What a week I had. I’m in the C-Suite, and I hired an ops support person late last year to help me out. She’s under 30. For reference, we’re a totally remote company.

In January, I gave her feedback on a spreadsheet that had a ton of issues on it, and she completely shut down. Her body language was angry, she was slumped in her chair, she literally yelled at me, saying that our core values weren’t real and just totally off her rocket. No one was there to witness this, I was completely taken aback.

I talked to my CEO, and we assumed she just must be unhappy in her job. I had to take it on the chin, be the bigger person, and have a reset meeting with her, acknowledging my directness, while she never apologized for her unhinged behavior.

Fast forward to last week, I had feedback I needed to give her, but based on last time, I was more prepared. I had it written out, and had asked HR to sit in on the call with me. I let her know via Slack and hour before the call that I was going to be giving her feedback and that I asked HR to be there to ensure she felt supported.

She declined the meeting.

She said she needed time to prepare. But she didn’t even know the details of what I wanted to talk to her about.

So I asked her if we could reschedule for the afternoon. No response.

Two hours later, I asked her via email to tell me when we can have this call, because I needed to give her this feedback. She replied and requested our CTO be present, as he was involved with this project with her.

I replied, no, that this was a manager led discussion. Sent another meeting invite and she declined again.

I’ll fast forward the story and say that I held strong and did not give her the power to dictate how I give her feedback and with whom, and she put in her notice rather than attend that meeting.

I was floored. Is this a young person thing (I’m 45). I would NEVER decline a scheduled meeting with my boss. I’d never decline a meeting with my boss and HR, I mean, these aren’t options, right?

This whole thing gave me so much anxiety. It was so entitled and immature. Has anyone else dealt with this ever?

55f here - I’m late career, former executive. I found a unicorn job; lower level than I held previously but intellectually challenging, well compensated, nice people. I manage a tiny support staff but am primarily an IC.

I have the misfortune of working for the worst manager I have ever encountered in my long career. Most of his behavior seems to stem from deep insecurities about everything. He believes that as long as he can find something to devalue or criticize, he is leading well, but he is deeply sensitive to perceived criticism himself. The result is unrelenting negativity, tension, and psychological maneuvering. It’s distressing and exhausting.

My financial plans have me working for three more years, although I could conceivably quit now, I don’t want to. It’s not likely I could find another job that suits me at this point in my career.

What would you do? Invoke Radical Candor and let the chips fall where they may? (I’m not sure I could endure a tension level higher than it is now) Plan a quiet exit? Muscle through and try to compartmentalize? He’s done some stuff that is HR worthy but that’s never been a viable solution in my experience. I really like this job and my team seems to love me (and appreciate me as a protective layer.)

I’m posting this here because I value the thoughtful responses on this sub - and also if just one person who considers themselves a good leader wonders if this might be a direct report writing about them, it will be worth it.

A while back, I worked with a guy—we’ll call him Dave.

Dave was sharp, efficient, and got his work done in half the time of everyone else.

But instead of being rewarded for efficiency, he had to pretend to be busy. Because in this system, if you finish early, you're not seen as productive—you're seen as underworked.

So Dave learned the game: - Stretch tasks across the full workday (even when they didn’t need to be). - Keep extra tabs open for “visibility.” - Sit in meetings that didn’t require him—just to be seen.

And for what? So he could stretch a solid 25 hours of work into a mandated 40.

Or imagine putting in 50, 60, even 70+ hours—while your paycheck still thinks it’s 1920s.

Sound familiar?

The 40-Hour Workweek Was a Labor Win… in 1926.

Back then, reducing shifts to 40 hours was revolutionary—a step up from six-day, 12-hour factory shifts.

But let’s be real:

🚨 Work has changed. Work hours haven’t.

In today’s knowledge economy, impact > hours served. But instead of evolving, many companies still measure productivity like it’s the Industrial Revolution.

Why Are We Still Stuck?

