Leadership Series
I have sat through more meetings than I care to remember where intelligent, experienced, perfectly capable people have identified a problem, discussed its implications, agreed that something needs to change, and then concluded by saying, “We should probably see what leadership thinks.”
Sometimes that is entirely appropriate. Certain decisions require formal authority, financial approval, or strategic alignment. Organizations need governance, and there are good reasons why not everyone gets to make every decision.
But on many occasions, I have found myself wondering what, exactly, everyone is waiting for.
The problem is understood. The consequences of inaction are reasonably clear. The people in the room have sufficient experience to recommend a solution. Yet somehow, responsibility remains suspended until someone with a more impressive title gives everyone permission to exercise their judgment.
This is one of the quieter failures of organizational life. We develop capable people, encourage them to think independently, and then create cultures in which initiative feels like a risk rather than an expectation.
Eventually, people become so accustomed to waiting for leadership that they forget leadership is something they can practice themselves.
The Permission Trap
There is a deeply ingrained assumption in many organizations that leadership begins with authority. First comes the promotion, the title, the office, the reporting structure, or the official announcement. Then comes the opportunity to lead.
It is an understandable belief, particularly in hierarchical organizations where authority has traditionally determined whose opinion matters and whose decisions carry weight.
But it creates a peculiar dependency.
People begin to associate leadership with something bestowed upon them rather than something demonstrated through their conduct. They wait to be selected, recognized, encouraged, or formally empowered before behaving like the leaders they hope to become.
The irony is that organizations frequently promote people precisely because they have already demonstrated those qualities.
A job title may give someone authority over resources and decisions. It does not automatically give them judgment, credibility, courage, or the willingness to accept responsibility when circumstances become difficult.
Those qualities develop through practice, often long before formal recognition arrives.
If you need permission to demonstrate leadership, you may be confusing the position you want with the responsibility you already have.
Why Capable People Hesitate
It would be easy to dismiss people who wait for permission as lacking initiative. Sometimes that is true, but I think the explanation is often more complicated.
Leadership involves exposure.
The moment someone takes ownership of a problem, makes a recommendation, challenges an assumption, or proposes a different direction, they become visible. Their judgment can be questioned. Their recommendation can be rejected. Their effort may fail.
Remaining on the sidelines carries fewer immediate personal risks.
There is also a social dimension. People worry about appearing ambitious, overstepping boundaries, embarrassing their manager, or being perceived as difficult. They may have learned through experience that initiative is welcomed in principle but punished when it challenges someone else’s authority. The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley explains how people weigh the likely benefits of speaking up against the personal risks in How to Make It Safe for People to Speak Up at Work.
I have encountered organizations where employees are repeatedly encouraged to take ownership, only to discover that ownership disappears the moment their decisions differ from what a senior executive would have preferred.
Under those conditions, waiting for permission is not necessarily irrational. It may be a perfectly understandable adaptation to the culture.
But it is also worth recognizing that individuals sometimes use organizational limitations as convenient explanations for their own reluctance to take responsibility.
There is a difference between being prevented from leading and being unwilling to risk leading.
Recognizing which situation we are in requires a degree of self-honesty that is not always comfortable.
Leadership Begins With What You Notice
Some of the most valuable leadership behavior occurs without anyone issuing an instruction.
An employee notices that customers repeatedly encounter the same problem and begins investigating why. A manager recognizes that two departments are working against each other and brings the right people together. A team member sees a colleague struggling and offers support before being asked.
None of these actions requires a grand leadership mandate.
They require attention, judgment, and a willingness to act.
I have always believed that one of the clearest indicators of leadership potential is what someone does when they encounter a problem that has not yet been formally assigned to them.
Do they ignore it because it sits outside their job description? Do they complain about the person who should have addressed it? Do they wait for someone senior to notice?
Or do they take the first responsible step toward understanding and resolving it?
That does not necessarily mean taking control. Sometimes the most useful contribution is asking a better question, presenting evidence, or identifying the individual who actually has the authority to act.
Leadership often begins with accepting that a problem deserves our attention even when nobody has explicitly made it our responsibility.
Initiative Is Not a License to Ignore Authority
There is an important qualification here because the advice to stop waiting for permission can become dangerously simplistic.
Organizations cannot function if everyone independently decides which policies to follow, which commitments to make, or which strategic priorities to pursue.
