My friends,
I’m writing to you today not as a consultant or a guru, but as a peer, heck even a virtual friend.
Someone who has sat in the same meetings, felt the same pressures, and wrestled with the immense responsibility of guiding a group of people toward a common goal. It’s a privilege, this work we do. But I’ve also seen the dark side of it and it’s getting worse with the pace of life and technology we’re facing.
I’ve watched brilliant, passionate people slowly dim under the weight of so-called “leadership” that fails to understand its own impact, not just in the workplace, but to people’s personal lives outside of work.
This is about something I care deeply about, something I suspect you do too: the quiet, systematic erosion of your highest performers. We often talk about engagement and turnover in sterile, corporate terms. But at its heart, it’s a human story. It’s about what happens to a talented, dedicated person when the environment they’re in becomes toxic.
These aren’t lazy people. They’re the opposite. They’re the ones who lean in, who bring their full selves to work, who believe in the mission. Or at least, they did. Until a series of small, repeated actions by their leaders slowly convinces them otherwise.
The transformation is heartbreaking to watch. That star employee, the one you could always count on, becomes disengaged, dissatisfied, and deeply untrusting. And it’s almost never because of one big, explosive event. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts.
Let’s talk about what those paper cuts are. You’ll recognize some of them.
As a Swiftie, I need to drop this line from “Death by a Thousand Cuts” that many employees probably go through after a while…
I dress to kill my time
I take the long way home
I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be all right
They say, “I don’t know”
It starts with a vague vision. A mission statement that sounds good in a boardroom but means nothing at three in the afternoon when someone is trying to prioritize their work. When the destination is blurry, every step feels like a potential misstep. High performers crave clarity. They want to know the why. Without it, their immense energy has no focus, and they begin to feel like they’re running on a treadmill, wasting their talent.
Then there’s the shifting of priorities. The whiplash of a new ‘number one initiative’ every quarter, or worse, every month. It tells your team that their hard work on the last ‘number one initiative’ was disposable. It teaches them that depth and mastery are less valuable than reactive scrambling. They start to ask themselves, “Why pour my soul into this if it’s just going to be abandoned next week?”
We’ve all had these projects or initiatives that seems to be cutting edge, the next snowball that’ll change everything, only to see it fizzle after two years of consultancy firms’ vague shiny slide decks turn into yet another pointless project to give the favoured ones visibility to top management.
We have to talk about throwing people under the bus. Or dismissing ideas without credit only to champion them later as your own. This is a surefire way to shatter trust. A high performer’s mind is their greatest asset. When they offer an idea, they are offering a piece of their value. When that is publicly dismissed or quietly stolen, the message is clear: “You are not a partner here. You are a resource to be used.” They will stop offering ideas. They will keep their best thinking to themselves. And eventually, they will take it elsewhere.
Favoritism is a poison. It doesn’t just demotivate those who aren’t the favorite; it humiliates them. It proves that meritocracy is a myth within your walls. People are not blind. They see who gets the glamour projects, the undeserved promotions, the casual forgiveness for mistakes they would be raked over the coals for. It tells them that fairness is not a value you actually hold.
And what about rewards? A lack of a clear, transparent mechanism for recognition and advancement is deeply corrosive. High performers operate on a currency of achievement and growth. When they hit a target and the goalposts move, or the reward vanishes into a black box of subjective decision making, their internal drive is replaced by cynical calculation. “Why bother?” becomes the prevailing logic.
Then we layer on the micromanagement. The constant second guessing. The need to approve every font choice. This is perhaps the most personal insult to a capable person. You hired them for their expertise and then you refuse to let them use it. You are not managing them. You are imprisoning their potential. You are telling them, “I do not trust you.” It is a self fulfilling prophecy. They will soon give you exactly what you’re looking for: an employee who needs to be told what to do every minute of the day, because their own initiative has been systematically broken.
The result of all this isn’t just a bad mood around the office. It’s a human and organizational catastrophe. The pressure becomes toxic, leading to burnout and mental health crises. The best people, the ones with the most options, leave first. They take their talent, their institutional knowledge, and your future with them. What remains is often a culture of fear, silence, and mediocrity. A team that has learned that the safest thing to do is nothing at all.
I am not here to scold you. I am here to ask you to look in the mirror with me.
I want you to ask yourself some questions. Not for me, but for your organization, for your people, and for your own legacy.
When was the last time you looked a team member in the eye and sincerely asked for their unvarnished opinion on how things are going? And did you truly listen without becoming defensive?
Do your people know, without a shadow of a doubt, what you stand for and where you are leading them? Can they articulate it in their own words?
Think about the last time a project failed. What was your first reaction? Was it to find a lesson or to find a scapegoat? Are you scapegoats people who entrusted their career and deliverables under your leadership?
When you look at your inner circle, is it composed of people who challenge you and bring diverse perspectives, or is it composed of people who simply agree with you? Are you rewarding comfort or competence? Do you penalise those who bring in opposing views to yours that may actually be better for the mission in the long run?
Do you believe your employees are fundamentally driven and want to do good work? Or do you believe they will slack off unless constantly monitored? Your leadership style will always flow from your answer.
Are you building a team that can function brilliantly without you, or are you building a system that depends on your constant intervention to survive?
And perhaps the most important question: What is the long term cost of the culture you are creating right now? Not in quarterly earnings, but in human potential. In reputations. In the sheer weight of anxiety and dissatisfaction that people carry home to their families every night.
This is about more than profit and loss. It is about the kind of world we are creating inside our companies every single day. We have the power to build environments where people can thrive, where they can do the best work of their lives and feel proud of it. Or we can be the reason they lose their spark.
Even if you do not plan to stay in your current role or organization, the trail of devastation you may have brought to those who merely trusted you will last for years.
The choice, as it always has been, is ours. Be empathetic, be ethical, be a leader.
Warmly,
A fellow traveler in the corporate world
(Disclosure: Parts are edited with Deepseek)
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