Air Cover: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches

Your job as a leader isn't to manage your team. It's to protect them from the organisation.

Kate Carruthers, former Chief Data and Insights Officer at UNSW, recently wrote about what she's looking for in her next role after a decade at the university. The whole piece is worth reading, but one phrase stopped me cold:

"A good boss is a force multiplier. They don't just manage; they act as an umbrella, protecting the team from the inevitable bureaucratic nonsense and creating the space for you to do your best work. They advocate for you, they remove roadblocks, and they have your back when things get tricky. They provide air cover."

Air cover.

It's a military term. Fighter jets protecting ground troops from aerial attack. Creating safe space for the mission to proceed.

In organisational life, it means something similar: a leader who absorbs the incoming fire so their team can focus on the work. Who sits in the meetings that would waste their team's time. Who fights the political battles so others don't have to. Who says "I'll handle that" and actually does.

It's the leadership skill nobody teaches. And it might be the most important one.

What Air Cover Actually Looks Like

Let me make this concrete.

Air cover is the leader who attends the governance meeting so their team doesn't have to. The meeting where nothing gets decided but attendance is mandatory. The leader sits through it, extracts the two things that actually matter, and gives the team a five-minute summary instead of a two-hour obligation.

Air cover is absorbing unreasonable requests. When an executive asks for a "quick report" that would take three days, the leader pushes back. They negotiate scope. They buy time. They say "my team is focused on the priority we agreed on" so the team never has to have that awkward conversation.

Air cover is taking the blame. When something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong), the leader stands in front of it. They don't throw team members under the bus. They say "that was my call" even when it wasn't entirely. They protect careers.

Air cover is filtering noise. Every organisation generates enormous amounts of noise. New initiatives. Strategy pivots. Rumours about restructures. A good leader filters this, passing through only what the team needs to know and shielding them from the rest. The team can focus because they're not distracted by organisational static.

Air cover is fighting for resources. Budget, headcount, tools, time. The leader goes to battle for what the team needs. They navigate the political landscape. They build alliances. They make the case. The team gets what they need to succeed because someone is advocating for them.

Air cover is saying no on behalf of the team. "We'd love to help, but we're at capacity." "That's not something my team can take on right now." "I need to protect their time." These are hard sentences to say. Air cover means saying them anyway.

Why It's So Rare

If air cover is so valuable, why don't more leaders provide it?

Because it's invisible work. The meetings you attend so others don't have to. The political capital you spend. The requests you deflect. Nobody sees it. There's no dashboard that tracks "bureaucratic nonsense absorbed." Your team might not even know what you're protecting them from.

Because it requires saying no upward. Providing air cover often means pushing back on people more senior than you. That's uncomfortable. That's risky. It's much easier to pass demands down than to challenge them up.

Because organisations don't reward it. Leaders get promoted for visible achievements, not for invisible protection. The leader who shields their team from nonsense doesn't have a metric to point to. The leader who demands more from their team (regardless of the cost) can show "results."

Because it feels like a sacrifice. Every hour you spend in a meeting so your team doesn't have to is an hour you don't spend on something else. Every political battle you fight depletes your capital. Air cover has real costs, and they're paid by the leader, not the team.

Because many leaders have never experienced it. If you've never had a boss who provided air cover for you, you might not know it's possible. You might think leadership means passing pressure down, not absorbing it. You replicate what you've seen.

The result is that most teams operate without air cover. They're exposed to every organisational wind. Every request reaches them unfiltered. Every meeting requires their attendance. Every political battle becomes their problem.

And they wonder why they can't get anything done.

The Opposite of Air Cover

You know what the opposite of air cover looks like. You've probably experienced it.

The pass-through manager. Every request from above gets forwarded directly to the team. "The CEO wants this by Friday." No negotiation. No pushback. No filtering. The manager is just a relay station, adding no value and providing no protection.

The credit-taker, blame-pusher. When things go well, they're front and centre. When things go badly, suddenly it's "the team's decision" or "I wasn't fully informed." The team learns that taking risks means taking all the downside with none of the upside.

The meeting-creator. Instead of reducing the team's meeting load, they add to it. Statuses. Check-ins. Alignments. Syncs. Every hour the team spends in meetings is an hour they're not building. But the manager feels informed, so that's what matters.

The yes-person. They never say no to anyone above them. Every request is accepted. Every timeline is agreed to. The team's capacity is treated as infinite. Burnout is inevitable.

The politician. They're focused on their own advancement, not the team's success. They take on high-visibility projects regardless of whether they're right for the team. They make decisions based on optics, not outcomes.

Working for this kind of leader is exhausting. You spend as much energy navigating the organisation as you do on actual work. You're constantly interrupted, constantly context-switching, constantly dealing with things that don't matter.

And the best people leave. Because they can. Because somewhere out there is a leader who provides air cover, and that's where they want to be.

The Link to Capability

Here's where this connects to everything I write about.

Organisations that can't build things have a common pattern: the people who could build are too busy dealing with organisational nonsense to actually build. They're in meetings. They're responding to requests. They're navigating politics. They're managing up instead of creating forward.

Capability requires focus. Focus requires protection. Protection requires air cover.

When I write about the meeting where ideas go to die, I'm writing about the absence of air cover. Someone should be shielding builders from those meetings.

When I write about your best developers updating their LinkedIn profiles, I'm writing about what happens without air cover. Builders leave when they can't build.

When I write about the consultant who's been here three years, I'm writing about one consequence of no air cover. Internal capability can't develop when internal people are drowning in organisational demands.

