Toronto Metropolitan University has a problem that no diversity statement can solve.

Its own independent review, headed by a former Ontario Court Of Appeal Justice, contains evidence that Jewish faculty members, staff and students have become afraid to be visibly Jewish at work.

Many participants told investigators that they had experienced antisemitic incidents and feared for their physical safety, while several said they had gone “underground” for fear of being identified as Jewish.

Stop there for a moment.

Imagine an employee at any major Canadian institution telling an independent investigator that members of her community have gone underground because they no longer feel safe identifying themselves.

Would we call that an inclusion problem?

A communications problem?

A disagreement over politics?

Or would we ask whether the employer had created a workplace that had become intolerable?

That is the question Toronto Metropolitan University has to confront and long ago should have.

The external review, conducted by former Justice Mary Lou Benotto and Margot Finley, was not commissioned by a newspaper columnist or an advocate looking for ammunition. It was commissioned by TMU itself to examine the university’s handling of an increasingly bitter campus conflict involving Israel, Palestinians, Jewish students and faculty, protests, free expression and campus safety.

The reviewers heard from people on all sides.

And what emerges is not a picture of a university successfully managing an extraordinarily difficult debate. It is a picture of an institution where trust collapsed.

Some Jewish faculty and staff told the reviewers they were withdrawing from campus life. Some were reluctant to identify themselves publicly as Jewish. Some were afraid to speak about Israel or antisemitism. Some no longer knew whether they could safely raise concerns with administrators.

Those are not people engaged in an energetic academic debate.

They are the words of employees retreating from their workplace.

And there is another passage in the report that is, in some ways, even more revealing.

TMU considered whether the opposing camps should be brought together for dialogue. That would seem like an uncontroversial proposition at a university, a rather obvious first step toward reconciliation and healing.

If two groups cannot stand each other, perhaps they should talk.

If Jewish students believe pro-Palestinian activism has long crossed into antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian students believe accusations of antisemitism are being used to silence Palestinian advocacy, perhaps the university should create a forum where they can dialogue with, even challenge, each other directly. That is what universities are supposed to do.

But the report records serious resistance to the idea.

Students for Justice in Palestine and others made clear that they did not want to engage with Students Supporting Israel.

And Professor Joshua Sealy-Harrington, who now is tenured at Windsor law school, went further.

He argued against dialogue, warning that it could itself normalize Zionism.

“Promoting dialogue is not neutral. As Zionism continues to collapse, ‘dialogue’ initiatives have already become an intentional strategy of pro-Israel activists who are seeking to normalize Israel during an unprecedented period of its belatedly recognized abnormality as a modern settler colonial — and thus, genocidal state.”

You might question how most Jewish students would react to having him as their instructor.

This is an extraordinary position for a university to have to confront.

Not because Professor Sealy-Harrington is forbidden from holding it. He is not.

Academic freedom protects professors precisely because universities should contain people with controversial views.

But consider what the position means for the institution.

One side says, in substance, we do not want to sit down with the other side. A professor supporting that side tells the university that even promoting dialogue between the groups is not neutral.

Meanwhile, Jewish members of the university community are telling the reviewers that they no longer feel safe identifying themselves as Jewish.

And TMU is supposed to maintain a functioning academic workplace in the middle of all this. Fat chance of that!

This is not an argument that TMU should force Palestinians to embrace Zionists or force Jewish students to embrace anti-Zionists.

It is an argument that the university has a responsibility to maintain an environment in which people can disagree without one group effectively disappearing from public life.

That is particularly important for professors.

Students can graduate. Professors (and staff) remain. They return to the same classrooms, the same faculty meetings, the same committees and the same colleagues every day.

They cannot simply log off.

And that brings this from campus politics into employment law.

Constructive dismissal is one of the most misunderstood concepts in employment law.

An employer does not have to say, “You’re fired.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that an employer can fundamentally breach the employment relationship without formally terminating the employee. The question is whether the employer’s conduct has fundamentally altered the employment relationship or created circumstances in which the employee could reasonably regard the employment relationship as at an end.

The law does not require the employer to make the termination explicit.

That is the whole point.

To the extent that TMU staff are unionized, constructive dismissal itself may not apply, and they would have to look for any protections under their collective agreements and the human rights code.

The obvious objection to the report may be that TMU did not create every hostile comment, every protest or every ideological disagreement. An employer is not automatically liable because somebody says something offensive.

