This is article two in a series of seven. Click here to explore the other deadly sins of leadership.
Definition
[The best leaders] serve as human shields, protecting their people from intrusions, distractions, idiocy from on high, and anything else that undermines their performance or well-being.
To shield your team without getting in their way, you need to walk the line between empowering the team to be independent and shape their own path whilst also being involved enough to intercept and shield them from anything that undermines their well-being or performance.
Failing to shield your team is letting the bad influences through.
Shielding your team is hard
Let me be clear — protecting your team well is hard. For example, shielding your team from “idiocy on high” means pushing back against a person who is more powerful than you. That may be something you are comfortable with but it may be well outside your comfort zone. Are you ready to intervene if your boss goes directly to your team and asks them to do something they don’t agree with? Would you step in if your team mention that they are being asked to attend more and more meetings outside their timezone? Even if you are confident that you are able to step in, saying no may come at a cost. It will be your responsibility to decide whether the cost is worth paying.
Another challenge is having the awareness to actually spot when your team is being negatively impacted (or could be). If you don’t know your team well enough, if you aren’t looking hard enough or if you’re not listening well enough, signals can be missed.
A personal example of missing signals took place a few years ago. Several teams I was responsible for were being moved from project to project without staying to work on any one area for long. I made the mistake of assuming that this was fine and the teams enjoyed the variety. I did hear about a level of dissatisfaction with engineers feeling that they didn’t have enough autonomy — but I did not understand the implications and did not act on it. The true level of impact surfaced when several engineers left the business and explained in exit interviews that they were unhappy being constantly moved around without any influence over what they worked on.
My failure was not understanding my teams deeply enough and not listening carefully to what I was being told.
Finally, it can be easy to fall into the trap of destroying your team’s independence by having them rely on you too much. I heard a few years ago from a leader that I respect that “you have done your job when you can go and play a round of golf and no-one notices”. There is some wisdom in that.
Why does it matter?
Every time you fail to protect your team their performance or well-being are negatively impacted and they lose trust in you.
The negative impacts felt by the team can be anything from burning out (if you fail to protect the team from overwork) to dropping performance (if you fail to protect them from unproductive changes) to crashing morale if they are doing the wrong thing (if you fail to protect them from being told to do the wrong thing).
If the team lose enough trust in you, they will probably find a way to escape from you. Remember the saying “people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers”? Well CultureAmp research shows that to be true — kind of. In companies with poor managers and poor leadership, only 22% of employees plan to stay. Conversely at companies with good management and good leadership, 89% of employees intend to stay.
Spotting it in the wild
Signs to watch out for that may indicate you are not shielding your teams.
Idiocy from above
When a powerful person makes your team do anything that’s stupid.
Enough said.
Intrusions
Intrusions are other people or processes getting involved in your team when they are not wanted or needed.
Examples are easy to come by but I will list just a few to help highlight what to watch out for.
- Teams feeling that they do not have the freedom to make their own choices. This is almost always a result of someone somewhere telling the team what they can and can’t do.
- A more subtle version of being told what to do: well meaning bosses who offer too many questions and suggestions (watch out — this could be you!) — again this destroys autonomy.
- Teams feeling excessive pressure. This usually comes from on high and it is your job to shield your team from it. Urgency is healthy, pressure is not — and can lead to mental and physical health issues.
- Intrusive monitoring. Having your eyeballs monitored as you work from home (this really happens), or having someone very high up in an organisation looking for very frequent, very detailed status updates.
Distractions
Distractions are when your team is pulled away from their work without good reason.
- Low value meetings are a terrible distraction to a team.
- A culture of interrupting others even if they are clearly working or do not want to be interrupted (headphones on, clearly focused, under time pressure…)
- Being asked to do too many things which aren’t directly related to the team’s main objective. Timesheets, supporting releases, interviews, presentations…. Too many of these become a real distraction.
- Too many tools or tools that aren’t fit for purpose can be a huge distraction.
- App notifications — email, slack, Telegram, you name it…
- The team reporting on their progress can turn into a distraction if they are asked to do too much of it. This ‘reporting up’ is typically requested by someone high up — and if you subscribe to the inverted pyramid school of thought, should be shielded against.
Short-termism
All projects having a short-term focus is usually a symptom of a business focused solely on short-term returns, at the expense of longer term strategic investments. It may indicate failures at the very top of the organisation to shield the company objectives from the appetites of investors (i.e. Wall Street).
