Hi, hey, hello, 

IT’S THE LAST MONTH OF THE YEAR. Can you believe we’re here??

In 31 days we’ll close out 2025 and honestly, what a year it's been…

I recently told a panel that I was convinced 2020 would go down as the hardest year for HR, but then 2025 came out of nowhere and said, “jokes on you.” This year has felt exceptionally hard for so many reasons. Something about the combo of the AI-madness, job market instability and world issues just tested HR in different ways than in 2020. 

🚨 Agree or disagree?? I started a poll in Safe Space to see what folks think, stay tuned for deets, or join us there to chime in on the convo! 

While the year may be ending, you know I'll have a few final surprises for you: 

📺 December’s HR Therapy is next week!! Is performance management dead? And what could emerge from the ashes? Join me and Jamie Aitken as we talk about the future of performance management, trends we’ve seen and how to build a better process in 2026 + beyond. 

🎧 On the pod this week Erica Lydell joins me to talk about shoes and belonging at work. She shares what she has learned in her personal life and how that impacts how she thinks about cultivating belonging. 

Now, today’s edition about the good, the bag and the ugly when it comes to managers and their impact on energy.

CULTURE

The good, the bad, the ugly: manager editionCopy anchor linkCopied

Every quarter, I ask myself the same question:

How are managers actually doing?

And honestly?

The answer is: probably not great.

I will FOREVER be the woman standing in front of corporate America, begging it to give managers more support, not more pressure.

Because here’s the thing we all know:

📣 Managers influence an organization’s performance more than almost any other group.

You know it.

I know it.

And hopefully your CEO knows it, too.

But 2025 kinda threw us a curveball. We saw major companies, hi Amazon, openly reduce their middle management layers. And Gartner research is already predicting that by 2026, AI will flatten org structures even further.

So where does that leave us?

And why am I still talking about managers like they’re the lynchpin of organizational life?

Because no matter how flat the org chart gets or no matter how much AI we layer in… managers will continue to exist in some form.

And their impact, on culture, performance, and people,  isn’t going anywhere.

This entire quarter, I’ve been talking about energy at work from energy drains, energy boosts, to the systems that either fuel or deplete us.

And who has the single biggest impact on your day-to-day energy?

Your capacity to think clearly?

Your ability to get sh*t done without screaming into a pillow?

DING DING DING.

Your manager.

So let’s break it down the only way that feels fitting with a game I'm calling:  

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Manager Edition.

The good:Copy anchor linkCopied

Good managers make work feel lighter. 

And it's not because the work is easier, but because they make the energy cost of doing it lower.

Working with them actually feels good and maybe even fun???

Good managers: 

• Give clarity → reducing the energy spent decoding expectations
• Make decisions → removing the endless mental tabs teams keep open
• Overcommunicate → so people don’t waste energy filling in the silence with assumptions
• Ask better questions → helping people think sharper to get to better decisions faster
• Protect team bandwidth → guarding against burnout before it shows up
• Coach instead of micromanaging → building energy through competence and momentum
• Absorb the chaos instead of distributing it → acting as an emotional buffer, not an amplifier 

And we know, all of this absolutely makes a difference in the energy of a team.

When you have a good manager, the whole job can feel completely different even when nothing else changes.

The same tasks feel manageable. The same project feels doable. The same challenges feel easily solvable.

Because what employees are really reacting to isn’t actually the work…

It’s the energy cost of doing that work.

Teams with good managers feel:

• Calm because expectations are clear
• Capable because support is consistent
• Confident because leadership is predictable

Good managers boost energy and bad managers, welllll they do the opposite. 

The bad:Copy anchor linkCopied

Hear me out okay…

Bad managers aren’t always malicious, sometimes they’re just exhausting. Like they drain energy in slow, steady drips that add up over time. 

These are the managers who unintentionally increase the energy cost of every task, every project, every conversation. You just know if they’re involved things are going to take longer and possibly be harder to get done. 

And oftentimes, it’s not that they’re intentionally trying to be annoying or a bad manager. It's because they’re stretched thin, unclear, or overwhelmed themselves.

They:

• Change priorities constantly → forcing the team to spend energy pivoting
• Avoid conflict → creating lingering tension that drains everyone’s mental bandwidth
• Delegate inconsistently → making people guess what’s theirs vs. what’s not
• Wait until the last minute for everything → triggering mini-adrenaline spikes across the team
• Bring leadership’s anxiety directly to the team → transferring emotional load instead of processing it
• Ask for updates constantly → because they’re looking for control, not clarity

Over time the team culture and the energy just quietly erodes under bad managers. 

And the energy impact is real.