But that is not the legal test.

The legal question relates to the cumulative impact of the environment which the university has allowed to fester.

What happens when an employee belongs to a protected group, repeatedly reports that the workplace has become hostile, sees the conflict continuing, loses confidence in the institution’s willingness to protect them and ultimately suppresses their own identity to remain at work?

At some point, “this is just a political controversy” is a remarkably inadequate human and legal response.

TMU’s report itself says that the university has not applied its existing policies consistently or decisively. It has not enforced its own policies. It identifies serious problems with the university’s complaint processes. It records a lack of confidence among members of the community that complaints will actually produce meaningful action.

An employer’s obligation is not fulfilled because it has a 40-page harassment policy as well as many others sitting on its website.

Employees do not work inside policies. They work inside the reality those policies create.

And the reality described by TMU’s independent reviewers is deeply troubling.

Jewish employees say they cannot safely identify themselves and are afraid to speak.

And this at a university whose very purpose is supposed to be the fearless exchange of ideas.

There is an almost unbearable irony here.

Universities and certainly this one regularly lecture about the importance of inclusion. They teach courses about discrimination. They conduct research into workplace equity. They issue statements about creating spaces in which marginalized people can bring their whole selves to work.

Then their own independent reviewers hear Jewish employees saying that they cannot safely be openly Jewish.

If that happened at a law firm, a bank or a corporation, the employer would not get away with saying, “Well, there are strong political feelings on both sides.”

Why should a university have such a dramatically lower standard?

Would this university have tolerated this if it had been any other group than Jews?

None of this is an argument that criticism of Israel is antisemitism. Nor is it an argument that pro-Palestinian advocacy should be prohibited.

A university must protect legitimate political expression, including expression that many people find offensive.

But as the report noted: “Freedom of speech is not an unlimited right. It carries corresponding responsibilities toward others in the university community, and conduct that interferes with the ability of others to speak or participate in lawful university activities falls outside its protection.”

The report also concluded that two misconceptions were common in their review: “First, the misconception that protest rights exist without corresponding responsibilities. The frequent narrative is that protestors are sanctioned because they are protesting, not because of their conduct. Nothing could be further from the truth. The protected right is peaceful protest, not violence or the threat of violence, both of which must be met with zero tolerance.

“Second is the misconception that discriminatory, intimidating and harassing words and conduct are protected. The University has both a legal and institutional responsibility to protect students, faculty, and staff from intimidation, discrimination and harassment.”

Protecting political expression does not require protecting discrimination. And by not enforcing its existing policies, that is exactly what TMU appears to have done.

Academic freedom does not mean that Jewish professors are required to tolerate a workplace in which they feel they must hide their identity.

The university’s responsibility is not to decide who is right about Gaza, Israel, Hamas or Palestinian statehood.

Its responsibility is simple.

Make sure the people who work there can work there.

That means a Jewish staff member should be able to say, “I am Jewish,” without wondering what professional and personal consequences will follow.

She should be able to discuss antisemitism without wondering whether doing so will make her a pariah or result in her being assaulted.

He should be able to express a view about Israel without fearing that his colleagues will regard him as politically contaminated.

And Jewish employees should not have to go underground in order to remain employed.

The Benotto report does not declare that TMU has constructively dismissed anyone. That was not its mandate.

But that is precisely why TMU’s lawyers should be reading it very carefully.

The report supplies evidence. Testimony. Institutional admissions.

And it supplies something employers rarely receive before litigation begins: a warning.

A constructive dismissal lawsuit would ultimately require a court to decide whether the circumstances amounted to a fundamental breach of the employment relationship.

There is a profound difference between an employee saying, “I disagree with what is happening here,” and an employee saying, “I can no longer safely identify who I am or be safe in this environment.”

The first is workplace disagreement. The second is a workplace crisis.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, leading his teams of labour lawyers in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Howard has appeared in more Supreme Court employment law cases and provincial appeals than any lawyer in Canadian history. A bestselling author, he discusses current workplace issues on the podcast, At Work with Howard Levitt.

The law rarely punishes employers for firing poor performers. It punishes them for pretending they never noticed the poor performance until the day they decided to act on it.

That distinction costs Canadian businesses hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

The pattern is almost always the same. A manager complains privately that an employee is missing deadlines, ignoring instructions or producing mediocre work. Everyone around the office knows there is a problem, yet no one tells the employee in clear terms.

