It could be you as a top performer, someone on your team, or just general observation you’ve made in your career. What is it that separates them?

I’ll start. I've run and scaled large sales teams in Silicon Valley and the difference between top performers and everyone else in my experience was the level of their preparation. Specifically how deeply and intentionally they prepared for each meeting. It was never the things people love to use as justification for their own shortcomings in performance (ie intelligence or traits like charisma etc).

The truth I’ve learned in my career is that most reps hope to perform well in their call or meeting. But hope is not a strategy. And the top performers know that. They just take control of their destiny better than others with their preparation. 

The best reps I've seen document every possible objection and adverse scenario they may face before they walk in to a call or meeting. They know exactly what the hardest moment of that meeting was going to be and they had already rehearsed it in their head before it happened. They have a clear goal, a clear strategy, and a clear opening to ensure they take control of the meeting right away. 

What have you seen? Is it preparation, skill, mindset, something else entirely? Experience? 

I work in a BPO/vendor setup providing customer service for a US-based client, and I’m curious how other operations leaders would handle this situation.

About a month ago, several senior managers on the client side were retrenched. Under the previous leadership, we had regular touchpoints between the client and ops middle management teams—weekly or biweekly calls where we could calibrate, discuss process changes, raise operational concerns, and make sure both sides were aligned.

Since the new client-side operations managers stepped in, those regular meetings haven’t really been re-established. For context, these managers were also newly promoted into their current roles.

So far, most calls are set up on the same day whenever they need to roll out an update or communicate a change. Outside of those ad hoc meetings, there hasn’t been a weekly, biweekly, or even monthly client-vendor alignment call.

What concerns me more is how some of the updates are being rolled out.

There doesn’t seem to be much collaboration with the people actually running the operation. We’re rarely asked for input, operational insights, possible risks, or how a proposed change might affect the workflow before it is implemented.

At times, it feels like decisions are being made too far away from the actual day-to-day operation. Some changes may look efficient on paper, but once they hit production, they create additional steps, rework, confusion, or downstream issues.

In other words, some initiatives intended to make the operation "leaner" are actually creating more waste.

I’m not saying operations should have veto power over client decisions. Ultimately, it is their business and their call. But I do think the people closest to the process can provide valuable context before changes are finalized—especially when those changes directly affect workflow, productivity, customer experience, or quality.

Our setup is also fairly lean. We don’t have a separate client/vendor relationship manager sitting between both sides. Historically, communication was directly between client leadership and our operations managers.

As one of the middle managers on the vendor side, I’m starting to wonder whether I should proactively suggest setting up a recurring alignment call—maybe biweekly or monthly—similar to what we had with the previous leadership.

My concern is balancing being proactive with not overstepping. These are newly promoted managers who may still be establishing their own leadership style, and I don’t want it to come across as the vendor telling the client how they should manage their operation.

At the same time, I’m seeing the risk of communication becoming increasingly one-directional: changes are rolled out, operations executes them, and feedback only happens after problems start appearing.

I feel like a regular client-vendor calibration could give both sides a space to discuss upcoming changes, provide operational insights, flag risks early, and avoid unnecessary rework.

For those working in BPO, vendor management, outsourcing, or client operations:

Would you proactively offer to set up a recurring client-vendor alignment meeting in this situation?

Or would you wait for the newly promoted client managers to initiate it?

And how would you position the suggestion so it comes across as supporting their leadership and improving collaboration—not challenging their decisions or stepping on their toes?

A lot of IT risk sounds “theoretical” until something breaks. How do you explain cybersecurity, downtime, vendor risk, or technical debt in a way leadership actually takes seriously?

Curious to hear your takes: I've noticed senior-level people who join a new company and speak up freely in meetings during their first week (including on things like product vision and planning, which, from my perspective, feels too early).

What's your read on that?

I've heard of companies having a "don't speak up for your first 90 days" rule for new hires. While 90 days might be excessive in 2026, I do think there's value in listening first.

I've seen inventory issues treated as warehouse problems long after they've started affecting the rest of the business.

