How to make complexity an advantage

Leadership - when trust and control go hand in hand

Leadership - when trust and control go hand in hand

Trust and control should not necessarily be viewed as dichotomous opposites in the workplace or society. A wise leader recognizes trust and control as essential allies that can complement and reinforce one another.

Few of us want a manager constantly looking over our shoulder. Instead, we prefer a leader who trusts our skills and grants us autonomy in carrying out our tasks. However, as a leader, there is a risk in relying solely on trust and allowing employees to operate independently. This approach might lead to projects lacking direction and procedural errors. On the other hand, exercising control over employees might be seen as a lack of trust—or is it?

The Value of Trust

According to German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, today’s complex societies depend on citizens’ trust. Optimistic expectations of institutions and systems allow individuals to navigate these complexities, despite having access to only a fraction of the necessary information. In his book Trust, Danish economist and political researcher Gert Tinggaard Svendsen emphasizes the societal and economic benefits of social trust—our tendency to trust strangers—in which Denmark ranks highest in worldwide. He argues that social trust is crucial for a good Danish economy because it reduces transaction costs, such as the time and money spent on oversight and control. He reframes Lenin’s famous phrase to: “Control is good, but trust is cheaper.”

Trust, therefore, is vital for a well-functioning society. A similar principle applies within organizations, where modern phenomena like psychological safety and autonomy stem from a postmodern culture of trust. In contrast, control is often viewed as a villain undermining trust and its positive effects—and perhaps rightly so.

In the public sector and private finance, the Danish press frequently highlights scandals: money laundering, dividend tax fraud, nepotism, tax evasion, and healthcare mishaps. These are often long-standing issues that eventually lead to tightened controls and the implementation of procedures that bog down bureaucracy, frustrate employees, and diminish motivation. One healthcare leader complained:

"It feels like the press dictates what we focus on in hospitals. If there’s a cancer case in the media, cancer gets all the managerial attention. Then we’re measured on how many diagnoses, treatments, and follow-ups we deliver. But from a professional standpoint, we may not be using our time wisely. This demotivates our skilled professionals, who then leave.Then we don’t get the results we are aiming at"

The problem with increasing control in response to scandals is the creation of a bureaucracy so dense that responsibility becomes sidelined. Employees fall back on, “I did what I was supposed to,” implying they haven’t exercised professional judgment or considered ethics. When every misstep is met with more control, we risk fostering indifferent, cynical employees who stop thinking critically—a dangerous outcome for any society.

In some parts of the public sector, leaders are now exploring the opposite approach. Several hospitals are transferring healthcare decisions back to departmental teams. Also, despite several scandals at the Danish Tax Agency, an organization built on enforcing compliance, Director Merete Agergaard is actively fostering trust among management layers. As she explains, this does not mean abandoning bureaucracy entirely; she stands firmly behind maintaining supportive procedures. Leaders need “just enough control” to feel confident they understand what’s right and wrong. This balance between trust and control is crucial and forms the foundation of what we call the trust-control paradox.

The Trust-Control Paradox

Control’s negative connotations in an organization often stem from its association with traditional, hierarchical management characterized by rigid power structures and limited employee influence. Consequently, in Scandinavian leadership traditions, control has almost become a dirty word, replaced by postmodern virtues like holacracy, sociocracy, and nión-hierarchical organizations. Yet even in these settings, employees work to create structures ensuring tasks are completed effectively.

Postmodern leadership, however, can sometimes go too far. When a leader’s toolbox consists solely of autonomy, employee involvement, and coaching, employees may begin to crave clearer guidelines and firmer leadership. Too much freedom can paralyze employees, export polarization downward to increase among employees and spark vicious cycles of conflict.

This is not only a philosophical or sociological stance but also a pattern we’ve observed in both public and private organizations.

Without clear frameworks, employees face heightened accountability for failures, leading to anxiety and indecision. In extreme cases, excessive autonomy can create a self-imposed pressure akin to an internalized panopticon, resulting in stress and confusion.

Empirical studies repeatedly show that employees need structure and clear expectations from leadership. Inspired by Tina Øllgaard Bentzen from Roskilde University, control might be better framed as governance, freeing it from its negative associations. According to Bentzen, governance/control is effective when it becomes meaningful for task completion, particularly when co-created through dialogue with employees. Meaningful governance and control should:

1. Involve employees in its design.

2. Provide a clear framework for task execution.

3. Empower employees to exercise decision-making and autonomy confidently.

This form of meaningful control not only fosters mutual trust between leader and employee but also grants the leader greater insight into employees’ work processes because employees feel safe sharing their challenges.

One might argue that trust and control form a leadership paradox. On one hand, they appear mutually exclusive—showing only control undermines trust. On the other, they are interdependent—trust can be built through clear frameworks, and control achieved through trust. Navigating this paradox requires reflective leadership. Leaders must ask themselves: What is just enough of trust so that it doesn’t end up in blind trust? When do I show just enough control to provide direction and confidence? When do I show just enough trust to instill autonomy and belief in my employees?