Nothing meaningful is committed to writing. Annual performance reviews remain positive — or at least not sufficiently negative — because confrontation is unpleasant and the manager has to keep working day to day with the employee. Management convinces itself the performance will improve or there will be another opportunity to address it.

Until finally there isn't.

The employee is dismissed. A demand letter arrives. Management suddenly remembers every failure in vivid detail. Unfortunately, memories are not evidence.

Judges are understandably skeptical of employers who discover years of poor performance only after they receive a demand letter and retain counsel. They have seen too many cases where a termination letter or response to a demand letter became an exercise in creative writing rather than an accurate summary of what actually occurred.

The lawsuit is no longer about performance. It is about credibility.

And credibility belongs to the party with the better contemporaneous record.

Documentation is not bureaucratic busywork. It is proof that an employer acted honestly, reasonably and consistently.

A brief email identifying the problem, explaining what must improve and warning of the consequences of dismissal (for cause) if it does not is worth more than pages of lawyer's correspondence written months later. The least expensive legal advice is that obtained creating that email.

No termination letter can rescue a process that never existed. Yet many organizations continue to avoid an uncomfortable conversation today only to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending that avoidance tomorrow.

That is not prudent management. It is procrastination with legal fees attached.

The lesson applies equally to executives. When I assess a dismissal case, I spend less time reading the lawyer's letter than the employer's file. A file containing candid emails, contemporaneous notes and clear performance warnings tells one story. A file assembled after the dismissal tells another. One reflects management. The other reflects damage control.

By the time counsel is retained, the outcome of most dismissal cases has already been largely determined — not by what the lawyer says, but by what management did (or failed to do) months earlier.

Employers frequently ask me what the most important document is in a wrongful dismissal case. The answer is invariably the one that should have been written long before anyone contemplated termination.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, leading his teams of labour lawyers in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Howard has appeared in more Supreme Court employment law cases and provincial appeals than any lawyer in Canadian history. A bestselling author, he discusses current workplace issues on the podcast, At Work with Howard Levitt.

Every quarter, boards receive an extraordinary amount of information. Revenue. Profitability. Cash flow. Market share. Forecasts. Operational metrics. Risk assessments. Management presentations.

The modern corporation measures almost everything — and with AI, more than ever.

Yet the most important metric in many organizations is rarely measured: confidence.

Not investor confidence; board confidence. More specifically, board confidence in senior management.

Unlike financial performance, confidence cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet.

There is no dashboard, no quarterly report, no benchmark against competitors, no percentage attached to it.

Yet confidence may be the single most important predictor of whether a chief executive and other C-suite executives remain employed.

The curious thing is that most executives never see it changing.

A CEO receives reports on sales, margins, costs and productivity. No comparable report arrives stating: "Board confidence in management has declined materially during the past 12 months."

Indeed, directors themselves would struggle to identify the precise moment confidence begins to erode.

That is because, in my experience, confidence rarely collapses. It drifts.

A strategic initiative takes longer than expected. An acquisition underperforms. An investor becomes dissatisfied. A governance issue emerges. A valued key executive departs. A forecast is missed.

None of these events may be significant in isolation. Collectively, however, they alter perceptions — not necessarily of competence, but certainly of confidence.

That distinction is critical.

Most executive departures are not caused by a single event. They are caused by the gradual accumulation of concerns that eventually alter the board's assessment of the future.

This often surprises executives.

The event that becomes public — a disappointing quarter, a failed transaction or an investigation — is frequently viewed as the cause of the departure, usually by the executives themselves.

In reality, it may merely be the moment when a much earlier loss of confidence becomes visible.

Experienced directors understand this phenomenon.

The board's most difficult decisions rarely involve evaluating the past but assessing the future.

A board may acknowledge that a chief executive has performed admirably and still conclude that a different leader is required for the business' next phase.

The founder who built the company may not be the ideal person to institutionalize it. The turnaround specialist may not be the optimal growth leader. The aggressive acquirer may not be the right steward of a mature company. The role executives are brought in to perform may become less important to the board.

The executive may not have failed; the board's confidence may simply have shifted from one vision of the future to another.

This is where governance becomes both art and science.

Financial results are objective. Confidence is not.