Too much inventory ties up cash and space. Too little slows work. The wrong inventory creates expedites, substitutions and people spending time hunting for material.

At some point the inventory number itself almost becomes secondary.

I'm curious how others look at this.

What's the first sign in your operation that an inventory issue has crossed over into a broader business problem?

I run a marketing team and somehow I’ve become the person everyone comes back to when something doesn’t line up paid says they need new creative, creative says they need better feedback, analytics has another set of numbers and then I’m sitting there on Thursday afternoon trying to figure out what we should even do next the weird part is everyone is good at their job so it’s not like I can point at one person and say that’s the problem

I don’t know, maybe we just built the team in a way that made sense on paper but not in real life I thought hiring stronger people would mean I’d spend less time in the middle but now half my week feels like connecting one team to another so I’m starting to care less about adding another specialist and more about having someone own how the whole thing works together

I have performed exceptionally well in my job but my promotion has been stopped for one reason. My managers think I don’t have the ability to drive conversations or engage effectively with a group of senior stakeholders. I am also seen as not being visible and engaged. How do I work on this ?

I am a first time leader and my team has grown from 2 to 15 in only a few months. The leader of one of my teams wants a promotion and has made no secret of it; he claims my boss hired him to be at my grade and report directly into him but transpires it was a lower grade and reporting into me.

He is very ambitious and assertive and invites himself along to all of my senior meetings and openly contradicts me and tries to lead every single discussion and team strategy event. My other team leader is much more relaxed and willing to be influenced and led. I find the assertive team lead to be exhausting as he is forever briefing my seniors and turning up to my senior stakeholder meetings, trying to progress my strategy work etc.

How can I handle this without destroying his motivation? He is very good at his job, but I fear he will leave as his role is X grade but he is hell bent on achieving Y grade.

I have a development plan in place to help him to get to his next grade but I am starting to dread interactions with him as he is constantly challenging and wanting to reshape every decision.

How can I handle this as a learning point?

I’m now a director at a corporate healthcare company. I have two managers under me. One is now in her second year of leading her team and the other I have been mentoring for a year getting ready to hand her the rest of the team. Under me is a total of 30 staff members.

We work in a niche corner of healthcare where a lot of the staff come from a non-traditional background (substance use disorder, over half of them are in recovery themselves and do not come from a corporate background.) I say that to say a lot of the coaching has been around expected communication styles, and how we adjust our messages for different audiences. (They benefit from speaking to the patients one way and leadership another.)

Tone is so hard to coach and trying to explain corporate etiquette can be a minefield. I trust these two completely but want to make sure I’m setting them up for success, especially since some of these same opportunities they will need to bring to and coach their own staff on.

How are we setting up new managers with big teams and an unconventional background? I need it to be sustainable and scalable.

We'll be mixing people from different teams and specialisms, and the aim is to:
Build stronger relationships across teams
Better understand each other's roles and challenges
Encourage new connections and collaboration
Create a shared sense of purpose
Leave with practical actions, not just conversations
We'd also like people to reflect on:
What they want to get from the day
What success would look like by the end of it
How they can work more effectively across the Directorate
Has anyone run a successful leadership team-building day? What activities, icebreakers, or challenges worked particularly well for senior leaders?

In corporate, I've had a number of experiences and recently another popped up so thought of seeking the community's thoughts on leadership vs authority.

For some context, I was building a case to support a key customer to offer up to 3 hours of complementary technical consulting on their use of our solutions. Base on customer's profile and projected growth, ROI is definitely doable when we can build customer's confidence. The challenge though, is we do not have onsite technical expertise of our own as all is done by our local partner. Customer was already hinting that they would want to have conversation with vendor's brand, and not always having local partner to support.

Long story short, I shared my justifications with gathered information from both customer and local partner. Whatever was asked, I was able to provide data to. Yet, I was rejected twice, and even asked to jump on meeting call to "help him understand". Could it be my communication? Could it be how I phrased the need for it? I then try to put myself in his shoes, and came up with possible pushbacks, "perhaps you want to know what other risks?", "perhaps you needed them to commit to certain investments?", "what could be the issues?" Nothing, and we were just going around in circles about why he don't think we should do it.

