A conversation with Tanya Uyigue, career coach and author of What Your Team Won’t Tell You, on the promotion she didn’t get, the employee who called her an absentee manager on the way out, and why being direct is still the hardest thing she does.
Why Honest Feedback From Employees Rarely Reaches Managers
Tanya Uyigue had been gone from the job long enough to have some distance. She recorded a three-minute video about a promotion she’d applied for, didn’t get, and never received a real explanation for. She held onto it for a month before posting.
She didn’t want to come across as bitter. She didn’t want the story to be about her. Her content had always been about the people watching it, the ones quietly living through the same experiences and wondering if they were the only ones. Posting about her own career disappointment felt like a risk she couldn’t fully calculate.
She posted it anyway, and it passed a million views on TikTok. In the comments, people kept telling her the same thing. That’s my story. That’s almost exactly what happened to me. Many of them described an external hire who came in and didn’t work out. “This seems to be a very common thing,” she told me. What felt intensely personal turned out to be close to universal.
That video, and the years of DMs, coaching sessions, and comments that followed, became the foundation for her book, What Your Team Won’t Tell You. Most of it was honest feedback from employees that never reached the managers who needed to hear it. People kept asking her to say the things they couldn’t say at work, and the book is her answer.
What Happens When You’re Passed Over for a Promotion
The story behind that video shapes everything about how Tanya thinks about management and what gets left unsaid inside organizations.
She had applied for a promotion at a company where she’d never received a negative review. She was a high performer who knew the work well. Being passed over for a promotion is hard. Being passed over with no real reason is harder. When she asked for feedback, which she considers the right move, she was told the person they hired had attended a university that impressed the decision makers and could bring something different to the team. That person had no experience in the field.
The external hire lasted 60 days. The company then promoted a colleague Tanya had helped recruit years earlier, someone who hadn’t felt ready for the role and hadn’t applied the first time around. That person became her boss.
“It was so awkward for me,” she said. “And it was awkward for them.” The awkwardness wasn’t about anything her colleague had done. “I helped and advocated for you to be here. But I also believe that if you see an opportunity to grow, make more money, and/or gain more experience, then take it. I can’t get mad at someone for that.” What she knew, even sitting in that first one-on-one, was that she wasn’t going to stay much longer.
She still doesn’t have a full explanation for why she didn’t get the role. At some point, she said, you have to decide whether the answer still matters.
Why High Performers Get Stuck Waiting for a Promotion
One of the more uncomfortable threads in the book is about the ways high performers contribute to their own stagnation. Tanya names it plainly. She played herself.
“I gave myself more work constantly, like a fool,” she said. She saw problems that needed solving and opportunities nobody was going after, and she took them on. She also wanted to grow and get promoted, and the two felt connected. Do more, show your value, move up. But the goalposts kept moving. There was always a reason. The budget, timing, and some vague promise of later that never arrived.
“Sometimes it’s like we can get mad at the company, managers, or leadership, but there are patterns that we’re just not paying attention [to]. If we pay attention, then we will see it’s time for you to go.” Her point is that another company might value the work more, or have the budget, or have the desire. “If you don’t make the move, you’re playing yourself.”
Safe Bet Employees and the Problem With Hiring for Cultural Fit
One concept that threads through the book is what Tanya calls the safe bet employee. These are the people certain leaders feel comfortable around because they’re predictable. They won’t ask hard questions in meetings. They won’t push back in ways that draw attention. They might disagree privately, but they’ll go along with it publicly.
“They’re not a threat,” she said simply. She’s careful not to cast these employees as lesser. Some of them have learned to read the corporate environment with real skill, knowing when to speak and when to stay quiet. What troubles her is the culture that rewards it, and the people who feel they have to dim their light so someone else can feel safer. A leadership team that selects for comfort over capability eventually pays for it, usually in talent that quietly leaves.
The comment that stayed with her came from a senior leader evaluating a colleague she’d recommended. The presentation was good, the leader said, but the person didn’t quite have the polish. Tanya knew what that meant. The person had the knowledge, skill set, and respect of the people around them. What they didn’t have was the look and sound the leader had in mind for the role. It was a cultural fit judgment dressed up as feedback.
