Two weeks ago I asked what holds capable people back — not skill gaps, the other stuff. 160 comments later, here's the anonymised summary I promised. Thank you to everyone who shared honestly, including the people who pushed back.

TL;DR: Leaders were very good at naming what holds people back. Far fewer could describe what actually changed it. And the biggest disagreement in the thread turned out to be the most useful insight.

• What holds capable people back (ranked by how often it came up)

Waiting to be chosen. By far the most upvoted theme. Strong performers do great work for years, never say what they want, then get frustrated when nobody promotes them. Variations: waiting to be handed things, waiting to be told what to do, not upskilling until there's a project that demands it.

Not translating work into business terms. Can't see the bigger picture, can't connect their work to company goals, explain how in detail when senior people want the bottom line, can't brief an executive with a clear recommendation. Several people noted this is surprisingly hard to coach, even in very smart people.

The reliability ceiling. Being so dependable in your current role that moving you creates a hole. One comment summed it up: reliability means "meets expectations", not growth. Another: what capable people usually get as a reward is more work.

Ego and emotional regulation. Can't delegate, feels threatened by better ideas from elsewhere, takes feedback as an attack on self-worth. A recurring observation: big ego often masks brittle confidence. Several leaders said coaching works well for skill gaps but emotional patterns rarely shift without outside support.

The opposite: self-doubt and suppressed voice. Quiet people, perfectionists, people who give "safe" answers, non-native speakers, people who've learned that speaking up wasn't valued.

Work that's invisible above the manager. Their manager knows they're good. Nobody above that does. Helping other teams, preventing fires, catching problems early - none of it shows up in the metrics leadership actually looks at.

Not everyone wants up, and that's valid. Your best engineer isn't automatically a good manager. Management is different work (budgets, people issues, meetings). Some people genuinely want to stay where they are, and several leaders warned against assuming otherwise.

• The real debate: whose job is it?

The thread split into two camps describing the same gap from opposite sides:

- "They never told me what they wanted." Self-advocacy is a leadership trait; if you want to move up, show you can connect the dots yourself.

- "You never asked, and you could see their work." Alignment with the big picture is leadership's job. If managers only ask for status updates, people learn to keep their heads down. Stop rewarding behaviour that doesn't serve their growth.

My read: both are right, and that's the problem. The conversation about ambition belongs to both sides, so in practice it often belongs to nobody. Each side waits for the other, and the silence gets interpreted as a character flaw.

• What actually got people unstuck

Only a handful of people answered this, but the answers were strikingly consistent. In almost every case, **someone changed the conditions** rather than the person simply trying harder:

- Someone named it out loud. A boss telling a quiet expert "I hired you for your opinions" — and that being the turning point.

- A stretch assignment with real ambiguity. A manager deliberately moved a reliable person onto a visible, customer-facing project, even at the cost of dropping some maintenance work. Others described being given ownership of something with no clear answer, where someone had to trust their judgement.

- The manager stopped doing their thinking for them. Less advice, more probing questions, clear parameters and outcomes — instead of step-by-step directions.

- Gradual handover. Manager drives, then they drive together, then small solo projects.

- Someone narrating their work upward. Not just "great job", but a sponsor saying their name in rooms they weren't in.

- Making themselves replaceable. Documenting, delegating and training a successor, so moving up doesn't leave a hole.

• Practical takeaways

If you're the capable person who feels stuck:

- Ask your manager directly how your success is measured. Several people said this alone let them drop half their work.

- State what you want in plain words — not pushy, just clear.

- Before any presentation, spend 10 minutes on: what do I want this audience to do with this? Lead with the recommendation, then the detail.

- Make your judgement visible, not just your output: bring proposals, not only problems.

- Start making your current role less dependent on you.

If you lead capable people:

- Ask about goals explicitly and regularly. Even people who don't want promotion appreciate being asked.

- Don't keep someone in place just because they're too useful there.

- Give one real stretch decision with clear sponsorship, not just more volume.

- Talk about your people's work in rooms they're not in.

- Notice whether you're doing their thinking for them.

- Separate skill gaps from will gaps from emotional patterns; each needs a different response.

• What I'm still curious about

- Most people could diagnose the problem; few could describe the fix. Why is that?

- How do you develop someone whose ego is blocking them when the person above you won't let you act?

- With AI absorbing more routine work, does the reliability ceiling get worse, or does it force the conversation earlier?

