Most companies say they want proactive people. People who spot problems before they become crises. People who take ownership, seek opportunities, and look for ways to improve things. And people who don’t simply wait to be told what to do before taking appropriate action. And yet, strangely, many of these same organisations unintentionally teach their people to do quite the opposite.
It's not that they have formal policies or procedures directing people the wrong way, but more often it results from the thousands of small interactions that gradually shape how people think about their ability to influence what happens around them. Over time, these experiences become part of the culture which in turn influences whether people see themselves as active participants in shaping the future of their workplace, or simply observers or passengers responding to events around them.
And so, we need to consider the concept of agency.
At its simplest, agency is the belief that our actions can influence outcomes. An 'agent' is someone who acts on behalf of something or someone else. For example, an 'agent of change' actively influences events rather than simply reacting to them. Agentic behaviour describes people who take the initiative, exercise judgement, and seek to shape circumstances rather than merely accept them. Agentic is a term that has recently become popular through discussions about Agentic AI, but psychologists have been studying human agency for decades, and it sits at the heart of motivation, resilience, learning, leadership, and performance.
You can spot people with a strong sense of agency, they're the ones asking what they can do to help, looking for options and solutions, suggesting ways to resolve issues or improve processes. You can easily spot people with low agency as they are the ones often asking why things always happen, wondering who is responsible, suggesting 'someone should do something about this', or perhaps questioning the point of bothering.
That constitutes quite a profound difference in mindset. One mindset looks for possibilities and options - where there's a will, there's a way. The other mindset looks for explanations, limitations, and has a sense of not being in control.
In many ways, low agency can be described as a fatalistic mindset - events happen, circumstances exist, and there is little expectation that anything can or will be done about that. But high agency people have a belief that while they may not control everything, there is usually something that can be done. Interestingly, both groups consider themselves as realists, responding to what is realistically possible - or not! And both mindsets can be learned!
Agency is not a binary state where you either have it or you don't, and in most organisations, there is a mixture of behaviours spread across a continuum from 'Learned Helplessness' to 'Learned Agency'. Agency is a type of behaviour, and in an organisation, behaviours are learned.
Psychologist Martin Seligman studied 'learned helplessness' which is where people can come to believe they have little influence over outcomes, even when opportunities to act exist. His work was focused on individuals, but the principles apply equally well when considering individuals working together to form workplace cultures.
People gradually learn whether showing initiative is welcomed, ignored, or punished. They learn whether raising concerns leads to management action or push-back. They learn whether challenging assumptions is encouraged or discouraged. And over time, what they learn from these interactions teaches them where they are expected to sit on the continuum, and that becomes embedded in the culture.
Signs of Learned Helplessness. There are a number of phrases that you may hear - and these should be acting as warning flags; phrases such as:
One of the challenges with learned helplessness is that people often believe they are being realistic; none of these statements is necessarily wrong, and sometimes they may even be factually correct.
However, the problem is that they often become conversation - and thought - stoppers. Once spoken, if there is acknowledgement - or no one pushes back, then the model of helplessness becomes further engrained. When repeated broadly and often enough, there is no curiosity, no exploration of possible alternatives, people hide behind the statement, and responsibility for the situation is shunted elsewhere. Rather than asking what might be possible, people begin explaining why nothing can be done. This feeling of 'helplessness' has to be rationalised, hence the development of an 'it's out of our control, so let's just accept it' belief. And so, over time, organisations can unintentionally train themselves not to act.
This is one reason why some cultures become increasingly dependent on permission. People learn that decisions belong elsewhere, initiative carries risk, and action requires approval. The safest response becomes waiting rather than acting.
Signs of Learned Agency. An agentic culture will sound - and feel - quite different. People will ask things like:
Agentic people don't necessarily have more authority than anyone else; they simply focus their attention differently. Faced with the same circumstances, they will look for options to move forward, rather than reasons to stay still.
This creates a very different energy inside an organisation as problems become challenges to be solved, and constraints become part of the challenge, rather than excuses. Change becomes something people participate in rather than something they endure.
Agency does not mean that everyone is acting independently or doing whatever they want. The healthiest organisations will combine high levels of agency with clear boundaries. People understand the outcomes they are trying to achieve, the decisions they are empowered to make, and the limits within which they should operate. This is known as 'bounded autonomy' where people are trusted to exercise judgement within a clearly understood framework, rather than constantly seeking permission.
While agency can be part of an individual's natural tendency, organisations can play a significant role in shaping it and leaders have a major part in that either through what they tolerate, what they demonstrate, and what they reward.
Leaders teach helplessness when they:
Conversely, leaders teach agency when they:
Culture is often less about what leaders say and more about what people repeatedly experience. Every interaction teaches people something about how the organisation works and what behaviours are expected.
Another key way of developing agency is to engage with 'unhelpful' comments or statements. For example, I was recently speaking with a leadership team who had noticed a common phrase appearing, and spreading, across the organisation.
Whenever a challenge emerged, someone would eventually shrug and conclude that “it is what it is”. The phrase itself was not the problem; the issue was what happened next - NOTHING!
Conversation stopped, so thought, options, and possibilities weren't considered, and so attention shifted elsewhere.
I suggested a simple intervention. Whenever someone used the phrase, the next question should be: “And is that acceptable?” If, or rather when, the answer was no, then the follow-up question became: “So what can we do about it?”
The aim was not necessarily to solve every problem immediately, but to retrain thinking, stop people hiding behind the phrase where they accept the status quo, and to start considering possibilities and how to improve things. Small questions can have surprisingly large cultural effects when asked consistently.
Ultimately, agency is a cultural characteristic, and culture changes through behaviour. Leaders play a critical role in creating that change, through the questions they ask, and also through the example they set. If leaders routinely fall back on excuses, avoid accountability, or dismiss ideas, people quickly learn what is truly acceptable regardless of the official messaging.
Also, leaders must be willing to be challenged themselves. An organisation cannot encourage agency in some people while discouraging it in others. If questioning assumptions and seeking solutions are valued behaviours, they need to apply in all directions.
Every organisation teaches agency - whether low or high, and whether intentionally or not. Given the right circumstances (ie the right culture), most people have the ability to influence outcomes. When people repeatedly experience that their ideas matter, that sensible initiative is welcomed, and that their actions can make a difference, agency grows. And when agency grows, organisations become more adaptable, more resilient, and often more innovative.
The most effective cultures are the ones where people believe they can help create the future - and they make every effort to go and do just that.
Ad Futurum
Graham
/kcl-goes-green/HeaderLogo-60x300-ID-e065fb7a-094d-4fc6-d8c1-f4f88e7523f5.png)