Guilty as Charged

Posted on May 9, 2025 in #Leadership. Reading time: 5 minutes

The Problem

Let me set the scene for us real quick:

You are the leader of a team of five brilliantly talented and hungry high flyers. You have hand-picked them all and couldn’t be more proud. There is just one problem.

You find yourself at your desk on a Thursday afternoon after yet another crushing conversation with your higher-ups. About how budgets are tight and nobody will be able to get a gold star this year (for the purposes of this exercise, a gold star = a promotion). Trouble is, it has been like this for three years, not one. In just this moment, someone from your team walks in with that look on their face that tells you exactly what time it is. Again. They ask the question, you have to say that you cannot give out gold stars this year, no matter how much you wish you could.

A sigh. A frown. And there it is again, that guilt. Can’t they see that your hands are tied?!

The Root Cause

This problem is only as inescapable as our ability to imagine and communicate a different paradigm is limited. And for that lack of communicative acumen, not the inability to give a promotion, I say: guilty as charged my dear reader (or rather: leader).

It is easy, sooo easy to give into our own frustration, cross our arms and say to ourselves: The system simply is rigged and while we sympathize with our teams, we wish everybody would just stop asking us about promotions already.

The system, possibly, is rigged. But the root cause for your team’s frustration is not the lack of promotions per se. It is the lacking sense of reward in a system that suggests promotion as the ultimate prize.

Lucky for us, this sense can be changed. By us, as leaders.

The Path to Intentional Leadership

“Intention” in this example means finding the courage to be transparent and vulnerable in how you communicate with your team. The kinds of conversations I am proposing may prompt members of your team to leave. Yet, you would see them go in the knowledge that you empowered them to make an informed decision, rather than seeing them leave or stay based on hope and frustration. So take heart, let’s go.

Step 1 – The Firm but Fair Reality Check

A critical step in any paradigm shift is to understand where we are today and to, as a team, decide to break away from it. Gather your people in a room (an actual room ideally) and:

• Acknowledge their frustrations about promotions, give thirty minutes to let them air out the details of why they are unhappy.

• Honestly lay out what you know about the budgetary bind at the top and give your team an opportunity to come to grips with it. Questions are encouraged.

• This next bit is tricky, as it is the departure from the current paradigm and will come with some resistance:

  • Money isn’t everything. Promotions aren’t everything. Especially if you happen to work in a company with already above-market compensation packages, you should 100% point this out to the team in no uncertain terms.
  • Success and reward have dimensions other than promotion in abundance. Dimensions that do not hinge on available budgets. Think visibility, think time, think learning, think growth. It does not mean that you won’t fight for monetary compensation at all times. It simply means that we should broaden our horizon in the interim.

This was big. This was emotional. Close the meeting, but put the next one (step 2) on the books already. Showing that you are a person of consequence is the hallmark of intentional leadership.

This was also the hardest part for you, so take a deep breath, you’ve done well!

Step 2 – The Opportunity for Ownership

This second meeting is dedicated to diving deeper into alternative reward and success paradigms and gives power to team members over their own path. Here is what you could do:

• Share your own annual objectives and discuss as a group which areas who from your team would prefer to contribute to. If the perspectives need reshuffling to make the best of a rigged system, scopes are allowed to get shuffled around as well.

• Depending on your situation, projects can have different “reward types” attached to them. Here are three examples:

  • One project may have high strategic relevance and challenge, but also high control by you (the leader). Your contributing team member might do the leg work on this priority project and sit in on more high-stakes meetings, but they likely won’t be the ones running the show or presenting the work.
  • Another project may be strategically relevant to a lesser degree, but will receive less control from you. The contributing team member gets more autonomy, freedom to call the shots and the chance to present to senior leaders.
  • Yet another project may be more business as usual with less visibility, but also involves less stress. It leaves room for family obligations or things like doing a certificate course with a commitment to run a master class for the rest of the team afterwards.
• Plan the year together, including milestones during which the various rewards can be “cashed in.”

Step 3 – Participatory Success

Nothing breeds more frustration (or worse, apathy) than a lacking sense of agency. As you have introduced a new paradigm, its dynamics are untested and new. You or members of your team could get lost, get into fights, run into dead ends, the whole shebang. Change can feel icky. That’s ok! Make sure that your team knows this and provide a monthly platform to review Step 2 as a group.

Intricate as it may seem, the underlying factor that determines success or failure here is the leader’s (aka your) ability to shift your own perspective first. By doing so, you can take your team with you in this new paradigm and redefine what success and reward look like for you as a unit.

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The Intentional Leadership Series aims to help leaders elevate their craft by learning how to identify and address the root cause of a problem, as opposed to dwelling on the symptom. Often the root cause of leadership that is not intentional but reactive, lies within the leader themself. A lot of this has to do with fear in its many shapes and colours. While acknowledged as fundamental to many of our challenges, this series is not a psychological exploration of our existential angst. We are looking at the attributes and behaviors of Intentional Leadership in practical work-place scenarios. This kind of Intentional Leadership is trust-based, courageous & vulnerable, committed, accountable and impactful.

I also want us to remember that the article you just read is an example only and will never be able to do the complexity of your unique situation justice. If its practical lessons end up helping you in your life, awesome! If this scenario doesn’t sound like your life, but inspires you in one way or another, equally as awesome! And if it just makes you realize that your challenges are so complex that no one person could plausibly be expected to solve them on their own, genius! You are allowed to get support, from a leadership coach like me or any other within your reach. Take care!

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