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Hiring well is one of a leaders most important jobs. Having talented employees is a strong competitive advantage and allows your organization to produce results and create a productive and positive culture. Its hard to do well, especially at senior levels where judgment and character become increasingly important, and theres a high cost of recruiting or replacing someone. Substantive questions help assess a candidates skills and readiness for a job, and behavioral questions provide the opportunity to understand how they think and handle themselves. But ultimately, once youve established their competency, its time to decide whether a candidates character is the right fit for your team and company cultural. I asked several experienced hiring managers from different fields what secret weapon questions help them evaluate key intangible qualities that indicate a trustworthy team member’s character. They all have one thing in common. Though each interviewer approaches their inquiry from a different angle, they all ask questions that invite vulnerability and connection. 1. Whats a time in your life or work when someone helped you? An executive director of a nonprofit organization that works with inner-city kids swears by this question. His team needs to work together under stressful conditions, so anyone who works there needs to be able to offer and ask for help when necessary. I go firstI share my own story of a time when I hit my limit caring for two special needs children as a single parent and finally told my friends that I was at a breaking point and needed help. This opens them up to share their own vulnerable stories, and I learn so much about them. Only once did someone tell me that they had never needed help. I didnt hire them. This persons team has enviable retention in a field with high turnover. He credits hiring team players, rather than heroes. 2. Tell me about a mistake you madewhat happened, how did you react, and what did you do differently after that? A CFO I spoke to says her team members need to have a high baseline of skills. However, she also knows that no one is perfect. She employs this question to assess a candidates willingness to take accountability, apologize (she usually asks this directly if they dont volunteer it), and change their behavior. I appreciate working with people who are smart but also humble, who know the value of saying Im sorry in an authentic wayand who know theres always room to grow. 3. When have you changed your mind on a difference of opinion with a colleague? A CTO I spoke to prides himself on building engineering teams with both a positive culture and a high-quality standard. He likes this question because it gives him insight into how a candidate handles a conflict and whether they can be flexible and get out of the Im-right-youre-wrong mindset to collaborate and solve problems. Having an open mind and being willing to change your view of an issue promotes cooperation and innovation on a team, and is key to building trusting relationships. Each of these questions gets at the interdependent nature of working on a team and invites the candidate to demonstrate humility versus ego, flexibility versus rigidity, and team orientation versus self-orientation. Other hiring managers I talked to have used a different approach. One deliberately has pictures of his children, a travel photo, and a guitar displayed behind him, hoping the candidate asks him about himself, his family, or his hobbies. One exec who has interviewed hundreds of candidates scours the often-ignored Interests section of the résumé or picks out a project from their portfolio. It takes a little preparation, but asking them about their experience as a competitive swimmer or their record collection, or showing interest in a piece of work that they are proud of gives me a chance to see their enthusiasm sparkle, she says. The importance of going deeper Whatever approach you take, remember that the best questions lead to a conversation that goes beyond the surface level. As the interviewer, dont just accept an answer and move on to the next question. Instead, dial up your curiosity to ask follow-up questions. Youll want to probe what they learned from the experience, how it changed their relationships or perspective, and how they balanced trade-offs in a decision. Questions that ask a candidate to go a layer deeper often reveal more about their values and motives, beyond their specific behavior. Ultimately, this helps you predict how they would respond and fit in your environment.
