Sarah's manager asked her every Monday morning: "How are you doing?"
And every Monday morning, Sarah said: "Good, thanks."
Even the week she worked until 2am four nights in a row.
Even the week she cried in her car before coming into the office.
Even the week she updated her resume and started responding to recruiter messages.
"Good, thanks."
Three weeks later, Sarah resigned. Her manager was blindsided. "I asked her all the time how she was doing. She always said she was fine."
She did. Because that's what "How are you?" trains people to say.
It's a greeting masquerading as a question. Everyone knows the script. You ask, they say fine, you both move on. Nobody wants to be the person who actually answers honestly and turns a hallway chat into a therapy session.
But here's what that costs you: Sarah was drowning for months. She needed help. She needed someone to actually see what was happening. Instead, she got a question that didn't want a real answer.
So she left.
Now imagine her manager had asked something different. Something specific. Something that invited honesty without demanding a performance.
"On a scale of 1-10, how sustainable does your workload feel this week?"
That's it. One question. Ten seconds to ask.
But it changes everything.
First, it's specific. You're not asking about their general state of being or their weekend plans or their vague sense of workplace satisfaction. You're asking about something concrete that affects them right now.
Second, it's scaled. A number is easier to give than a confession. Sarah might not volunteer "I'm completely overwhelmed and considering quitting," but she'll say "probably a 4" when you give her a framework.
Third, it invites action. When someone says they're "fine," what are you supposed to do with that? But when someone says they're at a 4 on workload sustainability, you know exactly what comes next.
You have a conversation.
Anything below a 7 means something is off. Maybe it's temporary. Maybe it's a busy season they knew was coming. But you need to talk about it. You need to know if they see a path through or if they're just hoping it gets better.
Anything below a 5 means you're losing them. Maybe not today. Maybe not this month. But they're in the danger zone. They're running calculations about how long they can keep this pace before something breaks.
And if you catch it here, you can still do something about it.
You can redistribute work. You can push back deadlines. You can kill the project that's draining everyone. You can have the hard conversation with leadership about resourcing. You can actually solve the problem instead of reading about it in an exit interview six weeks later.
This one question has saved more people from burnout than any wellness program or pizza party ever could.
Not because it's magic. Because it's honest.
It gives people permission to tell the truth in a way that "How are you?" never will.
Sarah's manager is asking better questions now. The person who replaced Sarah gets a weekly check-in that actually checks in.
Nobody's quit since.