Communicating the Balance

Leaders must articulate and justify their use of control. When governance is implicit or left unspoken, and only trust is communicated, leadership risks losing credibility. Often, hidden forms of control, like performance management or compliance checks, emerge anyway, creating conflicting messages: “We trust you, but we need to monitor your performance.” Instead of concealing control, leaders should make it explicit, framing it as supportive structures for task execution. Hidden control is directly harmful – it is at high risk at being mistaken for mis-trust

How to Lead with Trust-Control

Balancing trust and control requires a nuanced approach tailored to the task and the individual employee. Here are three practical steps for integrating trust into control:

1. Clarify expectations:

   Discuss task frameworks and the level of governance and control employees feel they need, including how often to check in.

2. Solicit feedback:

   Ask employees how they perceive your balance of control and trust—whether they feel micromanaged or left unsupported.

3. Adapt to individual needs:

   Learn to recognize which employees thrive on structure and which need high autonomy.

Too often, organizations respond to failures by tightening control. However, this risks exacerbating the problem. Employees disengage and stop taking responsibility when there’s too little trust. By asking, “What is just enough control?” leaders can use control not only to mitigate risks but also to foster trust, create better task frameworks, and strengthen psychological safety within the organization. With this approach, control becomes a tool for building, rather than eroding, organizational trust.

By Lotte Lüscher, Msc. In psychology, PhD in management and Lars Kjartan Bacher Svendsen, Msc in psychology and Doctoral student

Artifical Intelligence and Ancient Wisdom, a Both/And Story

Ivo Brughmans

The possible threats and disruptive effects of Artificial Intelligence are real and pervasive. We can try to curb and contain them with all kinds of regulations. Regulations are undoubtedly necessary, but we also need to build a positive, equally strong counterbalance next to AI. This counterbalance can be found in Ancient Wisdom.

With the recent wave of generative AI applications conquering the mainstream at an unprecedented pace, we have seen only a glimpse of the incedible possibilities of this new technology. Besides the jaw dropping amazement and the spiralling enthusiasm about the astonishing possibilities and benefits, many eminent thinkers and even AI practitioners speak out their deep concerns over the risks and threats of AI. And indeed, AI will probably have disruptive effects on nearly everything: our lives, identity, jobs, organizations, economy, society, security, democracy,... to name only a few.

Regulation provides only part of the solution

Therefore many plea for regulating, containing, slowing down or even banning the deployment of AI applications and legislators all over the world are working on new regulatory frameworks. Regulation will certainly be needed as we risk to open up a Pandora’s box. The consequences of the introduction of AI applications are hardly known and may be even in principle unforseeable and uncontrollable due to its emerging capabilities. Doing nothing and hoping that it will settle by itself is not an option, as the stakes are simply too high. With new technology also come new responsibilities.

However, one can ask the question if putting a cap on AI is sufficient, and even if it’s realistic or desirable? In a free society you cannot prevent innovation, especially, when it’s clear that it has the potential of great benefits. It feels for example somewhat artificial to let people do a job when a machine can do it much quicker and better, simply to keep them employed and provide them with purpose and identity. Moreover, there is a race for technological and economic dominance going on that no one wants to loose. Therefore loopholes and workarounds will be easily found to bypass any regulations.

A paradoxical perspective: AI counterbalanced by AW

Complementary to a possible negative route of slowing down and curbing these developments, one should also invest in building a positive, equally strong counterbalance next to AI. It is the essence of paradoxical thinking not to spend all the available energy on going against the current, but to nurture and optimally use the self-correcting power of the opposite side.

This positive counterbalance is about making people and society more capable and skilled to keep control over this technology by staying focused on what really matters. We should therefore focus on our unique and inaliable human prerogative: to direct this amazing computational power to what we value and find important. This requires a reflection on our purpose and values, also on a moral level.

To build up this counterbalance we can gain great benefit from Ancient Wisdom, or should we call it AW. It is about strengthening the skills and practices that were equally relevant in antiquity as they are now: linking our actions to a deeper purpose, asking the 'Why’ questions, balancing competing values, making sound judgments in moral dilemmas and conducting a meaningful dialogue. Let’s unpack some of these AW skills and practices.

Identity: shift to the ‘Why’

Can the unique combination of qualities that define us be automized and perfectlty captured in algorithms? Who are we if we cannot refer anymore to our special capabilities, carefully built up by years of study and experience, as a source of identity and professional pride?

The fundamental difference between us and machines is that we can give purpose and meaning, and cherish dreams and ambitions. Machines can help us realize this, but they can never take over our sense making role. For example, an AI application can tell us what we need to do in order to optimize our physical health, but only we can decide how healthy we want to be, and how we want to balance health with other values in our life, such as our ambitions, our need to enjoy and relax, or our desire to be accepted by our social environment.

