When a leader laments, "After all I have done for them!" or refers to a staff as "ungrateful," this indicates that the "caring" has gone wrong. When leaders think that if they do "X" employees would do "Y," or that they know what is best for employees, or that they can make decisions on employees' behalf without asking them, they are being paternalistic and do not want to be challenged.

I have coached leaders whose maternalistic compulsions to care translated into giving staff money from their wallets and making other over-the-top gestures of compassion, which were followed by complaints of a lack of reciprocation from staff. On the other hand, employees who shirk personal responsibility and depend on their leader for career planning, task completion and other work-related issues are asking their leaders to be maternalistic. Since female leaders are often assumed to be more compassionate than their male counterparts, a larger burden of caring-for is often placed on them.

Both paternalism and maternalism lead to codependent relationships where one party enables the behavior of the other. The leader has an exaggerated sense of responsibility, and staff members want to please the leader and need his or her approval. Staff members can subvert their own thinking and behavior to reflect what the leaders want or think. Both parties carry the strain of each other's failures and feelings while blaming the other for their own difficulties.

As a leader, I want to create adult-adult relationships within the teams that I work. I don't want to coddle or negotiate for work – I want team members to understand the purpose of their work, what's in it for them and how it is aligned to the organization's vision.

To this end, I co-created safe spaces with team members.

The team and leader set up a safe space by discussing what keeps the space safe for them as well as what would violate the space for them. Once agreed upon, these become the rules of the space. The safe space is the "office Vegas" – what happens in the room stays in the room. Employees use the space to vent about perceived wrongs, discuss personal or other issues that may be distracting them, or hatch an idea and keep working on it until they are confident enough to sell it to a wider audience. Between team-oriented and one-on-one exchanges, the leader can understand what motivates employees, their interests and their personal visions. The leader can now align employees' ambitions with the organization's vision and create a mutually beneficial relationship.

The safe space works when its participants trust that there will be no repercussions from what they say, and that they can ask silly questions, challenge the status quo and discuss taboo subjects. For this reason, confidentiality is the No. 1 rule for the space, followed by no judgement, meaning that qualities are not attributed to what is said. Instead, participants are encouraged to ask "what" and "how" questions to help the other person clarify his or her thoughts.

For the space to work, the leader needs to become a safe person. This does not call for a change of personality; the leader is asked to be consistent in how he or she treats people and his or her application of policies and procedures. The leader is asked to be clear about his or her motives and to share them. The leader needs to be honest and work on maintaining and growing the trust that team members have in him or her. Leaders need to support team members through failures and use them as learning opportunities.

While leaders can involve team members in decision making, leaders cannot abscond responsibility. The buck stops with them to lead their teams.

Maxine Attong is a professional facilitator, coach and author living in the Caribbean and U.S. She can be reached at 868-724-7642 or [email protected].