Name withheld, San Francisco

A You'd think the cliche about corporate stiffs showing up and smarmily announcing, "We're here to help you", would be dead by now, but it still happens all the time, and it's still godawful.

When you're on the front lines, fighting for customers, wrestling with suppliers and distributors, and all the while deflecting competition from every direction, the last thing you need is senior management stuffing you with pie-in-thesky targets. It's enough to make you turn to your great little entrepreneurial team and scream.

And that is exactly what you cannot do. Ever, ever, ever. Corporate is not the enemy, although it can too often seem that way, with outsized demands or out-oftouch targets. It's just that corporate has a job to do and sometimes, it actually knows some things you don't.

On its best days, then, corporate is not trying to micromanage you. It's trying to balance your needs with the needs of other parts of the organisation. It's trying to manage short-term results and long-term investments.

It's trying, basically, to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts . . . a worthy cause, underneath it all.

But there's a bigger reason not to 'protect' your people from corporate, at least in public. Doing so is a fast track to losing your team's confidence and respect.

Every time you groan, "Jim says we have to cut 10% of inventory", or complain, "Helen is forcing me get rid of Steve because he's so bad at meetings", you make yourself look like a marionette. In fact, you actually make yourself a marionette. That's career suicide for you and not much better for your team.

Very soon, instead of looking to you for direction, your people will be looking around you, searching for signs from the 'real boss'. If you think speed and morale are taking a hit now, watch out.

So, back to your problem . . . which happens to be extremely common.

Obviously, we're not going to suggest you become 'corporate apologist', trying to sell every edict to your people like ice cream. By all means, push back hard on behalf of your business.

Challenge nonsense targets.

Negotiate for resources.

But keep that process behind closed doors. When it is over, whether you've made gains or not, own corporate's final decision as your own. Take it to your people as your plan.

Remember Jim's inventory cut? Say he won't budge, even after you've made the case that it's stupid in your business's high-demand environment.

At that point, you need to buck up and move on. Get with your team and figure out a way to deliver the additional net income or cash that corporate wants without whacking inventory levels and disappointing customers.

As for poor Steve, whom Helen wants fired, that's another case for you to own. If Steve's a solid contributor, then instead of pulling the trigger while blaming Helen, quietly work your tail off to improve his presentation skills. In other words, make your job managing the interface between corporate and your team.

And when corporate makes that interface thorny, don't share your pain, absorb it.

If that sounds a bit unnatural, that's because it is. It is perfectly human for managers to want to blame 'up there' for how hard it is 'down here'. But real leaders can't do that. And they don't.

Q I just said no to an excellent business opportunity because I didn't trust the person in charge, even after he doubled the salary to keep me from walking. I'm still having pangs of regret because I was passionately in love with the product. Did I do the right thing?

Wendy Garfield, New York

A Double the money is very nice, we'll give you that. But you just cannot work very long with people . . . and especially for a person . . . you do not trust, because trust is the foundation for everything good that happens in organisations, like candour, collaboration, feedback, debate, and creativity.

Now, there certainly are times when you will join a company not because you particularly like the people, but because you love the product so passionately, to use your phrase, or because it just offers so much career opportunity.

But trust is different from like, and the boss is different from people in general. You saw a red flag and you heeded it. Stop panging and feel proud.

Jack and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international best-seller Winning. You can email them questions at Winning@nytimes. com.

Please include your name, occupation, city and country.