Whose Knot Is It
On teaching managers to hold their own hardest moments
The knot came first. Before I said a word, before I’d even sat down properly, it was already there — the same feeling that later I’d tell managers to expect, though no one quite believes it until it happens to them.
I was still in my first years in HR. She had been there since the early days, one of the people who’d been there from the start.
Her manager was in the room. She said nothing. I did the talking.
My voice was shaking by the second sentence. I got through it anyway — the decision, the reason, the next steps — and somewhere in the middle of it I remember thinking: this is what a good HR person does. You don’t make someone else carry the hard part. You carry it for them.
I needed a drink afterwards. Not because the decision was wrong. I was sure of that. I needed it because of the hour it took to say it out loud to someone I’d known for years, watching her face while I did.
A few weeks later I told my mentor what had happened. I was expecting him to tell me I’d handled it well.
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Instead he said: “You know Roza, you made a mistake here. The responsibility of the announcement lies with the manager. They are the ones deciding on the termination, they are the ones making the announcement.”
I found that liberating, and I didn’t expect to.
It took me longer to understand why the relief ran so deep. I hadn’t just made a mistake that day. I’d been making it every time I stepped in like that, quietly teaching every manager watching that when a moment got hard enough, someone else would carry it for them.
Ever since, I’ve built my work around a different bet: that managers can hold the hardest moments of their role, if someone teaches them how, and then lets them.
Teaching it starts long before the conversation itself. It starts with the direct sentence a manager avoids saying for months: we have a problem, here it is, what can we do about it. A real second chance. Sometimes a third. By the time it comes to the decision itself, the hardest work is already behind you. What’s left is simpler, if not easier: announce it clearly, one reason, allow time to breathe, and listen without rushing to fix or defend.
The structure only carries a manager so far. Some people go quiet, nod, even thank you before they leave. Others push back, get angry, accuse you of things that aren’t true. What that reaction shows you is how differently people carry the loss of something that mattered to them, not whether you got the decision right.
And on the other side of that conversation is someone who, in most cases, didn’t see it coming the way the manager did. Whatever they say or don’t say in that room isn’t the whole of how they’re taking it. Μost of that happens after, alone. Giving them a way to leave with dignity, not just information, is part of the job too.
I still feel that knot sometimes, watching a manager sit across from someone they’re about to let go. But I’m not the one doing the talking anymore. I’m the one who stays after making sure that whatever came out of it, the quiet nod or the two hours it took to finally sign, was met by someone steady enough not to look away.
Originally published at https://serendipitybyroza.substack.com.
