They Were All My Managers

What a decade of different bosses taught me — about leadership, about people, and about myself.

I’ve had managers from different countries, different cultures, different genders, different leadership styles. Some I admired deeply. Some I learned to appreciate only in hindsight. And a few — I’ll be honest — taught me my most important lessons by showing me exactly what not to do.

They were all my managers. And in their own way, they were all my teachers.

The one who gave me my first management role

He saw something in me before I could see it in myself. When I hesitated, he pushed me outside my comfort zone — not impatiently, but with a kind of quiet certainty that I was capable of more. He didn’t just hand me a title. He handed me belief. I am forever grateful to him for that. He also taught me one of the most important things I carry as a leader today: learn to identify the potential in a person, not just their current performance, and give them challenges that match who they could become — not only who they are right now.

The one who stayed calm when the room exploded

Our department was under fire. He was the one being yelled at — not me, not someone else. Him. And he didn’t yell back. He didn’t scramble to defend himself or cave to the pressure of the room. He simply stopped the meeting and said, calmly and clearly, that it would continue once everyone was ready to conduct themselves professionally and respectfully. That was it. No drama. No retaliation. Just a quiet line drawn in the ground.

He could have easily matched the energy in that room. He chose not to. And that choice — that deliberate, composed choice — was more powerful than anything he could have shouted. I learned that day that how you run a meeting is a statement about who you are. He never lost himself, not even for a moment. I’ve always admired him for that.

The one who turned a hidden problem into an opportunity

In the busy rhythm of daily work, it’s easy to leave things as they’ve always been. Some problems don’t get solved — they just get normalized, quietly buried under the pace of everything else. I raised one of those problems once. It had always been there, just never spoken out loud.

She could have thanked me and moved on. Instead, she chose to do something about it. She allocated real resources — people and time — and rather than just patching the issue, she framed it as a project. A real one, with structure and purpose. She used it as an opportunity to train and empower her younger staff in Lean tools and Six Sigma methodology. A hidden problem became a managed improvement project. And I was one of the people she brought along for it.

That experience taught me two things I’ve never let go of: never be afraid to speak up about a problem you see in the system, and never underestimate how much a problem, handled right, can become a platform for growth.

The one who saw the person behind the employee

People don’t leave or stay in a job based on salary alone. Their manager has an enormous influence on that decision — often more than people openly admit. He understood this, not as a management theory but as a simple human truth.

He remembered things. He’d ask how my family was doing. He noticed when something seemed off, and he’d ask — not because it was on a checklist, but because he genuinely cared. We often call this “soft skills.” I prefer to call them human skills. Because people are not machines. We spend so many hours at work that, for many of us, it becomes a second home. And no one wants to spend that much of their life feeling invisible.

I was lucky to have him — and I know that, especially when I hear other people’s stories. You can become a manager. You can become a leader. But please, always stay human.

The one who walked into the CEO’s office with me

I had been called in to explain my actions to the CEO. I was young, I was insecure, and I was terrified. I went to her and told her honestly: I don’t want to go in there alone. She didn’t hesitate. She came with me.

She couldn’t give the explanations — those were mine to give. She didn’t have all the details, and it wasn’t her place to defend me. She came for one reason only: so I wouldn’t be alone in that room. And that changed everything. Just having her there settled something in me. Before I walked in, she looked at me and said: say exactly what you think, and why you did it. No excuses needed.

I took a deep breath. And I spoke with a confidence I hadn’t felt when I walked through the door. That’s what real backing looks like — not just words in private, but presence when it costs something. I have never forgotten what it felt like to have someone stand beside me like that.

The one who taught me that mistakes are how you know you’re working

He wasn’t my direct manager — he was the project manager, part of the broader leadership team. But when I made a serious mistake, he was the first person I called. I had shared the wrong documentation with external parties. I was nervous, apologizing, already spiraling. He listened, and then he said, calmly: “First, calm down. Only the ones who don’t work never make mistakes.”

