When “Bad Leadership” Becomes the End of the Conversation

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, and still you can decide not to be reduced by them.” - Maya Angelou

What if naming poor leadership wasn’t the end, but the beginning of something more honest?

You can often feel it before you have words for it.

Decisions don’t make sense. Priorities shift without warning. Questions go unanswered. Meetings feel like talk with no direction.

So people adapt. They stop offering ideas. They stick to what’s asked. They guard their energy. Not because they don’t care. Because they’ve learned it doesn’t always help.

And here’s what gets missed:

When we treat leadership as the only place responsibility lives, everyone else pulls back.

Work doesn’t stop. It just gets harder. More second-guessing. More quiet frustration. Less trust.

Even then, how people relate to one another still shapes how the work feels.

Research shows that when people feel powerless, they often stop trying in visible ways. They speak up less. They focus only on what’s in front of them. Because that is what experience has taught them. In these times, agency doesn’t disappear. It has the potential to move.

The work of Amy Wrzesniewski, from the University of Pennsylvania, suggests, when leadership is unclear, people often shift their energy into small, everyday choices like how they communicate, how they collaborate, and how they get things done together.

I saw this recently with a team where the leader wasn’t a good fit. Everyone knew it. Support was inconsistent, and priorities kept changing.

Yet, the team didn’t check out. They leaned in. Not up, but across. They shared information more openly. They worked through roadblocks together. They made decisions where they could, instead of waiting for clarity that wasn’t coming.

The frustration didn’t disappear. It just stopped leading.

So what now?

Instead of letting “bad leadership” be the end of the story, we can treat it as a signal and we can consider:

• Where have I gone quiet?

• Where has my effort shrunk?

• Where am I protecting myself, and where might I be ready to re-engage?

Agency doesn’t mean doing more or fixing everything. It means choosing where to stay in the work, on purpose. Because even when leadership falls short, how we show up for one another still matters.

Sometimes the most important shift isn’t upward. It’s sideways.

If you are going through this, here is a question to consider:

Where might pulling back feel safer right now, and what would it look like to choose one small place to re-engage?

With understanding,

Maria

In case you are interested in some of the research:

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1–26.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York, NY: Vintage.

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.