Teams under bad managers tend to feel:

• Drained because they’re managing constant small fires
• Disoriented because the goals won’t stop moving
• On edge because everything feels like a surprise

These teams aren’t necessarily failing because of the work, they could be failing because they’re spending their precious energy on dealing with their manager instead of the work at hand. 

Now, that’s just the bad managers… there’s actually worse.

The ugly: Copy anchor linkCopied

Ugly managers aren’t just energy drains…

✨They turn everything into chaos. ✨

These are the managers HR is texting about in the group chat, the ones who create such emotional turmoil that everyone around them is wondering if chaos is their leadership style or rising sign.

The energy cost of working for them is SO HIGH that teams end up in survival mode, struggling with chronic burnout, or planning their exit strategy. 

I’ve worked with one of these before and nightmare is a nice way to describe them. 

They:

• Withhold clarity to maintain control → turning basic tasks into psychological puzzles
• Lead from emotion, not intention → making the team do constant emotional labor
• Micromanage everything → converting trust into suspicion and autonomy into fatigue
• Weaponize urgency → creating false crises that spike cortisol and kill focus
• Punish risk-taking → making people spend energy self-protecting instead of innovating
• Create fear → one of the most expensive energy drain of all

This isn’t just a challenging manager.  This is the final boss of energy drains when it comes to management. 

Teams under ugly managers feel:

• Depleted because every day requires emotional armor
• Hypervigilant because safety is unpredictable
• Disconnected because there isn’t much trust 
• Transactional because there’s no energy left for belonging, creativity, or meaning

As you were reading the descriptions for the good, the bad and the ugly did a certain manager name jump into your head? Whether it be a manager from the past or a current manager you’re dealing with internally there’s good, bad and ugly all around us. How fun for us!

The thing is… what do you do about it? 

Pro-tip: Start by doing a pulse check on your org. Where do the majority of your managers fall in those 3 categories? From there put a plan together to address what comes next. 

And if you need some help…

A quiz!Copy anchor linkCopied

Did anyone else do those quizzes in the back of Cosmo like it was their job? I’m still out here taking Buzzfeed quizzes to figure out what One Tree Hill character I am. 

So with that energy in mind… I made a quiz so managers can find out if they’re the good, the bad, or the ugly kind of manager. 

You could use this on your manager… or if you’re feeling brave send it to your managers so they can better understand their impact. 

Circle all that apply:

1. When someone asks a question, you…

A) Answer clearly
B) Answer eventually
C) Answer with another question
D) Answer depending on your mood

2. Your team learns about a priority shift…

A) In a structured update
B) In Slack at 10:07pm
C) When someone else mentions it
D) By guessing

3. Your definition of urgency is…

A) Clear and rare
B) Frequent but manageable
C) Used for everything
D) My entire leadership personality

4. When things get chaotic, you…

A) Absorb the noise
B) Distribute the noise
C) Amplify the noise
D) Become the noise

5. Your team’s energy levels are…

A) Healthy
B) “Fine” but could be better

C) Questionable
D) Measured in weekly attrition

Mostly A’s: The Good: you’re amplifying the good energy 

Mostly B’s: The Bad: you’re slowly draining the energy 

Mostly C’s/D’s: The Ugly: you’re management style needs to change

What’s next:Copy anchor linkCopied

As this year comes to a close there’s something I can’t help but think about when it comes to work… 

And that is boundaries. 

 How to set them, hold them, and stop letting work eat your entire life for breakfast. 

Stay tuned!!

---

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

• 📚 What I’m reading: The Things Gods Break by Abigail Owen. I was OBSESSED with book 1 in this series. Greek Gods, powers, and mysteries I’M SAT. I highly recommend this series. 
• 📺 What I’m watching: A Merry Little Ex-Mas on Netflix. It's the holiday movie season for me, so prepare to be annoyed with me. This cast was bonkers, Alicia Silverstone, Melissa Joan Hart & Jameela Jamil?? OKAY STACKED. I loved this lil romcom about exes navigating Christmas with their children and the dads new gf. My mom and I settled in for this one with a bag of popcorn and no shortage of laughs.
• ✍️ What I’m obsessing over:  End of year reflections. I’m thinking about journaling a bit about this year and hopes for next year. If you do this as a regular practice, do you use prompts? Please let me know, trying to do this before the end of the year!

---

SONG OF THE WEEK

🎧 Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call by BleachersCopy anchor linkCopied

Well now that Thanksgiving is over it’s time for my annual share of my fave holiday music. 

Def not what you’d consider typical holiday music… 

Enjoyyyy

---

That's all for this week! Here's to making it to Wednesday without any major issues. 

Reminder: 31 more days left in this year, what are we letting go of in 2025??