A late 2024 Gallup poll found that only 46 percent of U.S. employees strongly agree they know what’s expected of them at work. Ten points lower than 2020. That’s not just a slip, it’s a freefall. It reminds me of the importance of addressing root causes and not just the symptoms. Therefore, is this really about disengagement (we have a tendency to blame the employees), or are leaders confusing autonomy with something else entirely (where the leadership must shoulder the problem)?
I put this question to the groups I spoke with at a recent HR conference. What if autonomy isn’t always the gift we think it is? What if autonomy, in some cases, is actually the problem?
I know, I know, autonomy is supposed to be the holy grail. Trust your people. Step back. Don’t micromanage. I hear it all the time in keynotes, in workshops, in the endless stream of leadership content we consume. But let’s be honest. It’s lazy to pretend autonomy is always the answer. Micromanagement can wreck a team. Autonomy can too. If there is one thing I leave you with today, is “it depends.”
And that’s the problem. We don’t like the phrase “it depends.” It’s easier to uphold absolutes. Autonomy good. Micromanagement bad. But the reality is different. Context matters. Who’s the employee? What’s the task? What’s happening in the organization around them? Autonomy without context is just neglect dressed up as empowerment.
Think about your own job. Pull out your description and look at each duty. Once you have those in front of you, make a quick list of the various tasks you actually perform to accomplish that duty. Now, for each task, rate your competence on a scale of one to four. Four is fully competent. One is not competent at all. That’s where the real story shows up. It’s easy to say you’re solid on “budget preparation” as a duty. But when you break it into tasks like running the software, analyzing trends, reconciling errors, or presenting numbers, you may find yourself at a four in one area, a two in another, and maybe even a one in the parts you rarely touch (or are not fun). And that’s the trap. Leaders hand out autonomy at the duty level, when what really matters is competence at the task level.
That’s where leaders miss the mark. We over-grant autonomy. We buy into the mantra of “trust your people” without pausing to ask, “at this moment, with this person, for this task, does autonomy actually help?” Too often, the answer is no. And the result is employees drifting, unclear, unsupported.
So maybe that Gallup number isn’t just about disengagement. Maybe it’s about leaders handing out autonomy like candy, mistaking hands-off leadership for trust. It’s not trust. It’s neglect.
Autonomy is not an entitlement. It’s not even always a virtue. It’s situational, it’s earned, and it should be applied with intention. The better question for leaders isn’t, “am I giving enough autonomy?” The better question is, “am I giving the right kind of autonomy, to the right person, at the right time?”
Because there’s a fine line between freedom and freefall, right now, too many organizations are letting people slip.
