September 25, 2025

Why It’s A Bad Idea To Protect Your Team

15 minutes

Do you believe shielding your team from tough realities helps them perform at their best? In this episode, Shannon Waller challenges leaders to look beyond good intentions and empower their teams by sharing the whole story. She also explains why trust, transparency, and real challenges, not protection, give entrepreneurial teams the confidence and capability to solve problems and drive growth.

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Show Notes:

Protecting your team from reality may come from a place of empathy and care, but it limits their growth and independence.

Trusting your team means giving them the full picture, even when it’s difficult.

Shielding people from challenges sends a message that they can’t handle complexity or bad news.

Transparency in leadership invites ownership and responsibility from your team instead of dependence.

Facing tough situations together builds team resilience and innovation.

Teams deprived of real information struggle to make strategic decisions and align with company goals.

True learning, confidence, and capability come from dealing with setbacks directly and adapting.

Organizing workflow is different from hiding reality; help your team do great work by managing priorities without hiding challenges.

Entrepreneurial leaders excel when they trust their teams to rise to challenges and participate fully in shaping business outcomes.

The best leaders share context and invite team input, knowing that creativity and solutions come from everyone, not just the top.

Real empowerment comes when your team feels capable, included, and trusted with even the hard truths.

Reflect on when you learned the most: was it when someone trusted you with responsibility or when they shielded you from reality?

Resources:

The Great Game Of Business: The Only Sensible Way To Run A Company by Jack Stack

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By Shannon Waller