Directors evaluate judgment, credibility, adaptability, communication, leadership depth, succession planning and strategic vision. Those assessments are inherently subjective.

Yet they often determine outcomes far more consequential than any quarterly earnings report.

This creates a challenge for boards. How candid should directors be when confidence begins to weaken?

Too little communication can leave management blindsided. Too much can create instability and distraction. Many boards struggle to strike the proper balance.

The challenge is equally significant for executives.

The higher leaders rise, the fewer people are willing to deliver uncomfortable truths.

Subordinates hesitate. Advisors are cautious. The directors may be reluctant to voice concerns until those concerns have become difficult to ignore.

The result is that highly accomplished executives sometimes possess less accurate information about their own standing than the people who report to them.

That irony is one of corporate life's least appreciated realities.

It also explains why some executive departures appear so sudden and why the executives are surprised when they occur.

For the board, the discussion has often been underway for months. To the executive, the announcement may feel abrupt.

Both perceptions can be accurate.

There is an important legal dimension to this phenomenon.

By the time confidence has visibly deteriorated, the board may already be considering succession plans, leadership transitions, changes in compensation structures, revised reporting relationships or separation scenarios.

The most significant employment issues affecting senior executives rarely arise after a decision has been made. They arise while confidence is waning.

That is often the period when leverage is greatest, options are broadest and outcomes remain most flexible.

For boards, understanding these dynamics can help avoid unnecessary conflict and poorly managed transitions. For executives, it is even more important.

Financial statements reveal the health of a corporation; they reveal remarkably little about the confidence that ultimately determines who leads it.

And in many organizations, that invisible metric proves more consequential than any number appearing on the balance sheet.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, leading his teams of labour lawyers in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Howard has appeared in more Supreme Court employment law cases and provincial appeals than any lawyer in Canadian history. A bestselling author, he discusses current workplace issues on the podcast, At Work with Howard Levitt.

By Howard Levitt and Michael H. Kennedy

After a recent Toronto Star article outlined complaints regarding Prime Minister Mark Carney's management style and about a difficult working environment within the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Canadians may reasonably have wondered: when does a demanding boss become a legal liability?

The answer might surprise many employees and employers.

As employment lawyers, we routinely advise executives, managers and employees operating in extraordinarily high-pressure environments. Whether a Bay Street trading floor, a corporate boardroom, a major law firm or the Prime Minister's Office PMO, one misconception appears again and again: that being subjected to a tyrannical boss is, by itself, unlawful.

It is not.

Canadian employment law gives employers remarkably broad authority to manage their workforce. A manager may be demanding, impatient, abrasive, blunt, difficult to please and even unpleasant. None of that is inherently illegal.

Courts have repeatedly confirmed that employees are not entitled to a stress-free workplace. Not even close. Employers are permitted to set ambitious targets, impose strict accountability standards, demand long hours (subject to employment standards, maximum number of hours of work) and insist upon exceptional performance. Some of the most successful organizations in the country are built upon precisely those expectations.

A difficult boss may be bad for morale. It may lead to turnover. It may even be poor leadership.

But it does not automatically lead to a lawsuit.

If an employee resigns solely because a supervisor is hard to satisfy, maintains exacting standards or routinely disciplines them for poor performance, that departure will generally be treated as a voluntary resignation, leaving the employee with no entitlement to severance, damages or compensation.

The law changes when management crosses the line from demanding performance to attacking the individual.

An employer's right to manage is not a licence to humiliate or torment.

Constructive dismissal can arise when managers routinely berate employees, scream at them, publicly embarrass them or engage in a pattern of degrading conduct. In those circumstances, the issue is no longer performance management. It becomes a fundamental breach of the relationship itself.

Every employment contract contains an implied legal obligation that employees will be treated with civility, dignity and respect. When management conduct destroys that foundation, an employee may be entitled to resign and claim damages as though they had been terminated.

The financial consequences can be significant.

For senior employees, constructive dismissal awards frequently reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. For executives, they can be substantially higher.

The risks do not stop there.

Across Canada, employers are also subject to statutory obligations to provide workplaces free from harassment and violence. Occupational health and safety legislation, human rights legislation and workplace harassment rules impose legal duties that extend beyond traditional wrongful dismissal principles.

Codes of conduct provide additional contractual obligations, some of which many employers impose upon themselves by borrowing codes from other companies without considering whether they 'walk' that particular 'talk.'