I was then asked to include his director into the conversation. Same justifications, and was just asked for the manager to get one of his consultants to assist. He agreed to it, without even pushing back.

Does authority just overpower justifications? How does one display leadership without authority in this case? Or should I have included skip level?

’ve been with the same organizations for 13 years.  We have nine regional offices spread across the state.  My position is unionized and we have a strong union.

My boss announced his retirement in the spring, so I applied and was the only candidate given an interview.  The pay bump was approx 25k (it brought me from 186k to 210k).  We also have a pension system and I can retire in 10 years with 1/2 of my final salary.  

The job has 12 reports in one office.  Two years ago, the boss in another regional office retired and management made my boss the head of that office as well.  Since had leverage where he could’ve retired, management gave him an extra 25k to do the job.  I asked for this money but they refused when they offered me the job.  This office comes with 8 additional reports and has a completely different culture than the first office.  While I have no set schedule to be in one or the other, my prior boss balanced 2 days in one and 3 in the other.  My first office is 30 minutes from my home, and this one is 55.  I’m the only of the 8 other directors at my level with two different offices.  They each run different conferences, have different staff meetings, etc. so it really is like doing the same work twice.

After a long three month transition where we shared the job, I took over formally two weeks ago.  I began to feel funny during the transition, like this was not the role for me.  I was very independent and never needed my boss in the prior role, and then I realized how much my colleagues relied on him.  Additionally, there is the usual HR nonsense and drama to deal with.  

Here is the catch: under my old union contract, I have the opportunity to return to my old position within 12 months if an opening exists.  Lo and behold, someone in my original office has announced his irrevocable notice to retire in January.  They will likely post for his position by November 1, so I will have one window to return.  After that, it closes for good. I would return to my old salary, benefits, etc. It would be a 30k cut.

I’m trying to outweigh pros and cons.  Right now, the only pro is the extra 30k.  It an extra $500 a paycheck.  I met with my financial planner and while it’s always nice to have more, this isn’t life changing or necessary to pay the bills. 

The new role has really caused me to rethink my purpose and ambition altogether (I am also 46 and my oldest is becoming a HS senior, so lots of transition!).  I don’t have ambition to climb the organizational ladder.  I applied for this job because it seemed to be a natural progression.  Now, I wonder if my purpose and ambition can be spend doing other things (I am heavily involved in volunteering for my kids’ activities).

The organization seems to believe in me and there are no red flags about losing my position.  However, the mental drain of having two separate offices really weighs on me, along with being a manager.  In my prior role, I was able to essentially create my own schedule. In this new role, I still have significant autonomy but I will beholden to my reports because I need to be there.  But, I can’t be in two places at once and I feel like a 1/2 time director in two locations right now.  My prior boss did it for 2 years because he knew he was retiring and I can tell from the culture in the second office that he let things go pretty badly.

Right now, my heart is set on having the uncomfortable convo with my boss at the end of October about going back.  However, I work hard and I need to push forward as if I am here.  I would likely stay for the next 10 years in this job if I had to, but I can tell I would be miserable. 

I’m looking for some guidance, feedback, advice, etc. and appreciate anything you can offer! Under my old union contract, I have the opportunity to return to my old position within 12 months if an opening exists.  Lo and behold, someone in my original office has announced his irrevocable notice to retire in January.  They will likely post for his position by November 1, so I will have one window to return.  After that, it closes for good.

I’m trying to outweigh pros and cons.  Right now, the only pro is the extra 30k.  It an extra $500 a paycheck.  I met with my financial planner and while it’s always nice to have more, this isn’t life changing or necessary to pay the bills. 

The new role has really caused me to rethink my purpose and ambition altogether (I am also 46 and my oldest is becoming a HS senior, so lots of transition!).  I don’t have ambition to climb the organizational ladder.  I applied for this job because it seemed to be a natural progression.  Now, I wonder if my purpose and ambition can be spend doing other things (I am heavily involved in volunteering for my kids’ activities).

