Why Caring is the Key to Unleashing Agency
Fred Miller on the LevelUp Podcast
I recently had a great conversation with Fred Miller, a leader with over five decades of experience in strategic cultural change. It’s not often you get to discuss leadership concepts with someone who has such a long-term perspective.
Our discussion brought several critical leadership challenges into sharp focus, particularly the interplay between trust, candour, and organisational agility. It’s worth reflecting on how these elements form a cohesive leadership model. Too often, we discuss these as separate skills, but Fred’s perspective makes it clear they are parts of a single, interconnected system.
We covered significant ground, but three core themes stood out as particularly relevant for leaders and coaches today.
Professional Candour as a Mandate: The necessity of speaking up, not just as an option, but as a core function of leadership.
Agency vs. Empowerment: A valuable reframing that shifts the leader’s role from a giver of power to a remover of obstacles.
Visibility as the Foundation: The non-negotiable, physical act of leadership that underpins all efforts to build trust.
1. The Mandate for Professional Candour
A key theme was the necessity of professional candour. Fred shared a formative story from his early work with Apple. He had suggested an alternative approach to a senior leader but did not press the point when he met resistance. The leader’s plan subsequently failed.
In the debrief, the leader held Fred accountable, saying, “I’m paying you so don’t make mistakes... I expect you to be more emphatic about your suggestions.”
The lesson was clear: his role was not to be a passive observer but an active partner in their success. This highlights a non-negotiable aspect of leadership, whether you are an external coach or an internal manager. Your silence in the face of a bad decision is a form of complicity.
This is an act of professional responsibility. Fred’s point, and one I agree with, is that this candour is not combative. It is the product of trust. When your team or client knows you are advocating for the shared mission, challenging an idea becomes a constructive act, not a personal one. This integrity is the baseline requirement for effective leadership.
2. Reframing Agency vs. Empowerment
A particularly salient point in our discussion was the reframing of ‘empowerment’ versus ‘agency’. This is a distinction I find valuable, as the term ‘empowerment’ has always carried problematic implications.
‘Empowerment’ suggests a top-down, conditional granting of power. A leader, from their position of authority, ‘allows’ a team member to have influence. It is a parent-child dynamic.
Fred suggests a different model: people arrive with innate agency. They are born with the will and desire to contribute, solve problems, and move forward. The problem is that our organisations, with their legacy systems and risk-averse cultures, actively stifle that agency.
The leader’s job, therefore, is not to grant power but to remove the organisational friction that suppresses the agency people already have.
The practical tool for this is ‘guardrails’. This framework prevents autonomy from descending into chaos. A leader’s responsibility is to be explicit about the boundaries:
Inside the guardrails: The team has full autonomy to act, create, and make decisions. This is where speed and innovation thrive.
Outside the guardrails: This is where consultation with the leader or a wider group is required.
This simple act of definition is one of the most powerful things a leader can do. It provides the clarity and psychological safety required for high performance and moves the leader’s role from micromanaging tasks to architecting a system.
3. The Visibility of Leadership
These concepts are all underpinned by a simple, physical act: leader visibility.
Fred observed that “leaders these days are sequestered in conference rooms,” and their teams report “I never see them.” This observation is accurate, and it points to a significant missed opportunity.
We have allowed the transactional work of management (reports, budgets, meetings) to supersede the relational work of leadership. You cannot build trust from a conference room. You cannot understand the real-world friction you need to remove if you are not present.
Fred noted that many senior leaders are “wonderful people,” but their teams may never know it. This lack of connection creates a trust vacuum, which makes professional candour feel dangerous and actively stifles agency. People will not take risks or speak up if they have no relational foundation with their leader.
This is why simple acts, like the factory leader Fred mentioned who stood by the door on Fridays to thank people, are not “soft” extras. They are the core mechanism for building the trust that high-performance teams run on.
What This Means for You
Translating these reflections into practice is the next logical step.
For Leaders
Conduct an ‘Agency Review’: Ask your team, “What is the single biggest process that slows you down from doing great work?” and “Where do you feel you have to ask for permission when you shouldn’t have to?” Then, commit to removing one of those blockers.
Define Clear Guardrails: Have an explicit conversation with your team. “Here is where you have 100% autonomy. Here is where you must consult me.” This clarity is liberating for everyone.
Schedule Relational Time: Put “management by walking around” (physically or virtually) in your calendar as a non-negotiable task. Its purpose is not to check up on work, but to listen and be seen.
Address Legacy Concerns: Before launching a new initiative, acknowledge the past. Ask, “What are your concerns based on previous change efforts?” This demonstrates you understand the ‘battle scars’ and are committed to a different outcome.
For Coaches
Use the ‘Agency’ Reframe: Introduce the “agency vs. empowerment” distinction to your clients. It is a powerful way to shift their perspective from ‘controlling’ to ‘unleashing’.
Facilitate ‘Guardrail’ Definition: Use this as a practical framework in a coaching session. Help your clients get precise about what is inside and outside the boundaries for their teams.
Coach for Visibility: Help your clients see that their visibility is not a distraction from their “real work”; it is the work. It is the primary data-gathering and trust-building tool they have.
My conversation with Fred was a useful exploration of how these leadership pillars are interconnected. They are not a menu of options; they are a system.
You cannot unleash agency without trust. You cannot build trust without candid, visible leadership. And you cannot be candid if you have not established a relational foundation where your team knows you are all working towards the same goal.
These are not new ideas, but Fred’s long-term perspective is a valuable reminder that they are the enduring ones. The work of leadership is to build the human connection that makes organisational performance possible.
I recommend listening to the full discussion and exploring his work further, including the book he co-authored, The Power of Agency.
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