My biggest mistake as a young leader wasn't the failures I experienced myself. It was the failures I wouldn't let my team experience.
I thought I was being a good leader. I thought my job was to anticipate every problem, clear every obstacle, and build a perfectly smooth path for my people. I saw it as my duty to protect them from the stress and the sting of getting it wrong.
I was wrong. I wasn't building a path; I was building a cage.
The moment you protect people from failure, you rob them of their chance of success.
I had to learn a simple but profound truth about leadership from an old gardener. He told me, "You can keep a sapling in a climate-controlled greenhouse its whole life. It will look perfect. It will be green and tall. But the first time a real wind blows, it will snap in two."
The wind, he explained, is what forces the tree to grow deeper roots. The struggle against the elements is what gives it the strength to stand tall.
As a leader, your office can become a greenhouse. You think you're creating a perfect environment for growth, but you're actually creating the conditions for collapse.
When you rush in to solve every problem:
You rob them of the chance to develop their own judgment.
You teach them that the solution is not within them, but with you.
When you shield them from every difficult conversation:
You rob them of the chance to build resilience.
You teach them that conflict is something to be feared, not navigated.
When you take over a struggling project to "save it":
You rob them of the deepest form of ownership.
You teach them that, ultimately, their work is not their own.
Ken Blanchard says that feedback is the breakfast of champions. Well, failure is the workout. It’s the resistance that builds the muscle. True success is the earned confidence that comes from having solved them. That is a feeling you can't give to someone. It must be forged in the fire of their own effort.
So, look at your team today and ask yourself a hard question.
Are you building a greenhouse, or are you cultivating a forest? One creates things that are pretty. The other creates things that last.