The Control We Call Leadership
- May 31
- 5 min read
Carla Madeleine is an attorney, executive leader, and advisor who guides executives in integrating unexamined inner aspects so their leadership becomes examined rather than reactive. Her work bridges authority, authenticity, and inner transformation, particularly during moments of personal and organizational transition.
Many leaders genuinely believe they are fostering accountability, high standards, and strong performance, yet some of the behaviors they rely on may be quietly communicating something very different. This article explores how distrust can become embedded in leadership practices and organizational systems, often limiting the very ownership, initiative, and innovation leaders hope to inspire.
Let’s play a round of “Have I Ever?” Give yourself one point for each behavior described that you embodied within the last 10 days.
Here we go:
Have you ever rewritten work that was already good because it was not done the way you would have done it?
Have you ever added another approval step "just to be safe"?
Have you ever asked for input while already knowing which answer you wanted?
Have you ever struggled to delegate something because doing it yourself felt faster, easier, or less risky?
Have you ever said you wanted initiative from your team, then felt uneasy when people exercised independent judgment?
Have you ever monitored people more closely during moments of uncertainty, pressure, or change?
Have you ever interpreted a mistake as evidence that tighter control was needed?
How did you do? No one I have supported has ever scored less than 1. Heck, based on the last 10 days, I scored a 4.
The undercurrent beneath the behavior
Many of these behavior patterns are often framed as diligence, high standards, accountability, or leadership rigor. Sure, sometimes they are. But often they are something else, distrust. Not necessarily malicious distrust. Not even conscious distrust. But distrust nonetheless.
Modern leadership culture has become increasingly fluent in the language of "empowerment" while simultaneously designing systems rooted in control. Organizations ask people to innovate, take ownership, move quickly, and think creatively while surrounding them with layers of monitoring, approvals, over measurement, excessive meetings, and decision bottlenecks that quietly communicate the opposite.
We often speak about trust as though it is a soft cultural value rather than a structural force. But distrust shapes behavior. It shapes systems. It shapes how people show up in rooms, how quickly decisions move, how much initiative employees take, and whether people feel safe enough to think, risk, challenge, create, or tell the truth. In many workplaces, distrust has become normalized.
Sometimes it looks like leaders constantly checking work that does not actually require checking. Sometimes it looks like over engineered reporting structures designed to soothe leadership anxiety more than support meaningful outcomes. Other times it looks like endless approval chains that slow decisions to a crawl. Sometimes it looks like leaders unintentionally training teams to seek permission for everything because independent thinking feels risky.
The result is not stronger organizations. The result is tension. When distrust quietly shapes leadership culture, organizations become slower, more brittle, and more dependent. Employees stop exercising judgment because they learn that judgment is not actually trusted. Innovation declines because experimentation becomes emotionally expensive. Initiative shrinks because people begin optimizing for safety rather than contribution.
Over time, cultures shaped by chronic distrust train people to disengage from their own intelligence. This matters because many organizations are operating in conditions of immense uncertainty right now. Economic instability, rapid technological shifts, public scrutiny, political polarization, and ongoing workforce transformation have created increasing pressure for leaders. Given those dynamics, control can feel comforting. Monitoring can feel responsible. Tightening oversight can feel like protection.
But leadership anxiety does not become wisdom simply because it is institutionalized. Control and accountability are not the same thing. Discernment and surveillance are not the same thing. Trust does not mean the absence of standards, feedback, responsibility, or consequences.
Healthy leadership requires accountability. But accountability rooted in trust looks different from accountability rooted in fear.
One expands capacity. The other narrows it. One cultivates stewardship. The other cultivates dependence. One strengthens discernment. The other trains compliance.
The cost of distrust over time
Over time, this erosion becomes expensive in ways many organizations fail to measure. People stop bringing forward early concerns because they no longer believe honesty is truly welcome. Teams become performative rather than collaborative, spending more energy managing perception than solving problems. Resentment quietly accumulates beneath professionalism. High capacity employees either leave, emotionally withdraw, or shrink themselves to fit the limits of the system. Leaders, often without realizing it, become increasingly isolated from the very truth, creativity, and relational feedback needed to navigate complexity well.
The true question
Perhaps the deeper question is not whether leaders trust their employees. Perhaps the deeper question is whether leaders trust themselves enough to lead without trying to control every variable.
Because underneath many control oriented leadership behaviors is often an unspoken fear, fear of mistakes, fear of unpredictability, fear of reputational harm, fear of losing authority, fear of uncertainty, fear of what might emerge without constant oversight, or fear of becoming obsolete or replaceable. But people can feel when systems do not trust them. Even when the language says otherwise.
Eventually, cultures built on distrust produce exactly what they fear most, disengagement, passivity, fragility, and diminished ownership.
The future will not belong to organizations that perfect surveillance. It will belong to organizations capable of cultivating discernment, relational trust, adaptability, and shared stewardship strong enough to withstand uncertainty.
So perhaps the invitation is not simply to ask whether your organization values trust. Perhaps the invitation is to ask:
Where in your leadership are you calling control by the name of accountability?
What behaviors might your systems actually be training in the people around you?
Where has pressure or uncertainty narrowed your capacity to trust?
Are your employees spending more energy managing leadership anxiety than exercising their own judgment?
What would become possible if your organization cultivated discernment instead of dependence?
What kind of leadership becomes available when trust is treated not as a slogan, but as a practice?
What realizations come up for you?
Read more from Carla Madeleine Kupe
Carla Madeleine Kupe, Executive Leadership Advisor
Carla Madeleine is an attorney, executive leader, and trusted advisor who works with leaders navigating power, responsibility, and transition. With a background in law, executive leadership, and organizational change, she helps individuals identify and integrate unexamined inner patterns that quietly shape decision-making, authority, and trust, particularly during periods of uncertainty, contraction, and reimagination. Carla writes at the intersection of leadership, inner work, and change, offering grounded insight for those shaping the future.