Air cover isn't just about being a nice boss. It's about creating the conditions for capability to develop. You can't build an organisation that builds things unless you protect the builders from the organisation itself.

What the Research Says

This isn't just intuition. There's substantial research behind why air cover matters.

Psychological safety (Amy Edmondson's work) shows that people perform better when they feel safe to take risks. Air cover creates psychological safety by ensuring that organisational punishment doesn't reach the team. When the leader takes the blame, the team feels safe to experiment.

Flow states (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) require uninterrupted focus. Every interruption, every meeting, every "quick question" breaks flow. Air cover maximises flow by minimising interruption. The team can get into deep work because they're not constantly being pulled out of it.

Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) identifies autonomy as a fundamental psychological need. Air cover provides autonomy by shielding the team from micromanagement and external control. The team feels trusted because they are trusted.

Servant leadership (Robert Greenleaf) inverts the traditional hierarchy: the leader serves the team, not the other way around. Air cover is servant leadership in practice. The leader's job is to make the team successful, even when that means personal sacrifice.

The research converges on a simple point: people do their best work when they're protected from organisational dysfunction. That protection doesn't happen automatically. Someone has to provide it.

How to Provide Air Cover

If you're a leader who wants to provide air cover, here's what it looks like in practice.

Audit the demands on your team

Start by understanding what's actually hitting your team. What meetings do they attend? What requests come to them? What reporting do they do? Map it all out.

Then ask: which of these could I handle instead? Which could I eliminate entirely? Which could I negotiate down?

Most leaders have never done this audit. They don't know how much organisational noise reaches their team. The audit is often eye-opening.

Attend meetings so they don't have to

This is the simplest form of air cover. For every recurring meeting, ask: does my team need to be here, or could I represent them?

Often the answer is that you could go instead. You sit through the meeting, take notes on what matters, and give your team a summary. They get the information without the time cost.

Yes, this means more meetings for you. That's the job.

Negotiate on their behalf

When requests come in, don't just pass them through. Negotiate.

"My team could do this, but not by Friday. Would next Thursday work?"

"We can take this on, but we'd need to deprioritise the other thing. Which matters more?"

"Before I commit my team, can you help me understand the actual need here?"

These conversations are uncomfortable. They're also essential. Your team doesn't have the standing to push back on senior stakeholders. You do.

Take the heat

When something goes wrong, step forward. Don't say "the team decided" or "I wasn't aware." Say "that's on me" and deal with the consequences.

This builds trust. Your team learns that you have their back. They become more willing to take risks because they know you'll protect them if things go sideways.

Yes, this means absorbing blame you might not deserve. That's the job.

Filter information ruthlessly

Not everything that happens in the organisation needs to reach your team. Strategy discussions that might or might not affect them. Reorg rumours. Executive drama.

Be a filter, not a firehose. Share what they need to know. Shield them from what they don't.

This requires judgment. You don't want to hide things they genuinely need. But most organisational information is noise. Filter accordingly.

Fight for resources

Your team needs things. Budget. Headcount. Tools. Time. These things don't appear automatically. Someone has to fight for them.

That someone is you.

Build relationships with the people who control resources. Understand their priorities. Make the case for your team in terms they care about. Spend political capital when it matters.

Your team probably doesn't see this work. That's fine. They see the result: they have what they need to succeed.

Say no

This is the hardest part. Saying no to peers. Saying no to senior leaders. Saying no to "opportunities" that would overwhelm your team.

"I appreciate the ask, but my team is at capacity."

"We can't take that on without dropping something else."

"I need to protect my team's focus right now."

Every yes costs your team something. Before you say yes, make sure it's worth the cost.

The Force Multiplier Effect

Kate called a good boss a "force multiplier." Let me explain why that's exactly right.

A team without air cover might spend 50% of their time on actual work. The rest goes to meetings, requests, politics, and noise. Their effective capacity is half of what it could be.

A team with air cover might spend 80% of their time on actual work. Same people. Same skills. Same hours. But dramatically more output.

That's the multiplier. Not by demanding more from the team, but by protecting what they already have. Not by adding pressure, but by removing friction.

The best leaders I've worked with understood this intuitively. They measured their success by what their team accomplished, not by how busy they made people. They saw their role as clearing the path, not adding to the obstacles.

This is what Kate is looking for in her next role. It's what every talented person is looking for, whether they have the language for it or not.

The question is: are you providing it?

A Different Kind of Leadership

Air cover requires a fundamental shift in how you think about leadership.

Most leadership models focus on what you get from your team. How you direct them. How you motivate them. How you hold them accountable. The team exists to deliver your objectives.

Air cover flips this. Your job is to serve your team. To protect them. To give them what they need. To remove obstacles from their path. You exist to make them successful.

This isn't soft or weak. It's demanding. It requires you to fight battles, absorb pressure, and make sacrifices. It requires courage to push back on people more powerful than you. It requires discipline to attend meetings you'd rather skip and filter information you'd rather delegate.

But the results speak for themselves. Teams with air cover build more, ship faster, stay longer, and grow more. They feel trusted, protected, and empowered. They do their best work because someone creates the conditions for it.

Kate Carruthers spent a decade at UNSW. She's looking for her next role. The criteria she published are a map for any leader who wants to attract and keep talented people.

Mission and values that matter. Smart, kind people who operate in good faith. Autonomy and trust. Meaningful impact and continuous learning.

And air cover. The umbrella that protects the team from the storm.

If you're a leader, ask yourself: am I providing that umbrella? Or am I just letting the rain through?