The leader who protects their team too well

Hi Nik,

Every week I share one thing I have observed in the field of commercial leadership. This week it is about autonomy and the cost of protection.

There is a specific kind of leadership trap that only affects the best managers. It does not show up in performance data, and it rarely surfaces in 360 feedback, but it quietly caps what a commercial team can become.

This week in the field

The most conscientious commercial leaders often create the highest levels of dependency in their teams. Not through neglect or poor management, but through the opposite: they care deeply, they prepare their people thoroughly, and they absorb complexity before it reaches the team. Over time, the team learns to route decisions upward not because they lack capability, but because the leader has made it easier and safer to do so. The protection that built trust has become the ceiling on growth.

What it means in practice

The shift required is not about stepping back or becoming less available. It is about becoming more deliberate with when you intervene and when you do not. If your team consistently brings decisions to you that they are capable of resolving, the answer is not to refuse the conversation. It is to change what happens inside it: ask a question rather than provide an answer, and hold the silence long enough for them to find it themselves. That discomfort, for both parties, is where genuine capability is built.

The question to sit with this week

If everyone on your team spent two months without access to you, which decisions would they make well, and which ones would reveal that your presence has been doing the thinking for them?

Curious where you'd score on this? Take the free CODE Leadership Scorecard, five minutes, free.