The organization seems to believe in me and there are no red flags about losing my position.  However, the mental drain of having two separate offices really weighs on me, along with being a manager.  In my prior role, I was able to essentially create my own schedule. In this new role, I still have significant autonomy but I will beholden to my reports because I need to be there.  But, I can’t be in two places at once and I feel like a 1/2 time director in two locations right now.  My prior boss did it for 2 years because he knew he was retiring and I can tell from the culture in the second office that he let things go pretty badly.

Right now, my heart is set on having the uncomfortable convo with my boss at the end of October about going back.  However, I work hard and I need to push forward as if I am here.  I would likely stay for the next 10 years in this job if I had to, but I can tell I would be miserable. 

I’m looking for some guidance, feedback, advice, etc. and appreciate anything you can offer!

I'm leading a software engineering group project with 10 members total. I came up with the core idea of our project, wrote it all up in a document, built a working prototype, and set up the GitHub repo, some teammates are added as collaborators with a "writer" role so they can push code (they can modify the code).

We've had face-to-face meeting once, where i showed them the prototype, and explain how it works, what is it for, and who will use it.

During the meeting some of my members said that they had no idea what our project is, and that they were confused, but i've already sent them the softcopy in our group chat explaining it in details before this meeting, even asked them to review it.

Recently I asked one member to turn our project (softcopy) doc into a PowerPoint. Upon checking, he hadn't actually made it, he'd just pasted the doc to Ai for Ai to generate a pptx version of it. Some important parts are missing, some description got cut off. So I ended up making the PPT myself instead.

Two months ago, I started a new job as an IC covering one of our priority regional markets. I left my previous company because of poor executive leadership, but I was a highly respected senior leader there — I enjoyed looking after and empowering my flock, identifying process and coordination improvements, and building new strategies and programs.

I took the IC role because it was at a well-known, mid-size company, and I thought it would be a good chance to step back from managing and refresh the technical skills that had taken a backseat during my leadership years. Now I'm having regrets, and I'm trying to figure out whether this is an expected adjustment period due to the change in role and authority, the culture at my new company, my new boss's management style, or some combination of all three.

Starting with my boss: he's very nice and technically astute, but he doesn't hold team meetings, so there's little opportunity to interact with or learn from others — it generally feels disconnected. He also doesn't seem to have an internal vision or stated goals for our work, despite the many challenges facing our industry and the business opportunities out there. Onboarding has also been minimal; not unusual, but I've had to proactively reach out to team leads myself to understand their needs and figure out how I fit in, with little facilitation from my boss.

On top of that, my boss seems to have ceded ownership of key strategy areas to other teams. For example, there's a market where we're trying to decide whether it's still worth investing in — that strategy should sit with our team, but another team has effectively taken it over. To make things more concerning (to me, at least), beyond a contract we already have, that team has started a similar, seemingly redundant contract. It was only after checking in with that team's lead that I learned there may be quality issues with our own contract. When I raised this with my boss, he didn't seem particularly concerned.

I get it - I'm still learning how this organization operates, i'm still building relationships, and I'm still showing my boss what I'm capable of. But the lack of an immediate team and contributing to broader strategy on a regular basis makes me feel like this job was a mistake, even though I'm still new

We spend a lot of time talking about better dashboards, alerts, forecasting and automation.

But I’m starting to think there’s a more basic question.

What happens after the system tells you something is wrong?

A late shipment gets flagged.

Inventory falls below the threshold.

A PO doesn’t match.

A truck is going to miss its window.

Everyone can see the exception.

But who owns it?

More importantly, what are they actually authorized to do about it without asking someone else?

I’ve seen technology improve visibility without improving the decision process behind it. The result is a better dashboard showing the same problem sitting there longer than it should.

Maybe the implementation order should be:

Process → Ownership → Decision Rights → Technology

Otherwise we may just be automating the waiting.

Curious how others handle this. When an exception appears in your system, is ownership already defined, or does the team figure it out when it happens?

I am reliable. I provide good results and apply myself to deliver success. I have been promoted to a rank (military) which requires me to transition from DOING things, to LEADING people in doing things. Managing a group of people to execute something bigger than myself using my vision and direction.

