Many organizations struggle to find the right balance between giving people freedom and keeping things under control. They often try to fix a “trust problem” with more control, or fix a “control problem” with more trust.
But these are not opposites to be solved. They are a polarity to be managed.
In Polarity Management, Barry Johnson showed that many tensions in leadership, such as trust versus control, stability versus change, or individual versus collective, are not problems with one right answer. They are ongoing dynamics that must be balanced over time.
When we overuse control, we get bureaucracy, fear, and disengagement. When we overuse trust, we get chaos, inconsistency, and uneven performance.
Yet when we balance the two, we create clarity and empowerment, high standards and high commitment.
A perfect example of an organizational model that overuses control is Taylorism. It was built on the belief that people could not be trusted to think, only to execute. Managers designed the work, workers performed it. Efficiency improved for a while, but curiosity, initiative, and humanity were left behind.
Now imagine instead a Michelin-starred restaurant. Every detail is thought through carefully. Standards are sky-high. Yet everyone, from the chef to the dishwasher, plays an active role in maintaining those standards. Trust and control coexist. Precision and creativity reinforce each other.
That is the sweet spot of emerging leadership.
It is not about choosing trust over control.
It is about creating systems where trust enables control, and control protects trust.
In your team, where might you be overusing one side of this polarity?
And what small shift could bring you closer to that Michelin balance: high standards, high trust, and collective excellence?
Photo de Laura Heimann
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