Category:
E-Commerce
In 2001, Antoni was working at a business that was underperforming and facing layoffs. People didnt know who would be cut or when. You could tell by peoples behavior that anxiety was at an all-time high. Managers were networking in the right corridors, colleagues started to crowd meetings to look indispensable, and teams were slowing down because nobody wanted to make the wrong move. One leader chose a different tactic. Every day, at the same time, he stood in the same spot where anyone could walk up to him. He shared what he actually knew (not what he guessed), answered questions without theater, and ended with a concrete direction for today. People still didnt like the situation, but the atmosphere changed. Not because he shared more information than everyone else. Because he paired transparency with clarity. That pairing is the point. Leaders talk about being transparent as if its the whole job, but it isnt. Transparency and clarity are different muscles. Transparency builds trust, while clarity builds focus. When you confuse them, you end up paying twice in lost time and diminished credibility. The myth: more transparency automatically creates clarity Transparency in a company setting typically means more dashboards, more all-hands, and more context. It feels responsibleespecially in uncertain momentsbecause it signals you arent hiding anything. But facts dont organize themselves. People still have to decide what matters, what they need to ignore, and what to do next. When leaders dont provide that structure, they leave teams confused, and teams will fill in the blanks with rumor and gossip. In the end, this leads to more insecurity and more internal politics. How transparency can coexist with confusion This is why radical transparency can coexist with mass confusion. You can be open and still leave people directionless. In some instances, transparency can even backfire. David De Cremer summarizes research showing that complete transparency can trigger predictable side effects: blame cultures (because you see who erred without understanding why), distrust (because being constantly monitored feels like suspicion), and even resistance and reduced creativity in highly exposed environments. In our decades of experience working with leaders and organizations, this oversharing is one of two extreme communication modes that companies can slip into. Its worth taking a closer look at these two and their costs before we examine how leaders can avoid them. The following are two traps that many leaders often fall into (but should stop doing). 1. Transparent but unclear: the ‘information dump’ organization This is the leader who shares everything: forecasts, board slides, Slack threads, meeting notes. They hide nothing, but execution continues to drift. Thats because you highlight nothing when you share everything. People dont know which metrics are heads up versus background. They dont know which risks are actionable. The natural response among workers in this scenario is to hedge and wait. Worse yet, when incoming data exceeds what people can process, information overload is the inevitable result. And according to research, this overload can lead to worse decision-making, higher stress, and lower productivity. Yet productivity isnt the only area that suffers. Ambiguity has measurable psychological and performance costs. Meta-analytic research on role ambiguitya close cousin of organizational unclear-nessfinds it too is associated with worse outcomes, including strain and reduced performance. Transparent-but-unclear leaders often misread the feedback from their workers. They hear, Were confused, and respond by adding more information. But in doing so, theyre trying to fix traffic jam by pouring more cars onto the road. 2. Clear but opaque: the ‘because-I-said-so’ organization The second mistake looks better on paper but is just as costly. Leaders succinctly present things, set firm deadlines, and outline whos accountable for what. As a result, everyone knows what to do. But (and this is the critical bit) the why is missing. This is important. As Nancy Duarte points out in a Harvard Business Review article, when you ask people to change behavior, their first question is rarely how. Its why. If people dont recognize the why, they can become suspicious of a leaders motives. What leaders should do instead So how do you know if youre missing transparency or clarity? Start by listening to the reactions you already get. If people say, What are we supposed to do with this?, Why are we doing these tasks? or Whats the point? you are not being clear. If people say, We feel out of the loop, or Decisions come out of nowhere, you are not being transparent. By paying attention and listening to what they express, you dont even need a survey to detect the gap. Your people are already telling you what your company needs to do. From there, we recommend a three-step process that weve seen numerous successful leaders intuitively adapt, as a way of ensuring the proper balance of transparency and clarity: Start with transparency. This is what we know, and what information we still miss. Add clarity. This is why you need to know. End with direction. These are the short-term goals we pursue, the reasons for them, and how we follow up. This is a simple yet impactful framework that brings transparency and clarity together. It eliminates unnecessary confusion and frustration, so that your people can be more productive and generate better results. And thats exactly what Antonis boss in the hallway was doing.
