Challenge in Private, Support in Public
Ever been caught in the middle—where you don’t totally agree with a decision, but now you have to deliver it to your team? Been there.
In this quick tip, I share a parenting moment (because let’s be honest, leading at home and leading at work aren't all that different sometimes) that reminded me how important it is for managers to show up as part of the bigger team—even when you don’t love the call that was made.
It’s easy to say, “Hey, that wasn’t my decision,” but doing that chips away at trust. Your team needs to see you as aligned and steady, not stuck in the middle.
If you’re a manager, remember: disagree behind the scenes, but show up united. That’s leadership.
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Well, like most parenting partners, my husband and I always try to come across like we are on the same team, on the same page in front of our girls. And even if we're not. Right?!
Behind closed doors, we can disagree. But then when we come to them with a decision, we want to come across with a unified front.
Just recently, our youngest daughter was invited to go on a trip that would require her to miss some school and miss some other things, and we chatted about it and decided not to let her go.
And so the other morning I shared the news with her and she was very disappointed, very bummed. And when my husband entered the room, she was talking about it and blamed it on me.
And I of course was waiting for him to jump in, chime in, and say, "No, Mom and I are on the same page on this. "It's not just your mom's decision." And it felt like there was a long silence. And so I jumped in and said something.
Well, turns out he was just about to chime in and I just acted too quickly and assumed he wasn't going to. So we figured it out thereafter.
But these situations happen and I see them happen in work too.
Sometimes maybe, you know, frontline managers, middle managers, a decision is made above you that you don't agree with, that you don't love. But now how do you relay it to your team?
It can be tempting to kind of throw that person or that decision under the bus and connect with your team, empathize with your team, but that degrades trust in the organization and in senior leadership.
And so it's so important to disagree behind closed doors, but then come to your team with a unified front.
Just recently I was working with a leader who kind of has a challenging senior leader above him, and some things that that senior leader will do or say, decisions made. They're kind of tough to support. But I will say this leader that I'm working with, he does such an excellent job of representing that leader well, of speaking so highly about him to the team, of not throwing him under the bus. And that's a hard thing to do, but again, it's so important because this influences the way teams feel about leadership as a whole.
So I want to encourage you, if you are in a middle management position and a frontline leadership position, you have a responsibility to represent the leaders above you, the organization above you, well to your teams. You are on the same team with them, and you as a manager have a responsibility to represent those decisions in an aligned, one team manner.