Feeling under-appreciated
Sometimes your team may feel underappreciated despite putting in their very best work. This can be because your team is under-recognised or because other teams are overly recognised. Either way, the human shield has work to do.
Unrelenting, excessive workloads
Teams being repeatedly given unrealistic workloads and then expected to do everything possible to deliver them. One wayt for this to begin is the team headcount being reduced without a corresponding reduction in expactations on what the team can deliver.
Being pushed from one project to another
Teams being moved time and again, never staying in one area long enough to develop expertise and ownership. Some teams love this but some don’t.
Remedy
As mentioned earlier, shielding your teams is hard. Here are some suggestions on techniques to effectively protect your team without stifling or isolating them.
- Be prepared to say no. Be brave and say NO when the team needs you to. If this is hard for you (for example, insubordination is unwelcome in some cultures), practice on smaller things first and work upwards. Ultimately you must be ready to defend your team when the need arises.
- Explain why. When you have to say no to someone to protect your team, make sure you explain why. This should reduce the negative perception of your refusal.
- Negotiate. Be willing to negotiate on behalf of your team. When a direct NO is not acceptable, you should try to negotiate a compromise.
- Know your team. Build a deep understanding of your team and develop your empathy for them. Bring that understanding and empathy and review all influences on the team (see ‘Spotting it in the wild’). For each one, decide whether the team needs shielding from it or not.
- Reflect, reflect, reflect. Don’t make the same mistake as me and miss the signals in what people are telling you. Make it a habit to carefully reflect on what you have seen and heard — then act if necessary.
- Transparency. Be as transparent with the team as possible. Where you judge that the team should to do something which appears to not be in their interest, make sure you tell them why. If the team trust you, the context should be enough for them to get behind what you are asking for.
- Recognition. If your team feels under-appreciated, find ways to acknowledge and reward their achievements. Make those acknowledgements both within the team and publicly.
- Build a culture of psychological safety. When it is safe to question anything, those difficult conversations are a lot less difficult and the team will be more effective at protecting themselves without your help.
- Empower your team. Teach your team these principles and empower the team to be vigilant and protect itself. Who better to reject distractions than the team itself.
Inspiration
Before sharing a story of protecting teams to get you inspired, first consider an extreme example of a leader who lacked empathy for his teams and failed to shield them. In December 2021 better.com was struggling and made the call to cut staff. The CEO Vishal Garg stepped up to let his team know — but he chose to deliver this sledgehammer message over zoom, alienating his staff and half of the internet. After the dismissal announcement, Garg went on to tell his remaining employees that they were “stealing” from the company and that their productivity would be closely monitored. Remember the point about people leaving managers and leadership?
Please don’t give up on humanity though. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, once protected his teams in a way which was so profound and surprising that it has gone down in Pixar Lore as “The day our bosses saved our jobs”. Enjoy:
[In 1985 the] precursor to Pixar, known as the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, was under financial pressure because founder George Lucas (of Star Wars fame) had little faith in the economics of computer animated films. Much of this pressure came down on the heads of the Division’s leaders, Ed Catmull (the dreamer who imagined Pixar long before it produced hit films, and the shaper of its culture) and Alvy Ray Smith (the inventor responsible for, among many other things, the Xerox PARC technology that made the rendering of computer animated films possible).
Lucas had brought in a guy named Doug Norby as President to bring some discipline to Lucasfilm, and as part of his efforts, Norby was pressing Catmull and Smith to do some fairly deep layoffs. The two couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Instead, Catmull tried to make a financial case for keeping his group intact, arguing that layoffs would only reduce the value of a unit that Lucasfilm could profitably sell. (I am relating this story with Craig’s permission, and he double-checked its accuracy with Catmull.) But Norby was unmoved. As Craig tells it: “He was pestering Ed and Alvy for a list of names from the Computer Division to lay off, and Ed and Alvy kept blowing him off. Finally came the order: You will be in my office tomorrow morning at 9:00 with a list of names.”
So what did these two bosses do? “They showed up in his office at 9:00 and plunked down a list,” Craig told me. “It had two names on it: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith.
Source: HBR
Not to be confused with
- Letting your team make mistakes so they can learn from them. This is a useful tool if you use it carefully.
- Letting some urgency reach your team to give them an edge.
- Taking credit for your team’s achievements. That could be called shielding but it is something a great leader would never do.