Category:
E-Commerce
By now, youve surely noticed it. Jean waistlines, sky-high not so long ago, are going lower. Low enough that you might need to think of underwear as outerwear. Across the fashion industry, experts agree that in 2026, ultra-low-rise will be a key business driver in the denim sector, with some brands saying that their low-rise styles have replaced the eternally popular high-rise as their best selling cut. “What we’re going to see in this next decade is [itll be] really dominated by the low-rise,” says Amy Williams, CEO of Citizens of Humanity group, which also owns the premium denim brand Agolde. “Right now, you’re sort of at that early stage where people are just now getting a feel for it. If you pay attention to the runways or street style, you might have already picked up on this shift, as celebrities, models, and on-trend normies started trading in high-waisted jeans for pairs that sit low on the hips in the past couple of years. But the real tell is that low-rise jeans finally hit mass market. In 2025, global brands with slowerto-adopt consumers like Gap found their large customer base was finally ready for the navel-gazing silhouette. Weve been kind of waiting for this moment, Noelle Rogers, senior vice president and general manager of Gap Specialty, told me last August. We tested a few times on low-rise and it wasnt until the last 9, 10 months that the customer was ready. Now denim designers are pushing low-rise further. Well definitely see more ultra-rises coming through in 2026, says Susie Draffan, senior denim strategist at WGSN who began tracking low-rise in 2019 when macro trends like a resurgent interest in 90s and Y2K aesthetics put the style on her radar. Mass-market brand Lucky launched an ultra-low-rise flare style (thats an itty-bitty, two-button, 7.25-inch rise) with Addison Rae last August, after the company first spotted her wearing the vintage version in the wild. [Photo: Lucky] Fashion is going to be pushing those extremes, Tamara Reynolds, vice president of the Denim Center of Excellence at Catalyst, the parent company of Lucky Brand. We are really excited about low-rise still, and we’re even more excited about super low-rise. This style was bound to happen. High-rise is a silhouette that’s really held people’s attention for almost 15 years, says Citizens of Humanitys Williams. So, as with anything in fashion, that pendulum swings backward, but when it goes back, it evolves into something new. Part of that evolution is todays range of equally acceptable pant silhouettes: wide-leg baggy, straight, bootcut, flare, and, dare I say, increasingly skinny. Whats most fun about this moment is that while were seeing some strong micro-trends within denimslimmer, straighter, lower-rise cuts are undoubtedly dominating the conversationwere still seeing brands across the market sell nearly every kind of denim shape and style, says Alexandra Avdey, vice president of merchandising at Reformation. In the past, there has almost always been a single must-have style. Right now, theres something for everyone. So pick your poison. The result is sure to be toxic (1. adj., pejorative, a negative association due to the ultra-low-rises inherent ties to an era that correlated beauty with thinness; or 2., adj., complimentary, origin: Britney Spears song; a nostalgic association with naughties cultural icons that brings new and interesting approaches to dress in the current context.) Ultra-low-rise is polarizing. But whether or not you want to hang, its going to be here for a while. Britney Spears onstage at the American Music Awards in 2001 [Photo: Frank Micelotta/ABC/Getty Images] Slow burn, hot stats Data from a cross-section of denim brands is indicating that low-rise is a big business driver. At Citizens of Humanity, its low-slung baggy represents 35% of its business. Four of its top 10 styles are low-rise, according to the company. Agolde since introduced a low-rise bootcut for Spring, which the website describes as a true nod to the early 2000s. Though the company doesn’t plan to release any ultra-low-rise styles, this bootcut is now the companys lowest rise (8 inches) and sits low on the hips. The numbers are even more striking at Reformation. Sales of low-rise denim grew 500% in 2025 compared to 2024. Like Citizens, 4 of Refs top 10 jeans SKUs year to date are low-rise. Its top-selling denim style is its Cary low-rise slouchy wide-leg jean, which overtook its high-rise counterpart. (Hitting about an inch below the navel, Cary feels a bit more like a mid-rise.) [Photo: Reformation] And the style isnt just for the youngest consumers. The company says that low-rise is performing across generations, with 38% of low-rise e-comm sales driven by Gen Z and 30% by millennials. If anything, going low has more to do with a willingness to experiment rather than age. At Lucky, whose customers are predominantly women in their twenties, low-rise sales increased 763% in August 2025 compared to the previous year, and contributed 43% to full price denim sales, compared to 8% the previous year. Gap didnt share specific data, but following a test period that resulted in high sales volumes, the company went all in on low-rise with its long and lean launch with girl group Katseye last August. We’ve seen a huge uptrend that is more U.S. and North American-based starting in basically like August of this year, Citizens CEO Williams told me in late 2025, noting the upswing is all coming from either low-rise