Would You Take the Hit for Your People?
Having your team's back is the final act of leadership, and it's tested not when things go well but when protecting your people costs you something. Simon Sinek captures it in “Leaders Eat Last” — “the leader serves and protects the team first, providing what he calls cover from above and drawing a Circle of Safety that keeps outside threats out so people can trust and cooperate within.” Brené Brown adds that this “takes daring, not armor: the courage to have hard conversations and absorb real risk on your people's behalf.” Julie Zhuo names the mindset shift — a manager's success is the team's success, earned by giving credit, taking blame, and investing in others' growth. This completes the Back movement, and the whole Hanlon Potential Model™ — See, Grow, Back. The weekly move: find one visible way to have someone's back at a cost to yourself.
There's a moment every leader eventually faces. Something goes wrong on your watch — a project fails, a mistake becomes public, a decision you signed off on blows up — and the blame has to land somewhere. In that moment, you have a choice that reveals more about your leadership than a year of good intentions: do you step in front of your people and take the hit, or do you step aside and let it land on them?
Here's the uncomfortable truth — your team already knows which kind of leader you are. They've been watching how you behave when protecting them carries a cost. This week we reach the final movement of the model, and the whole month has been building to it: having your people's back. It's the culmination of everything, and it's tested not when things go well, but precisely when they go wrong.
Key Takeaways
• Championing your people is tested in the hard moments — when standing behind them actually costs you something.
• Simon Sinek's core image: leaders provide “cover from above” so the team can look out for each other — the Circle of Safety.
• “Leaders eat last” — the leader's job is to serve and protect the team first, not themselves.
• Brené Brown's distinction: “daring leadership takes courage; armored leadership just protects the self.”
• Julie Zhuo's reframe: “a manager's entire job is to make the team better — you succeed through them.”
• This completes the Back movement — and the whole Hanlon Potential Model™: See, Grow, Back.
The Moment That Reveals You
Leadership is easy to perform when things are going well. Anyone can share the credit in a good quarter and smile through a smooth project. The real measure arrives in the hard moment — when a mistake needs an owner, when someone above you wants a name, when protecting your person means absorbing a cost yourself. What you do then is the truest statement you'll ever make about what kind of leader you are, and your team reads it instantly.
This is what championing your people actually means. Not cheerleading, not praise in the good times, but standing in front of them when it counts and behind them the rest of the time. It's the difference between a leader people follow because they have to and one they'd follow anywhere — and it's built entirely in the moments when having their back is inconvenient for you.
Leaders Eat Last
Simon Sinek took the title of Leaders Eat Last from a practice he observed in the Marine Corps: in the mess hall, the most junior people eat first, and the senior leaders eat last. No one orders it; it's simply understood that leaders serve their people before themselves. That inverted image — the leader at the back of the line — captures his entire argument about what leadership is for.
Sinek reaches back to ancient Sparta to sharpen it. Spartan soldiers could lose their armor and keep their honor, but a soldier who dropped his shield faced the harshest punishment — because a shield protects not just you but the person beside you. The lesson holds for any leader: your job is to be the shield, to provide what Sinek calls “cover from above so your people are free to do their best work and look out for one another.” Leaders who put their own interests first, he argues, don't just fail their people; they eventually cost their organizations trust, loyalty, and performance that no strategy can buy back.
The Circle of Safety
Sinek's central idea is the Circle of Safety. Great leaders draw a circle around their people that keeps the dangers of the outside world — competition, uncertainty, politics — on the outside, so that inside the circle, energy goes into cooperation rather than self-protection. He grounds it in biology: “trust and belonging release oxytocin, which fuels collaboration, while a culture of distrust floods people with cortisol, the stress chemical that makes them guard their own backs instead of the mission's.”
Notice how this ties the whole month together. Sinek was describing the felt experience of psychological safety years before the term went mainstream — the circle is what safety feels like from the inside. But there's a crucial addition here: the safety doesn't appear on its own. Someone has to actively build and defend the circle, absorbing the outside pressure so it never reaches their people. That someone is you. Championing is the work of holding that circle intact even when the pressure to collapse it — to pass the stress down, to sacrifice a person to protect yourself — is greatest.
