Most people do not leave jobs. They leave the person standing at the front of the room. A job vacancy can be filled in a week. A job interview can be coached and rehearsed. But a job title will never tell you whether the person holding it will stay up until 2am so nobody finds out alone, or fight for your promotion in rooms you will never be in.
Nearly a decade of research and close to 75,000 workplace surveys confirm that honest leadership remains one of the top contributors to employee mental health and wellbeing. These 10 real office moments are proof that the person leading the room carries more of their team’s story than they will ever fully know.
1.
My boss died on the way to the ER. I found out by text from a coworker. “He’s gone. Finally!” I sat in the bathroom and cried for an hour.
At the funeral his son shook my hand and said, “Sarah, right? Dad mentioned you a lot. I need to talk to you privately.” Then he found me after the service and pulled out a folder.
Inside were 8 months of internal emails, his father fighting the board for a promotion and salary increase for me, blocked every single time, with a final email written 2 weeks before he died that said, “If this doesn’t go through, I’m escalating to the CEO. She has earned this 3 times over.”
He never told me, and now that he is gone, no one will ever give me my promotion. Not like I care about it, honestly. He was just a good man.