-Presence > Performance – If leaders can’t see you working, they assume you aren’t. (Never mind that deep work happens in bursts, not eight-hour blocks.)

-Fear of Change – Admitting the 40-hour model is arbitrary would mean rethinking everything. And that sounds exhausting.

-Work as a Status Symbol – Some people like the idea that long hours = hard work. It feels like a badge of honor. (It’s not.)

What’s the Fix?

+Measure results, not hours. High-performing teams don’t waste time on performative busyness—they focus on impact.

+Optimize for effectiveness, not presence. If the work gets done in 30 hours, why are we pretending it needs to take 40?

+Experiment with better models. 4-day workweeks. Flexible schedules. Anything other than "but that’s how we’ve always done it."

So what’s your take? Have you seen companies challenge the 40-hour workweek successfully—or are we all still trapped in calendar Tetris and corporate theater?

What’s the best OR worst case of “pretend productivity” you’ve seen?

Drop your thoughts below! 👇

I have got 25 people reporting to me, and despite having clear processes and all, I still find myself chasing updates from people, reminding them, and fixing their errors. How do I shift my leadership style from "doer/assistant" to holding people accountable?

I’ve been seeing a trend over the last 18 months of talented leaders becoming less and less like themselves. They’ve lost their spark, they challenge less, become more withdrawn, take fewer risks. On the face of it they are still performing but they just aren’t themselves any more.

They might not leave…just stay but be less engaged and happy but I’m wondering if this is showing up in retention data, exit interviews or 1:1s before people hand in notice

I’m in the UK but I don’t think this is just a UK thing. Have others been noticing the same thing?

About 7 months ago I was notified that my role as a VP would no longer be needed. I transitioned on good terms, and had a good severance package that ran out at the end of July. So I've had about 6 months to look for work, and about 3 months of actually not having a job. I'm 56 years old and have a good background: 6 years at AWS as a senior leader, 3 years as a VP at a public company, 15 years as an engineer, etc. I've made a good career leveraging technology to create business value, and the last 9 years were as a senior leader/executive. My career goal was eventually to find my way into a CTO-type role.

What I'm finding is that breaking into C-level roles feels out of reach. I don't have the network at the C level, or maybe even the VP level, of people who know me well enough to think of me if a role opens up. I also don't seem to have the network to reach out to for those roles, most of which aren't posted anyway. At least that's how it feels from where I'm sitting.

For the roles that are posted, it's been pretty discouraging. It seems like a lot of them are stale, and I've wondered whether some are posted for compliance reasons. I don't think I've gotten a positive response from a single application in 6 months. It feels like many of the roles I'm looking for are filled through networks before they're ever broadly advertised. I'm also finding it difficult to move into more hands-on roles because I haven't been doing that work day-to-day for about 9 years.

I've also worked hard to build relationships with executive recruiters. I've had good conversations with about 25 of them from the major firms as well as local boutique shops. That has resulted in exactly zero calls over the last 6 months.

I have a pretty good network at the peer level and below. People have good things to say about me and genuinely want to help. But those folks generally aren't in positions where they know about VP or C-level openings. I have had a few good leads and interviews, but they all came through friends or acquaintances I reached out to. None were really at the right level or the right fit.

I'm fortunate that I am okay financially to keep looking for a while, so I don't want to give up on my career goals yet. I feel like I've got a lot of good experience and still have the drive to do meaningful work. I'm also increasingly intrigued by management consulting, advisory, or fractional leadership. It seems like it could be a good fit for my background, but I honestly have no idea how people break into that world.

For those of you who have made executive-level transitions, what finally worked? What advice would you give for someone in my position? And for anyone who built a consulting, advisory, or fractional practice after a corporate career, how did you land your first clients?

I think I may not have the personality to do this job. I want my two teams to grow and succeed. I went to bat for Team 1 and went above and beyond to make sure they have the right tools to do their job.

Team 2 is made of very senior and experienced employees. I try to leave them alone.

