The signature is a pattern rather than an event: turnover concentrated in one team, exit interviews that circle the same subject without quite naming it, internal candidates who withdraw when they learn who they would report to, and no single incident that would sustain a formal process.
Why the Usual Responses Fail
Doing nothing is the most common, and it is a decision with a running cost: recruitment, lost knowledge, the quiet reputational effect on internal mobility, and the people who stay and disengage. Performance managing the manager rarely works either, for a specific reason — the difficulty is usually not that they are failing at their job. They are frequently technically strong, which is often precisely why they were promoted, and they are hitting their numbers; the problem is entirely in how they operate with people, and a performance process that cannot point to an output failure looks arbitrary and is experienced as such. Waiting for a formal complaint is the worst of the three: it means the organisation has known about a problem for years and acted only when someone was distressed enough to put their name to something, which is a poor position to be in if the matter is later examined, and which places the entire burden on the person least able to carry it. And when the complaint does come, it frequently fails the definition test — because being abrupt, exclusionary, inconsistent and demoralising is not necessarily bullying in law.
What Actually Shifts It
Two things, usually in sequence. First, a mediated conversation about a specific relationship, where one exists that is currently deteriorating. This works better than general feedback because it is concrete: not “people find you difficult” — which almost every manager in this position has heard and discounted — but a particular person, a particular set of behaviours, and a particular set of arrangements agreed going forward. Managers who have dismissed years of vague feedback frequently respond quite differently when someone describes, in a facilitated setting, exactly what happens and what effect it has. Second, the organisational question that mediation cannot answer: whether the role is right, whether the manager has ever been trained to manage, whether the span of control is realistic, and whether the organisation has been rewarding results while quietly tolerating the method for years. That last point deserves honesty — in a good many of these situations the manager has been promoted, praised and retained on the strength of output while everyone around them managed the consequences, and it is not entirely reasonable to treat the resulting pattern as purely their failure. Where the underlying issue is structural, mediation will surface it and say so, which is more useful than facilitating a conversation that changes nothing. The full page on reporting-line breakdowns.
The exception that overrides all of this: if what is actually happening amounts to bullying, harassment on discriminatory grounds, or conduct engaging safety duties, this is not a development conversation — it is a matter requiring investigation, and treating it as a coaching problem is exactly the error that leaves employers badly exposed.
A pattern you have been aware of for a while? 01 5827148.
Richard O’Shea — Solicitor & Mediator
Solicitor at Mary Molloy Solicitors (established 1981) and holder of the Law Society of Ireland Diploma in Mediation. The firm also runs a substantial employment practice, which is why the honest sorting question — whether a situation needs a mediation or an investigation — gets answered at the first call rather than halfway through. Workplace mediations are conducted on site, at neutral venues, at The Ormond Building on Ormond Quay, at the Kilkenny office — or fully online. The mediator is appointed by both sides and acts for neither. 01 5827148 · richardoshea@marymolloysolicitors.com · LinkedIn
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