Your team finds out fast whether you'll actually go to bat for them, or whether that's just something you say.
Build a case, not just an objection
In a leadership role after Smoke Cartel, someone above me wanted to demote a longtime team member over a single paperwork lapse: a license renewal that ran a few weeks late.
I said no, in writing, and I built an actual case instead of just pushing back. His real record: the fewest incidents of anyone in his position, more hours worked during a crisis than anyone else on the team, and a level of patience with a genuinely difficult situation that most people in his seat wouldn't have had. I laid it out point by point, the way you'd defend a budget line: numbers, dates, a documented record, not just loyalty.
It worked. He kept his position.
Loyalty alone is easy to wave off. A documented record is much harder to argue with.
Protect your team from outside the org chart, too
In that same role, my team eventually told me about a recurring problem with someone outside the team who wasn't treating them well. They'd quietly stopped reporting it because they were worried about what speaking up would cost them.
That second part bothered me as much as the first. I put both in writing to leadership: what had been happening, and the fact that my own people hadn't felt safe telling me. I pushed for a firm boundary and said plainly that protecting my team mattered more than protecting that relationship.
Prove it the first time it actually costs you something.
The time I didn't
I don't want this to read like I always got it right. I didn't.
Years ago, I let a retail employee go based on a single complaint that reached me through social media. I didn't do the due diligence it deserved. There was no evidence beyond one person's account, and I didn't look for any. I just acted.
Within a few months, that store's numbers started slipping. It wasn't a coincidence. The person I'd let go had actually been good at the job, and nobody, me included, had checked the data before deciding they weren't worth defending.
They deserved the benefit of the doubt, and I didn't give it to them, because I'd stopped paying close enough attention to know what I'd be giving up.
Advocacy runs both directions
When you defend your team, they learn to defend each other, and sometimes you.
A few years into Smoke Cartel, I got us into a nasty lease dispute with a local landlord, the kind where untangling the relationship meant literally giving back gifts. One of them was a table-and-chairs set. I was too bitter to handle the return gracefully, so I handed the job to my product manager.
The next morning, I got a photo. They'd returned the set, all right: fully assembled, dead center on the roof of the building we were leasing. 😅
It was petty. It was probably wrong. And if it had gone sideways, I'd have owned it as my own idea, because the real failure was mine: I hadn't kept my own emotions in check well enough to lead the team toward the higher road. I was sorry I hadn't been a better example. I wasn't sorry about what happened. Nobody got hurt, and we made our position known.
Train for it in small moments
If your team believes your ultimate goal is their success, there's very little they won't do, for each other or for you. If they believe your goal is your own, that's a very different team, and a much smaller one when it counts.
Teams that protect each other in big moments got there by practicing it in small ones.
Next time someone asks you to give up on a team member
- Pull their actual record before you respond: numbers, dates, history.
- Put your defense in writing.
- Before acting on an accusation, look for evidence beyond one person's word.
- Ask your team what they've stopped reporting to you, and why.
- Own your team's mistakes publicly. Correct them privately.
Follow me on Instagram: @darbycox
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