or straight leg shapes. View this post on Instagram A post shared by McQueen (@alexandermcqueen) Of course, runways are one of the best signals for what brands will launch down the road, and waistlines are jostling for share. Over the last two seasons, designer labels like Diesel (see its nearly-bumster styles) and Alexander McQueen (revival of its actual 90s bumster styles) have shown off ultra-low-rise styles. Low and natural or high-rise styles held equal share of the denim mix at the A/W 25/26 shows, at 17.8%, with low-rise styles increasing 11.8 percentage points year over year, according to WGSN catwalks data provided to Fast Company. Katseye [Photo: Gap] Cultural emergence Last fall I was scrolling through Instagram and a paparazzi photo of actress Zoë Kravitzmy personal style chimerain baggy low-rise jeans crossed my feed. Kravitz, 37, wore them low on the hip, without a waistband or pockets so theyre flat across the pelvis. They also had an adjustable toggle closure at the ankle. The design felt new. After some recon I learned it was the $325 Still Heres Sport jean that fashion acolytes have been ravenously scooping up. View this post on Instagram Head of Brand Eliza Rolfs told me when I visited the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, store that the connection happened organically, after Kravitzs stylist, Danielle Goldberg, reached out and pulled some styles. Kravitz kept three pairs of the Sport, which Rolfs describes as a more classic approach to low-rise. She’s not the only fan: The brands Pear wash sold out in 25 minutes after its first release, which led to 10,000 people joining a waitlist. The original Sport Jean, which launched in July 2025, sold out four times within its first six months on the market. As with previous trends, many denim designers I spoke with cited street and celebrity style as their early ultra-low-rise indicators, and name-checked Bella and Gigi Hadid as two examples. The members of Katseye are always in hip-bone, thong-strap, or belly-chain-bearing pants. (Thong straps, functionally designed to hide a visible panty line, have now become lucrative new real estate for charms and bedazzling.) So are other Gen Z pop stars like Tate McCray, Addison Rae, or more recently, fellow millennial Charli XCX, 33, who wore a thong-bearing jean to promo her new movie, The Moment. In the beginning of February, stylist Andrew Mukamal dressed Margo Robbie, 35, in super-low leather pants for a look during her Wuthering Heights press tour. @voguegermany #margotrobbie is in London for her #wutheringheights press tour. #voguegermany #margotrobbieofficial (Video: Getty Images) original sound – Thats because many current cultural icons are looking to the irreverence and confidence of early 2000s stars like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, according to Reynolds. Really low-rise denim was a key piece in the outfitting and the entire look. That’s how the Y2K kind of revival came across and it caught like wildfire, she says. Reformation plans to lean even more into Y2K this year, with components like exposed buttons, rivets, seaming details and low-rise boot-cut styles, for instance. Christina Aguilera at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards [Photo: Ron Galella Ltd./Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images] Nostalgia is a big driver, says Draffan. Interest in that period revived a range of low-rise styles, with 90s-inspired baggy and straight legs as well as bootcut styles from the noughties driving the revival, she adds. But dont just peg ultra-low-rises comeback to a long-simmering cultural fixation on Xtina at the 2001 VMAs. The low-rise revival has a co-dependency with other shifting denim trends like baggy pants. As those baggier fits got lower and lower slung, and they’re belted and theyre hanging off the hips, it gave rise to the midriff, right? asks Reynolds. So that’s where I feel like the rumblings from a design point of view first came. Can design fixes mend cultural flaws? Like anything you wear, denim has direct ties to material and tech innovations as well as the broader sociocultural climate. Back in the day when skinny jeans became a thing, it was primarily because stretch products had evolved to a point where there was so much stretch in the product that you could wear a skin tight jean all day long and be really comfortable, says Williams. Stretch materials remained as waistlines shifted to high-rise in the early to mid-2010s (I was a Citizens of Humanity Rocket devotee), and it made for a skin-tight fit like leggings, which people also couldnt wait to peel off and replace with sweats or actual Lululemon leggings when they got home. [Photo: Cody Lidtke/Still Here] When the pandemic hit, so did the wide-legged pants. It’s super comfortable and you can wear it all day long, says Williams. I think that’s what got people out of their sweatpants from COVID and into wide leg jeans. The most common rise was still around 9 inches (considered high-rise), though. Williams says high-rise jeans have been telling the same fashion story for a long time, and consumers are simply ready for styling that has something fresh to say. You can tell when you lose your attention span and the customer changes gears, she says. I do think there’s just an element that is absolutely cyclical. Kate Moss circa 2005 [Photo: Antony Jones/U.K. Press/Getty Images] When I delivered the news to friends that ultra-low-rise is back, the