Don’t Rob People of Their Messes
I have complicated feelings about Mel Robbins' "let them" philosophy.
My biggest issue with it is that it can quickly become a proxy for passivity if you're not careful. There are plenty of things in life that we shouldn't just "let them" do if there are real consequences. That said, there are also plenty of situations where “letting them” can save you and everyone around you a tremendous amount of mental anguish.
I worked at a company once where I had a manager who held me to exceptionally high standards. Then she left. A new manager stepped in, and the standards slowly drifted in the opposite direction. The new manager also added several people to the team who made rookie mistakes early on.
At first, I did what I thought was the responsible thing: flagged oversights or asked "why?" when decisions didn't make sense or ignored important historical context about how things came to be. I tried to prevent people from making mistakes that could have damaged their credibility or created unnecessary problems for myself or the rest of the team.
And for my efforts, I earned one of the most frustrating labels you can get as a professional: difficult.
Looking back on my experience, I was in the perfect "let them" situation. Their decisions didn’t impact the perception of my own performance, the consequences to the business were recoverable, and no one was being harmed in any physical or emotional way. The stakes simply weren't high enough to justify the political capital I was spending trying to prevent messes.
This isn't an argument against ever giving feedback or holding high standards. In fact, I think the healthiest work environments are ones where people feel safe challenging each other's thinking without worrying they'll be negatively labeled (I’ve worked on these teams, I promise they do exist). But not every workplace is healthy and not every hill is worth dying on.
When you find yourself in an environment that doesn't value your 2 cents, it's worth remembering that you cannot force a feedback culture. And at some point, you have to stop volunteering to be the person who cares more about the outcome than the people responsible for creating it. Unless you’re explicitly asked for help or the consequence would be costly, just let them learn the hard way.
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