Giving autonomy without clarity leaves people feeling the weight of ambiguity, not freedom. Trust, then clarity, then agency is how championship teams are built.
The traditional wisdom about autonomy is deceptively simple: hire great people and give them latitude. Let them crack on. Trust them to figure it out.
But this often backfires in a predictable way. When we give teams autonomy, we think we’re offering agency, but what they feel is the paralysing weight of ambiguity.
What starts out as good intentions quickly turns into uncertainty and frustration.
I’m compelled to write this article because of a conversation I had with a highly talented engineer last week:
“Lack of clarity in our organisation has become a feeding ground for the abdication of responsibility, followed by a cat-and-mouse blame game”.
Can you smell the cynicism? It hurts particularly because it’s how I used to manage my team.
The ‘giving’ autonomy paradox
Agency has resurrected itself as the silver bullet for ‘navigating change and complexity’. And yes, agency is crucial. It’s why it’s central to my high-performing championship-team model: trust > clarity > agency.
But we’re approaching this challenge the wrong way.
The underlying problem is a mindset issue.
The idea that we should give autonomy. The idea that we should empower people.
This language is a trap.
Language matters because a manager “giving” autonomy is a paradox - if it’s given, it implies it can be taken away and that quietly strips people of agency. This creates a ‘leash effect’. People feel like they’re on a leash, rather than being treated like adults who can figure things out.
You end up with a team of cautious subordinates waiting for the tug on the collar.
Real agency isn’t permission-based: it’s emergent-based. In other words, autonomy has a flywheel effect through clear constraints.
Brain fog: the lack of clarity pitfall
People often think that giving clarity is overbearing or instructional. That it’ll upset people, that it’s imposing. If that’s the feeling, there’s a re-contracting conversation needed about the relationship between clarity and agency.
Because for me, these guardrails create more space to solve problems, experiment, and try things than ambiguous empowerment ever does. But the right constraints must be added early and clearly: otherwise, late intervention feels like micro-management.
When there’s a lack of clarity, people hesitate, they second-guess, and they wait for others to solve the problem. Rather than taking a step in to figure stuff out, they step back. It quickly becomes chaotic.
If you’ve experienced this, you know how frustrating it is. You tried your best, you did everything within the bounds of your understanding. All of a sudden, you get the red pen treatment. At this stage, neuroscience is in action: your brain is a prediction-making machine. Why this important to understand? The next time you start a project, you’re hesitant. You remember what happened last time when you got it wrong. You start asking more questions. You overthink things. You seek more sign-offs.
Constraints: freedom within a framework
We have been conditioned to think constraints are the enemy of creativity. The opposite is true.
To use the analogy of an Olympic team sport, clarity turns a group of individuals into a team united in winning together.
A team wins not because it is “free to do whatever,” but because it understands team tactics. They understand their own role, and critically, the role of others. They understand the boundaries. When to press, when to hold. That shared clarity is what creates speed, confidence, and intelligent risk-taking.
In other words, the things that are often unspoken are spoken and understood.
Who owns what decision? What needs consultation or sign-off? What are we explicitly not doing? (This is the most underrated tool in leading, I think. Does this decision need stress-testing or peer review?
Guardrails enable colleagues to decide the right tyres for the right track conditions. Without guardrails, teams are less likely to press the accelerator on risk-taking or decision-making.
This isn’t just a leadership problem.
Whilst the leader and manager’s roles are to architect the arena and communicate the right constraints transparently. Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking it’s a problem to be fixed by leaders.
It creates this weird, psychological, adult-child relationship. We need adult-to-adult if we’re going to succeed.
Teams must transition from passive execution to active ownership. This means refusing to operate in a vacuum. It is everyone’s responsibility to relentlessly “pull” for clarity when it’s missing, to proactively signal when guardrails are stifling speed, and to provide the transparency that gives everyone the confidence to fulfil their role.
When leadership clarifies the “where, what and why,” the team must own the “how” with a level of rigour that makes micromanagement feel redundant.
This is definitely an article for another day.
Trust > clarity > agency: that’s the key for building a high-performing championship team.