My boss trusts me. He’s an accomplished college president, busy with a hundred things that aren’t marketing, and generally happy with what my team produces. That’s a good situation to be in.

Most of the time.

That trust means I sometimes go weeks without talking to him. I have to request our 1:1s. It’s not like I’ve been banished to the back 40. He’s always available and responsive. But when your supervisor isn’t deep in your domain and isn’t looking over your shoulder, you get a lot of latitude. You can make calls, set the direction, decide what matters. Nobody’s second-guessing you on the details. That part is freeing.

The flipside to that coin? They’re probably not pushing you either.

I’ve had to learn to manufacture my own resistance. To ask myself the questions a more present boss might ask. To hold myself to standards I’d be embarrassed to miss even when no one’s grading me. I’ve written about it before HERE and HERE.

You’re probably saying, “Must be nice to report to a president who leaves you the eff alone. My AVP is all up in my business every damn day.”

I’m not complaining. It’s just the job I have. But it made me think hard about what happens to a team when the person above them isn’t calibrated to push at the right moments.

They drift. Or they coast. Or they work hard without knowing if they’re working on the right things. Junior and senior staffers, neither are immune.

Recently I looked at my own team and asked: am I doing that to them?

Most of our people don’t need a parade. They need to know someone above them is paying attention and believes they can handle more.

Those of us in marcomms leadership spent years wanting someone above us to actually see what we were capable of. To give us harder problems, more context, a real role in decisions instead of a pile of requests.

Some of us got that boss. Some of us got the micromanager who won’t leave us alone. And some of us got one who’s well-intentioned, busy, and not quite sure what to do with us.

Whatever boss you’ve had, that experience is still in you. Use it.

Your team is in the same hallway you came from. They want someone who knows what they need before they do. Someone who challenges them without burying them. Someone who gives them real room to work and enough context to use it well.

That’s the boss worth becoming.

Face it: a stronger team gives you back your own time. Better team judgment means fewer decisions land on your desk. That’s not a side effect of good leadership. That’s the architecture of it.

A strong team is a force multiplier. You’re doing right by your people and right by yourself at the same time.

Jeff’s tips for being the boss you wish you had

1. Give them the map, not just the destination. Teach them the why behind the how. You already know the job. You figured it out the hard way. Pay it forward. Two sentences of context before an assignment, what decision it supports and why it matters right now, saves more time than any project management tool you’ll ever buy. Don’t make them reverse-engineer the why.

2. Challenge them to stretch, not to stumble. Assigning projects can grow someone or it can bury them. The difference is calibration, and you know your team’s current capacity better than anyone. Be honest about which one you’re handing out. Stretch is productive. Consistent overload by design is just abuse dressed as productivity maxxing.

3. Give them enough rope to lasso the moon. Let them own the work and solve the problem their way. Resist the urge to fix it before they’ve tried. But don’t leave them without a lifeline. That same rope can also hang them. Your job isn’t to disappear. It’s to be present at the right moments, not all of them.

4. Anticipate what they need before they can name it. Watch how your people work. Notice where they slow down, where they second-guess, where they loop back to you on calls they should be able to make themselves. Some staffers need reined in. Others need nudged out of the nest. This is the skill that takes longest to build and matters most when you’re trying to develop a team that runs well without constant supervision.

5. Show up with enough friction to matter. This is the one I’ve had to learn on my own. Presence isn’t hovering. It’s calibration. A team that never gets pushed doesn’t grow. A team that gets pushed without context gets frustrated. Your job is to create just enough productive friction, a harder question, a tighter standard, a deadline that requires them to reach. Not so much that they break. Just enough that they build something.

You can’t manage up from a team running on empty. And you can’t build influence with leadership while you’re still resolving problems your team should be handling.

Fill the tank below you. Push when pushing is needed. Let off when it isn’t.

That’s what your best boss did for you.

Your turn.