Leading People Who Are Hurting
You don't have to have the answers. You have to have the room.
Somewhere along the way, leadership got redefined as having the answer. Walk into most rooms and the person in charge is expected to be the steadiest one there — the one with the plan, the calm voice, the next step already mapped out.
Nobody trains you for what happens when someone on your team sits across from you and says something true and difficult, and you realize the thing they need from you isn't a plan. It's your attention. Your patience. Permission to not be fine yet.
We hear from a lot of coaches and managers who describe the same quiet dread: someone comes to them struggling, and their first instinct is to fix it, fast, because sitting in the discomfort feels like failing at the job. But that instinct, however well-intentioned, often communicates the opposite of what someone in pain needs to hear. It says: hurry up and be okay again, because your okay-ness is what makes this manageable for me.
The lesson
The leaders we admire most did something different. They made room before they made suggestions. They asked a second question instead of offering a first solution. They were willing to not know, out loud, in front of someone who needed to see that not-knowing wasn't the same as not caring.
This doesn't mean lowering the bar or excusing performance. What it means is understanding that the people you lead are carrying things you can't see, and that your job includes making it safe enough for them to eventually let you see a little of it. You don't have to have the answers. You have to have the room.
The psychology behind it
This is what researchers call psychological safety — the shared belief that it's safe to take an interpersonal risk on a team, whether that's admitting a mistake or admitting you're struggling. Google's multi-year Project Aristotle study found it was the single strongest predictor of team effectiveness, ahead of talent or process.
Psychological safety and high standards aren't opposites — the research is fairly settled on that. Teams with real psychological safety often push each other harder, not less, because people can hear hard feedback without it becoming a threat to their standing. The leader's response the first few times someone takes a risk — disagrees, admits a mistake, says something true and hard — sets the tone for every response after it.
For your journal
- 1.When did someone make room for you to not be okay? What did they do, specifically?
- 2.Where might your team be performing wellness for your benefit rather than theirs?
One action for today
This week, the next time someone brings you a problem, ask one more question before offering your first solution.