A junior employee who unilaterally commits the company to a substantial expenditure is not necessarily demonstrating leadership. A manager who bypasses colleagues because they believe their own judgment is superior may be creating precisely the dysfunction they claim to be solving.
Initiative requires discernment.
The useful distinction is between seeking permission to think and seeking authorization to act.
You should rarely need permission to understand a problem, gather relevant information, construct a recommendation, identify potential consequences, or suggest an improvement.
You may absolutely need authorization to spend money, change established policy, redirect someone else’s resources, or make commitments that affect the wider organization.
Strong emerging leaders understand these boundaries. They do not use initiative as an excuse for disregarding legitimate authority, and they do not use legitimate authority as an excuse for intellectual passivity.
Their contribution is to make good decisions easier for the organization, whether or not they personally possess the final decision-making authority.
The Responsibility of Senior Leaders
Of course, encouraging initiative is considerably easier than creating an environment in which people genuinely feel able to exercise it.
Senior leaders have an obligation to examine how their own behavior influences the confidence of those around them.
Do they routinely override decisions without explanation? Do they react defensively when someone proposes a different approach? Do they praise independent thinking publicly while privately rewarding unquestioning compliance?
If so, they should not be surprised when employees become reluctant to act without explicit direction.
I have seen founders create extraordinary businesses through personal drive, instinct, and relentless attention to detail. Those same strengths can become constraints as the company grows.
When every meaningful decision continues to flow through the founder, capable managers gradually lose the habit of exercising independent judgment. The organization becomes dependent on the very person who complains that nobody else is taking sufficient ownership.
The solution requires more than telling employees to step up. Leaders must establish clear decision rights, define measurable expectations, tolerate reasonable differences in approach, and resist the temptation to reclaim responsibility whenever someone makes an imperfect decision. Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko of Bain show how clear decision roles speed up organizations in the Harvard Business Review article Who Has the D? How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance.
You cannot complain that people are waiting for permission while creating a culture in which acting without permission is dangerous.
Leadership Is Developed Through Use
One of the difficulties with leadership development is that organizations often treat it primarily as an educational exercise.
We send people to courses, recommend books, provide coaching, and discuss competencies. These activities have value, but leadership cannot be developed entirely through instruction. The Center for Creative Leadership’s research behind The 70-20-10 Rule for Leadership Development suggests that most leadership learning comes from challenging assignments rather than coursework.
At some point, people must practice judgment under conditions where the outcome matters.
They need opportunities to make recommendations, resolve disagreements, confront underperformance, communicate difficult information, and accept responsibility for results.
They will occasionally get things wrong. So do experienced executives.
The objective is not to eliminate mistakes, but to help people develop the capacity to recognize them, understand their consequences, and make better decisions next time.
Waiting until someone is completely ready before allowing them to lead is rather like waiting until someone can swim before allowing them into the water. Preparation matters, but eventually experience has to do some of the teaching.
The challenge is to provide meaningful responsibility with sufficient support and appropriate boundaries.
The Choice to Step Forward
There is also a more personal dimension to this subject.
Many people spend an extraordinary amount of their lives waiting to be recognized. They hope someone will notice their ability, appreciate their ideas, identify their potential, and invite them into a larger role.
Recognition matters, and organizations should be far better at identifying and developing talent.
But there is a danger in allowing our willingness to contribute to depend entirely on whether someone else has acknowledged our capacity.
Leadership begins with a decision about how we intend to behave, regardless of the title on our business card.
It means preparing thoroughly, thinking independently, speaking when something important needs to be said, and accepting responsibility for work that matters.
It means understanding when to challenge, when to support, when to act, and when to seek the authority necessary to move forward.
Most importantly, it means refusing to become a passive observer of problems we are capable of helping to solve.
I have never believed that everyone needs to aspire to a senior management position. Organizations need excellent specialists, thoughtful contributors, and people who derive genuine satisfaction from doing their particular work exceptionally well.
But leadership is not restricted to the people who want to manage others.
It is available to anyone willing to exercise judgment, take responsibility, and improve the circumstances around them.
Sometimes a promotion follows. Sometimes it does not. Either way, the contribution remains valuable.
And perhaps that is where we should reconsider what it means to lead.
Rather than waiting for someone to confer leadership upon us, we might begin by asking what responsibility is already within our reach, what problem deserves our attention, and what useful action we can take without waiting for an invitation.
Because the most convincing evidence that someone is ready to lead is often that they have already started.
