The First Person I Managed Who I Failed

Aarav had been on my team in Hyderabad for three months when I understood, too slowly and too late, that I was failing him. He was in his first professional role, younger than me by five years, and genuinely capable in ways that I had not done enough to make visible or to develop.

What I had done, in the busy first months of managing for the first time, was treat him primarily as a unit of output rather than as a person in the early stages of building something important - his professional identity and capability.

I had not invested the time to understand what he was finding difficult and what kind of support would have addressed it. I had given feedback that was accurate and poorly timed, which is one of the more expensive management errors because accurate feedback delivered at the wrong moment produces defensiveness rather than development.

I had assigned him work that needed to be done rather than work that would develop him, which is efficient in the short term and a failure of management in any meaningful sense. He resigned at the five-month mark to take a role elsewhere.

In the exit conversation I asked him, directly and without the self-protection I might have reached for, whether there was anything I could have done differently. He was honest in a way that I think required courage from someone leaving his first role.

He said he had not felt like anyone was invested in whether he grew. He was right. I had been invested in what he produced and had not distinguished between that and being invested in him. The distinction is the whole thing.

Every management decision I have made since that conversation has been informed by what I failed to do for Aarav.