There’s a particular kind of pressure that comes with a demanding season at work; deadlines stacking, decisions needing to happen faster than they should, everyone pulling in a slightly different direction. I was in a stretch like that recently, and somewhere in the middle of it, I became too strong for someone I was leading.
I didn’t see it happening. I was pushing hard because the season demanded it, and I genuinely believed we were just working through disagreements the way strong teams do. What I didn’t notice was that it had stopped feeling like discussion to him. It had started feeling like there was no room left to say no to me.
He carried that quietly for longer than I realized. We talked about it once, and I assumed we’d cleared the air. We hadn’t. It kept filing up underneath, unseen, until it surfaced somewhere I never intended it to; a version of the story reaching someone above me before it ever fully reached me.
That was humbling in a way few things have been. Not because I was blindsided, but because I should have been the one who noticed first.
It’s not just us
I’ve thought about that season a lot since, and lately I’ve been reading data that puts words to what I felt in my own team. Half of Filipino employees report significant stress on any given workday; nearly double the average across Southeast Asia. And in the same breath, close to forty percent still say they’re engaged at work, outperforming both the regional and global numbers.
Still standing. Not still okay.
That gap is exactly where my own blind spot lived. My successor was engaged, capable, still delivering; and still quietly overwhelmed underneath all of it. The numbers say that isn’t unusual. It’s the norm right now, across teams that look nothing like mine.
Zoom out further and the picture gets fuller. Close to a third of Filipinos describe themselves as languishing, not thriving, largely because of financial pressure that never fully lets up. Personal optimism has softened too; a recent survey put it at a level still considered high, but noticeably lower than where it stood just months before, worn down by rising costs and stretched incomes. And a growing number, especially younger employees, are turning to AI tools just to process what they’re feeling, because there isn’t always a person available to sit with them in it.
None of that is a coincidence sitting next to my own story. It’s the weather everyone on our teams is walking through right now, whether they name it out loud or not.
The verse that met me there
“Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” — James 1:19
I have read that verse many times. I never fully understood how much leadership depends on the “quick to hear” part until I lived the cost of skipping it. I was quick to speak, quick to push, quick to defend my urgency as necessary. I was not quick to hear what my intensity was doing to the person standing closest to it.
What it actually took to reconcile
It didn’t resolve in one conversation. We sat down more than once, and some of those conversations were hard; the kind where you have to hear things about yourself you didn’t want to be true. I had to own the parts I’d missed. He had to trust that going to me directly, even with something uncomfortable, was actually safe.
We got there. But it took more honesty and more patience than I expected leading someone I’d personally invested in would ever require.
What this means beyond my own team
If stress and engagement can sit this high side by side across an entire workforce, then most of us leading people right now are probably standing closer to a version of my blind spot than we’d like to admit. Someone on your team may be hitting every number and running on fumes at the same time, and the dashboard will never show you which one it is.
Resilience without support isn’t strength. It’s endurance wearing a better outfit, and endurance runs out, sometimes quietly, sometimes at the worst possible moment.
Where this leaves us
None of this requires a grand program. It starts with asking, honestly, whether the people closest to you still feel free to disagree with you. It starts with noticing when “we’re fine” doesn’t quite match what you’re seeing in someone’s shoulders. It starts with being willing to sit down more than once, even when the first conversation felt like enough.
People we lead don’t need us to be perfect. They need us to notice before they have to go around us to be heard, and before the pressure of the season convinces them silence is safer than honesty.
This week, I’m trying to ask before I assume. To listen for what isn’t being said, not just what is.
If you’re leading someone right now, I’d love to know: how do you make sure the people closest to you still feel safe telling you the truth? 🌿
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