'How to Tell Somebody Off' - by Adam Carlton

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So you make a decision. Then someone on your team goes off and does what they think is right. But what they think is right completely undermines what you're trying to do.  

You tell yourself: I need to explain to this person that disloyalty and insubordination are not good things. They need to shape up. They need to behave.  

But how do you do that?  

When I was in my twenties, teaching, I once saw the head of my department chastising a misbehaving schoolboy. I might well have brought the little delinquent in myself, expecting a proper dressing-down. So I stood to one side and watched closely.  

As a young teacher, I needed all the help I could get in something as crucial as disciplining bad children.  

It was strange. The head spoke all the right words. The rebuke was articulate, precise. But the tone was almost conversational, his gaze floating somewhere above the child’s left shoulder. No direct eye contact. No tension in the air. No actual telling-off was happening. It was pure theatre. The child nodded in all the right places, said all the expected things. The teacher performed his lines perfectly. But nobody’s mind or emotions changed.  

That, I thought, is how not to tell somebody off.  

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We are meant to be disciplined. We discuss objectives, we make a plan. As a cadre dirigeant, I expect my people to execute in a coordinated way, checking-in as appropriate. But in this case, one of them hadn’t. Someone had gone rogue. I couldn’t let it slide. It had to be addressed.  

But how?  

I spent a long time thinking about how to handle it. They had, I felt, been disloyal and insubordinate. I couldn’t just let that pass. I ran through scenarios in my head, rehearsing cutting monologues:  

"You’ve been disloyal and insubordinate. You seem to think you’re in charge, that I work for you. The truth is the other way around. You work for me. If you have a problem with that, fine—go ahead and run this project yourself. But don’t expect me to tolerate this any longer."  

I repeated versions of this, refining the rhetoric. And then I stopped.  

This felt wrong. Entirely wrong.  

What did I actually want?  

I wasn’t looking for a dramatic confrontation. I needed a change of behavior, a shift in understanding. I needed this person to recognize that they were, in fact, working with me and that I was in charge, they were not operating independently. That’s not really a cognitive change—it’s an emotional one.  

So I had to be blunt. I had to own this conversation, look them in the eye, not flinch. I needed to be fully present in the moment, not reading from a script.  

The right way to begin?  

"Recall this situation. What were you thinking?"  

And then silence. Wait. Just wait.  

When they answered, I wouldn’t argue. I’d simply reframe. Show them, through their own words, how their actions had been disloyal. Keep turning the mirror until they saw it from my perspective. Make them choose: either they acknowledged they were part of a team, accountable to me, or they admitted their position was untenable.  

That, surely, is how you tell someone off.  

But then another thought struck me—the reason we all recoil from this kind of conversation is that it’s deeply inegalitarian.  

We try to work with our colleagues in a collegial, easygoing way, without rigid hierarchy or fear. The moment you impose authority, everything changes. Subservience creeps in. A social distance opens up. We move from free discussion to domination. We become rigid.  

This kind of power dynamic belongs in the army, or in old-fashioned corporations where fear keeps the machine running.  

Did I want that? Was that the kind of organization we were supposed to be?  

I decided: no - at least, not when it’s working properly.  

So I revisited the whole situation. Was this person actually disloyal and insubordinate? Or had they simply been enthusiastic—too eager to solve a problem, acting impetuously rather than maliciously? Had they just skipped a step they didn’t think was necessary?  

Should I be reprimanding them—or supporting them?  

And then suddenly, I realised: I was the idiot here.  

Instead of fretting about power and control, I should have been working with them to establish a shared understanding of how we should operate as a team—not getting bogged down in authority games.  

So perhaps there are several lessons here about telling people off.  

And the most important one is this: most of the time, there are smarter things to do than telling people off.