That one sentence stopped me cold — in the best way. He didn’t dismiss what happened. But he immediately shifted the frame. Instead of dwelling on the error, he started looking at it from a completely different angle. Together, we found a way to turn the situation around — what felt like a crisis became a leverage point. Lemons into lemonade, as they say.

He taught me that there is almost always a way forward — you just have to be willing to look at things differently and be creative enough to find it. I’ve carried that with me ever since. I use it with my own teams, I share it with people who come to me for professional advice, and honestly — it has served me just as well in my personal life as it ever has at work. Some lessons are bigger than the job.

The one who let me go so I could grow

When the time came to leave, I didn’t hide it or soften it. I shared openly and honestly why I was going. She listened without interrupting. She understood without making it about herself. She didn’t take it personally — because she knew. She knew I had more to give than the organization could offer me at that point. She knew I needed to go somewhere else to continue my path. And rather than hold on, she let go — with warmth, with belief in me, and with genuine wishes for what was ahead.

Letting someone leave so they can grow — that’s not easy. It takes a kind of confidence and generosity that not every leader has. That, to me, is real leadership. We’re still in touch.

And then there were the others. The ones I learned from in a different way.

The one who never saw the team — only the individuals

Everything happened in separate, private conversations. Decisions were made one corridor at a time. So it would happen regularly — a team member would find out about something that had already been decided, something that affected them directly, and they’d be caught completely off guard. Not because they weren’t capable of contributing. Simply because they were never asked.

I raised it once, directly. I told him we needed a team meeting — a real one, where everyone sits together, where all voices are heard, where each person can bring the perspective that comes with their role. I explained that together we could help him see the full picture. It didn’t land. Nothing changed.

What I took from it is this: you cannot build collective performance without building collective identity. And you will never see the full picture if you choose for yourself who to listen to and when. A team that is never in the same room — never truly aligned — will always be working at a fraction of what it could be.

The one who only saw the half-empty cup

Every meeting, every discussion, was about what was wrong. The gaps, the problems, the things that hadn’t worked. There was no balance — no acknowledgment of what was actually going well, no celebration of small wins, no moment where someone could feel that their efforts had been seen and recognized.

When I raised it, the answer was simple: “If it works, there’s nothing to discuss.” I understood the logic. I just didn’t agree with it. Because people don’t move forward on criticism alone. They need wins too — real examples of what good looks like, proof that progress is possible, moments that give them the energy to actually want to improve.

You can’t inspire change by only pointing at what’s broken. The cup is not only half empty. It is also half full. And a good leader makes sure their team can see both.

The one who sent me in without the tools to succeed

I was given a project. A real assignment, with a KPI attached to it and what felt like a green light to move forward. What I didn’t have — and only discovered along the way — was the alignment, the management backup, or the organizational support to actually make it work. Higher-level managers were not on the same page. No one had prepared the ground. And when I raised the flag and said this isn’t going to work the way it’s set up, I felt the silence more than anything else. Nobody really stepped in.

I gave it everything I had. I did my best with what I was given. But some things are set up to fail before they begin — and no amount of effort can fully compensate for a foundation that was never there.

That experience shaped something I say to managers to this day: don’t set your people up for failure. If you give someone a job, make sure they have the tools to do it. The mandate, the backing, the aligned stakeholders, the real support — not just the assignment. It is just setting up for failure. And that is on the manager, not the person.

Here’s what I believe after all of it: you don’t need a perfect manager to become a good leader. You need enough self-awareness to know what to take, what to leave, and what to actively reverse.

The managers who inspired me and showed me what to do and how to act, the ones who showed me what to avoid and what not to be — they all shaped me. Both lessons were essential.

They were all my managers. Every single one.

The HR & Organizational Excellence Toolkit gives teams the structure to lead people well — including the Annual Performance Review for consistent, meaningful feedback.