There is one experience on my CV that is probably more valuable than almost anything else I have done as a manager, and at the same time it is the one I would least want to repeat.
For about a year, I worked in one of the most intense environments I have experienced in seven years of management. On paper, it was a great job. I was paid well, had good benefits, plenty of responsibility and exactly the kind of difficult leadership experience that later looks great on a CV.
But it also broke me for a while.
I consider myself resilient, calm under pressure and generally good with people. In several companies I have been told that one of my strengths is bringing calm into messy situations. I think that confidence worked against me in this case, because I joined genuinely believing I could fix the situation.
Before joining, I was told the team was negative, morale was low, engagement was bad and some people might need to leave. None of that sounded especially unusual. As a manager, you listen, understand the history, build trust, fix obvious problems, create clarity and gradually improve things.
What I misunderstood was the nature of the problem.
I had not inherited a negative team. I had inherited something closer to a tribe.
There was a strong collective orgview: leadership was wrong, other teams were incompetent, the company was moving in the wrong direction, and the group somehow saw things more clearly than everyone else.
Disagreement itself was never the problem. I like people who challenge me and question decisions. The problem is when disagreement becomes part of the identity of a team, when being the people who “see the truth” becomes more important than actually solving anything.
I did not recognize that early enough.
For a long time, I thought one more conversation would help. Another one-on-one. Another attempt at alignment. More recognition. A promotion. Fixing another valid complaint.
And to be fair, the situation did improve.
The team’s NPS went from around -75 to -33 🫠. People were promoted, compensation improved, concerns were addressed and the environment got better in several ways.
What I struggled to accept was that improving someone’s situation does not always change what they have already decided to believe about it.
Some people wanted things to improve. Others seemed to want confirmation that everything was broken.
There was also one highly influential person in the team who made the situation much worse. He was extremely political, constantly building alliances, talking to people about each other and trying to influence who should stay and who should go. Some of the quieter people saw through this much earlier than I did.
Eventually, we had to fire that person for the greater good of the team and the company.
My biggest regret is that we did not do it earlier 🚷
That experience changed how I think about leadership.
I failed in several ways. I stayed in certain dynamics too long. I kept believing another conversation might fix something that was already beyond conversation. I overestimated my ability to influence people, and I did not establish strong enough boundaries early enough.
My boss used to tell me that I needed to take care of myself. At the time, I thought I was. What I did not realize was how much energy I was spending trying to take care of everyone else.
I used to associate resilience with being able to take more pressure. Now I think part of resilience is knowing when continuing to absorb something is no longer useful.
If I inherit a troubled team or organization again, one of the first things I will try to understand is not only who is performing well, but who actually wants to be there.
Who still believes there is something worth building?
Who is skeptical but willing to work?
Who disagrees but is still participating in good faith?
And who has already mentally left?
You do not need everyone to love the company or agree with every decision. That would be unhealthy too. But there has to be some minimum willingness to participate.
I no longer believe a manager should spend quarter after quarter trying to convince employees to work for the company that already employs them.
There is another idea I took from this experience that may be unpopular.
Managers are often told that when a team is dysfunctional, the manager is responsible. I agree that managers have more power and therefore more responsibility. We shape the environment, set expectations and decide what behavior we tolerate.
But I think we sometimes take that idea too far.
Teams are made up of adults, and adults make choices. They choose whether to engage in good faith, whether to gossip, whether to undermine others and whether disagreement becomes constructive or destructive.
If I create a bad environment, hold me accountable. If I communicate badly, hold me accountable. If I tolerate toxic behavior for too long, hold me accountable.
But if someone repeatedly behaves destructively, manipulates people or makes the environment worse, hold them accountable too.
Leadership does not mean absorbing everybody else’s responsibility.
The whole situation ended up costing much more than it should have. I spent close to a year working through it. Eventually, I left. Other people left. Others were let go. The team had to be rebuilt afterwards.
That taught me something else: delaying difficult decisions has a cost, not only for the company, but for the people inside it. Managers have finite emotional capacity, and so do the good people inside dysfunctional teams.
Today, my situation is almost the opposite.
I work with a team I genuinely enjoy working with. We work hard, disagree and have difficult conversations, but we are on the same side. I support them, they support me, they challenge me and I am proud of what we are building together.
That sounds basic, but I did not appreciate how valuable it was until I experienced the opposite.
And that is why the old experience remains one of the most important things on my CV.
It taught me how I behave under pressure, how organizational politics really work, what happens when boundaries are not enforced early enough, and where my own limits are.
It also taught me that empathy and patience are not always the same thing as good leadership.
I do not look back at that experience thinking I was a victim. I participated in the situation. I made mistakes. There are decisions I would make much faster today.
But I also do not believe that because I was the manager, everything that happened inside that team was ultimately my responsibility.
That year made me a better manager, not because I found the perfect way to fix a difficult team, but because I learned that not every situation should be fixed, not everybody wants to be convinced, and sometimes waiting longer is simply avoiding a decision.
When I look at my CV, this is probably one of the experiences that makes me look strongest on paper.
It is also the one I would least want to live through again.
I would not repeat it, but I would not erase it either.