In her first HR leadership role, Heather MacKay-Mencheski was told people were scared of her and that she was tearing bridges down. She apologised to thirteen colleagues, then spent a long time rebuilding trust in small steps. The lesson: leadership means serving, not being in charge.
The most defining moments of my career have been my mistakes. The bigger the mistake, the bigger the lesson. And the biggest change in how I lead, and in how I understand HR entirely, came out of one of my first HR leadership roles.
It was brutal.
The conversation that ended my first leadership role
I came into a manufacturing organization genuinely excited. I knew what I was going to do, how I was going to conquer the world, and how I was going to build a great culture while I did it.
I was one of the youngest people on the leadership team and the only woman on it, and I felt like I had a point to prove.
So I came storming in. I need this from you, and this, and here is how we are getting into compliance. I believed I was doing exactly what the company needed. I was protecting the organization, and I could have defended every individual thing I asked for.
Then I was called into the CEO's office. He said my name, and I thought he was about to tell me he was happy with my work.
He said he did not think this was a good fit for me.
My mouth dropped. I had no idea what to do in that moment. Then he explained why. People were scared of me. They did not like working with me. They felt like I was the principal all the time. I was not building bridges, I was tearing them down.
I went home bawling. All I could think was that I had finally got my first opportunity to lead and I was terrible at it.
Why I apologised to thirteen people
I will never forget walking back in. It was a Tuesday, because Tuesday was the day we held leadership meetings, and there were thirteen other people in the room.
I apologised. I apologised for my behaviour, for steamrolling them, and for not listening to what they believed the organization needed. I owned my mistakes in front of all of them.
It was brutal, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. It was also the moment my understanding of leadership changed, because I had to say out loud that being responsible for something does not entitle me to push past everyone else to accomplish it.
I would love to tell you the apology fixed things. It did not. It only made the repair possible.
Rebuilding trust is slow, and there is no shortcut
Anyone who thinks regaining leadership trust is quick has never had to do it.
Trust is earned rather than granted, which everyone says. What people say less often is that when you lose it, you get it back in very small steps, repeated many times, over a long period.
For me that meant sitting down with each leader and asking what their particular problems were. It meant small wins and tiny solutions that slowly let them see me as a partner rather than an obstacle. It meant asking for their advice and their help on what they were trying to solve, instead of assuming I already knew what they wanted.
Mostly it meant time and consistency. Not one gesture, but the same behaviour often enough that it stopped looking like a performance.
It worked. The relationships I ended up having with those leaders, and the way we were able to support their teams together, were genuinely successful. But the rebuilding took far longer than the damage did.
The second lesson: sixty days of building relationships
There is a companion lesson I learned later, from an excellent CHRO, and it was painful in a completely different way.
I arrived at an organization and the first thing they told me was that I should spend my first sixty days building relationships and getting to know people. No changing policies. No fixing anything. Just relationships.
I am a doer. I said no. They said no back, repeatedly.
Every one-to-one with him made it worse. He would not open with what was going on or what roadblocks I had. He would ask who I had met that week, who I had coffee with, how I was feeling. I kept telling him I was not feeling anything, because I felt like I was accomplishing nothing and contributing nothing to the organization.
I did the sixty days, and they nearly killed me.
Then we had to close a facility during COVID. We had to move all of our residents and displace a hundred and twenty employees. And because of the relationships I had been made to build, people stayed until the very last day and took care of every one of those residents while we helped them find their next jobs. They knew they could trust us when we said we would get them through it.
I could not see the value of those sixty days while I was inside them. I could see it very clearly when we had to have those conversations.
What I took from it
Four things came out of that year that I still lead by:
- Listen long enough to understand what someone needs before deciding you have the answer.
- Treat colleagues as partners whose perspectives belong in the decision.
- Own the behaviour you need to change without making people reassure you about it.
- Follow an apology with changes people can actually experience.
That last one matters most. An apology that is not followed by visible change is just a request for absolution, and people can tell the difference immediately.
Leadership means you serve, not that you are in charge
What I learned is that our job in leadership is to be there to support, encourage, and serve other people. My defining moment was learning that leadership is about serving rather than dictating.
That sounds soft until you try to practise it on a week when production is behind and three decisions are waiting on you. Serving does not mean lowering the standard or avoiding the difficult conversation. It means the standard is not a thing I impose from above while ignoring what the people doing the work can see.
The version of me that walked into that manufacturing organization would have read this article and disagreed with it. I was certain I was right, and I was technically right about most of the individual items. I was wrong about the only thing that determined whether any of it would happen.
Why I am grateful for the feedback
I appreciate that CEO telling me. I am sure it was not easy for him either.
The further along in my career I had carried that behaviour, the bigger the eventual fall would have been. Getting it early, when the damage was contained to one leadership team, was a gift even though it did not feel like one.
People do not generally enjoy being evaluated, critiqued, or given feedback. I am a firm believer that respectful feedback is the only way any of us grow. When people only tell you that you are doing a great job, where do you go from there?
If you are a leader, this cuts both ways. You need people willing to tell you the thing nobody wants to say, and your team needs to believe you will respond to it the way you would want a manager to respond to you.
What to do with this if you recognise yourself
Some of you reading this are the person I was, and you will know it by a specific feeling. It is the sense that you are the only one who understands what actually needs to happen here.
If that is familiar, three questions are worth sitting with. When did you last change your position because of something a colleague said? Who on your leadership team has stopped raising objections, and when did that start? If someone were scared to work with you, how would you find out?
That last question is the one that matters, because in my case the answer was that I would not have found out. Someone had to tell me.
The people around you usually know long before you do. That is true of performance problems, and it is just as true of you. Our piece on why you are always the last to know works through the same pattern from the other direction.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the feedback that changed how Heather leads?
A CEO told her he did not think the role was a good fit, because people were scared of her, did not like working with her, felt she was the principal all the time, and saw her tearing bridges down rather than building them.
How long does it take to rebuild trust with a team?
Longer than causing the damage took. Trust comes back in very small steps repeated many times: sitting down with people, asking what they are trying to solve, delivering small wins, and asking for their advice instead of assuming you know.
Does apologising to a team actually help?
Only when it is followed by changes people can experience. An apology on its own makes the repair possible rather than complete. Without visible change afterwards, it reads as a request for absolution.
Does serving as a leader mean lowering standards?
No. It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or dropping expectations. It means the standard is not imposed from above while ignoring what the people doing the work can see.
How would a leader find out if people were afraid to work with them?
Usually they would not, unless somebody tells them. That is why respectful feedback matters, and why it is worth noticing which colleagues have quietly stopped raising objections and when that started.