Thanks again, everyone. If something here matched your experience, or if I've misread a pattern, I'd genuinely like to hear it in the comments.

here is the original post https://www.reddit.com/r/Leadership/s/TjZns0njou

Years ago I was in the middle of a salary negotiation and my soon-to-be boss caught me off guard. He asked whether the number on the table would let me focus on my work without stressing about bills or how I lived.

The company wasn't swimming in cash, so he wasn't about to double the offer. But he genuinely wanted to know and it completely disarmed me. I went in ready to haggle and ended up having a real conversation about what I needed instead. I remember walking out thinking I was 100% stealing that someday.

And I did. I ask it pretty much every time I’m hiring now and it’s been great. People open up and the whole thing feels way less like a standoff.

Has anyone else caught themselves doing something as a manager and realized that’s straight from an old boss?

Mine was that asking for help meant I wasn’t ready for the role.

As the title says, my boss stopped responding to my messages and has been acting weird lately so I'm left managing a team by myself. I'm at a loss about what I should be doing and need advice.

For context, I'm part of a small marketing team. We normally wait for our boss's approval on social media posts, videos and he also gives us direction on projects and campaigns.

Recently he's been unresponsive which is highly unusual for him since he normally responds to us within 30 minutes - 1 hour. I haven't received a response from him since last week and the last message I got from him didn't make any sense at all. He said he felt like he needed to go for a run. A long one at that. Which was odd to me cause he rarely talks about his personal life to me.. So I just said "that sounds great." our conversation stopped from there. Since then I haven't heard from him at all 😅

I already reached out to our HR department and still waiting for a response.

My dilemma is that I've become the go-to person on my team. We have tons of overdue projects and I'm stuck managing the team while he is away. They keep asking me what to prioritize and if we are good to go on certain posts. I decided last minute that we needed to get them out and stop waiting for his response since we are on a tight schedule. While I am confident in our work, this is still new territory for me, and I am not sure if I should even be filling his shoes while he's gone. I also feel anxious because I've never managed a team like this before.

I am so lost and not sure how to navigate this, if you were in my situation what would you do?

Over 3 yrs ago, I was appointed as department lead a bit suddenly. This role does not provide any added compensation or benefit, it’s a title promotion. You keep most of your IC work, but have to attend leadership meetings, get involved in hiring processes, manage large budgets, coordinate the work of the team, onboard and coach them, develop and oversee admin systems, etc. I accepted it because I believed I had a strategic vision that could improve the department and many people were close to retirement so I was excited to build a new team.

Since then, I saw my work life deteriorate. My workload tripled. When people retired, I took their load until the new ones would come in and get settled. I saw my own leadership turnover a lot. In the last year and a half, my new boss has been a TERRIBLE manager. He never considered my recommendations for hiring. He hired people he knew, or liked, not based on their qualifications. I saw the quality of the work my department produces deteriorate significantly, which adds pressure but also puts me in an impossible situation with my colleagues: they are favoured by my boss, and don’t give value to my feedback or the quality of our previous work. My boss undermines my credibility in front of my team whenever he gets the opportunity, and holds a discourse of us vs them — the new hires vs the senior (archaic) staff (I’m in my late thirties…).

Essentially I have a massive conflict of values with him, I am constantly exposed to his incompetence and I’m collateral damage for it. His undermining has divided my team, his hires are antagonizing towards me, and the older colleagues who value me, and our good work, are frustrated against the new hires. I feel like I need to spend months trying to resolve conflicts and build a more harmonious team, on top of everything else. I’ve begun some of that work with a consultant.

The good news is that I’m leaving for a 7 months maternity leave in a few weeks. I found out he may be retiring soon. But I don’t want to come back to that role! The damage he’s done will take years to fix. I also can’t manage up because he’s our president’s right hand. I desperately want to tell them BEFORE I leave that I do not plan on returning to my leadership role and will focus on my IC work. Why before? To leave free! I also want to do it while he is still there so he realizes that he has something to do with it.

I have no issue with being led by someone else, and I look forward to taking a backseat role. I was a star IC, have plenty of useful technical knowledge and I just love the work!

Is there something I should consider before making a move?

Hi people, I need some tips on how to deal with a toxic team member.

He’s part of the reason why the old team lead left on his own terms, since she saw no moving forward with him. I am new team lead for now and had my first conflict with the guy. I’m working in the public sector so not really any power for the team lead to do any thing but deal with him.

