Hey There!

A friend and I were cooking dinner together last week and rambling about work stuff. She told me that I should start a Dear-Abby-esque column. I laughed because I feel like I already do this through this newsletter and, more recently, my podcast. How many more ways do people need to hear from me?!

Anyway, I humored her and asked what the first question I should answer should be. Here's what she is wondering about:

I'm sure there are at least a thousand of you reading this who have asked one or all of these questions at some point, if not already today. Sooooo here's my Dear Marissa response, which, in all its words, tells you exactly why a column like this is probably not the best vehicle for me 🤣.

Dear Bestie,
Thank you for asking these very important questions! You are absolutely not alone in feeling these tensions. The fact that you're asking (rather than defaulting to "it's not my problem") tells me that you're a thoughtful and intentional leader. That's a great place to start.

The bottom line: You are responsible for creating the conditions for people to thrive, AND you are not responsible for every outcome. This is hard to accept for control freaks like me. I want to believe that when I take the time to do all the things right, it will always translate to people staying, people performing the way I expect them to, and people also taking the time to do all the things right. And yet...nope. My effort matters, but in a world of humans with agency, I am not fully in control. BLAH.

The work of good leadership lives in the space between creating conditions for the outcomes you want and not being so attached to the outcome that you are derailed when people fall short.

So let's start with the conditions. Before you decide whether you're looking at a "person problem" or a "leadership problem," you have to be willing to ask what this person's struggle MIGHT BE telling you about your team, expectations, culture, or systems. If only one person is drowning, it might be a more individual issue. If two or three people in the same role have struggled in the same ways over the past few years, the data point to something structural. Burnout or breakdown concentrated under a particular manager*, within a particular team*, for a particular identity group, or during a particular season of organizational life is a pattern that can't be addressed by just managing a person better. We have a responsibility to interrogate the environment in which people are being managed.

Are my/our expectations clear and reasonable?

Do people have the knowledge, support, and resources they need to meet expectations?

Is this person in a role, a team, or an environment that is a good fit for who they are, what they're best at, and how their brain works?

Are policies, culture, or leadership style exacerbating an already hard situation?

These aren't comfortable questions, but we need to ask them and be honest about the answers before we decide on an intervention.

*Important Aside: If you are a person who has lost several staff members and it feels like the common denominator is you, first, take a breath. That pattern deserves your full attention, but not in a spirally, shameful, or self-flagellating way. This is not the moment to ask whether or not you're a bad person. I am very confident that you are a good person doing the best you can with the information and tools you have right now. My work (and the rest of this newsletter) is about giving you new information and tools!

At the same time, we cannot let performance slide while we're figuring out why performance challenges or turnover are happening. This is where a lot of well-meaning managers veer into what Kim Scott calls ruinous empathy—giving someone so much grace, so many extensions, or so many "I'll let it slide this time because I know you've got a lot going on outside of work" passes that you've stopped doing your job as a manager, and they've stopped doing the job they were hired and paid to do. Ruinous empathy feels like kindness but is more often avoidance, a trauma response, or a martyrdom complex that almost always makes things worse for everyone.

The Alternative

Compassionate accountability is the alternative. It means being honest and direct about what you're observing and treating someone like a full human being at the same time. It means saying, "I can see you're going through something hard, and I also need to be honest with you about what I'm noticing in your work and what will happen if that performance doesn't improve."

Once someone is consistently underperforming, both compassion and accountability must be present in the same conversation. Which doesn't mean we're mean, insensitive, or inflexible. It means we're doing our jobs. Compassion without accountability AND accountability without compassion yield chaos.

Compassionate accountability is especially important when the challenge is mental health-related, because it's when our instinct to give endless grace is strongest, and the need for honest, caring structure is actually greatest. People need structure to feel safe, and that is especially true when things feel chaotic. Absolving someone of accountability (even with the most loving intentions) actually sends the message that you don't think they can handle it. As long as you are being thoughtful about what you're asking and how you're asking it, holding the line is not unkind and might be the kindest thing you do.

[I lead a workshop on Compassionate Accountability if that's interesting to you]

The Hard Truth

Once you've audited your systems, had the compassionate accountability conversations, and offered real support and clarity, you have to remember: Not every person is a good fit for every culture, and not every culture is a good fit for every person.

The leader's job is not to make everyone happy or to retrofit their culture around every individual (even if they make you feel that way). Your job is to be abundantly clear about what your culture and expectations are, so that people can make real, informed decisions about whether to stay. It's not a moral failing if individual people leave because they need something you or the organization can't (and often shouldn't) provide. Sometimes, what someone needs is a level of flexibility, accommodation, or support that is genuinely beyond the scope of an employment relationship. Naming that clearly is its own form of grace and care.

Red flags start to creep up when patterns, bias, or broken systems consistently impact multiple people or teams OR are causing harm. Knowing the difference is a leadership skill and is where your responsibility lies.

Which brings us to the question: How much of this is on me?

There's no way for me to know, but I'd guess that some of it is on you and some of it isn't. Helpful right?!

How much responsibility you bear depends on what you did and didn't do when you saw the signs of burnout or breakdown. Did you look away? Did you have the hard conversation, or did you avoid it? Did you advocate for the resources or policy changes that might have helped? Did you build the kind of culture where someone could tell you they were drowning before they already were?

If you did everything in your power and within the reasonable limits of your role and capacity, you can breathe.

And if you didn't? You're human, and you're allowed to not do everything right. You know more now and will do better next time. Hopefully, some of this helps.

It also feels important to be explicit that you cannot want someone's well-being more than they do. You cannot catch every person before they fall. You cannot be a direct report's crisis worker and their manager. You cannot be the solution to problems that are bigger than your role, influence, team, or organization.

Part of mature, sustainable leadership is learning to wish people well without over-taking responsibility for outcomes that were never fully yours or within your control. That is not callousness or indifference. It's about learning to set a reasonable boundary around your energy to protect both you and the people you lead, in the short and long term.

One More Thing

Whether someone is on their way out the door or clearly heading there, one of the most underutilized tools in a manager's toolkit is an intentional, honest exit process that helps them truly understand what happened and if anything could have changed the outcome. Sometimes, the most powerful leadership move available to you is simply being willing to ask.

When I'm running exit interviews for organizations, some of my favorite questions are:

• What would have made it easier to stay?
• Was there a moment, experience, or season where you felt things shifted for you? When did you first know something wasn't working? Did you express your concerns? If so, do you feel those concerns were heard? If not, what kept you from speaking up?
• What did you need that you didn't get while you were here? From me, from the team, or from the organization?
• What policies, processes, or norms made your job harder than it needed to be?
• If you could have asked for anything without fear of judgment, retaliation, or punishment, what would it have been?
• How easy or hard did it feel to access support?
• What's one thing you think we should do differently for the next person in your role?

These questions require you to show up without your defenses on and to actually listen to the answers, even when (especially when) the answers are hard to hear. It's also important that you do something with what you learn.

Not to punish yourself. Not to relitigate the past. Not to self-flagellate. Not to spiral in your perceptions of failure or inadequacy.

But to become a stronger, more effective leader and to build the conditions for human thriving within your sphere of control and influence. That's it. That's the whole job. And for what it's worth, I BELIEVE IN YOU!

Have a wonderful week!
Marissa