August 11, 2026
The best leader I ever had checked in with me once a month, asked for the top-line view, and then got out of my way. Those were the most productive years of my career.
In nineteen years as a police officer, I worked under more sergeants than I can count, and fairly early on I worked out something that no training course ever taught me. The difference between a good supervisor and a damaging one was not experience, rank, or even intelligence. It was whether they understood that their job was to clear the path, not walk it for me.
When you are chasing witnesses in a criminal investigation, the dynamic is delicate in a way that is almost impossible to explain to someone who has never done it. A witness has nothing to lose by withdrawing their support. It is all moral with no legal obligation, no consequence, no reason to stay involved if the process becomes more trouble than it is worth to them. Which means the entire relationship rests on trust, timing and patience, and the moment you try to push that timeline to suit the organisation rather than the witness, you risk losing them entirely and with them the conviction you have spent months trying to build.
I had sergeants who understood this instinctively. They trusted that I knew my witnesses, knew the pace the investigation needed to move at, and left me to work it. Under those supervisors, cases moved, convictions followed, and the work felt like it meant something. And then I had sergeants who did not understand it at all, who wanted updates on their schedule rather than the investigation’s, who pushed for movement before the ground was ready, and who turned a manageable process into something five times harder than it needed to be. Not out of malice, but out of a fundamental misunderstanding of what their role actually required of them. Witnesses withdrew, cases stalled, and convictions that should have happened did not, and the damage was entirely invisible to the person who had caused it because it looked, from the outside, like the investigation had simply not gone their way.
That is the hidden cost of micromanagement that almost nobody measures, not the morale impact, not the frustration, but the actual outcomes that quietly disappear because someone in a supervisory role confused activity with progress.
Years later, as a project manager in the MOD controlling multi-million pound budgets and running multiple complex projects simultaneously, I had a programme manager who did something remarkably simple, and it was extraordinarily effective (let us call him Nick). He checked in with me once a month, asked for the top-level view, confirmed compliance, and then trusted me completely to run the work.
That was it. No interference in the detail, no second-guessing of decisions already made, no presence in conversations that did not require him. Just the framework, the accountability, and then the space to operate within it as I saw fit.
The projects ran on time and within budget, which is what any organisation would measure and call a success, but the thing I remember most vividly is not the delivery figures, it is the feeling I had over those years. Because for the first time in my professional life I was not just working, I was growing. Every bold decision I made was mine to justify, which meant I had to think it through properly, build the reasoning, stand behind it, and learn from how it landed. The autonomy gave me purpose, the purpose gave me position, and the position gave me the confidence to keep reaching further than I might have done if someone had been looking over my shoulder at every step.
A leader who gives their people freedom is not being hands-off. They are being exactly what a leader is supposed to be.
The caveman tribe did not have middle management, but it understood leadership with a clarity that most modern organisations have entirely lost sight of.
The chief’s role was never to hunt alongside the hunters and correct their technique mid-chase, it was to set the direction, secure the trust of the tribe, make every member feel that their contribution was essential to something that mattered, and then stand back and let each person do the thing they were expected, trained and built to do. The hunter who had tracked prey for twenty years did not need to be told how to hold his spear, and being told this would not have improved his aim. It would have insulted his experience, undermined his confidence, and introduced doubt into a moment that required complete instinctive certainty.
What the great tribal leaders understood, and what the best leaders I have worked under understood, is that people do not give their best performance because they are watched. They give it because they believe the outcome matters and because their role in reaching it feels real and valued. The moment a leader removes that belief, either by hovering over every decision or by reducing someone’s role to a series of tasks to be checked off, they have also removed the thing that made that person capable of exceptional work in the first place.
Micro-management is not just an inconvenience. In the wrong context, it is avoidably destructive. To morale, to outcomes, and to the people on the receiving end of it, who slowly stop growing and start merely working, going through the motions of a role that no longer feels like theirs.
The best leaders I have known, the sergeant who trusted me with my witnesses, Nick the programme manager who checked in once a month and then stepped back, never confused their visibility with their value. They understood that their job was to make the mission feel important and the person doing it feel capable, then get out of the way and let me get on with it.
That is the oldest leadership principle there is. The tribe that hunted best was never the one with the most involved chief, it was the one where every hunter went out believing that what they brought back mattered, and that they were trusted to bring it back their way.
If you want to bring this conversation into your organisation, to give your leaders the perspective they need to build teams that grow rather than just work, I would love to come and talk about it.
Book me as your next keynote speaker: www.carljones.org
Caveman Thought
The chief who stood over every hunter’s shoulder did not get a better kill, he got a tribe that stopped trying.
Parting Question
Think about the best leader you have ever worked under. It is probably not the most impressive title, nor the busiest presence, but the one who made you feel like you were growing rather than just working. What did they do differently? And is that what you are doing for the people around you right now?
As always, be the tribal member you are meant to be. It makes for a much easier and simpler life.
Your friend,
Carl – The Caveman.
P.S. When you are ready, here are a few things that might help you;
- You can book me to attend your next event as a Keynote Speaker.
- Do you want to do a FREE personality test? Check out The Caveman Principles Tribal Sorter.
- Check out my theories – The Caveman Principles and The SLAP Technique
- Grab a copy of my book The Caveman Principles, directly from my printing agent.
- You might want to book yourself onto one of my eLearning courses to help you master a new skill.
- Or, if you have time and want to schedule a Caveman chat (with virtual coffee) for a discovery call, do it here.