The first time I got laid off, we had just had our second child, and it was right before Christmas. Then it happened at Zillow, the company I figured was too big for that. Then it happened again. More kids every time.

This one is different. No script. I turned the camera on after a long weekend and talked about the storms, the ones at work and the ones you don't post about.

What the layoffs taught me: companies make decisions you can't control, and the only thing you control is you. And every single time, I didn't lose everything. I lost a job. My family was standing right next to me.

That goes straight into how you lead. A job can end tomorrow. The relationships you build with your team can last the rest of your life, so treat people like people, even on the day you have to make the hard call. And for everybody who's asked whether six kids are a distraction: they're the reason I do any of it.

This week: help the person who can't get to the 80%. Do something for somebody else first.

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One summer my dad decided we were putting up solar panels on our thirteen acres in Missouri, years before anybody did that, and he handed the whole problem to me. "Steven, can you figure this out?" I got it most of the way there, he told me I did a fantastic job, and then we built it together.

That's what delegation is supposed to feel like. Here's what it usually feels like instead: you hand someone a project, they bring it back at 80% of what you'd have built, and the night before it's due you change all of it. What you just told them, without a word, is "your work doesn't matter, just bring me the 80% next time and I'll do the rest." Nothing degrades trust faster.

So: if it's 80% there, let them present it. Defend them in the room. Coach afterward, because that's where the growth is, and it means more when they're the ones who say "I could have done that better."

This isn't hands-off leadership. You still set the goal and you still deliver results. But don't rescue them, don't swoop in, don't redo it at midnight. We're building thinkers, not button pushers.

Also in here: why I've been quiet for a couple of weeks, the two questions I ask my own kids after a bad grade, and why every person on your team needs a different version of you.

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I let somebody sit in a review and hear something for the first time that I had known for six months. I told myself the whole time that I was being kind. I wasn't. I just didn't want the twenty uncomfortable minutes.

Nobody avoids a hard conversation because they're lazy. They avoid it because saying nothing feels like care in the moment, and the bill doesn't come due for months. Kim Scott calls it ruinous empathy — you care about the person, and because you care, you don't challenge them. And the opposite failure is no better: saying it harshly and calling that honesty.

You're not sparing them. You're deciding, by yourself, what they're allowed to know about their own career. Every week I didn't say it, I made it more expensive for that person. It never cost me anything. That's the part I got wrong.

In this one: why silence isn't neutral and what people conclude from it, a stretch from the new season of Ted Lasso about a coach nobody liked and what changed when somebody told her what he actually saw, Brené Brown's clear is kind, unclear is unkind — and then the move, step by step. Put a deadline on it. Say it in the one-on-one, because that's what those thirty minutes are for. Lead with what you saw, not what you concluded. Name the impact. Then stop talking.

Nobody has ever been fired by surprise. Somebody knew. Somebody always knew.

There is somebody on your team right now who would fix it if they knew. Tell them.

Free 1-on-1 Starter Kit: https://beyondjustleadership.com/links