When Stepping Back Is the Intervention

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0600

When you see your team heading toward a mistake, your instinct to step in is usually right. Acting on that instinct right away, however, usually isn’t the most useful thing you can do.

Watching a team walk toward a problem you can already see, and saying nothing about it, feels a lot like negligence. As leaders, silence reads as inaction, so we fill it. I’ve filled it more times than I’d like to admit, catching a team right before a mistake landed and, in the same motion, taking away the opportunity that would have taught them something.

Team-Autonomy on David R. Longnecker - Converting Coffee to Code

When Stepping Back Is the Intervention