Hi, Joe
Not sure this is the kind of question you answer but I need some guidance. I am the new supervisor of my team after a challenging reorg. It’s been a hard process of taking on this role, but I think I’m in a good place. Except for one guy on my team. He is doing everything to make it hard to move forward. I’ve tried reasoning with him but it’s not working. Any suggestions?
New supervisor
Hey, New Supervisor.
Sorry to hear you are going through this. Many of my clients are asking me the same question. With so many companies and nonprofits dealing with budget cuts, discussions around returning to the office or working from home, and an increase in resignations, it’s getting more challenging to manage an effective work culture.
In my coaching and trainings, I use a classic framework from American author, speaker, and organizational consultant William Bridges, where he explains that transition is the psychological process of adapting to change. In his writings, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the many-faceted layers of transition as a key for systems and organizations to navigate change and growth effectively.
“Transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation that marks the turning points in the paths to growth,” he says. “Transitions are key times in the natural process of self-renewal.”
Bridges offers us a simple, three-phase guideline that leads to clarity and aids us in successfully moving through transition.
- Letting go of the past.
- The "neutral zone" where the past is gone, but the new hasn’t fully presented itself yet.
- Embracing the new.
While the external circumstances may have already changed, we all have our own relationship with change, based on our psychological makeup, trauma history, privilege and how much we have to lose with the imminent change. Some see it as an exciting chance to expand; others can feel a threat to their power.
Using this “map” is a helpful first step in coming up with a strategy of how to support you and each member of your team to all go through that process of stepping into the new. My suggestion is to see where all members of your team currently are situated in this process. It sounds like you have fully embraced the new, or are still hovering in that uncomfortable liminal space where you are still not sure how things will play out. And it sounds like this person you are having trouble with is stubbornly not letting go of the old.
Once you’ve evaluated what phase each person is in, then you can come up with strategies for how to support them to continue moving forward. If people have let go of the old, but are still not embracing the new, what can you do to alleviate some of their anxiety caused by the uncertainty. Perhaps you need to be clearer in exactly what is expected of them in this new model.
And for this colleague who is stubbornly holding on to the old, maybe it’s a question of them gaining their trust. What can you do to show them that they will not be left behind, or become obsolete, in this new configuration? Maybe find out what their deeper concerns are, or what they would need to open to letting go of the old ways.
You may find out that they are just sabotaging the process; that they will never support you. If that is the case, perhaps it is appropriate to ask them to consider whether this job is still right for them. This of course is tricky when dealing with HR issues, but the sooner it is made clear that there is no way that the team is going back to the old way, the sooner you can have them make their own decision of whether to be collegial or to move on.
If it doesn’t feel safe for you to address them in this way, perhaps you find someone to join you in this conversation. The best way to help the other people be more receptive is to meet them where they are, give them the benefit of the doubt, and still stay clear and steadfast in your conviction that the change is inevitable. If you have any questions on how best to have difficult conversations like these, where you ensure that neither of you get harmed in the process, check out my book, “Mastering Respectful Confrontation,” for skills and strategies.
This is one way to approach this, New Supervisor. Perhaps you can use this situation as an opportunity to sharpen your management skills, and also as a way to establish your authority as both a compassionate and decisive leader. By doing so you build trust and safety, and set the conditions for a work culture based on respect and accountability.
Keep looking forward on your path,
Joe
Learn more about Joe Weston and his work here. Make sure to c heck out Joe’s bestselling book Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace, published March 2023.
To Ask Joe, please submit questions to: AskJoe@Fulcrum.us.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.