Leadership Coach and blogger, John Agno, recently laid out eighteen  lessons on leadership from Colin Powell. One particularly caught my attention with its application to the non-military organizational environment:

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

As John mentions, sometimes leaders foster a culture that asking your boss for help is a sign of weakness or failure. This can have really negative consequences for the organization because employees will not tap into the experience and wisdom of their boss when it is appropriate. In the end they risk making poor decisions that can cost a lot.

But the real issue here involves, as is so often the case with the art of management, a paradox:

• On the one hand you want your people to take full accountability for their job, including making decisions and taking action without always running to you to solve their problems or provide cover by endorsing decisions they are about to make.
• On the other hand, you want your staff to come to you when they are truly stymied, the cost of a bad decision is too high, or they need information that is understandably beyond their reach.

The “art” here is, when an employee brings a problem to your doorstep, to be able to differentiate between a problem that they should be able to handle on their own and one on which it is appropriate to consult with you.

Make a point of clarifying with each of your direct employees what sorts of issues or situations should trigger their talking with you first. You can do this as part of a larger conversation about the performance expected from them. Part of their performance, after all, is bringing their independent judgment to bear in their job. These guidelines, of course, may need to be adjusted as you go forward, so be sure to revisit them periodically, as needed.

Finally, having done such a good job clarifying decision boundaries, resist the ever-present temptation to break these guidelines by taking the “monkey” and solving a problem that clearly belongs to them.