Therefore our unique human focus should shift from the ‘’how’’ to the ‘’why’’. AI can review a wide range of different options and anticipate their positive and negative effects more quickly than we can, but what we ultimately choose is based on our purpose and values. In other words, we are the ones that ask the questions.

We should therefore strengthen our capability in asking ourselves fundamental questions, on a personal, organizational and societal level: What is important? What makes us happy? What makes a good society? How should we work together? How should we bring all our different views together in a joint course of action? These questions cannot be answered in a purely rational and technocratic way, but require a deeper connection with our intuition, heartfelt feelings and bodily wisdom. All of which is the domain of Ancient Wisdom.

Making wise trade-offs

Ancient Wisdom increasingly becomes an essential quality in our work. The big challenges of today are not so much complicated technical puzzles to be solved, but complex paradoxes to be navigated: what is the balance that we want to strike in our society between for example stability and change, between solidarity and own responsibility, beteen climate and cost of living or beween individual freedom and social cohesion? And, even better, how can we realize both?

The same applies to the work of the professional. What really differentiates a great professional is the ability to effectively deal with dilemmas and tensions and to find for each case the right balance between competing values and goals: between commercial opportunities and sustainability, between privacy and security or between technology and personal touch. Balancing requires a reflection on our own values and on what the situation needs, and all the tensions that may arise from this. It calls upon our moral compass and how we can justify our choices to ourselves and to others.

This requires that we improve our skills to have a constructive and meaningful dialogue with others. The skills already praised in Ancient Wisdom are more relevant than ever: being able to listen, to self-reflect, to investigate the question behind the question, to sense what is needed, to build trust, to empathize with people who are different.

Livelihoods and purposeful work

One of the biggest AI related challenges that requires plenty of Ancient Wisdom is rethinking the future of work.

Just like offshoring and automation, AI will most likely increase the divide between highly valued creative jobs on one end of the spectrum and low wage, high stress and purpose poor jobs on the other, with not much in between. These earlier transformations have fed feelings of powerlessness, fear, unease and anger with large parts of society. Moreover, AI will also threaten the relevance of high-skilled professional work in middle positions. At least these jobs will need to be transformed and upgraded, for some a great opportunity to get rid of cumbersome nitty gritty work, for others a step too far and a direct threat. This may have a major negative impact on the livelihood of individuals and communities and on social cohesion.

From a purely economic point of view, this forces us to think and implement radically new mechanisms of redistributing wealth, not just for the sake of social and economic justice, but for the mere survival of the western society model.

However, work is more than money alone. It is a crucial source of self-esteem, pride and contributing and being part of something bigger. This will need to review and broaden our definition of what we consider as valued and purposeful work. And if one thinks about re-skilling, what are unique skills that are essential cannot be simulated by a computer? They will probably have something to do with having authentic contact and meaningful conversations with others, showing genuine interest, building purposeful relationships, giving personal attention, bringing people together and building communities. Especially in these times of loneliness and social fragmentation, these should probably be the key areas to heavily invest in, to avoid that this vacuum is filled by technology.

Building our AW capability: spontaneous AND planned

For building our AW capability as a necessary counterbalance to AI, we do not need to rely solely to large-scale policy interventions. Counterbalancing forces will often emerge spontaneously, as people have an increasing intuitive sense of imbalance. There are plenty of examples of this self-correcting mechanism: The more new technology comes in, the more people rediscover old technology, such as the revival of LP records with young people who are grown up with streaming technology. The more life accelerates, the more attention shifts to slowing down. The more virtual it gets, the more people value physical contacts and vintage objects. The more information overload and stress, the more people turn to mindfulness and yoga.

These developments arise from a genuine need for more balance, although they are sometimes also driven by the economic principle that scarcity increases the value. However these spontaneous self-correcting mechanisms are not enough to balance society as a whole. They are often limited to a small minority of financially stong and highly edudated people, increasing the overall gap between haves and have nots.

Training Ancient Wisdom

Therefore, additional policy interventions and investments will still be needed to build up sufficient Ancient Wisdom capability. It cannot be denied that this will be a challenge, as it is a slow process compared to the incredible speed of technological revolution.

It certainly will be important to give AW a prominent place in our regular education programs. However, we should not develop our AW capability in isolation. It will be most valuable if we develop AW within the process of working and experimenting with AI. Just as AI gets smarter when being fed with new input, we will become wiser when using plenty of AI, while at the same time consciously learning about what AI is and does. Therefore, it is probably not a good strategy to prevent students to work with applications such as ChatGDP. It would be better to let them work with it intensively and use this experience as a great opportunity to reflect together on its purpose and use and to learn to make trade-offs on values and goals, which AI is unable solve for us.

Ivo Brughmans is a philosopher, political scientist, management consultant, and author of several books on working with paradoxes, including his most recent one: Paradoxical Leadership. Making Complexity an Advantage (Toronto: UTP, 2023).