[twic]

> You had better not front-stab your boss.

Something my current employer does, which with hindsight is incredibly obvious, is to separate the roles of leader and manager. Leaders guide the day-to-day work, managers guide the careers of employees. I'm the leader of a development team, and while i do spend a lot of time guiding my team as to what to do and how to do it, i don't carry the can for their happiness, professional development, etc. Rather, that's in the hands of various other people in the company [1], who have monthly one-to-ones, collect feedback, give performance reviews, etc.

As a result, one of the people on my team could absolutely front-stab me without fear of the consequences. They could simply say to their manager that i was a shitty team lead. It would then be up to the manager to act on that information, by giving me or my manager that feedback. That's not hypothetical; it's happened (i actually am a shitty team lead).

[1] That's not to say i don't contribute towards that; if the manager of one of the people on my team comes and tells me that that person is keen to learn more about some topic, i'll try to carve out work related to that topic and let that person work on it. But i'm not the prime mover.