reaction wasnt very different from what itd be like to share that you got back together with a boyfriend they all secretly hated: healthy skepticism. You have to be hot to wear low-rise, an aggravated friend told me at a party (in this context: hot = 2000s model thin). Cynicism from those of us whove been through the first go-around is fair, because the ultra-low-rise revival calls back to the era we came of age in: dominated by fatphobia and capped by Kate Moss telling WWD one of her mottos is Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. And while contemporary low-rise is in reality more of a wearable mid-rise (Reformation, for instance, dropped the crotch so the wearer could adjust where it sits by sizing up or down), ultra-low-rise, which sits low on the hip bone and creates a more square rather than hourglass shape, is less universally flattering. [Phto: Agolde] While theyre trending right now with Gen Z, there is obviously a huge swath of the market for whom a low-rise will just not appeal, says Draffan, the WGSN strategist. Its a tricky rise to pull off, not to mention that anyone over 30 already did the low-rise at some point in their lives, and isnt keen to go back there, especially Millennials and the mature market. She describes mid and high-rises as more flattering with broader consumer appeal. The good news for the low-rise-averse is that wearable high and mid rises are still in the mix, so those with an aversion to navel exposure can keep a safe distance in the comfortable rise of their choice. For low-rise, the cool thing about denim trends is when a silhouette does come back in style is that it lingers a little bit, rather than fast fashion, [which is] a voracious trend cycle, says Rolfs of Still Here Sport. Denim tends to stick for a couple of years and that has ripple effects in the rest of the garments as well. The leg opening of denim is tapering toward straight, which in turn looks nice with a pair of loafers, which are becoming more popular too, thanks to a prep revival. The customer’s purchasing a lot more than they have, says Williams, who calls straight legs and loafers the new wide leg and Sambas. And itll keep evolving: a stovepipe skinny jean is one of WGSNs key fashion items for 2026. Anatomy of the new low-rise Denim designers I spoke with insist the style is more inclusive this time around, and brands like Gap are showing the style on a variety of body types. The fit of Y2K-era low-rise jeans were a painted-on, tightly fitting second skin. When it comes to today’s aesthetics, it feels much more sophisticated and cool to wear something that sits a little bit away from the body, says Williams. So you’ll see a low-rise iterated, in a way, that has like a bit of ease, maybe bagginess to it so it still looks refined and it has a little bit more of what you would imagine today’s model off duty to have evolved to. [Photos: Agolde (left), Lucky] Williams says the new cuts are easier to wear and have more balance proportions, allowing for a different visual anchor. Now you’re anchoring the jean at that low hip, so the top part is the anchor rather than the legs and the booty as the anchor, she says. That solves the whole host of problems that we’ve all witnessed. [Photos: Agolde (left), Lucky] Designers make lots of micro adjustments to make a low-rise jean look more flattering and proportional. You’re going from a proportion that’s hourglass-shaped to one that sits low and is a little bit more square, and you’re shrinking down all of the proportions, McDonald says of the difference between a high-rise fit and low. To accommodate for this shift in proportions, ultra-low-rise jeans have different pocket scoops, smaller, shorter back pockets, and adjusted spacing between pockets. Whereas the waistband of many skin-tight 2000s era ultra-low-rise was a V-shape in two pieces to be ultra form-fitting, todays typically have a slightly curved waistband for a sense of cheeky boyishness, says McDonald. (Luckys ultra-low-rise does have a V waistband.) One of the things that’s most exciting about a low-rise jean is just how appealing your bum looks, she says. It creates the cutest boyish, bum shape. The curved waistband is meant to prevent gapping, but also helps keep the pant up even though it generally sits at the widest part of the hipbone. [Photo: Still Here] I see all of the women that are adopting this that were afraid of it at first and we’re like, oh, actually it’s great it looks good on them, says Reynolds. It’s all ages, all body types, and all attitudes, and so I’m really proud and impressed with the outcome and the adoption that’s happening across the board. She adds, It’s one of those things you sort of have to get out of your mind and just put it on, right? For anything new, there can be a resistance and you’re like, Oh wait, I love this. I tested a several pairs in my usual size. One of the best was the Gap long and lean 90s loose, which had a touch of stretch and contour waistband which didnt, well, gap. Neither did Still Here’s Sport or Reformations 100% cotton low-rise Cary, although it had the most mid-rise fit in my usual size. Its not foolproof though. Agolde’s low-rise loose epitomized the cool sort of ease you want with low-rise denim: a perfectly stiff, nonchalant straight leg silhouette, balanced with a just-low-enough waistband that had a touch of looseness at the hipthough it did gap to reveal my underwear while seated at the bar. A charm opportunity, if Im brave.
