You should not protect your team (sometimes)

One of the things that people keep telling EMs - including me - is that they should protect their team's time. Do the shitty, boring, tedious work, so that they can deliver. Do the tedious work of "tag your resources so that your infra can be accurately billed" so that your team can focus.

There is a kernel of truth to this advice, but I think most well-intentioned managers take it too far. In fact, I've taken it too far as well at times.

Protecting the team is a spectrum; if you veer off the middle towards either the "I exist solely to protect the team" side vs the "who cares about the team" side, then you risk hurting your team.

To clarify, this isn't a problem with shitty managers (i.e. people who don't actually care about their team), because they don't do enough of what I just described in the first place. To be fair though, you're most likely not one of those managers, because you're still reading up until this paragraph.

So rejoice, oh well-intentioned-manager, because you've most likely done your job too well.

Reexamining your job description

Your job is to make your team succeed. All of the team bonding events, all of the "trainings", all of the boring meetings that you shove down their throats; they're there to hold your team together. Booking a venue for your team's paintball event doesn't excite you (unless if you're a psychopath, you sicko), but you do it anyways because it's your job.

At the same time though, you're just one person. You are bound by the same contraint as everyone else: your time and energy is finite.

What happens when you run out of time and energy? Burnout, or missed deadlines, or both - all of which are bad for your team.

Why you should not protect your team (sometimes)

I'll tell you a story: at one point, one of the companies I was working with almost ran out of money; we were potentially unable to make payroll on time.

Me and my business partner had a call to make: should we inject temporary capital into the team itself in order to hide the problem; or should we let the team "feel the fire"?

If you recall, I mentioned something about the act of protecting the team being a delicate spectrum. I wasn't planning on letting the team completely crumble because we can't make payroll - it's just that the payroll itself might be delayed by a few days if - and this is a big if - the team slacks off on pushing the necessary stakeholders to approve our invoice.

And so we broke the news: payroll might be delayed if we don't get paid, and there will be no year-end bonus.

Everyone's faces dropped.

Fast forward a few days though, I noticed a difference in everyone's morales. They became a bit more... pushy with our clients. It seemed like it was an accidental wake-up call, which I completely did not expect.

Again, these decisions are delicate and require so much context, so I'm not saying that you should always do it, but - and this is very important - if your gut says that your team might benefit from a little bit of "stick" after the "carrot" does not work:

You absolutely can let your team feel the fire.

Final words

Have too much on your plate? Delegate.

Your Head of Engineering is asking for random, stupid AI-related initiatives? Delegate to your team, and share the burden.

Feeling the tedium of filling up access forms? Delegate (if allowed by CorpSec).

"My team is getting bogged down, help!"

Then, and only then, does the onus fall on you to escalate. But don't let yourself be the martyr for your team - your team still needs you to perform your EM roles without being bogged down by the minutiae of corporate life.

Your team isn't made up of toddlers (usually). So don't treat them like one; they're your team members, not your children.

Plus, struggling together dealing with the bullshit that life throws at you might just bring your team together. I know because it happened to me.