Trust & Commit: Responsibility as a management principle

Why responsibility fails when leadership retains too much control

As a manager, you face a real dilemma today: you want to delegate responsibility, enable autonomy and empower your teams, while at the same time ensuring that results are reliably achieved. Letting go of control often feels risky. After all, you are ultimately responsible for the outcome.

‘Responsibility doesn’t work for us,’ a department head recently told me during coaching. ‘We’ve given the teams more autonomy, but they’re not delivering. If I don’t constantly check in, nothing happens.’

Many managers have this experience. The desire for more personal responsibility is there. Teams should decide for themselves, set priorities and develop solutions. In practice, however, a contradictory leadership pattern often emerges: autonomy is announced, while at the same time old control and monitoring mechanisms remain in place. Only in more modern language.

When modern terms conceal old patterns

In many organisations today, there is a lot of talk about alignment, governance, KPIs and commitments. These are important concepts. However, when put into practice, they often serve to maintain control without anyone realising it.

‘We need more alignment’ does not mean: Let’s clarify the direction and goal together, but rather: I will tell you exactly how you should work. ‘Clear governance’ often means: Please stick to this detailed plan. And ‘commitment’ becomes a ritual in which teams must promise to deliver exactly what has already been specified, not what they themselves can take responsibility for.

This creates a culture in which responsibility is only simulated. Teams deliver numbers instead of results, status reports instead of real progress. The result: frustration on both sides.

Why responsibility does not arise from control

Many managers understand responsibility as a kind of silent contract: I give you freedom – you deliver reliably. But responsibility does not work like an instruction. It is not a reaction to pressure, but a voluntary decision. People take responsibility when they have clarity, feel trust and experience real influence on the outcome.

If responsibility is linked to control, the opposite happens: teams act defensively, avoid risks and, above all, deliver what is expected. Not necessarily what would be sensible. Energy flows into safeguarding rather than value creation.

Responsibility cannot be demanded. It grows where leadership has the courage not to dictate the how completely and yet remains present for the employees.

Why simply letting go also fails

Some managers react to this insight by going to the other extreme: they withdraw completely. ‘I didn’t want to intervene,’ I hear them say. Or: ‘The team should sort it out themselves.’ But autonomy is not going it alone in a vacuum. Responsibility without guidance is not empowerment, but overload. Teams need direction, priorities and context. They need a vision and a manager who remains visible without dominating.

It is not the amount of freedom that determines a team’s performance, but the quality of that freedom.

More leadership, less management

This is where the real change lies: many executives are excellent managers. They plan, coordinate, monitor and secure processes. That is important. But autonomy and responsibility also require leadership.

• Managers assign tasks, leaders set the direction.
• Managers check whether plans are being fulfilled, leaders check whether goals are being achieved.
• Managers correct deviations, leaders enable learning.

In a dynamic working environment that requires quick decisions, leadership becomes a decisive lever. A manager does not create a detailed script for every situation. They provide clarity about goals, frameworks and expectations and enable the team to make their own decisions.

They are present, but not controlling. Approachable, but not supervisory. Orienting, but not restrictive. And above all, they are someone you can approach early on if something is not going well, without fear of sanctions.

The importance of trust & commit

If responsibility is to grow, a clear principle is needed: trust & commit – in exactly that order.

Trust means providing guidance while demonstrating confidence in the team’s abilities. Trust does not mean letting go blindly. It means trusting people to make decisions and setting clear boundaries. Trust is demonstrated through dialogue, not by asking about every step along the way.

Commitment arises where people want to take responsibility. Not because they have to. Commitment grows out of transparency, freedom of choice and the feeling of being taken seriously. That is why effective leadership always begins with trust.

Figure: Trust & Commit: Why responsibility begins with trust

How leadership truly enables responsibility

Effective leadership strikes a balance between direction and letting go. It stays close enough to provide guidance and far enough away to allow for personal responsibility. It provides support early on, rather than only intervening when there is a crisis.

Teams deliver when they understand why something is a priority. When they feel that their decisions are desired, not just tolerated.

And when they can trust that their manager has their back, even when things don’t go perfectly.

In the early stages, however, responsibility rarely runs smoothly. And this is precisely where leadership is challenged. At the first misunderstanding or delay, many managers intervene more strongly again: ‘That’s not how we do things here, we need to manage more closely.’

Interestingly, this conclusion is rarely drawn when it comes to traditional management tools. Hardly any project plan is followed exactly. Yet no one fundamentally questions the tool. With autonomy, on the other hand, one stumble is often enough to cast doubt on the entire principle.

Responsibility is not a switch, but a development process. Sometimes it works well, sometimes less so. That doesn’t mean that responsibility doesn’t work, but that learning is taking place.

Trust is worthwhile not because everything always runs smoothly, but because it is the only management approach that enables sustainable performance and genuine commitment. Short-term control creates security in the moment. In the long term, it prevents growth.

If you really want to strengthen responsibility, you have to accept that not every attempt will be successful. It is not the principle that is wrong. The path to achieving it requires time, clarity and managers who are willing to redefine their role.

Notes:

Marei Bauer supports executives in practising effective, people-centred leadership with structure, clarity and trust. If these topics are also relevant to your team, please feel free to contact her. You can easily get in touch via her website or on LinkedIn.

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Marei Bauer has published another article on the t2informatik Blog: