Most of the executives I coach got where they are largely by reassuring their teams. They're good in a crisis and good at keeping people calm. What they don't always see is that calm has a cost when it isn't real, and I didn't see it for a long time either.

It’s a reasonable bet, and until this year it was a safe one. Then Meta cut about 8,000 jobs this May, a tenth of the company, and Groupon roughly a quarter of its workforce, both to move the money into AI, and the people cut were largely experienced, well-paid, and supposedly untouchable. Being competent but no longer engaged doesn’t protect you the way it once did.