Category:
E-Commerce
Theres a new epidemic sweeping companies worldwide: unhappiness. According to recent research, only 51% of employees frequently feel happy at work. Being happy is not just a “nice to have” in the workplace. The same research found that happy workers are 42% more likely to feel productive or motivated, meaning that employee happiness is directly linked to business outcomes. While many organizations have introduced initiatives such as “duvet days,” mindfulness classes, and wellbeing apps, recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that these have no discernible effect on employee mental wellbeing. So, what is the answer to curing this unhappiness epidemic? It lies in your management approach. Unlocking happiness with questions As a manager, you play a crucial role in your employees’ happiness and mental well-being. Gallups State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that those who work in companies with poor management practices are nearly 60% more likely to be stressed than those in companies with good management practices. Add to this the fact that managers have the same impact on peoples mental health as their partners, doctors, or therapists, and you can see that staff happiness, perhaps unsurprisingly, is contingent on how theyre managed. Implement effective people management, however, and the results speak for themselves. If workers feel seen and understood, and believe that their strengths, values, and contributions are noted and celebrated, engagement, trust, and retention all improve. Once an employee is empowered by their manager to know and use their strengths daily, theyre nearly six times more engaged. Businesses with highly engaged staff experience 78% less absenteeism and significantly lower turnover rates. When employees feel that managers care about their well-being, theyre 73% less likely to feel burned out and 53% less likely to be actively seeking a new job. If youre a manager wondering how you can better motivate your team and reap these benefits for your organization, its time to consider a new style of management called Operational Coaching. Practitioners of this new approach learn to use an enquiry-led approach, asking purposeful questions intended to engage others’ thinking. At the heart of developing an Operational Coaching style is learning to apply the STAR model in everyday situations: Stop: When an employee comes to you with a problem, as their manager, you must learn to stop, take a step back, and overcome your natural inclination to step in and solve the problem for them. Think: This gives you the space to think about whether the situation an employee has presented offers a coachable moment. Ask: Mastering the art of asking powerful, thought-provoking questions and then actively listening to your employees allows you to ditch the “fix and solve” response and instead presents the other person with a learning opportunity to become independent, solution-driven problem solvers. Result: Work with the employee to secure commitment to an action from this coachable moment, that theyll see through. You may need to ask a few more questions to agree on the appropriate follow-up, increasing the likelihood that action will be taken and providing a future opportunity to give appropriate feedback. By learning how to ask purposeful questions and actively listening to what your team members are saying, youre supporting them on a journey of continuous performance improvement. Enabling and empowering employees to take action establishes a more equitable relationship and advances their skills, capabilities, and prospects. An important part of Operational Coaching is also offering appreciative feedback to your staff. This is crucial for motivation, which, as weve already established, is whats needed to banish workplace blues, boost morale, and ensure employees feel valued. Learning to apply the STAR model also has benefits for you as a manager. Chances are, your responsibilities already mean youre overstretched. In fact, you may be one of the 82% of people who have ended up as an “accidental” manager on top of your actual role. So learning to use an Operational Coaching style of management enables you to have “in the moment” daily coaching conversations with your employees and achieve great results, without the need for lengthy coaching-style sessions that drain your time and energy. This means youll likely be happier and have improved morale, too. Reframing the purpose of management The benefits of Operational Coaching in action have been clearly established. A large-scale randomised controlled trial, funded by the U.K. Government and conducted by the London School of Economics (LSE), showed statistically significant results across 62 organizations in 14 sectors. Managers who undertook the STAR Manager program went on to spend 70% more time coaching their team members in the flow of work than before adopting an Operational Coaching style of management. Intervention group organizations also recorded a sixfold improvement in employee retention, and 48% of reported successes were related to increased engagement and productivity. The robust results of the study show the benefits that await managers who learn how to adapt their management style to an enquiry-led approach. It clearly demonstrates that when managers are better trained to handle the people side of their roles, everyone feels happier and more motivated. By reframing management’s purpose and intention to enable others to develop, empower them to act, an motivate them through appropriate appreciative and developmental feedback, you can ensure your organization is a place where employees feel motivated, supported, and able to grow. And this is exactly the type of workplace we desperately need in the U.S. and around the world.