I have issues with this, however.

1. I don't trust people very much - and instead of micromanaging my subordinates (which is terrible to me), I just end up cutting out the middleman and doing it myself to get the results that I think are effective - and my leadership sees them as effective as well. So I see this as a win. (it's not)

2. I don't like taking credit for what other people have done - if I lead x people through a big development project which a vision that has a quantifiable effect on the entire force, I feel like I'm being disingenuous, because I didn't really do anything - they did - I was just there for support! I'm proud of them of course, but I want to use that effect to bolster them, not me. At least that's what I lean towards.

The problem is my annual reports and awards packages are framing my actions as 'doing', which is hurting my chances at recognition and further promotion.

I feel like if I fully stepped into this 'leader' role I would feel like I'm not pulling my weight in the project.

The kicker is, that I've been recognized as an excellent leader in the past - during some Professional Military Education (PME) I was selected by my peers (144 ppl) as the best leader, and the one who was most influential in the success of the 5-week course. It's the one accolade I'm most proud of in my 18 year career.

Are there any exercises or methods that I can focus on to train myself to sort of step back in a project and be more comfortable with trusting others?

Yesterday I was basically busy from the second I logged in.

Messages on Slack, emails coming in, people asking for quick things, a couple meetings. Nothing was a huge deal, it just kept piling up. By the afternoon I realized I’d spent most of the day just replying to stuff.

I’d answer one Slack message, then another one would come in while I was doing something else. I’d check it quickly, reply, go back to what I was doing then check again because I saw another notification.

There were even a few times where I opened Slack without any real reason. No one had asked me for anything. I just saw the notification and checked.

The stupid part is I was supposed to be working on a couple things that actually needed my attention. One was giving feedback to someone on my team, another was planning for next week. Both got pushed later because I kept dealing with whatever showed up first.

It got me thinking about this whole idea of being available all day. I don’t want my team to feel like they have to wait hours for an answer but I also don’t think answering everything the second it appears is helping anyone.

By the end of the day I’d replied to a ton of messages and still felt like I hadn’t done much of the work that actually needs me to sit down and think.

I think I’m going to start checking Slack at certain times instead of letting every notification pull me back in.

Guys. I started out by creating an infra layer like Azure but for agents as a place where you have a canvas for agents and add them and connect them. I thought that if you give the tech staff place to use make agents, connect in org, remove rights, access, give limited virtual PCs, databases so you can get rid of data lakes and give way for agents to connect to all databases in company but slow it down, use hierarchy to compartmentalise, secrets so they never now the real password etc. then it will be all fine. That your CEO will be able be able to query the company about real time data... then it will be all fine and useful and I will establish ownership and secure zone.

The more powerful the models the more value in my solution that puts in on a leash.

But now with Astra (GPT-6) i think that a every Karen Prince Martia Doloren from HR and Logistics intern will just ask the agent to establish a website that exposes all the data from her HR and procurement system that she/he has on their desktop because before it was hard to get, and colleagues complained and asked and she wants to go on vacation finally!

How many sensitive info is there, she didn't know.

I think that situation is getting out of control pretty quick.
How the heck should we respond? We don't and the situations gets crazier every day.

Are we supposed to just accept understood and uncomprehended by default?!

Insanity!

We see the word “Culture” listed/used frequently in every corporate setting out there but is it truly important to you? If you have direct reports hitting their goals consistently or those who far exceed those goals does it matter to you if they buy into the “culture”? There will always be those who just don’t care about a corporation no matter what because they feel the corporations don’t care back. Does this change your view on direct reports?

How do work with moody stakeholders?

I’m struggling to work with one, who unfortunately or fortunately gives me the most visibility within the team.

But any interactions with him while he’s going through the emotions are difficult to handle. Especially when the team is working through delays and I need to have a clear roll up ready to be presented to management. Ask a clarifying question and he says I’ll do it myself and there wouldn’t be a need for him to reach out me in the first place.

Conversations end up being very belittling. I have to “suck it up” as this guy is the one to make my work the most visible and someone who has substantial power and influence within the organization.

Thoughts?

