Great leadership is not just about holding people accountable. It is also about understanding what is actually happening before deciding why someone is struggling. In this episode of _At Work, Under Pressure_, Jessi Beyer sits down with leadership coach and author Mike Goldman to talk about high-performing leadership teams, accountability, coaching, vulnerability, talent development, and why assuming positive intent can completely change the way leaders respond when someone is falling short. Mike explains that leaders often become frustrated because they unconsciously assume negative intent: they’re lazy, they don’t care, they should know better. His alternative is to assume that people are doing the best they can with the resources they have, then get curious about what the leader or employee may be missing. Jessi and Mike discuss: • Why assuming positive intent creates better coaching conversations • What separates a merely good leadership team from a genuinely great one • Why vulnerability includes being able to say “I screwed up,” ask for help, and give difficult feedback • How leadership teams can stay connected to what employees closer to the front line are actually experiencing • Why employee feedback is useless if leaders never communicate what they did with it • How to decide whether someone should be coached up, moved into a better-fitting role, or coached out • Why Mike believes the number one driver of profit growth is people growth Mike also explains why senior leaders cannot afford mediocre performance in roles with outsized influence, and why companies often make the mistake of investing disproportionately in struggling employees while failing to keep developing their strongest people. This episode is for CEOs, executives, HR leaders, leadership coaches, people managers, and anyone trying to build a team where accountability and humanity can exist at the same time. Because assuming positive intent does not mean lowering the standard. It means getting curious enough to understand the real problem before deciding what needs to happen next.