Misjudged: How Systems Get People Wrong and What It Costs

We like to believe our judgments are fair.

But many of the decisions people make about others happen long before understanding has had a chance to develop. First impressions form within seconds. Labels attach quickly and linger long after they stop reflecting reality. Reputations spread through organizations before anyone stops to question whether they’re still true. And once those conclusions are made, the systems around them begin reinforcing rather than reconsidering.

In Misjudged, attorney and leadership strategist Mary Kaye Holmes examines ten of the most common ways leaders and organizations get people wrong — and what it costs when those misjudgments go unchallenged. Drawing from behavioral research, organizational dynamics, and her own experience navigating institutional systems from both sides, she explores the hidden patterns that shape how people are trusted, evaluated, promoted, and defined.

From the confidence trap to the institutional echo, each chapter names a distinct pattern, examines how it operates, and challenges leaders to question the assumptions driving their decisions before those assumptions become embedded into culture.

Because misjudgment rarely begins with bad intentions. It begins with patterns people fail to recognize in themselves.

Misjudged is for leaders who want to evaluate people more clearly, build cultures where growth is possible, and lead with the kind of discernment that sees people as they actually are, not simply as they first appeared.