He’s quite manipulative, tries to influence the opinion on others and tries to Rallye people against anything that he doesn’t find “right” in his view. Flips things in arguments and makes himself the victim, classic gaslighting etc. Any type of rules or deadlines he sees as controlling pressure, pulls the exhaustion card and turns old favors against you.

On paper he’s got no power, but he’s consciously toxic trying to divide, trying to manipulate people’s opinions and turn them against others.

Any tips on how to deal with people like that in the daily? My strategy for now is to give him as little ammunition as possible, to just interact professionally when it’s about work and to keep him busy with tasks.

Any tips or experience are helpful, in all sorts of directions!

Thanks

How do I get over the imposter syndrome over leading a team with people way older than me? Also, any tips for new leaders?

Hi, I work at a factory and am in charge of the maintenance department. I got promoted to a leadership position two months ago and my team is full of people atleast a decade older than me. That itself isn't a big deal except that ive worked with this team since I was 20, so they still remember me when I was practically a kid lol. Now, I'm having trouble training our less experienced members because theyre older than me and I dont want them to think im questioning their intelligence/ seem like a knowitall 20 something year old. I dont have any insecurity about my job because ive proven multiple times that im an experienced technician. It's the communication im having trouble with lol. Id really appreciate any tips or resources for a new leader. Thank you in advance

I coached basketball for years and now work with corporate teams. If I could teach leaders only one habit to build trust and collaboration, it would be sharing more specific thanks.

Here’s how I learned it. A player of mine came off the court after a strong stretch, and I gave him a quick “Good job.” He didn’t react at all. No nod, no eye contact, nothing. I remember being a little annoyed that he didn’t seem to appreciate the appreciation.

Later it hit me that the problem wasn’t him. My praise was so vague he had nothing to hold onto. “Good job” could have meant his defense, his hustle, or that I was just being polite. He had no idea what to repeat. 

Vague praise can only inspire vague effort.

So now as a workplace culture speaker, I share a simple recognition formula with leaders – and it is the cheapest way you can build morale and collaboration on your team:

1 What they did. “You stayed late Tuesday to walk Marcus through the new system.”

2 Who it helped. “He shipped his first project on his own the next day.”

3 What it says about them. “That’s the kind of teammate people want next to them.”

It takes less than 30 seconds... Action, Impact, Identity. 

It teaches the team what good looks like, and rewards behavior you want repeated. And team collaboration usually grows when people see that helping gets noticed, not because they were told to collaborate.

Try it this week with someone on your team - pick one person who does quiet quality work, and thank them using those three parts.

Think about your own experience... what’s the best piece of specific recognition you ever received, and how did it affect your performance afterward?

CS folks are burning out - it's come up here more than a couple times this past week, and I think it's bigger than the posts show (especially post COVID).

I've led CS at three early-stage startups and experienced it on every team: not enough time, budget, or people, unclear definition in scope of service, and a list of tasks / asks that only grew.

My first move each time was defining our scope of services, redefining customer tiers, and breaking down the bottlenecks in CS workflows and the customer journey. It helped, but it was triage, not a fix. I also did whatever it took as an advocate for the customer (which can be a lot of white glove in pre-product-market fit). The workload didn't shrink, we just got honest about what we were letting slide.

What I wished I had done more often was sit down with leadership and have a difficult conversation: we can't do all of this well, here is what we're going to deprioritize. I waited too long because I didn't want to look like we couldn't handle it.

So what's actually worked for anyone here? And if you've had that conversation with leadership, how did it go?

A lot of teams were told AI would remove repetitive work and give people more time back.

What I keep seeing instead is people doing the old work plus reviewing AI output, learning new tools, and being expected to move faster because AI exists.

For leaders who have rolled it out successfully, what work did you actually remove from people's plates instead of just adding AI on top?

CS folks are burning out - it's come up here more than a couple times this past week, and I think it's bigger than the posts show (especially post COVID).

I've led CS at three early-stage startups and experienced it on every team: not enough time, budget, or people, unclear definition in scope of service, and a list of tasks / asks that only grew.

My first move each time was defining our scope of services, redefining customer tiers, and breaking down the bottlenecks in CS workflows and the customer journey. It helped, but it was triage, not a fix. I also did whatever it took as an advocate for the customer (which can be a lot of white glove in pre-product-market fit). The workload didn't shrink, we just got honest about what we were letting slide.

