The Dump the Puck Leader

If you played hockey — or even watched it — you know the move. A forward picks up the puck in the neutral zone, skates hard toward the offensive end, and dumps it into the corner. Then they coast to the bench and let someone else go dig it out of the boards.

In hockey, it's a legitimate strategy. Sometimes you dump and chase because the defence is too tight to carry it in. But in leadership? It's a problem. And if you manage people long enough, you'll see it.

What It Looks Like at Work

The Dump the Puck leader is the one who walks into your office and says, "I want to sign my team up for a training course." Great. What course? "Something on Time Management." What's it cost? "Not sure." Why this course specifically? "My team needs development." Which team members? What skill gaps? What's the expected outcome?

Silence.

They brought you the puck. They dumped it in your corner. And now they're skating back to the bench expecting you to do the work of figuring out whether it's worth the investment.

This isn't leadership. It's delegation upward — and it's one of the most common patterns I see in managers who look busy but aren't actually driving anything.

The Pattern Is Always the Same

The Dump the Puck leader has a few tells:

·       They bring ideas without context. No cost, no rationale, no connection to a business outcome.

·       They defer on decisions that are clearly theirs. "Whatever you think" is their favourite phrase when it's their team, their budget, their call.

·       They resist structure. The performance framework, the goal-setting process — it all feels like homework to them, not leadership infrastructure.

·       They confuse activity with ownership. Raising a topic in a meeting feels like solving it. Mentioning a problem feels like fixing it.

The frustrating part is that these leaders aren't lazy in the traditional sense. They show up. They talk. They have opinions. But they don't do the hard, unglamorous work of following through — building the business case, connecting the dots, and owning the outcome.

Why It Matters More Than You Think

When a leader dumps the puck, someone else has to go dig it out. Usually that's their manager, their HR partner, or their team. And every time that happens, a few things erode quietly:

·       Trust. Their team stops believing they'll actually see things through.

·       Credibility. Their peers notice who does the work and who just talks about it.

·       Culture. The rest of the leadership team starts to wonder why they're held to a higher standard.

·       Money. Uninformed spending requests — training courses with no ROI thesis, tools with no adoption plan — burn budget without moving the needle.

I'm a firm believer in investing in people. But I will not write a cheque for a training course that isn't tied to a specific performance gap, a specific employee, and a measurable outcome. That's not being cheap. That's being responsible. And any leader asking for development dollars should be able to articulate why this course, for this person, right now.

What Good Looks Like

The opposite of a Dump the Puck leader is someone who carries the puck all the way to the net. They don't just identify the opportunity — they bring the plan:

·       "I want to enrol Sarah and James in a management fundamentals course. Here's the provider, here's the cost, here's the gap I'm trying to close, and here's how I'll measure whether it worked."

·       "I've been thinking about restructuring the team into tiers. Here's my rationale, here's how it maps to our current headcount, and here's what I need from you to make it happen."

·       "I noticed our culture is slipping. Here's what I'm seeing, here's what I think is causing it, and here's my plan to address it over the next 30 days."

That's a leader. Not someone who mentions a problem — someone who owns it.

The Conversation You Need to Have

If you're managing a Dump the Puck leader, the fix isn't to do their homework for them. It's to send the puck back.

"That sounds like it could be a good idea. Come back to me with the cost, the rationale, and which team members you're targeting. I want to see why this is the right investment right now."

Every time you dig the puck out of the corner for them, you're reinforcing the pattern. They learn that half-baked is good enough. That someone else will finish it. That initiative without follow-through still gets rewarded.

Stop rewarding it.

The Bottom Line

Initiative is only valuable when it's complete. An idea without a plan is just noise. A request without a rationale is just a task you're handing to someone else. And a leader who consistently starts things without finishing them isn't leading — they're spectating from the bench while everyone else does the work.

Carry the puck to the net. Or don't pick it up at all.