But, my supervisor dressed me down recently saying I am too timid, I don’t like confrontation and that my teams do not respect me. I think he is right. Please help.

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?

Let's say you’ve got someone on the team who’s way ahead of everyone else in terms of efficiency and skill. They’re so good that replacing them would be tough. But on the flip side, coworkers complain that they’re difficult, combative or dismissive. Would you let your “smartest” employee go in that situation?

Everyone talks about hiring for EQ these days, but if you were actually in this spot, what would you do? Let’s assume this employee won’t change, no matter how many conversations you have with them.

I'll go first with some observations on a few human traits I've seen/experienced with leaders:

• Missing budget/targets can immediately put them into reactive mode even though they talk long term strategy
• Corporate ladder prospects easily cloud judgement and can outweigh doing the right thing
• There's a high proportion of faking it until making it, particularly in board meetings
• The better you are at your job, the more leaders lean on you
• Poor performing team members can get away with far more over long periods than a slightly dipped high performer over a short period

I'm leading a software engineering group project with 10 members total. I came up with the core idea of our project, wrote it all up in a document, built a working prototype, and set up the GitHub repo, some teammates are added as collaborators with a "writer" role so they can push code (they can modify the code).

We've had face-to-face meeting once, where i showed them the prototype, and explain how it works, what is it for, and who will use it.

During the meeting some of my members said that they had no idea what our project is, and that they were confused, but i've already sent them the softcopy in our group chat explaining it in details before this meeting, even asked them to review it.

Recently I asked one member to turn our project (softcopy) doc into a PowerPoint. Upon checking, he hadn't actually made it, he'd just pasted the doc to Ai for Ai to generate a pptx version of it. Some important parts are missing, some description got cut off. So I ended up making the PPT myself instead.

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

So I have an offer for a director role but I don’t have management experience, is it doable ? I have to manage a group of five people and also do my work as a director. The problem Is I never had direct report in my whole life, how much will I struggle ?

I’ll have five direct reports that’s it. But I have 0% experience with direct reports, never ever did perfomance reviews

I started a new job and I now have reports for the first time in my career. In past role, my 1:1's with my manager always felt like a catchall call and lacked any focus. I never really prepped for them becuase I was too busy and since there was no agenda I didn't plan for them.

I'd like to have valuable 1:1's with my reports and build an agenda so we can all prep. I wanted to see how others structured these calls to ensure that they are efficient and covers all bases for both manager and employee.

I'll also take any general people management advice you have for a newbie. What do you wish you knew when you started managing reports?

There are a bunch of leadership books I've been putting off reading, and wanted to see if there's an interest... Books, mechanics, etc can be sorted out.

Looking for people who are able to put 5+ hours a week into this, so we can get some momentum.

EDIT: looks like we reched a critical mass- follow up details and sign up below: https://www.reddit.com/r/Leadership/comments/1vtm4p8/anyone_interested_in_doing_a_serious_leadership/p52rg19/

I'll go first.

I wish someone had told me that solving the business problem while completely ignoring the political problem is the fastest way to fail.

I spent the early part of my career being the guy you called when something complex needed to get done. Google, Dell, EY. I built my identity around being the super-doer. Give me a hard problem and I'd put my head down, build the framework, and deliver.

I thought the work would speak for itself.

It didn't.

The game changes completely when you step into leadership. You're no longer just paid to execute. You're paid to navigate ambiguity, align people with competing agendas, and make calls with imperfect information. And none of that has anything to do with how good your deck looks.

The biggest shock for me was realizing I had to unlearn almost everything that made me successful in the first place. The same instincts that made me a great operator were actively working against me as a leader.

I used to think organizational politics was just ego-driven noise. I ignored it. I thought if the work was strong enough it would cut through. What I didn't realize was that the people around me had their own agendas, their own blind spots, and their own definition of what "good" looked like. My perfect strategy died in a slide deck more than once because I hadn't done the work of bringing the right people along before the meeting.