“I hate that I get it,” she told me. Back then, she said little more than that she thought the person was great. Today, she’d advocate harder. She’d name the specific things that the colleague had delivered and make the case that being different from the leader was an asset. Her reasoning is practical. You usually can’t criticize a powerful leader directly, but you can remind them of what they’re overlooking, because sometimes leaders don’t even realize what they’re doing.
How to Avoid Becoming an Absentee Manager
Some of the sharpest material in the book comes from Tanya’s own time as a manager, which she writes about with the directness she wishes more leaders brought to themselves.
One moment, she returns to what happened in a group setting, with her own boss in the room. Her direct report said, half joking, that Tanya never came around, never checked in, and wouldn’t know what they’d been working on. People laughed. “It really wasn’t funny,” she said. “It was kind of shocking for me.” She had become an absentee manager without realizing it.
She’d hired this person because they seemed capable, and in her mind, she was giving them room to work. What she missed was that they were early in their career and wanted something different from a manager than she did. “I would love for my manager to just leave me alone. I don’t want you around. I don’t need you. But some people do.”
The lesson she takes from it is about assumptions. What a leader wants from their manager isn’t necessarily what their team wants from that manager. If she’d had a manager coaching her through that moment, she said, they would have told her to ask the person how they like to be led. How often to meet, what goes on the agenda, and how they like to be recognized. Asking those questions directly is how a manager learns what each person actually needs.
How Middle Managers Can Lead Well Under Pressure From Above
Tanya is honest about something that often gets lost in conversations about bad management. A lot of what managers do to their people is being done to them first. Middle managers often inherit the habits of the people above them. Micromanagement comes down the chain. A lack of transparency is often policy, not personality.
Two weeks into a new job, a manager told Tanya to never let her staff know what was going on or how she was feeling. Just smile and tell them everything is fine. She was skeptical then and still is. She doesn’t believe in dumping on your team, but she does believe in telling them what you did with their input and what’s still unresolved. “People know that there are challenges and that there are problems that are not solved,” she said. Being open about it gives people room to help.
She also won’t let managers off the hook entirely.
“How you treat people still is your choice, and I think that that’s important for people to remember.”
Even inside a culture that doesn’t model good leadership, there’s still a range of choices for how you show up for the people who report to you. That range is narrower in some organizations than others, and it’s still there.
How to Rebuild Trust With Your Team as a Manager
When I asked Tanya what she’d say to a manager who reads the book and recognizes themselves in it, she didn’t offer easy reassurance. Recognition is the starting point. Change has to be behavioral and consistent, and it won’t produce quick results. People remember the old version of a leader. If you want to rebuild trust with your team, expect it to come back slowly.
“Just because you read this book and just because you put some of these changes into place, it doesn’t mean that your staff is gonna suddenly like you or respect you more,” she said. “That will take time.”
What she recommends is simpler than most people expect. Have the conversation. Acknowledge what you’re comfortable acknowledging. Listen more than you talk. Then follow through, again and again. “Your behavior over time is what could make the difference.”
She compares it to employee surveys that ask for feedback every year, with nothing changing. A manager who names their blind spots and then keeps behaving the same way is doing the same thing to their team.
Why Direct Communication Is Still Hard for Leaders
Tanya wrote this book because the people in her coaching sessions and DMs kept handing her the same experiences from different angles, and nobody on the leadership side was saying what most employees already knew. She chose to be direct.
That choice was tested. After the first draft, some early readers told her it was too direct, even harsh. She panicked. She thought about softening parts of it. In the end, she kept it the way she wrote it, because, as she put it, being direct is what people want from her when they can’t safely say it themselves.
Her affirmation in the book says she’s becoming a leader who doesn’t shrink, perform, or apologize for being clear. She told me that being clear is still the hardest of the three. Direct communication is a skill she’s still practicing, and the book was one more round of it. “I moved forward anyway,” she said, “and we will see.”
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Brandon Laws is the host of Transform Your Workplace and the VP of Marketing and Product at Xenium HR, an outsourced HR and payroll partner for small and mid-sized businesses in Portland, Oregon.