Who’s in Control?
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In times of uncertainty, people seek the comfort of control. Compensatory control theory, developed by researchers in 2009, suggests that when people feel a lack of control in their environment, they often try to restore it “by imbuing their social, physical, and metaphysical environments with order and structure.”
We see this playing out in organizations today as many leaders gravitate toward more automation, return-to-office mandates, monitoring systems, and other strict controls. It’s tempting to lean more heavily on technology and systematic approaches to workforce management and the promise of “objective,” data-driven decisions.
Yet research indicates that effective leadership requires more human engagement, not less. As Marylène Gagné and Rebecca Hewett explain in their examination of employee motivation, when leaders default to rules, monitoring, and rewards — a “carrots and sticks” approach — it diminishes the intrinsic motivation that drives top performance. They’ve found that high performance instead comes from engaging employees and supporting their fundamental needs for autonomy, competence, and connection. But this approach can seem counter to managers’ need for certainty and control.
Paradoxically, the quest to imbue the work environment with more order and structure — and to gain efficiencies — can lead managers to relinquish control to less-effective technology systems. Sharna Wiblen’s research shows how an overreliance on digital talent management systems can lead organizations to cede critical decisions about their future leaders to automated processes that can’t capture the nuances of human potential or align with company-specific needs. While these systems can be valuable tools, they work best when complementing rather than replacing leadership judgment.
The question of what control to retain and what control to relinquish (and how) is not an easy one. For instance, Henrik Saabye and Thomas Borup Kristensen’s research demonstrates that by engaging in solving real-world problems alongside their employees in a learning context, leaders can tap the collective intelligence of their teams to better navigate complexity and achieve more sustainable growth. This requires both taking back some control (from learning and development specialists) and resisting the tendency to provide all the answers to employees in favor of fostering inquiry. “I used to just ask a few questions before concluding,” said a senior manager at Lego. “Now I ask questions to let the employees arrive at the conclusions themselves.”
These findings point to an essential truth: As our world becomes more complex, the distinctive value of human leadership grows more important, not less. The most effective leaders understand that while systems and automation can enhance our capabilities, they cannot replace the essential human work of understanding individual motivations, recognizing a person’s unique potential, and fostering genuine learning and growth based on trust. Today, the ability to navigate this control space effectively is a critical management competency.
