Real stories, real tension, and clear maps for navigating the human side of management.
When Feedback Misfires: Why Managers Get Vague or Unfair Criticism
When feedback is vague or unfair, most managers assume it is truth. This episode helps you treat feedback as a system signal, sort what is yours, and recover your clarity.
Stop Trying to Please Everyone
"You can't make everyone happy. Just make the call." This feedback dismisses collaboration as indecision—but the research tells a different story. If you've been told you're too consensus-driven, you're not indecisive. You're building decisions that actually stick.
You're Too Sensitive
When someone tells you you’re “too sensitive,” they’re not assessing your leadership—they’re misreading your intelligence. You’re tracking emotional data others don’t value, and that mismatch gets labeled as fragility instead of insight. This post reframes the feedback, names the real pattern beneath it, and shows you how to lead without abandoning the part of you that actually sees what’s happening.
You’re Not Leadership Material
Being told “you’re not leadership material” is often not a reflection of your capability, but a signal that the system evaluating you lacks the lens to recognize your form of leadership. In organizations that equate leadership with visibility, charisma, or warmth, leaders who build structure, develop people, and translate strategy into durable systems are frequently misread rather than underqualified.
You're Too Direct
You've been told you're "too direct" or "need to be more collaborative." But the feedback isn't about a skill gap—it's about a leadership style mismatch. Learn how to teach people to see the system you see, so your clarity becomes relational instead of isolating.
You Don't Embody the Mission
What happens when you’re told you don’t “embody the mission,” even as your systems, strategy, and outcomes hold the company together. This essay explores how miscalculated feedback often hides archetype mismatch—not failure—and how to find the terrain that sees your kind of leadership.
When I Read the Room Right but Lost It Anyway
You walk into a high-stakes meeting. You've prepared. You have a plan that's grounded, operational, real. But something's off. The energy in the room doesn't match the agenda. You can feel the resistance before anyone says a word.
Decisions Under Pressure: When Your Values Are the Clarity You Need
Research shows that time pressure reduces decision quality—but the problem isn't the pressure itself. It's that we haven't built systems that let us move with confidence when it hits. This is the story of a decision I made in five hours that everyone thought was rash. It wasn't. It was the most prepared decision I'd made all year.
Why Performance Reviews Backfire (And How to Make Them Work)
66% of employees would quit if unappreciated. Learn why performance reviews fail and how to build feedback rhythms that actually work—for in-office and remote teams
The Year-End Crunch: How to Deliver Without Burning Out Your Team
It's late October. And if you're a manager, you already know what that means. You can feel it in the air—that shift. That tightening. Your calendar, which felt manageable two weeks ago, suddenly looks impossible.
"Burnout doesn't come from hard work. It comes from unclear work done at an unsustainable pace."
The Conversation I Practiced in My Kitchen
I was standing in my kitchen at 6 AM, practicing words I didn’t want to say. “We need to discuss your employment status.” Too formal. “I have some difficult news.” Too vague. “I know I told you your job was safe, but…” That one made my stomach turn. I’d been rehearsing this conversation for three days, trying to find a way to deliver news that would shatter someone’s trust in me. Someone who had asked me directly, multiple times, if they were going to be fired. Someone I’d looked in the eye and said no to, because I meant it. But everything had changed, and I was the one who had to deliver the blow
Stop Drowning in Updates No One Reads: The Manager's Guide to Clear Communication
You spend hours crafting the perfect status update, rewrite it three times, wonder if you're saying too much or not enough, and when you finally hit send... silence. Cue cricket noises. No feedback, no conversation, just the void. And still, next week, you do it again like a hamster on a wheel. The problem isn't that you don't care about keeping people informed—it's that no one taught you how to lead through clarity. Learn the one-sentence framework that transforms exhausting status reports into leadership tools that actually work.
The Consensus Trap: Why Your Collaborative Meetings Keep Stalling (And How to Fix It)
You know this meeting. Everyone weighs in. The clock runs down. And somehow, nothing gets decided. The same decision has been on the table for weeks, and it still isn't made. What started as noble inclusion becomes a stall. The consensus trap looks like collaboration, but really it's fear disguised as care. Learn the three-step framework that helps collaborative managers pair inclusion with clarity—so your team can finally move forward instead of circling endlessly.
Performance Reviews Without the Pit in Your Stomach: A Manager's Guide
Your calendar reminder pops up: "Performance review with Jordan—Friday, 2 pm." And there it is—that pit in your stomach. You start rehearsing what you'll say, wondering if you'll come across as too harsh or too soft. Performance reviews are supposed to be mile markers on the leadership journey, but they often feel like rocky terrain you'd rather avoid. That pit in your stomach isn't weakness—it's a signal that you understand the stakes. Learn the three landmarks and practical tools that transform dreaded reviews into confident navigation check-ins.
The Elephant in the Break Room: What Team Tension Is Really Costing You
Most team tension never gets named. We walk past it in meetings, feel it in group chats, sense it in how someone closes their laptop or doesn't respond to a message. And still, no one says a word. But tension that goes unnamed doesn't disappear—it just moves underground where it eats trust alive. If you've ever felt that weird energy shift in your team or watched productivity drop for no clear reason, you're witnessing the cost of unaddressed conflict. Here's your framework for naming what everyone feels but no one discusses.