When well-intentioned leaders try to protect their teams from "inclement organizational weather," the manager, team, and organization often pay a heavy price. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Luis Velasquez and Kristin Gleitsman outline seven mental shifts "umbrella managers" should make to stop protecting their employees and start supporting them.

Luis Velasquez is an executive coach who is the founder and managing partner of Velas Coaching LLC. Kristin Gleitsman is the VP of discovery research at Veracyte, a global diagnostics company.

How an 'umbrella manager' can affect an organization

According to Velasquez and Gleitsman, an "umbrella manager" is a leader who tries to shield their team from "all inclement organizational weather."

Ultimately, this leadership style comes with a heavy price for the manager, team, and organization. Umbrella managers start to believe they are personally responsible for every decision — but it is unrealistic for a leader to expect to oversee and manage every detail. When managers fall into this pattern of thinking, they become increasingly overwhelmed, their team becomes passive and complacent, and the manager becomes a bottleneck, slowing decisions and frustrating would-be collaborators.

Meanwhile, team members are given fewer opportunities to learn how to navigate difficult situations themselves. When employees are not able to form strong cross-functional relationships, they are less likely to have higher organizational visibility and impact.

In addition, the organization experiences reduced productivity and innovation capability from the team when employees cannot navigate these situations independently.

"In our experience, this behavior is not uncommon in emerging leaders," Velasquez and Gleitsman write. "Many individuals leading highly sophisticated teams for the first time need help to figure out the balance between supporting their teams and delegating effectively."

Change your mindset

To shift from protecting your employees to supporting them, Velasquez and Gleitsman recommend that you:

1. Understand what drives your protective behavior

Leaders can learn where their current behaviors stem from by asking questions like:

• Where does your instinct to "protect" come from?
• Do you worry your employees will crumble under pressure and, as a result, make you look bad?
• Do you believe their wrong decisions will compromise project outcomes and jeopardize their own success?
• Are you concerned that your value to your team depends on your ability to represent all aspects of their work fully?

Then, the authors recommend challenging yourself to determine ways to let go of those underlying beliefs. In addition, they suggest reflecting on how your current approach could be harmful to your team.

2. Trust your team can handle problems

When managers empower their team to solve their own problems, they are demonstrating their trust and confidence in the team's abilities. 

"[W]hen people raise a challenge, they often don't need help finding the solution — they either have one already or can come up with one by talking the challenge through with a trusted partner," Velasquez and Gleitsman write. "You can turn yourself into that partner to improve your leadership effectiveness and avoid offering solutions too quickly."

3. Turn short-term mistakes into learning experiences

Short-term mistakes can offer learning experiences and opportunities by revealing weaknesses, areas of opportunity, and improvement. When leaders allow their team to "fail" — and learn—independently, they fast-track their growth and long-term success.

4. Rely on your leadership strengths

As leaders develop their skills and take on more responsibilities, their leadership skills become more relevant than their functional knowledge. Managers often struggle with this identity shift. Many leaders worry that if they do not personally oversee all the details, they will be seen as an ineffective leader.

"Stop chasing down every detail and free up time for activities like figuring out which decisions are critical, clarifying 'what good looks like,' and getting alignment with your peers and other parts of the organization," Velasquez and Gleitsman write

Enable your team

After you adjust your mindset about how to support your team, Velasquez and Gleitsman recommend that you:

1. Provide support and tools for navigating situations

Managers are tasked with helping their team develop solutions for handling current and future situations. "When an employee brings up a challenge, ask what kind of support would be helpful, but avoid putting yourself at the center of the challenge," they suggest.

2. Help your team keep things in perspective

Even the most resilient employee can experience discomfort when navigating new challenges or stepping outside their comfort zone. However, managers can provide "mental models" to help support their team and encourage them to take on difficult situations. For example:

• Create a "safe-to-try" team environment and embrace a growth mindset
• Model approaching situations with curiosity instead of fear
• Reduce guesswork by clearly communicating assumptions and needs

3. Stay solutions-oriented and optimistic

When leaders model optimism, they set a positive tone in the workplace, which can empower team members to recover from a setback.

While leaders should avoid blaming other, retrospectives can help the team become better at anticipating and avoiding similar setbacks moving forward, establishing a sense of shared accountability.

"If you want your team to navigate challenges independently, the worst thing you can do in the face of a setback is look for who to blame," they write. "Developing the organizational muscle to pull together to overcome setbacks is crucial." (Velasquez/Gleitsman, Harvard Business Review, 3/1)