From Hard Work to Heart Work — July Edition

This month focused on something I see often: managers and employees can experience the same team very differently.

Everything seems to be working. Meetings happen. Targets are met. But beneath the surface, concerns can go unnoticed until they become much harder to address.

July explored why that happens and what helps managers see what's really going on.

Expert Advice

A new director, 5 months into her role. She had rebuilt the team rituals and given regular feedback. From the outside, things were working.

She was not in the individual interviews.

Two people said the same thing: “We do not know where we are going, and we do not dare tell her because she works so hard.”

Her commitment was protecting the team from telling her the truth.

In debrief, I told her directly: “Your engagement is what is keeping people from talking to you.”

Three months later, one of the team members who had been considering leaving had taken on new responsibilities.

One honest conversation, delivered once. That is what it took.

👉 Read the original post here

Client Success Story

Isabelle had been in the company for 12 years. Everyone described her as reliable and serious. She delivered on every commitment.

No one said she was engaged.

In her individual interview, I asked directly: “Where do you see yourself in 2 years?” Silence. Then: “I do not know if I will still be here in 2 years.”

She had asked for more responsibilities 18 months earlier. The answer had been “we will see.” Then nothing. She stopped asking. She kept delivering.

In debrief, I told the director: “Isabelle is 6 months from leaving. You can still do something.”

He called her the next day. Not to promise anything. Just to say he had heard.

A year later, she was leading a new department. The only obstacle had been that he did not know where she was.

👉 Read the original post here

Practical Tips

Tip 1: Close the loop on feedback

Thomas ran annual feedback rounds. He listened, thanked everyone, took notes. Eight months later, his managers gave him the same feedback. Same problem names. Same examples.

He had never told them what he planned to do with what he heard. So they stopped giving him anything real.

After your next feedback round, respond in writing to each person. Two lines: “You said X. Here is what I will do with that.” Even if the answer is “I am not changing anything, because…” Say it anyway.

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Tip 2: Check your calendar ratio

Sophie managed a team of 12 in a consulting firm. She knew every project, replied in 15 minutes, never turned down a meeting. Her DRH asked her: “What are you avoiding when you stay in the operational?”

Silence.

Look at last week’s calendar. How many hours on project meetings, how many on conversations about people: their development, their trajectory? If the ratio is 80/20 in the wrong direction, you know what is happening.

👉 Read the original post here

Industry Insights

The meeting that runs itself

Your Monday meeting has run for 90 minutes for 2 years. Nobody knows what it actually does.

Team rituals persist because canceling them demands an explanation. And explaining why means admitting they never fully served a purpose. So the meeting runs. The team shows up. Nobody says anything.

Carte blanche

You said “carte blanche.” They spent 2 weeks trying to figure out what you would have done in their place.

Autonomy without context produces anxiety, not initiative. The person in front of you is doing reverse engineering with no blueprint. Give them a constraint to work within, not an open field.

Personal Reflections

I spent 2 weeks inside a 40-person company. Observations, interviews, meetings. The director had asked for a team diagnostic; something was not moving.

What I found: the team ran on his validation. Every decision came back to him. The team was not waiting for instructions. It was waiting for his approval.

In the debrief, I told him: “The team trusts you. But between members, that trust has never been built. It has not needed to.”

We worked together for 90 days. Collective accountability sessions. Decision rituals where he was not in the room. Cross-1:1s between members of the leadership team.

Six months later he told me: “I was away for 10 days. The team made a major decision without me. And it was the right call.”

For me, that is what a working team looks like.

👉 Read the original post here

Book and Resource Recommendations

“Leadership and Self-Deception” by The Arbinger Institute

A short book with a specific claim: most leadership problems come from the leader being “in a box” about the people around them. Seeing them as obstacles or tools rather than full human beings with their own inner lives.

What makes it useful is how it explains the gap July kept uncovering: the manager who reads everything as fine because they have built a version of the team that confirms what they need to believe.

If any of this month’s posts landed, this book gives the mechanism behind them.

Q&A

Q: My 1:1s are short and calm. Everyone says things are fine. How do I know if the team is actually disengaged?

A: Short and calm 1:1s are one of the clearest signals I track. When people stop raising problems, they have usually stopped expecting things to change when they do.

One question that cuts through: “What would you tell me if you were sure it would not affect how I see you?”

Ask it once. Hold the silence for 30 seconds. What comes out is almost always the conversation you needed to have months earlier.

Conclusion

July came back to the same thing each week: what is visible on the surface is not always what is happening underneath.

The dashboard is green. The meeting runs. Isabelle keeps delivering. But somewhere in the room, a person has already moved on.

Paying attention to that gap is the job.

Call to Action

If any of this resonated, I work with managers and leadership teams in Swiss SMEs to identify what is holding the team back and build the conditions for it to move again.

The starting point is always a conversation.

👉 Let's take 20 minutes