I Discovered a “Secret” Slack Channel Where Managers Rate Staff—And a Chain Reaction Began

The letter you’re about to read highlights a familiar tension: when formal power exists, but trust doesn’t. It raises an uncomfortable question—if leadership were just about position, why do so many employees feel unheard, pressured, or disconnected from their managers?

The letter:

“I wasn’t supposed to see the chat.

Someone added me to a Slack channel by mistake and removed me a few minutes later, but not before I scrolled through enough to realize what it was. It was managers-only, and the comments were awful.

They weren’t talking about work or performance, they were talking about people—who was ‘too dumb to lead,’ who was ‘useful but disposable,’ who was ‘a future HR problem.’ My name was there, and the comments weren’t subtle.

A few days later my boss called me into his office. I didn’t mention the chat, but he did. Smiling, he said the leadership liked me and that a promotion was being discussed. It felt wrong, like a payoff for something unspoken.

After that, his behavior changed. He started micromanaging me, cutting me off in meetings, making jokes about how ambitious people sometimes forget their place.

Eventually we had a conflict. He raised his voice, shut the door, and told me I should be careful about how I interpreted internal conversations. He said I was overthinking things, that careers can stall very easily, and that he was only trying to protect me. That was when it clicked—the promotion wasn’t protection, it was leverage.

I went to HR the next day and told them everything: the secret chat, the comments about employees, the sudden promotion talk, and the closed-door meeting where he tried to intimidate me. HR stayed neutral, took notes, and said they would ‘look into it.’

Two weeks later my boss stopped speaking to me completely, and the promotion was quietly postponed. A month after that, HR informed the team that my boss was leaving the company, effective immediately. No announcement, no explanation.

I still work there. But now I know that in some workplaces, promotions aren’t rewards—they’re warnings.

Is it weird?

X.”

No, it isn’t weird—and it’s more common than people realize. In organizational psychology, this pattern fits what’s called informal power management: when leaders use incentives like promotions not as rewards, but as tools to control risk. Once an employee is perceived as “aware,” “outspoken,” or potentially escalating issues, managers may try to neutralize that risk by offering status, praise, or advancement—while simultaneously increasing surveillance and pressure.

The goal isn’t development, but containment. When that fails, organizations often shift into damage-control mode, where HR intervenes quietly to reduce legal exposure rather than publicly address wrongdoing. What feels confusing on a personal level is often a system responding predictably to a perceived threat.

Why secret chats like this exist

Managers often create private spaces to speak freely, but without oversight these spaces drift from strategy into dehumanization. When people believe their conversations are hidden, they’re more likely to use labels (“difficult,” “disposable,” “risk”) instead of facts. Over time, those labels quietly influence decisions, even when no one intends them to become official policy.

Why HR acted quietly

HR’s role is often misunderstood. In most organizations, HR’s primary responsibility is risk management, not justice. When credible evidence suggests legal or reputational exposure, the fastest solution is usually structural: remove the risk, limit discussion, avoid precedent. Silence doesn’t mean nothing happened—it often means something serious did.

Here are a few simple questions worth thinking about:

• If leading people were really that easy, why do so many employees—or even whole teams—end up disliking their bosses?
• What kind of power do we usually rely on by default: our title, our authority, or our relationships? Can we be more flexible and use different ways to influence people instead of just one?
• Why do some people in formal leadership roles seem unaware of how their behavior affects others? And why do some managers struggle to earn respect or be liked by their teams, even though they have authority?
• Finally, how can we build referent power—the kind of influence that comes from trust, respect, and people genuinely wanting to follow us?

And sometimes, a difficult experience becomes the lesson we didn’t know we needed.

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