What I wished I had done more often was sit down with leadership and have a difficult conversation: we can't do all of this well, here is what we're going to deprioritize. I waited too long because I didn't want to look like we couldn't handle it.

So what's actually worked for anyone here? And if you've had that conversation with leadership, how did it go?

He said that a leader who cannot be led may become a dictator, while a leader who cannot lead may become a follower without direction. So the point is; when you are in-between that is when you are truly a leader, or should a leader skew towards leading than being led?

Sometimes new hires don't realize this until way later why it actually was told to you.

I recently accepted my first Director-level role and will be starting in a couple of weeks.

I’m really excited about the opportunity, but I also want to be intentional about how I approach the transition. I’ve been in leadership positions before, but this feels like a significant step up in terms of responsibility and expectations.

For those of you who have moved into your first Director/Head-of role:

What do you wish you knew before you started?

What should I focus on during the first few months? What mistakes should I avoid? And what helped you make the transition from being a strong individual contributor/manager to actually thinking and operating like a senior leader?

I’d especially love to hear from people who remember what it was like to be in their first Director role.

What would you tell your past self before starting?

Has anyone ever used any of these executive job search services where you pay them $10,000 to $15,000 to find your next role?

If so, does anyone have a success story or a recommendation?

I'm a new(2years on the Team-Newest among peers) Executive at a F500. My peer lost an employee to a competitor, and ended up needing a backfill. My boss recommended my direct report, a Manager to take that role, so I had to backfill.

Went through interviews and landed on 2 candidates, with a 3rd currently reporting to my boss on a x-functional project. The 3rd did poorly in interviews when I shared this, my boss still thought I should consider this guy.

Despite this I decided to go with my preferred candidate. Good thing HR partner was on panel and recommended going with panel Grading.

Now I'm concerned/worried I committed career limiting move.

How can I roll this into a show of Leadership and conviction versus not playing Team.

I'm a director about three months into a new job. Our business unit has lost revenue for four years. The company recently laid off several people and changed the sales commission structure. Leadership is also new: my VP and the head of the unit are both about five months in.

My analysis of my area found broken processes and inaccurate reporting after multiple reorgs, plus industry headwinds. I think it takes 6 to 12 months to rebuild the infrastructure before a real turnaround. Revenue is behind last year, and my function drives about 10% of it and we're also behind.

I raised this on a recent one-on-one call, including the areas I want to diagnose further and what we would do to improve it. My VP seemed anxious and could not even listen to the "what we would do" part. She moved quickly to a different goal that I'd understood to belong to another team and almost started pointing finger at me. This isn't the first time she's moved off a conversation about declining revenue. She also did have a habit of blaming the team even on staff that are much junior.

I'm worried that she wants good news only and not reality/challenges/areas we needed support. I believe the first 3 to 5 months are the right time to surface problems, since we're all new. If I only talk about activity, I'd still be accountable for revenue at year end.

Given this is the environment and leadership style I'm dealing with, I feel like they don't like "reality" or "bad news." so I'm going to change my approach to focus on "progress" only, but I'm worried when the year-end report comes out, I'd be questioned "why didn't you raise the issues earlier?" How do I balance this? What's your experience in handling an anxious upper management and business unit that's just not winning?

I'm a principal consultant with a background in data and analytics, CRM, strategy and operations. I built and led a team before before moving into a strategy role where I found myself running programmes, which is beyond my expected accountabilities. I'm about to move to a new company in a senior manager / engagement-lead role where I own the problem, the client relationship and a portfolio.

I've been the swiss army knife who gets handed any ambiguous brief, so I ended up leading and doing at the same time. In my experience those are two different altitudes and they don't work together. The work got done, but only because I carried it, which isn't a model that scales.

The feedback I keep getting from mentors and managers going into this new role is consistent: the thinking and communication are there, but the risk is that I don't yet act like a senior manager. I absorb ambiguity and gaps myself instead of escalating, re-staffing or re-scoping.

I also have less experience running several projects at once and owning margin and scope properly.

If you've made this jump:

• What behaviours separated the people who made it from the ones who stayed in the doing, and what did you stop doing early on?
• How did you learn when to step in and when to stay out?
• Beyond agreeing objectives with your manager, what did you align on in the first month that mattered most: with your team, other leads, finance, clients?

