Jess Walker was a guest on the Management Detox podcast, and I STILL think about everything we discussed. I worked with Jess in New York at Huge - a large digital agency in Brooklyn. I knew she was special then, but seeing how she has evolved into a leader of leaders is pretty inspiring.

In this episode, UX Leader and Coach Jod Kaftan and I discussed the perils (and temptations) of "falling on every grenade for your team." Meaning, that you have to guide them to make their own decisions, coach them to face off against and collaborate with challenging stakeholders, and stop trying to be everyone’s “hero.”

If you’ve been on Tiktok or Insta lately you’ve seen all the posts of terrible bosses. We’ve all seen the influencers play acting as toxic managers who insist that employees sleep with their phones on their chests to be available for some urgent 2 a.m. phone call, or pretending to be a clueless boomer boss bumbling through basic technology.

Employees need our help to evolve in their careers. They need someone to help them move through their blind spots. Managers should regularly be engaging with employees and providing their perspective and highlighting growth opportunities. I just think we should call this something other than “feedback.” 

Senior leadership needs to stop passing insecurities, fears, and turf wars down to their teams. Intentionally or not, they are instilling the belief that meetings are the only way to safely get things done. Instead, corporations need to promote leaders who aren’t afraid of failures, know how to learn from them, and won’t shame their teams for taking action. 

In 2023, the RTO (Return to Office) mandates started trickling in, getting more and more punitive by the month. CEOs moved from bribes to threats, and they backtracked on their promises of supporting remote work, even gaslighting the workforce by telling us we were less productive at home when we knew the opposite was true. What gives?

Career progress is the language of success in Corporate America. But promotions can be difficult to get, and on top of that, at some companies, the process can be difficult to understand - which I sometimes suspect is intentional.