My job existed because the person above me wasn't doing theirs. Nobody said that out loud. The org chart said I was there to run a legal team. What I was actually there to do was stand between that team and her. So that's what I did. Every unreasonable demand came to me first. Every piece of feedback that would have landed as a personal attack got rewritten or trashed before it reached them. Every meeting someone would have walked out of feeling small, I took instead. I made myself the filter. It worked, mostly. The team did good work and most of them never knew how much noise I was absorbing on their behalf. It also flattened me. A filter fills up. Nobody notices that part, because the entire point is that nobody notices. The thing I was slower to see: an organisation that needs a human shield has a culture problem, not a staffing problem. My post was the workaround. It was never the repair. I don't know if it was the right way to handle it. It was the only way I knew at the time. So I'll ask you. When the person above you doesn't care about your people, what do you actually do? Absorb it, escalate it, or teach your team to handle her themselves?

Take advice from Obama, such great advice...

What a week. Here's what you all taught me. Every person who answered said the same thing. Theirs was above them on the org chart. Not a peer. Not a direct report. The one with the power. Which is why I put up that Obama clip. His point is that nobody gets to make you feel like you don't belong. Titles and money and big resumes are intimidating from the outside, and then you get behind the door and find people are just people. Every one of you named someone above you. Look at what most of them were running on. Position, not substance. Four things came out of your comments and they are worth writing down. One. The work was never the problem. I spent years thinking that if I got sharper and tighter and more prepared, he would ease up. He did not. If you are auditioning for someone's approval and the terms keep moving, the moving terms are the point. Two. You leave a bad manager, not a job. Christina said that and it stopped me cold. Sometimes you cannot fire the person, so the only card you hold is firing yourself and walking out. That is not losing. That is choosing yourself. Three. The person we are hardest on is ourselves. Christina again. The one person she would fire is the version of her who was surviving a toxic leadership team. Read that twice. We carry shame for how we behaved while under attack, and almost nobody gives themselves the grace they would hand a friend in the same spot. Four. Protecting your people is the whole job. Sharon showed up for someone on her team who was in real trouble, and the staff told her she was the first commander they had ever seen do that. First. Ever. That tells you how low the bar sits and how much it matters when somebody clears it. Sharon left us with the question I want to pick up next. How do you protect your people when the person above you doesn't care about them? That's where we go this week. Tell me what you did, or what you wish you had done.