WednesdAMA: Reader-Submitted Questions
While it’s true we get to do a lot of cool work with various companies, it’s no secret that our individual mentoring is considered the crown jewel of The Threadsmith Group. If we can make one person’s life better through the mentoring we provide, the business is a success.
BUT, not everyone is able to make the investment to get 1:1 mentoring, and we believe in giving back to the community. So welcome to WednesdAMA, in which we take a mix of reader submitted questions and LinkedIn questions and answer them.
LinkedIn: “You've tried everything to please a dissatisfied client. How can you turn the situation around?”
If you've genuinely tried everything—communicated clearly, adjusted your approach, offered options, listened carefully to feedback—and they’re still unhappy, you’ve got to be willing to walk away. One quote that sticks with me is this: “You can be the sweetest peach on the tree, but some people just don’t like peaches.”
Some clients are just never going to be satisfied, and continuing to twist yourself into knots trying to win them over is a fast track to resentment and burnout. You don’t need to keep proving your worth to someone who refuses to see it. At some point, it stops being a customer service problem and starts being a self-respect problem.
Let them go. Let them be dissatisfied somewhere else. Protect your mental health, your team’s energy, and your business reputation by knowing when to say, “This isn’t working anymore.” It’s not a failure to cut ties—it’s a sign of maturity and boundaries.
Reader-Submitted: “I was promoted to manager but still feel like “one of the team.” How do I step into leadership without losing trust?”
Ugh, this is such a hard and weird transition to make. Companies often pluck you out of being a high performer on your team and are like, “ok great you were so good at individual contribution, now do this completely different skillset with effectively zero training. Ta-taaaa!”
Suddenly you’re managing people who were your peers last week, and no one gives you the tools to navigate the emotional, relational, or structural whiplash that comes with that.
So what do you do? Weirdly, you talk about it. Be straight up with your team. I’ve been in this position, and I held 1:1s with people to let them know that my role had changed, I wanted to make sure I was supporting them in a fair, clear way, and that I wasn’t going to get it right all the time but that I was definitely going to do my best to advocate for them and earn their respect as their boss.
It’s vulnerable and awkward to have that discussion, but it helps significantly. Step into that power, acknowledge it’s a little weird, and do everything you can to BE a leader by advocating for your team, removing roadblocks, and doing your best to be empathetic and supportive for every one of your new direct reports.
You’re on your way, and I believe in you.
LinkedIn: “Your manager expects the impossible. How do you maintain your sanity while meeting their demands?”
You don’t. You will never win at a game designed for you to lose.
You can time-block. You can boundary up. You can drink the calming tea and do the breathwork and read the leadership books and still feel like you’re drowning. Because you are.
When someone expects you to do three jobs, hit impossible metrics, or run on pure adrenaline and gratitude, they’re not setting a high bar. They’re building a system that rewards collapse.
And no, you cannot fix a bad manager by being a better employee, it’s not possible to outperform dysfunction.
You cannot therapy your way out of a toxic job. I’ve tried. Multiple times. I’ve also failed, multiple times, so I know what I’m on about.
Here’s what I’d do:
Start polishing my resume.
Start having quiet conversations with people who are hiring.
Start believing that you deserve a manager who lives in this reality and on this timeline.
There is no growth in being chronically overextended, there’s no character building in these bullshit setups. All you wind up with is burnout, lost time, and so much crying in your therapist’s office.
Protect your health, protect your joy, and realize: no job is worth your mental health. Do not compromise on that.
Reader-Submitted: “I have feedback for my manager but I’m afraid of retaliation. Should I say something?”
Ope, back up: the fact that you’re even asking this question is the real answer.
If you’re afraid to give honest, respectful feedback to your manager, it means you already know it’s not a psychologically safe relationship. And that is not something you caused or you can fix. That’s a failure in leadership—and no, it’s not your job to “coach up.”
If you say something and they retaliate, even subtly? You lose.
If you say nothing and stay silent? You’re still losing.
So here’s what you do instead: start documenting everything. Start detaching. Start prepping your exit.
Your job is not to rehabilitate a bad manager with your carefully worded feedback, your job is to protect your peace and get out of there.
Here’s the truth: if your feedback would hurt their ego more than it would help your team, they’re not a manager, they’re a liability. You don’t owe them anything.
The Threadsmith Group Approach
At The Threadsmith Group, we don’t believe in cookie-cutter advice. We believe in real answers for real people, backed by experience, strategy, and a healthy dose of common sense.
Got a question of your own? Send it in. Let’s talk about the things that actually matter.