The project plan succeeds. The people carrying it out pay a price that the project plan never recorded. By month eight, the system was operational, and the person was quietly updating their CV, weighing up whether to stay or leave an organisation they had been loyal to for years. This is not an unusual story. It is a pattern that repeats whenever the mechanics of change are prioritised over the human experience of it.

This is where leadership judgement at your level truly shows. Not in the high-stakes interventions, but in the regular, well-judged feedback conversations that keep performance moving in the right direction before it needs rescuing. The managers who are most trusted by their teams are not the ones who avoid difficult conversations. They are the ones whose feedback is so consistent and so fair that difficult conversations stop feeling difficult.