I listened to a very dear friend today vent about her ongoing frustrations at work. Without going into any detail, she has a peer who is a stereotypical workplace nightmare. This fully grown man with a doctorate and decades of experience regularly throws temper tantrums to get his way. He has also convinced his supervisors that he’s a besieged genius. This is a classic bully pattern: Dominate and torture those around you and blow sunshine up to your supervisors.
For the purposes of this story, let’s call my friend Emily. She has held leadership roles before and, based on how she talks about the experience, I suspect she was quite good at it. But now, Emily is an independent contributor. So, even if she thinks Mr. Temper is an incompetent bully, there’s little she can do except complain to his boss, which she has done. While his boss is listening to her, he’s not doing anything productive to change the situation. So Emily is deeply frustrated.
After listening to her for a while, I said “You sure seem fired up about this.” She said, “Yeah, I tend to spew outward when I feel like I don’t have any agency.”
I’m grateful she trusts me enough to spew… AND I want to help her and others going through this kind of situation. So agency is what I wanna talk about today.
But first, a quick word about bullies.
Bully basics
Coping with bullies at work takes support and skills…and documentation. If you’re experiencing this, I’m sorry you’re going through it. I’ve been there, and I know how painful it can be, even for those of you who are typically strong in other contexts.
My strong advice: Don’t try to deal with it alone, and don’t give in to the shame you’re probably feeling. Find people you can talk to who can help you process your feelings and stay centered. This article has great advice that should get you started on self-care and self-advocacy.
Do you suspect your messy human leadership might be at a loss for what to do? If you have a healthy relationship with them and there’s an opening for giving advice, here’s a useful article from the leadership perspective to share with them. Make sure you offer it as an invitation, so that they feel seen and supported, rather than criticized. Trust they are doing their best with the information they have.
The boundaries of agency
All of that said, feeling like you lack agency is common in the workplace, even if you’re not interacting with a bully. The tips that follow apply in any situation where you feel helpless to implement change.
First, I would like to take a stab at redefining agency. Agency can be seen as the sense of control that you feel, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and your faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. Notice how much of that is about you instead of others. Your sense of agency helps you to be psychologically stable, yet flexible in the face of conflict or change.
I often need to remind the people I coach that yes, they have agency. You have agency. I have agency. We all have agency. But that can be hard to remember when you’re in the middle of a complex organization with a lot of opportunities and challenges. This can be overwhelming, making it easy to give your agency away without even knowing it.
Nothing good comes from giving your agency away.
It’s like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
If you feel like you don’t have agency in an area you care about, it probably means that you’re angry at the people who allegedly do have agency because they’re not doing what you want them to do. I’d like to suggest that this is a way of giving up your power twice. The first time you consciously chose when you accepted the job offer: contractually bounded limits on your sphere of responsibility. But the second time, when you reduce yourself to just feeling angry and helpless, is likely due to a self-limiting belief. We all have more influence than we think.
The art of influence
The trick is to reframe or reimagine how you think of agency. There’s a metaphor I find useful here, and it’s a use of the word you may not have seen: Canyons are carved by the agency of running water. The word “agency” implies use of innate qualities of water: the biochemical ability to break down rock, one molecule at a time. Us messy humans have many innate qualities that we can use to influence others and create change, generally more quickly than it takes a river to carve a ravine. It doesn’t require positional power. In fact, positional power used alone doesn’t generally produce healthy outcomes.
Some tips for rediscovering your agency
Power —> influence —> agency. Remember that many types of power exist, and positional power, also known as legitimate power, is only one. Another is expert power, where your skills, knowledge, and experience improve your influence with peers, bosses, and directs. Then there’s reward power, which is the ability to hand out raises and training but also—and here’s the interpersonal leverage that anyone can use—it’s the ability to compliment, celebrate, and reward people with your appreciation. Then there’s referent power, which you get by being likable. In a workplace, a person with referent power often makes everyone feel good, so she tends to have a lot of influence. There’s more out there. If you’re curious, ask an LLM — and then I invite you to share your insights in comments. I would love a chat.
Of course, it’s not that simple. You may be countercultural to your organization in some fundamental way. You might be a minority for whatever reason-you-can’t-change, and thus have some additional challenges to overcome, like implicit bias or exclusionary tactics. Or you may be in a challenging political situation where you feel strongly about wanting to create change, but engaging might cause trouble because, well, messy humans. In these situations, I hope that self-preservation is your top priority.
But once you feel internally stable and supported, I encourage you to experiment. Experimenting thoughtfully can provide you with lots of useful information that you can use in your next steps. Trust your judgment about whether you’re ready to try these. Also, pay attention to context and how people respond. You can trust yourself! Take what’s useful and discard the rest. You’ve got this!
Frame meaning with stories
Look for the narrative that’s holding the current situation in place. As a thought exercise, tell it to yourself in the form of a story. Identify the flaws in that narrative, from your perspective.
Now, create a change story for yourself, one that takes into account the past, present, and potential future. Respectfully include the flaws you identified, and then offer up alternative views and possibilities. The more you can make it feel like a story (characters, plot, etc), the more meaning you’ll tap into.
Use this story as a backdrop for your decisions and conversations.
Identify potential small wins
Look for opportunities / openings to create new experiences. Stay alert to what’s emerging and be ready to improvise!
For example, let’s say you notice that a team is having a hard time communicating with a stakeholder. You realize that the stakeholder is just following the cultural pattern — they come in once a week, tell people what to do, and then disappear. How might you make this better? One approach might be to look for a moment when you could break that pattern. The stakeholder probably honestly believes that they’re giving the team everything they need. What would happen if the team started asking clarifying questions? Or if you modeled asking questions in front of the team?
A small win is more like to trigger change when it is used as an opportunity to question existing understandings and beliefs. This fosters system learning and adaptation.
Speak up
You’re often closer to the ground than the senior executives. Leverage that vantage point. Do a bit of pattern analysis on what you’re seeing and hearing. Then, speak up. Information, insights, and perspectives only become valuable when shared. The knowledge you have can be a game-changer for those who need it. Don’t hoard it—spread it around. Notice that this increases your power and influence by positioning you as a provider of solid information.
Speak for the work
We grew up believing that good work speaks for itself. That’s a nice idea, but if you’re working in a large organization, you need to be the voice for your work.
What you’re trying to do is increase people’s sense of you as a competent expert worth listening to. People are busy with their own agendas, and the work doesn’t speak for itself—you have to do it. Speaking for your work isn’t about self-promotion; it’s about contextualizing your and your team’s achievements for senior leaders. Share what you’ve accomplished, the obstacles you’ve overcome, what’s hindering you, and the support you need. This shows agency and leadership.
Bring solutions
Your leaders are swamped. They don’t have the bandwidth to listen to a list of problems. Help them by providing potential solutions. If you can’t come up with viable solutions, it likely means you haven’t dug deep enough to understand the problem’s root causes. Do that homework first, then bring forward some solutions. Again, this increases your agency and influence by demonstrating that you are able to solve problems.
Reassess your risk / reward ratio
If all this seems too daunting, it’s time to reassess your risk/reward ratio. Over the past decade working with high-potential clients, I’ve seen a trend: individual contributors, managers and junior execs often overestimate the risk of speaking up and underestimate the rewards. If you’re a manager, think about this: how would you feel if a team member approached you with a big opportunity or a well-thought-out plan to tackle a problem? Most leaders would be thrilled. Your manager or executive is probably the same. Reevaluate the risks and reclaim your agency.
Thanks for reading. I hope you find a nugget of usefulness here. And, as usual, I appreciate your comments and messages.
Happy agency!