One issue is visibility. If things are perceived as not going as well as they should, and there is no visibility, it is extremely difficult for any leader to de

One issue is visibility. If things are perceived as not going as well as they should, and there is no visibility, it is extremely difficult for any leader to defend their group. To focus on building the environment, there are broadly two situations that can happen. 1. your director has broadly speaking total support from his leadership, and the leadership will be "patient" and trust the director to do things. 2. there is no such support, you better deliver on your KPI or you're next. In most cases, it is in between 1 and 2 of course. If it is not mostly 1., there the director will not be able to do much without understanding the delivery. If your director needs to "push back" to help foster a good environment, they will need some ammunitions, which will likely require commitments (in time, KPI, etc.). To be honest, it is really hard. I myself recently became director, taking over teams that were self-organized but had high attrition. "Do I enforce too much / not enough process" is a question I ask myself very regularly.