You absolutely cannot be a good leader if you can’t stand up for your people. Period. Let’s face it, when things go well you, as a leader, get to share in the glory. If things go wrong, you don’t get to point fingers and put the blame on your team. You share in the good and the bad. What differentiates a good leader is that when the bad things come, they take all the heat for it with upper management. “When you stand up for people, you show that you’re “on their side” when they need help. This builds long-term loyalty, trust, credibility, commitment, and morale in your team, and it gives your people a confidence boost.” (Mind Tools, 2008)
Understand that, at some point, you will have to take the heat for something your team did. Your job as a leader is to protect them and sometimes that means putting the responsibility for it on your own shoulders. That is your job. When necessary, make sure they know that you did it and then figure out how you will remedy this so that it doesn’t happen again.
That isn’t to say that the team, or a team member, gets off that easily. You are going to have to counsel your team, or the person, about what went wrong, how, and why. They need to understand what was wrong and commit to making an effort not to repeat the mistake again. If the mistake was blatant or negligent, you will have to put the burden onto them and deal with them appropriately; even if it means letting them go.
Sometimes you will take the heat because you disagree with a policy or decision from up the organizational chain that could negatively affect the team. Again, it’s your shop, it’s your responsibility. You can share this with your team if you want but don’t brag about it. You’ll get no points of respect from them that way. Don’t use it as a tool to manipulate your team; taking the heat for something easy and using that as a marker for payback later. Unfortunately, I have seen that, and I ended up respecting the person less than I had before that.
When it is Time to Stand Up
When the time comes and you need to stand up for your people, never go in cold. You need to be ready in advance so that you don’t look like you are flying off the handle with your response. (Mind Tools, 2008)
- Know your values. Know right off the bat what you are willing to stand up for an what you won’t. Think about what you will do and say to management or the customer when you do.
- Analyze the situation and assess the risks. Know what you are getting into and make sure you understand the consequences of what may happen if you stand up for your people and it isn’t popular with those you are butting heads with.
- Decide on Action. Figure out what/how you are going to act to defend your people. Don’t just go in cold. Think hard about what you want to say and do. Plan, then act.
- Defend
appropriately.
- Stand up for your whole team, not just the people you like.
An Example of Standing Up When Things Go Very Wrong:
Earlier in my career, we had full administrative rights on our servers and networks (it was all centralized to Washington and then to the cloud over the years). One day, a call to upgrade our Exchange server was sent out to the field. I always ran the patches on an offline server just to make sure it was OK. My staff knew this and were never happy about having to take the extra time to test it when “Washington” said we could do it. On that particular day, I took the day off for a function at my son’s school when the email calling for a patch was received. Since I wasn’t around, a couple of my staff figured what the boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him and they patched the production server. Two things happened, 1) they ran the patch during the middle of the workday (I always had them wait until just after working hours so that our customers could work uninterrupted) and 2) the Exchange server crashed almost immediately.
I received a frantic call from the front office that all email had stopped working. I had to come back to work to see what was happening and it didn’t take long to get to the truth. I asked them why they didn’t test the patch first and all I got from them was silence and a lot of staring at the floor. I got a copy of the backup tape, restored the server, and then headed up to the front office. It was not pretty. I got a royal chewing out from everyone at the table. When they finally got their anger off their chests, the Ambassador looked me straight in the eye and said “Who’s fault is this Chuck. You were at your son’s school all day, so it couldn’t have been you. Who did this? I want to know right now!”
My response was immediate: “It’s my fault sir. It’s my shop, it happened on my watch, so it’s my responsibility. I’ll take the heat; whatever you decide.” He said it was noble to have my staff’s back, but that this couldn’t go without reprisal. He asked again and I gave him the same answer. I was asked to leave the room. I am not sure what was said in there for the next 15 minutes. When I was asked to come back in, they were all calmed down and they told me that if it ever happened again that I would be on the next plane back to the states with a No Confidence letter from the Ambassador in my personnel record. I agreed with their terms.
When I went back down to my office, I called in the entire team and told them what happened. They were shocked that I did that. I told them that I had that process of testing patches offline in place for a good reason and that they just proved to everyone that it was a good one. I made them all promise right there and then that this would never happen again and that they understood why I did things this way. All of them agreed and, apart from a shutdown of the server room due to a major failure of the building’s air conditioning system during the heat of the following summer, our servers never failed for the rest of the time I was posted at that embassy.
An Example of Standing Up Against a Management Decision:
Not long after arriving at a previous posting, I had justified additional staffing in my section. My colleagues in general services and finance had done the same for their respective offices and we were confident that our requests would be approved. All our staffs had been over worked and there were a lot of overtime slips being submitted. The metrics were clearly there to support all our requests. One day, the Management Counselor called a meeting of the section heads and told us that all our requests were being denied because of budget cuts and, to add salt to the wound, that no overtime would be approved for the remainder of the fiscal year. We were to deny any overtime request that was submitted.
I told the Management Counselor that I would not deny overtime requests that was submitted to me that could be justified. We needed to ensure that our projects were completed, that our customers were attended to, and that our systems were properly maintained. All this required overtime, since we didn’t (and weren’t going to) have the staff to get the job done during working hours that overtime was a necessity. Plus, some tasks, like server upgrades or patches, needed to be done after hours or it would impact the ability for our customers to work during business hours.
Normally, I would have discussed this one-on-one with the Management Counselor, but since they made it a point of tossing all of us this bombshell in a group setting, I responded in kind. The immediate reaction was “you better tow the line and be a team player Chuck. You are in management and you have to back all management decisions!” To which I immediately responded “My people will always come first. Always. This is wrong and I will not play that game.”
After a lot of back and forth, the Management Counselor decided that they would vet, in advance, all overtime requests with justifications. Staying late to finish a task that was not critical to mission function would wait until the next business day. We all agreed.
Once the meeting was over, I did not say a word to my staff about what transpired. I was not going to use this as a marker to be cashed in later. Eventually, the staff got word of what we had done. They said nothing to me, but I did hear from someone else that it was that day I earned their respect. Honestly, I noticed the change in attitude, but I still never said a word to them about it.
Works Cited
Mind Tools. (2008). Standing Up for Your People. Retrieved from MindTools: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/standing-up-for-your-people.htm
Schmitt, J. (2013, February 19). 12 Ways to Be the Leader Everyone Wants to Work For. Retrieved from Forbes Magazine: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2013/02/19/12-ways-to-be-the-leader-everyone-wants-to-work-for/#30e115621eda
Stack, L. (2016, March 7). 3 Ways to Stand Up for Your Staff When the Going Gets Tough. Retrieved from The Business Journals: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2016/03/stand-up-for-your-staff-when-the-going-gets-tough.html