A manager who is merely tough will rarely create liability. A manager whose conduct causes documented psychological injury may.

When harassment, bullying or intimidation contributes to a recognized mental health condition, employers may face human rights claims, workplace safety investigations, aggravated damages and, in some cases, substantial reputational harm.

The modern workplace increasingly recognizes that psychological safety is not simply a human resources objective. It is a legal obligation.

None of this means employers should lower standards. Quite the opposite.

Organizations succeed because leaders demand excellence. Employees are hired to perform and managers are entitled to hold them accountable when they fall short.

But there is an important distinction between demanding excellence and stripping people of their dignity.

One drives performance. The other creates liability.

Whatever the facts ultimately reveal about conditions inside the PMO, the broader lesson extends far beyond politics. No employer is above the law. Not a public company. Not a law firm. Not a government department. And not the office of the prime minister.

Powerful organizations often assume that results excuse behaviour. Canadian courts have repeatedly demonstrated otherwise.

Toughness is legal.

Intensity is legal.

Even a difficult personality is legal.

Humiliation, harassment and conduct that causes psychological harm is not.

That is where management stops and liability begins.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practises employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada. Michael H. Kennedy is an associate at Levitt LLP.

Most executives spend decades accumulating power.

Yet the higher they rise, the less control they may have over their own careers.

That proposition sounds absurd.

After all, senior executives possess authority, influence, resources and compensation levels unimaginable to most employees. They shape strategy. They hire and fire. They negotiate acquisitions. They likely report to boards rather than managers.

From the outside, they appear to have reached the summit of corporate autonomy.

In reality, many discover the opposite.

As executives ascend the corporate ladder, they gradually lose control over the factors that determine their future.

A sales manager can increase sales.

A division head can improve operations.

A vice-president can grow revenue.

The connection between effort and outcome remains relatively direct.

But, for chief executives and other senior leaders, that relationship becomes increasingly tenuous.

The most significant career events often arise from forces beyond their control.

A merger. An activist investor. A private equity acquisition. A change in board leadership. A shift in corporate strategy. A succession initiative. A new controlling shareholder.

A disappointing quarter that has little to do with management performance.

Or simply a board deciding that the next phase of the business requires a different type of leader.

Many executive departures occur not because the executive failed but because circumstances changed.

This reality is poorly understood outside of boardrooms.

The public narrative usually demands a simple explanation. Someone must have underperformed. Someone must have made a mistake. Someone must be responsible. But the truth is often more complicated.

Some of the most successful executives I have represented lost their positions while their organizations were thriving. They were invariably perplexed. Many felt betrayed.

Revenue was increasing. Profitability was strong. Investors were satisfied.

Yet the executive was ousted nonetheless. Why?

Because boards are not paid to evaluate the past. They are paid to anticipate the future.

The qualities that make an executive ideal for one stage of a company's development may render them less suitable for the next.

The founder may not be the ideal institutional leader.

The turnaround specialist may not be the ideal steward.

The entrepreneur may not be the ideal custodian of a mature enterprise.

In each case, the executive may have succeeded brilliantly, but the board concluded that someone else is better suited to what comes next.

There is another reality that many executives find even more uncomfortable: success itself can create vulnerability.

As compensation rises, scrutiny follows.

The executive who creates extraordinary value often accumulates extraordinary compensation.

Salaries increase. Bonuses rise. Restricted share units accumulate. Stock options vest. Deferred compensation plans grow. Retention incentives multiply.

Eventually, a discussion begins that has little to do with performance. It has everything to do with economics.

The question becomes not whether the executive is doing an excellent job but whether the organization wishes to continue paying for it.

In an era of cost pressure, activist investors, private equity ownership and artificial intelligence, I see that discussion with increasing frequency.

Senior leadership positions are no longer viewed solely as achievements but as investments.

Investments are evaluated. Sometimes they are replaced.

What makes this dynamic particularly dangerous is that many executives devote enormous effort to maximizing compensation and comparatively little effort to protecting it or appreciating the vulnerability that comes with it.

This is where employment law enters the discussion.

Most executives understand the value of negotiating an additional bonus percentage.

Far fewer understand the significance of the provisions governing their departure and the fate of their various entitlements.

Yet it is often those provisions that ultimately determine whether an executive retains or forfeits a substantial portion of their accumulated wealth.

