Hi Reader,

When a team member comes to you and says, “I’m not doing well right now,” what do you do? Most managers who want to help suggest a vacation or give them easier work.

To the manager, that’s care. To the team member, it says: I told you the truth, and you stopped trusting me with the work.

This is one of the most common mistakes leaders make around mental health at work. It comes from good intentions, and it still does damage.

The ACT model: responding when someone says they’re struggling

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Ralph Kellogg, Chief Human Resources Officer at Lutheran Family Services and author of Leading While Human, about holding people accountable and treating them as humans at the same time. He uses a simple model for this moment, called ACT.

Acknowledge. Say what you’ve noticed without labeling or diagnosing it: “I see this. This is my observation. Are you okay?” Start from concern, so the person doesn’t feel called out.

Compassionate accountability. Keep the person and the work together. Ask how you can support them right now, then go through their priorities together and decide what moves. They keep the work that matters, and you two decide the load together.

Transparency. Stay open and come back to it. If you’ve felt the same way, you can say so. A “me too” can do more than any script. Then check in a week or two later: “You brought this to me, and I wanted to see how you’re doing.” If they’re not ready to talk, that’s fine. They know the door is open.

Why it works

There are two reasons.

First, it protects the person’s standing. Pulling work signals lost confidence, and reprioritizing together signals the opposite. Accountability stays, and so does trust.

Second, the follow-up turns one talk into an ongoing relationship. If you raise it once and never mention it again, the person is left exposed and the conversation looks transactional. A check-in two weeks later shows it was about them.

ACT has one condition: the relationship has to exist before the hard moment. If every conversation you’ve had with someone was about a missed deadline, “Are you okay?” will sound like the start of another one.

Try it this week

Look back at your last few conversations with each person on your team. If they were all about problems or results, book one this week that isn’t. Ask what they enjoy working on right now and what’s getting in their way.

Then prepare what you’d say if someone told you they were struggling, so you don’t have to improvise: “Thank you for telling me. How can I support you right now? Let’s look at your priorities together and decide what moves.” When that conversation happens, put a reminder in your calendar for two weeks later.

One line worth keeping

“Relationships aren’t built in one moment. They’re built upon small moments that you have with people throughout the day.”

The full episode covers more. Ralph explains how the ACT model came out of leading through the pandemic. He tells the story of a new manager who answered an isolated employee with “me too” and worried it was unprofessional. And he has an answer for founders who say they don’t have time for any of this: “Do you have time to replace that person?” You can listen on your favorite platform.