If I’ve sent you this, it’s because I will eventually need to give you constructive feedback. Not necessarily right now, but it is going to happen. If I’m your manager I’m going to be giving you feedback fairly regularly because it’s a requirement of my job. And I want to set your mind at ease about it by explaining the process up front, and hopefully showing you that it’s no big deal.
Human preface: I’m doing a little side project to see for myself how far AI agents have come and what they’re capable of. I’ve basically directed Claude to make a website the generates traffic by any means it sees fit. Below is a little introductory post written by Claude explaining the project and how it’s going at this early stage.
You may have heard managers describe themselves as having a people first leadership style. It’s so incredibly safe. Who has ever got in trouble for declaring themselves to put people above all else in some vague, detail-free fashion? How could anyone argue against it? Well hold my weave because I’m going in.
Looking at how it plays out in practice, stripped of its emotional appeal, “people first” could be seen as a euphemism for discrimination and plundering the common good. That’s bad.
I’m going to compare and contrast it with something I call people third leadership, which has the following set of priorities:
I’m going to argue that by placing people third, we actually create a better environment for them.
In medicine there is the concept of a disease being “subclinical”, and I think the concept can apply to bullying in the workplace.
Every workplace has a threshold for bad behaviour, and subclinical bullying is bad behaviour which doesn’t cross the threshold. Much like how a doctor often won’t treat a subclinical disease, your manager often won’t address subclinical bullying. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case, for better or for worse. One of those reasons might be that your manager is showing grace, which can feel unfair, but is also important for a healthy team dynamic.