The treatment of stock options. Restricted share units. Performance share units. Deferred compensation. Retention bonuses. Change-of-control protections. Carried interest. Termination provisions. Constructive dismissal rights. Restrictive covenants.

The language governing these clauses can affect outcomes measured not in weeks or months of compensation, but in years.

Ironically, many executives first seek advice regarding these matters only after they have received a call from the CEO or chair of the board requesting a meeting.

By then, their leverage has diminished substantially.

The most sophisticated executives approach the issue differently.

They understand that the most important employment advice is rarely obtained during a departure. It is obtained years beforehand, while they still possess their maximum bargaining power.

Smart execs prepare while they still have options; while amendments can still be negotiated; when they are still viewed as the "next best thing" who will turn the company around.

The greatest risk facing senior executives is not that their careers will end, as they inevitably do.

The greater risk is discovering too late that they never truly understood the rules governing that ending.

And in corporate life, endings usually prove far more consequential than beginnings.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practises employment law in all provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.

One of the more surprising conversations that we have with employers begins once they have decided to dismiss someone.

"The employee showed poor judgment," they say.

Perhaps.

But before accepting that conclusion, we usually ask a question they were not expecting.

"When was the last time you allowed the employee to exercise any?"

It is remarkable how frequently the answer is, "Not very often."

Then, after the employee failed to demonstrate initiative, the employer concluded that was the problem. But it may not have been.

One of the great misconceptions in management is that the more closely employees are supervised, the more accountable they become.

The opposite is usually true.

The more decisions require approval, the less ownership employees have over them. After all, if someone else is calling all the shots, whose decisions are they?

Managers then find themselves trapped by a problem of their own making. Every issue lands on their desk. Every client request needs their blessing. Every minor disagreement is escalated.

They complain that employees do not think independently. And many will not. But that is sometimes because independent thinking has been trained out of them.

Employment law recognizes an employer's broad right to manage. Courts are not interested in running businesses. They have consistently recognized that employers may establish standards, supervise performance and hold employees accountable.

What courts are less willing to accept is management exercised arbitrarily, inconsistently or in a manner that fundamentally alters the employment relationship. Lawsuits, in various forms, flow from that. The issue is rarely whether an employer exercised authority; it is whether that authority was exercised fairly, consistently and rationally.

Ironically, good management follows much the same principle.

Oversight is essential. Micromanagement is usually optional. There is an important distinction between measuring results and directing every step taken to achieve them. One promotes accountability; the other replaces it.

Technology has made that distinction easier to overlook. Today's employer can monitor emails, logins, Teams messages, workflows, calendars and, increasingly, AI-generated productivity metrics. The temptation is understandable. If something can be measured, why not do so and monitor it?

The danger is that organizations begin measuring activity instead of contributions.

An employee who sends 12 status reports will accomplish less than one who quietly solves 12 problems.

A manager copied on every email may feel informed while becoming the biggest obstacle to getting anything done.

The most closely supervised employee is not the most effective. The strongest employees eventually leave organizations in which every decision requires permission. Those who remain often adapt by becoming exactly what management appears to want: careful, compliant and unwilling to take risks.

Going back to our opening, the employer then wonders where all the initiative and judgment went. It walked out the door with the people who still had some.

Of course, none of this suggests employers should lower standards. Expectations should be high. Performance should be measured. Problems should be addressed promptly. Some employees require close supervision, particularly when they are inexperienced, struggling or working in highly regulated environments.

But there is a difference between setting standards and taking over the job. The goal should be to train them to the point where they are prepared and empowered to do the work themselves.

The best managers understand their role is not to make every decision; it is to ensure that good decisions are made.

After decades practising employment law, we have learned that employers usually overestimate the value of control and underestimate the value of judgment.

We know this from personal experience on top of our client work. Early in Howard's career, he worked for a couple of top organizations that stifled initiative. The result was that he (and others like him) left, and over time, the organizations lost what had attracted people to them in the first place.

The organizations that consistently perform best are rarely those in which every decision flows upwards.

They are the ones where capable people are trusted to exercise judgment, are held accountable for the results and given room to succeed — or fail — on their own.

If employees never have the opportunity to exercise judgment, it becomes very difficult to criticize them for lacking it and impossible to assert cause to fire them for it.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practises employment law in all provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada. Dante Capannelli is a partner at Levitt LLP.