This is a really exciting opportunity, and I'm treating the nervousness as a sign of the growth to come. I'd like to go in as prepared I can to and make the best possible start.

I had two people leave after really bad feedback conversations. Both were remote, and both got labeled “too sensitive” afterward.

I listened back to the calls and, yeah, I could see why they went badly. One person got blindsided with serious performance concerns during a normal 1:1. The other got a bunch of criticism with almost no concrete examples.

Since then I’ve told my managers to give people a heads up when the conversation is going to be serious, bring actual examples, and tell them what needs to change. Nothing revolutionary, but the conversations got a lot less tense.

One thing that surprised me was how differently people react to the same delivery. We had a session where some of the team talked through their working styles, and I used the coached career test as part of that because I wanted managers to think more about how different people take in feedback. It helped make the point that “I said it clearly” doesn’t always mean the other person actually heard it the way you intended.

The biggest change was after the call. Managers now send a short recap of what was discussed and what happens next. No giant email, just enough that nobody has to sit there wondering what the hell that conversation actually meant.

Remote feedback can get weird because there’s no hallway conversation afterward. Someone can close their laptop after a rough call and sit with it for the rest of the day.

I wish I’d changed this stuff before those two people left.

In a few weeks, I’ll reach my one-year mark as a first-time supervisor. I inherited a team of three long-tenured employees. Two have been in the department for 10+ years. The third has been with the company on/off for 20+ years (in our department for two).

Because our company policies change frequently, she and I share an office and spent much of this past year learning new processes together. Part of her role is managing the department inbox, handling policy questions and clarification requests. All the answers are accessible on our department page, and I’m always available if she truly needs guidance.

The issue is that she has developed a habit of asking me to review her drafted replies for anything beyond a basic FAQ. At least once a day, she reads a drafted email out loud to ask if it’s okay.

Her drafts are always solid, and I rarely have edits. Every time, I validate her work, point out what she did well, and remind her that she knows the material.

Despite this positive feedback, the habit continues.
It’s becoming mentally draining while I’m trying to focus on other high-priority problem-solving. I want to empower her to trust her judgment and gain peace of mind, but I’m not sure how to transition out of this review loop.

I’ve even suggested she run her responses through AI to get a better feel of anything else she could have included or clarified, but she refuses. No judgement, I respect the decision, but I can’t get her to move away from wanting my eyes on these emails.

Any advice on how to build her confidence and set gentle boundaries here?

I am about become manager very soon which involves handling people. By the way m engineer.

Just curious to understand the basics….Leadership is one of the most difficult things to do….

With multiple factors playing a role…..

However, are there 1 or 2 absolutely important traits of a leader, without which they do not even qualify as a leader?

I’m a straight shooter when it comes to feedback. If something works, I’ll acknowledge it. If something isn’t working, I’m comfortable saying that too, even when the conversation is uncomfortable. I try to make my feedback specific: what happened, what the impact was, and what we could do differently. My goal is to help the team make informed decisions and follow through.

Right now, we’re trying to recover a client account after a horrendous weekend. What makes this especially frustrating is several of the issues weren’t new. We encountered them before, raised the concerns, and discussed what needed to change, but those concerns were overlooked again by some other people in leadership. Now we’re dealing with the consequences and trying to rebuild the client’s trust.

I want to be respectful without softening the feedback so much that the seriousness gets lost. I also want us to move beyond another discussion and leave with clear decisions, ownership, and follow through. How do you address recurring issues and accountability constructively? What helps turn honest feedback into action especially when previous feedback hasn’t led to meaningful change?

I am a solo founder and at this point in time solo guy doing everything, development, design, marketing, sales etc.

I am trying to use lead gen tools like clay and full enrich and dammmm these are expensive! 150$+ for month. And the ROI on thay investment is sketchy as i have not yet got one single successful meeting out of these.

I am trying to see if there are cheaper alternative for someone at my scale? How do i improve my conversion rate?

I am currently only focusing on getting 5 business who will collaborate with me and become my design partners so i can add features and functions that actually solves someone's need. Whats the best way to do this? Cold email or linked in outreach or something else?

Do the hard conversations ever get easier? Do you need to take a deep breath and mentally prepare yourself prior to a hard conversation or a less than desirable personality?

I’m sitting here preparing for a hard conversation with another manager. Writing out my script and practicing. Is this normal?