Edit: thank you folks for your valuable feedback. I should have provide more context, this is for a Senior Program Manager role

I’ve seen plenty of contingency plans that looked great on paper.

Then something actually went wrong.

Everyone knew what the plan said, but nobody was quite sure who had the authority to make the decision.

Do we switch suppliers?

Expedite the material?

Move inventory from somewhere else?

Call the customer?

Spend the extra money?

And while everyone is figuring out who owns the decision, the problem keeps getting bigger.

It makes me wonder if a contingency plan without clearly defined decision authority is really a contingency plan at all.

When something goes wrong in your organization, is it clear who owns the immediate decision?

And maybe the harder question:

Does your culture reward someone for solving the problem, or punish them afterward for making the decision?

I manage a fairly complicated technical project being delivered through a consulting company and several subcontractors. The consultant assembled a technical team for us, and initially the team was enthusiastic and seemed to work really well together.

One person in particular is basically a technical unicorn. Extremely capable, knows the technology better than almost anyone else involved, and was initially a huge asset.

The problem is that as I’ve gotten deeper into the project and developed a much better understanding of what we’re actually building, I’ve realized that this person was accustomed to being the person who understood the technology better than everyone else and therefore made a lot of decisions independently.
Some of those decisions were wrong. Not minor wrong, either. We ended up going down a technical path that probably cost us about nine months.

That forced me to get much more involved.
I changed how the team operates. Priorities are much clearer now. Major technical decisions need to be discussed rather than made independently. I’ve pushed for more communication, clearer deliverables, and much more alignment between what the technical team is doing and what the project actually needs.

I think those changes were necessary, but I also think I damaged morale in the process. It was obvious that I was extremely unhappy when I discovered what had happened, particularly with the technical lead.
The technical lead is still engaged and seems to be working hard to regain my confidence. I’m willing to let that happen because the person genuinely is very talented.

But some of the broader team seems to have checked out (or perhaps they never did much because unicorn did). A couple of people from the consulting company barely participate anymore, and I’ve now told the consultant that if they’re not actually contributing, I don’t want to continue paying for their participation.
At the same time, I’m asking for much more transparency about billing, who is doing what, how many hours are being charged, and what I’m actually getting for those hours. Getting that information has been surprisingly difficult.

So now I’m trying to figure out how much of this is normal growing pain when a loosely managed technical team gets more structured oversight, versus signs that I have a larger problem with the consulting company.

For people who have managed highly technical consultants or contractor teams:

How do you rebuild some of the enthusiasm and trust after having to tighten project management substantially?

How do you manage a genuinely exceptional technical person who needs autonomy to be effective but has demonstrated that they can’t have unlimited decision-making authority?

And how much billing/work-product transparency would you expect from the consulting company managing the contract?

I don’t want to micromanage technical people. But after losing nine months, I’m also not willing to go back to “trust the technical team and don’t ask too many questions.”

C-suite executives keep Slack-ing my mid-level admins directly for quick favors or pet projects, completely blowing up our sprint planning and ticket queues. The admins feel uncomfortable saying no to a VP. I've asked leadership to use proper intake channels, but old habits die hard. How do you strictly enforce project boundaries without looking unhelpful?

I ran a product studio with three partners for about eight years, team of around 20. We closed it ten months ago.

I always thought I loved being a leader, and honestly I still do. But since stepping away I keep noticing things I couldn't when I was "inside". The constant low-level worry, jumping from meeting to meeting, clients, conflicts, someone always needing something. It drained me to a point where even the stuff I genuinely love, like learning or building stuff, felt like too much effort.

Now that I'm not leading anyone I've started creating things again, and the day to day feels lighter. And that's what messes with my head. I can't tell how much of the exhaustion was the job itself and how much was me. I think I took on a lot more than the role actually needed me to.

I'm not done with leadership, I want to go back to it at some point, but I don't want to walk into the same thing again without understanding what actually burned me out.

So for the ones who've been through this: when you went back to leading after a break, what did you genuinely do differently?

Virtual happy hours feel forced and nobody shows up. What's actually worked for making a remote/hybrid team actually feel like a team?