You want more autonomy from your team? Watch what actually happens when someone decides without you.

“I always have to tell them what to do.”

“They don’t take the initiative.”

“They bring me problems instead of solutions.”

It’s one of the most common complaints I hear from the business owners I work with.

And I won’t deny that it’s often true: the people in front of you may not have the maturity or skills they need. But before reaching that conclusion, I want to focus on something very concrete: what happens in your company when someone makes a decision and gets it wrong.

People learn quickly. They decide how to behave based on what actually happens, not on what is said.

If they can ask their boss and risk nothing, while a wrong decision brings a forty-minute lecture, the most rational choice becomes simple: don’t decide, ask. The same happens when a decision is judged afterwards using information that person didn’t have.

If you want others to be autonomous but then expect them to reach exactly the decision you would have made, you don’t realise that you’re not asking for autonomy: you’re expecting an impossible kind of telepathy.

And it’s precisely in this context that business owners, managers and employees often end up “rowing” in different directions while claiming to want the same things.

The business owner thinks: “Do I really have to take care of everything?”

The manager thinks: “If I do things my own way, I risk making a mistake. I might as well ask.”

The employee thinks: “Why don’t they see what matters? Why don’t they understand that if they removed these obstacles, things would work a thousand times better? Why am I always the one paying the price?”

The more I do this work, the more deeply convinced I am that motivation isn’t what’s needed: you need to make things clear and learn to negotiate. Clarity is about goals, room to act, boundaries, responsibilities, projects and measurement. Negotiating means learning to manage the fear of losing control, urgent demands and market uncertainty.

And it starts with these powerful questions:

• Where would it be useful for that person to have real autonomy?
• Up to what amount?
• Using which criteria?
• Which mistakes are acceptable?
• In which situations should they involve their boss?
• What outcome are they responsible for?

It’s through clearly defined and structured decision-making capability that a company can stop fuelling conflict between people and start growing.