..

Throughout my 18 months of managing this team member, he has been very difficult to manage. He is constantly under performing and I have spent hours upon hours on training, mentoring, improvement plans etc. The main issue I have however, is that even when evidence based, he is completely unwilling to take any form of criticism and throws a tantrum when issues or feedback is raised in his appraisal. There have now been 5 occasions where I have brought both evidence based alongside generic ‘I’ve noticed this..’ feedback to him and he’s either cried, shouted or stormed off. Every time, he calms down and I explain he can’t act like this at work and we go through the follow up plan, and then every time he starts performing poorly and cites the fact I’ve spoke to him about xyz as a reason he isn’t performing.

Last week, I spoke to him in an appraisal about his poor performance in August (which is driven by KPIs) and how he will need put on a PIP after this month if improvement isn’t met. He cried, and then basically argued at me for an hour about how we don’t respect him and how other people don’t get this treatment (not true) . I noticed today he has barely done any work by mid day, and when I called him he said he’s been too distracted after our chat last week and he’s struggling to work because he feels under attack by me and the company.

I am fairly sure he is edging to go off on the sick as he has previously advised (verbally) that he believes he may be autistic and he struggles with anxiety, though he has only raised this when he’s been confronted about performance

I am unsure on where to go from here. I feel like I am doing everything I can to help him however he is making me feel as though I am ‘picking on him’ and has previously said that every time I speak to him about his performance it’s making his anxiety bad.. what am I supposed to do?

I’ve been a people manager for one year. Everything had been great, but just recently started hitting some bumps in the road and now I’ve noticed a pattern in myself: when an employee pushes back on feedback, questions whether an expectation or evaluation is fair, seems frustrated with me, or a conversation just feels uncomfortable, I immediately start wondering what I did wrong.

I’ll replay the conversation afterward. Did I explain it badly? Was I unfair? Should I have responded differently? Are they upset with me? Do they think I’m a bad manager?

Reflection is obviously part of being a good manager, but I’m starting to realize there’s probably a difference between healthy self-reflection and taking responsibility for every negative feeling someone has about a decision, expectation, or piece of feedback.

I think part of what I’m struggling with is accepting that I can be a supportive manager and still have employees disagree with me, be disappointed in a decision, challenge my reasoning, or simply not like how something feels.

How did you learn to tell the difference between “there’s something here I need to learn from” and “this was just an uncomfortable part of managing people”?

And how do you keep yourself from interpreting employee frustration or disagreement as evidence that you’re doing a bad job?

So for the past three weeks, I moved up to management and a manager dropped down to sales assistant, but this sales assistant still thinks she is a manager and keeps doing all the manager Work and I’m stuck doing the sales assistant Work. To some people might think this is great having a higher pay and doing less work but it’s not because I have no clue what’s actually going on with management or HR cause I’ve received practically little to no training. I come into work and I’m stuck doing all the sales assist Work while this one girl is stuck in the office doing calls emails etc. She’s doing stuff that I’m supposed to be doing now. I have no issue with her helping out for instance if there’s a day where there’s no management at all of course she can help out with emails etc but if I’m there, she shouldn’t be doing that.

I understand that this girl is more trained than me and I barely understand what’s going on, but that’s why I need to be trained so I can continue doing management and not her and she can continue doing her sales assistant Work. Every day that I come into work it’s just her and my head manager doing management work and I’m just stuck packing shelves like a sales assistant the reason why I moved up to management was not because of higher pay but it was because of getting the experience so I then can move on and find a job in a different place with that experience. For instance, I’ve been begging my head manager to hire staff for three weeks she kept telling me that she wanted to wait for a day that me her and this girl we’re all in Work together so she could go through the hiring. I didn’t understand this because this girl is not part of management anymore so there is no need to wait for her to be there but I agree agreed anyway. I then come into Work to say that the hiring has already been done by my head manager and this girl. And I was very pissed about this as I wanted to be part of it since I’m a manager now.

This is not me on a power trip or just wanting to be in charge or anything like that, it’s me just not having a clue what is going on with management or HR because my head manager and this girl just keep doing everything and I’m just lost. If someone from HR was to call me right now and talk to me about something, I would not have a clue what to say back to them because I have no clue what is actually going on. It’s like I was just there to fill the space of a manager. So is my job now as a “ manager” to just keep on packing shelves like I was before but now if anything is wrong with the workplace, it just falls back on me. I would’ve rather just stay as a sales assistant in packing my shelves without having to worry about staff and stuff like that.

Hello,

When I got promoted from IC to manager of 2 teams, 2 directs reports and 12 IC below them, I got a 34% salary increase.
I was quite happy as the company matched my request without discussion.

After getting promoted I addressed various long lasting issues that helped increasing morale, increased our revenue and profit. My boss and all the stakeholders feedbacks are absolutely positive and it completely changed how my team are perceived. They used to be the complicated child, now they are seen as cooperative and knowledgeable.

My contract stipulated that my salary could be reviewed after 6 months. After 4 months my boss told me it would be reviewed immediately. However the ajustement is only +3%. To be honest after demonstrating my skills like I did, I feel 3% to be quite low.
Since I am a internal candidate, I know my comp is slightly lower than external candidates. I estimate the other managers (both external without prior management experience) to be paid 5-10% more than me. I don’t mind having people better paid than me, but their performance is far from being stellar.

Now, I am building my case for asking a minimum of 5% adjustments. But I feel like I may be pushing my luck too much.

I am delusional or do you feel a post promotion salary revision can also be within the 10% if the manager is showing an exceptional behavior and results?

Thanks for sharing your opinions. I am really wondering and maybe I need a hard and cold reality check.

I have a direct report who is basically Pollyanna. As a junior IC, she was friendly and polite, her work was thorough, and she was skilled at taking initiative. Everyone in my organization enjoys working with her, and I recently promoted her to a more mid-career role, which she completely deserved. However, it is here that I have encountered a very big weakness.

Her new role requires more ability to work cross functionally and with senior execs. And she is struggling to learn the difference between what (and how) you communicate with trusted colleagues and what you communicate with senior decision makers. Not rude or too forward, of course, but she has a tendency to provide details about how the sausage gets made (without context) that reopen settled decisions or create fires.

An example: Recently we were trying to make a seating chart for an event. She was asked to clear moving some of the C-suite's guests out of VIP seating (we had 20 names, we could fit 16). She sent a spreadsheet to the CEO's assistant with a note IN RED about a person the VP (my boss) did not want invited. This caused a fire between the CEO and the VP about that person when... it could have just been quietly handled (I had a plan, with dependencies). The guest in question was not one of the 20 names, it was outside of the scope of what she was asked to do. When I asked her about it, she said "Oh, I thought CEO assistant might ask about this person, and I wanted to provide all the information. Otherwise it felt like deceiving." VP has called me twice on this Sunday after his boss called him, and it will be a shitshow this week.

It is stuff like that, multiple times a week. I think that she genuinely thinks she is helping. But, good or not, our workplace is built on accommodating stupid shit from the C-suite and others, and thr best survival tactic is navigating around it without people ever knowing that is happening. And I have empathy that it is ridiculous and maybe not the sort of ideal workplace she wants, but, I need to continue to do my job not put out her fires.

How do I coach that? I have tried calling out specific incidents repeatedly, but she genuinely struggles to internalize that this is causing problems. It is making me regret promoting her for sure.

Is there a specific resource to point her to? Or even a name for the problem?