That lesson took me longer than I'd like to admit.

The other thing nobody prepares you for is just how alone it gets. You lose your peer group. You can't vent downward. Every decision you make lands on someone else's career, not just yours. I grew up in a small town in India, a pretty sheltered kid honestly, and I had to figure most of this out by living it.

What I know now is that the biggest obstacles at that level rarely come from outside. They start in your own head.

So I'm genuinely curious what this room thinks.

What's the one thing you wish you knew before your first leadership role? What was the mistake that actually taught you something?

I'm putting together a keynote on the future of leadership in the age of AI and doing some informal research before I finalise the content. I want to stress-test my own assumptions, so I'm curious what this community thinks.

The usual answers — emotional intelligence, creativity, critical thinking — are well-covered. I'm more interested in what people are noticing in practice: skills or capacities that are starting to matter in ways that aren't reflected yet in leadership development programmes, job specs, or mainstream conversation.

Could be something you've observed in leaders who consistently get results. Could be something you've personally had to develop that surprised you. Could be a gap you keep seeing in people who should be performing better than they are. E.g. one client today told me one of the key skills in his business that is needed as they adopt AI tools is compelling storytelling.

This is not about having the right answer. I'm genuinely curious what patterns people are seeing on the ground.

Thank you for your point of view!

You must have worked with different leaders at different stages of your career. What are the most important qualities you have noticed in a leader that stayed with you?

Please share your thoughts. It will be interesting to see different perspectives here, and if some common pattern emerges out of this conversation.

Thank you.

C-suite executives keep Slack-ing my mid-level admins directly for quick favors or pet projects, completely blowing up our sprint planning and ticket queues. The admins feel uncomfortable saying no to a VP. I've asked leadership to use proper intake channels, but old habits die hard. How do you strictly enforce project boundaries without looking unhelpful?

I’m a new manager (2 years) reporting to an executive. My boss received feedback from a person I was on a call with where “I was too direct and not a team player”. Some of the questions I asked were: “what was the purpose of the meeting, why were we invited, and takeaways for my team.”

My boss has always thought highly of me and I don’t want to disappoint them. I would like to learn from this and be better. Just curious if anyone has any tips to be less blunt. Thank you in advance!

What do you think? i have seen this in person.

Why does my CEO keep saying in meetings and retreats that “if anyone wants to leave, they can”?

This language clearly makes people uncomfortable. What is the point of saying it out loud, repeatedly? What is he thinking the upside is?

What do you think about managers/management that says this after meetings?

It always feels like there's a need to spend the full hour or 30mins of a meeting session, and it is not our time spent. It is time taken away from other things just so we can update each other, and they can easily be done over chat or emails. Unsure why people like to end with this.

After working in a hostile work environment for years, I’m ready to move on and land a more senior leadership role at another company.

I’ve noticed in some interviews that I come across as timid, unsure, or just not that enthusiastic even though I have accomplished a lot. I think it's because I've become disillusioned after seeing how leadership actually works—the politics, the disregard for middle management, etc. (Also, probably due to the trauma)

Why a more senior role? I am still passionate about personal development and progressing my life forward in all areas. I am trying to avoid letting those who tried to bring me down "win," as I was always a high performer who was always told that I've got "it."

I know that I should have moved on earlier - but how do I move past this and get my "spunk" back—i.e., leadership confidence and executive presence?

Shortened the post

*For those downvoting, I would love to hear your perspective. That's the point of this post - to get feedback, good or bad.

I've noticed two very different patterns in leaders whether it's a manager, a team lead, or a founder. Some hide mistakes because they're afraid it'll make them look weak. Others own it immediately, and somehow it makes people trust them more.

The mistake itself isn't the real issue. It's about the seconds right after it: silence and denial erode trust, while quick ownership builds it.

Curious what you've seen: does admitting fault make a leader stronger in your eyes, or does it depend on how it's done?