…t’s natural to throw up our own defenses and metaphorically cover our ears. Listen to the employee. It may be your last chance to hear from them their perspective on why they failed. You may also get invaluable insight into the cultural problems at the organization; after all, they’ve nothing to lose and they’re likely to be honest.
If your product mangers are working on one problem, your designers are designing a solution to solve another, and your developers are implementing a solution for a third, you don’t have a cross-functional team. You have siloed teams. It doesn’t matter if they occasionally talk to each other. It doesn’t matter if they sit together. You do NOT have a cross-functional team.
Poor leadership comes in many shapes and sizes. Signs of incompetence can come from abusive behaviours, lacking technical expertise, having no clue on how to give feedback, failing to understand potential and general inability to evaluate performance. Regardless of how purposeful, well-crafted and meaningful the job is to the employee, incompetent leadership will result in inevitable burnout, turnover, and even accidents.