It Takes Daring, Not Armor
Standing in front of your people is not comfortable, which is why Brené Brown's work in Dare to Lead matters here. She draws a sharp line between “armored leadership — acting from self-protection, ego, and the need to look good — and daring leadership, which acts from courage even when the outcome is uncertain. Championing your people is daring by definition, because it means accepting real risk on their behalf.”
Brown reminds us that courage and fear aren't opposites; brave leaders act while afraid. Having someone's back often requires exactly that — the hard conversation with someone above you to defend a team member, the willingness to say “that was my call, not theirs,” the vulnerability of championing a person's idea before you know it will work. Brown's research also gives us the foundation it all rests on: trust, which she breaks into behaviors like reliability, accountability, and generosity. People let you lead them into risk only when they trust that you'll be there when it goes wrong. Armor protects you. Daring protects them.
Your Job Is to Make Them Better
There's a mindset shift underneath all of this, and Julie Zhuo names it plainly in The Making of a Manager. “The moment you become a leader, your job description changes at its core: your success is no longer your own output; it's your team's. You win through them, not instead of them. A leader who still needs to be the star hasn't fully made the shift — and can't truly champion anyone, because they're still competing with the people they're supposed to be lifting.”
Zhuo's version of championing is concrete and daily. “Give credit generously and take blame readily.” Create opportunities and then hand them to your people rather than keeping the visible work for yourself. Invest in their growth even when it means they'll eventually outgrow you. Remove the obstacles in their way, and pay attention to the small signals — what you praise, what you tolerate — because those tell the real story of whether you're there for them. Championing isn't one grand gesture. It's a thousand small choices to put their advancement ahead of your own spotlight.
The Hanlon Potential Model™: Completing the Back Movement
This brings us to the end of The Hanlon Potential Model™ — See, Grow, Back. Over this month, you've seen your people's potential, grown it through coaching, handed them real ownership, and made it safe for them to speak. Championing is where it all lands. You stand behind the people you've built — taking the hits that are yours to take, giving away the credit that's theirs to receive, and fighting for their growth even at a cost to yourself. That's what it means to have someone's back, and it's the movement that makes all the others worth doing.
The move for this week is a visible act. Find one concrete way to have someone's back where it costs you something — take responsibility for a mistake that landed on your team, hand a growth opportunity to a person instead of keeping it, or give public credit for a win you could have claimed. Do it where people can see it, because championing is partly a message to everyone watching about the kind of leader you are. That single act says more than any speech: I've got you. And that is how you bring out the best in your people — not by demanding it, but by earning the trust that lets them give it.
Final Thoughts
We began this month with a simple idea: that the most leveraged thing a leader does is bring out the best in the people they already have. The path ran through seeing potential, growing it, handing over real ownership, and making it safe to speak — and it ends here, with the willingness to stand behind your people when it counts. That's not the soft part of leadership. It's the whole point of it.
So this week, find one way to visibly have someone's back at a cost to yourself. Because in the end, people don't give their best to leaders who merely manage them. They give it to the ones who they know, without a doubt, are in their corner. See them, grow them, and have their back — and you'll build not just a better team, but the kind of loyalty and performance that no title, bonus, or strategy can manufacture.
Sources & Further Reading
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together, and Others Don't — Simon Sinek
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. — Brené Brown
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You — Julie Zhuo
Frequently Asked Questions
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The opposite, over time. Leaders who protect their people build the loyalty and performance that make them more valuable, not less — and mature senior leaders recognize accountability as strength. What actually erodes your standing is being known as someone who throws their team under the bus; that reputation travels fast and costs you the best people.
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Championing isn't shielding people from consequences or accountability — it's protecting them from unfair blame while still holding them to a high standard. You can absorb the external hit for an honest mistake and still coach the person privately. Brown's word is the key: daring, not soft. Having someone's back includes telling them the hard truth.
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Some will, and that's part of the deal — you invest in people partly so they can outgrow you. But a reputation for genuinely backing your people is exactly what makes the best talent want to work for you, and what makes many of them stay far longer than they otherwise would. You lose a few and earn the loyalty of many.
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It's putting your people's interests first, not neglecting yourself entirely. Sinek's point is about priority, not martyrdom — a depleted leader protects no one. Championing your people and sustaining yourself aren't opposites; the leaders who last build circles of safety that support them, too.