Category:
E-Commerce
Three weeks into her new role as VP of operations, Maria got an 11:47 p.m. Slack from her COO: Where are we on the Q3 supply chain numbers? She had sent him those numbers that morning. She sent them again. By 6 a.m., Marias boss had changed the entire project scope based on a board conversation she didnt know had happened. By noon, hed ccd the CEO on a complaint about delaysdelays caused by his own shifting priorities. Maria didnt push back: She absorbed the burden. She reframed his abrupt messages before forwarding them to her team. She stayed late recalculating projections to match his latest mandate. She deflected her teams frustration with careful explanations about strategic pivots. The work was exhausting, and it was invisible. Her team saw a supportive leader. Her boss saw smooth execution. No one saw the toll. Many managers find themselves in this position: absorbing friction from above while protecting those below. Gallup research finds that managers account for at least 70% of changes in employee engagement, yet many of those same managers report feeling crushed by contradictory demands from their own bosses. McKinsey research confirms that the quality of the relationship with a direct manager is the single most important factor in employee satisfaction. The message is clear: The friction you absorb doesnt just affect you. It reverberates through everyone below you. In my executive and team coaching work with senior leaders, I see this pattern repeatedly: A C-suite leader creates destructive organizational friction through a chaotic style, lack of personal accountability, and unchecked reactivity. And managers are left to absorb it. Its an unsustainable dynamicbut one managers can counteract. Here are four strategies for navigating friction without burning out or compromising your effectiveness. 1. Name the Friction, Then Decide Whats Worth Absorbing The first step is getting honest about which type of friction youre dealing with. Constructive frictiona boss who raises the bar, questions your logic, or forces you to confront underperformanceis uncomfortable but valuable. This is what I call healthy friction. If your boss is pushing you to eliminate inefficiency or rethink a flawed process, thats worth leaning into, not absorbing. Destructive friction is different. Its energy lost to misalignment, rework, and emotional labor. Stanford management professor Bob Sutton identifies several types of destructive friction: unnecessary complexity that adds steps without adding value, ambiguity when goals keep shifting, emotional volatility that forces you to manage up constantly, and micromanagement that erodes autonomy. Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers, calls leaders who create destructive friction diminishers. They drain capability through behaviors like jumping in with answers or involving themselves in every decision. To separate signal from noise, seek to understand whether this unnecessary interference is actually your boss managing real constraints you dont see. A sudden pivot might reflect CEO pressure. Increased scrutiny might follow a compliance issue. Research on the hidden realities of leadership shows that senior leaders frequently operate under pressures that are invisible to their teams. Use these criteria to assess the situation: Comprehension: Have you had a candid, vulnerable conversation with your boss to understand the origin of the friction? What specific behaviors create it? Duration: Is this temporary or chronic? You can absorb friction during a crisis. You cant sustain it indefinitely. Impact on outcomes: What is your role in creating or enabling the behavior? Does absorbing the friction improve results or just create an illusion of progress? Cost to you and your team: What does it cost in time, energy, and team morale? Are you protecting your team or just delaying the impact? If talented people are leaving, youre not absorbing effectively. Marcus, chief of staff at a healthcare startup, learned this the hard way: I spent three months resenting my CEOs constant questions about our hiring pipeline. I thought he was micromanaging. Then I learned we were six weeks from running out of runway, and he was trying to slow spending without panicking the team. I wish Id asked, What are you seeing that Im not? sooner. 2. Create Systems That Reduce Friction Once youve diagnosed the friction, build systems to reduce itsystems that dont require you to be the constant intermediary. The instinct is to work harder, absorb more, and hope conditions improve. But research consistently shows that individual effort cannot compensate for structural dysfunction. A Deloitte study finds that when productivity tools and ways of working lack clarity, they create more work rather than less. And Gallups engagement research shows that only 46% of employees clearly understand what is expected of them, a 10-point drop from 2020. When the system around you generates confusion, the solution is not to absorb faster. Its to redesign the system. Four structural changes can reduce your role as the constant go-between. Establish clear decision rights. Much friction comes from unclear ownership. When roles blur, decisions stall and accountability weakens. Bains RAPID framework (recommend, agree, perform, input, decide) can help. When Maria finally had this conversation with her boss, they discovered he wasnt trying to micromanage. He genuinely didnt know she had authority to approve vendor contracts under $500K. Create predictable communication. Random check-ins create constant interruption. Your operating rhythm is a signal of how you leadit sets the tempo for decision-making, collaboration, and accountability. One director of product management I coached solved her bosss just checking in problem by instituting a Friday afternoon dashboard: three metrics, three decisions pending, three risks. He stopped asking because he knew hed get answers Friday, she said. Document and share context. When priorities shift, capture the change and its rationale. A simple decision log helps everyone see how you got here and why yesterdays plan changed. Build buffers into your processes. If your boss routinely changes direction, dont commit your team to immovable deadlines. Build in review points. Use phased rollouts. 3. Have the Conversation Sometimes systems arent enough. You need to name the pattern directly. Your boss likely doesnt see themselves as creating friction; they see themselves as ensuring quality or responding to pressure from above. Research on managing up suggests framing it as a shared problem, not an accusation. Try the following scripts: Frame it as shared: I want to make sure Im giving you what you need without overwhelming the team. Can we talk about how decisions are flowing right now? Come with data: Weve reprioritized three times this month, which has added about 40 hours of rework. I want to understand whats driving these changes so we can build more flexibility into the plan. Focus on impact, not intent: When requests come in after 9 p.m., the team feels like they need to respond immediately, which is creating burnout. Can we establish core hours for urgent communication? Propose experiments: What if we tried a two-week sprint where priorities stay locked unless something is genuinely on fire? Andrea, a senior director at a media company, used this approach when her bosss conflict-avoidant style created constant mixed messages. I told him, I think we both want the same thing: happy clients and a sustainable pace. Right now, were getting requests from three stakeholders who think they are all top priority. Can you help me understand how to sequence these? He didnt love the conversation, but he did start having clearer conversations with stakeholders. 4. Know When to Stop Absorbing, And Protect Your Own Leadership Sometimes friction stops being fuel and becomes rot. Drawing on insights from organizational psychologists like Adam Grant, you can watch for three warning signs that conflict has crossed into dysfunction: Its chronic rather than tied to specific crises, its driven by ego or insecurity instead of real business concerns, and its starting to show up in exit interviews and the loss of your strongest people. At that point, continuing to quietly absorb the damage is not noble leadership. Its enabling a toxic culture. You have three options: Escalate. Share what youre experiencing with a skip-level leader or HR business partnernot as gossip, but as a risk flag. Weve lost three senior people in six months, and the exit interviews all mention the same concerns about unclear priorities. Set boundaries. Let some friction flow downward or upward. If your boss demands weekend work for nonemergencies, say no. If they change priorities daily, push back: I need three business days to reallocate resources. If its truly urgent, tell me what were deprioritizing. Leave. If the friction is chronic, youve tried to address it, and nothing changes, staying may be costing more than its worth. Make an exit plan. James, former VP of Sales at a SaaS company, eventually chose to leave. After two years, I realized this is the job. And the job was making me someone I didnt want to be: short-tempered with my team, anxious on Sunday nights, too tired to be present at home. Leaving felt like giving up. Six months later, I can see it was the smartest thing I did. The bigger risk, though, is what happens if you stay and dont change course. Deloittes research on leadership sustainability shows that burned-out leaders transmit their stress directly to their teams, creating a cascade that damages performance at every level. You become reactive instead of strategic. You model anxiety instead of steadiness. You teach your team that success means managing up rather than delivering value. The Fallout from Friction With time, Maria also realized this. I thought I was being a good boss by shielding my team. But I was teaching them that last-minute fire drills were normal. When one of my best people resigned, she said, I just want to work somewhere that feels calmer. I wasnt absorbing the friction. I was transmitting it. So as you navigate friction from above, ask yourself regularly: What kind of leader am I becoming? What norms am I creating? What am I teaching my team about how work should feel? Being a buffer matters. But being a buffer shouldnt require you to lose yourself in the process.
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E-Commerce
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