How Leadership Strengthens or Erodes Agency?

Do you sense, around you, that people are thinking – or even saying out loud: "Whatever." "Nothing changes here anyway." "There's no point saying anything." "I'm just here to work."

When this kind of atmosphere starts to hang in the air, we easily interpret it as an attitude or motivation problem.

• Why don't people take more responsibility?

• Why is initiative lacking?

• Why does no one seem to take things on?

But what if we're asking the wrong question? What if the person hasn't stopped caring, but has gradually learned that what they do or think doesn't matter very much?

This question is worth pausing to consider especially now, when many organisations are living amid continuous change and uncertainty. Restructurings, cost pressures, the changes brought by AI, shifting goals and decisions over which an individual has no influence can gradually create the experience that one's own space to act is narrowing.

In times of transformation, we especially need the experience that even though I can't influence everything, I can still influence something.

Agency is the experience that what I do matters

Agency refers to the experience that I can, through my own choices and actions, influence what happens. This is close to the experience of self-efficacy: the belief that I'm able to influence my own situation. It should be underlined, however, that this isn't about an individual getting to decide everything.

In working life, many things are simply given to us. Strategy can change. The organisation can be restructured. A customer may make decisions unfavourable to us, market conditions shift, and sometimes decisions must be made that no one would have wanted to make.

Agency is needed especially amid uncertainty. In such moments, the individual identifies their own sphere of influence, focuses on it, and believes that their own actions matter.

Nir Eyal, in his article "How Leaders Can Build a High-Agency Culture", published in Harvard Business Review in March 2026, describes this as high-agency thinking. According to him, agency is not a fixed personality trait that some people simply happen to have more of than others. It is a capability that is built through experience.

If agency is built through experience, then leadership actions have a direct effect on it – either strengthening it or weakening it.

What has a person learned about whether it's worth trying?

In his article, Eyal highlights the work of Martin Seligman and Steven Maier, which turns the familiar idea of learned helplessness on its head.

The original theory, from 1967, proposed that amid repeated setbacks a person learns that their actions don't matter, and therefore stops trying. Half a century later, Maier and Seligman revisited their own theory in light of neuroscience and found that it had been wrong on an essential point. Passivity is not learned. It is the default response to a prolonged situation that cannot be controlled. It doesn't need to be learned – it arises on its own.

What is learned is the opposite: the experience that one's own actions really do make a difference. It is precisely this experience that dismantles the default passivity. And it has a long memory: once a person has experienced being able to have an effect, that experience carries them through later situations, too, even ones where they have no influence at all. Although this is brain research rather than workplace research, the analogy to everyday organisational life is strikingly familiar.

If passivity is the default state, and it is agency specifically that is learned, then a central task of leadership becomes arranging – often enough and repeatedly – experiences for people that show them their actions matter.

This also changes the question we, as leaders, often ask. Instead of asking:

"Why don't these people take responsibility?"

we could ask:

"What have they learned in this environment about whether it's worth taking responsibility?"

• If I raise a problem, does anything happen?

• If I suggest a change, am I listened to?

• If I make a decision by myself, is my judgement trusted?

• If I try something new and fail, what will follow?

People quickly learn an organisation's real game rules. The ones that repeat in everyday experiences.

If the experience, often enough, is that one's own initiative leads nowhere, a person may stop trying. What looks like indifference from the outside may in fact be quite a logical response.

A well-meaning leader can teach passivity

I don't believe any leader wants to erode agency on purpose. Yet good intentions can turn into something that chips away at it.

• A team member raises a problem, and the leader quickly offers a solution.

• Someone hesitates in the face of a difficult situation, and the leader takes it on themselves.

• A discussion drags on, so the leader makes the decision on others' behalf.

• Customer complaints have increased, so decision-making authority is moved upward and reporting is increased.

When these patterns repeat, we teach people:

• I don't need to solve this. Someone else will.

• There's no point in me deciding. The decision gets made elsewhere anyway.

• It's safer to wait for instructions than to use my own judgement.

  
  

The more responsibility a leader carries on others' behalf, the less responsibility-taking and agency emerges around them, the very thing that is, at the same time, being hoped for.

Agency strengthens only when people are safely exposed to situations in which they can practise it.

Uncertainty challenges the leader's own agency too

When we talk about agency, attention easily turns to those being led. But uncertainty affects leaders in exactly the same way. A leader, too, can start to feel that they are unable to influence anything.

• "The group decides."

• "The market dictates."

• "Nothing can be done about these targets."

• "My job is just to carry this forward."

It's difficult, almost impossible, to strengthen others' agency if your own experience is that you can't do anything yourself. One of a leader's most important skills is the ability to distinguish between what I can influence, what I should influence in my role, and what falls outside my sphere of influence. From the perspective of managing energy, it's worth turning focus to where it can achieve the most.

Talking about agency alone doesn't build agency Organisaatioissa puhutaan paljon vastuunotosta, itseohjautuvuudesta ja omistajuudesta. Mutta ihmisiä ei voi puhua toimijuuteen. Heidän täytyy saada kokea se.

Eyal describes GE's transformation as an example of how small teams solved real problems and quickly saw the concrete results of their own work. The idea was not primarily to make people feel more motivated, but to build conditions in which they received direct evidence that their actions had an effect.

This captures the whole essence of agency. Agency is built through experiences:

• I raised an issue, it was heard, and we solved it together.

• I made a decision. It moved us forward.

• We tested a new approach. Not everything went perfectly, but we learned a great deal about how the process can be improved.

  
  

A leader who strengthens agency asks: "What kinds of experiences does this working environment offer people to show them that it's worth taking responsibility?"

A leader cannot remove all uncertainty from around people. They cannot give people influence over everything. And it is not their job to maintain an artificial sense that everything is under control. But they can influence whether people experience themselves as mere objects of decisions and change, or as active agents within them.

One of the most important tasks of leadership in uncertain times is precisely to strengthen this experience:

I can't influence everything. But I can influence something. I matter. And what I do next matters.

References

Eyal, N. (2026). How Leaders Can Build a High-Agency Culture: The psychology of rewiring your company’s invisible belief systems. Harvard Business Review, 25.3.2026.

Maier, S. F. & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349–367.

This blog was penned by organisational psychologist Hanna Poskiparta. Hanna gets energised by projects that renew leadership, teamwork, and organisational culture. Her experience in supervisory and leadership roles brings depth and a practical perspective to client work. At Netco, she's inspired by a customer-centric approach and a work community that radiates joy and ambition.