I largely agree, especially with the sentiment that there are two sides to any story. I think one angle I'll nitpick though is this doesn't have to be related

I largely agree, especially with the sentiment that there are two sides to any story. I think one angle I'll nitpick though is this doesn't have to be related to whether or not the employee was a high performer or had particular leadership needs or whether they're adaptable to the current maturity level of the org. There can and likely are many other elements such as whether the manager/employee even get along, or agree on direction, strategy, problems, etc. And the difficulty is, these types of issues can often show up as performance issues. In lots of cases, is the performance issue the employees fault or the leaders. In my anecdotal experience where a job went from the best role I ever had to one of the worst happened over a very short week or two with the change in a manager. And I think to the point you're making, when I resigned I outright said... each of us is going to blame the other for my departure. The hard truth is the answer is likely if either of us had been different people I'd still be in that role doing work I really enjoyed, but in that particular leader/follower relationship we simply didn't get along well at all. If I ever did a what it was like or why I left post, I'd probably have plenty of arguments for my side, because I think to your point, I'll be the hero in my own story.