The Path to Leadership: Deference, delegation and the design of trust.

When following the leader stops us from thinking for ourselves.

The leader bears the weight, but it’s the system and the team that make it glide.

When Deference replaces Thinking.

Leadership carries weight.

For those in the role, it means being looked to for clarity, direction and calm under pressure.  For those outside the role, it can mean safety, a psychological relief that someone else is holding the responsibility. 

We defer, sometimes instinctively, because it simplifies our world.

In some settings, that deference is necessary.  On a flight deck, in a military operation, in an emergency room, someone has to decide and own the outcome. 

Following isn’t weakness in these environments.  It’s structure and it can be the difference between chaos and coordination.

As useful as this structure is, deference has limits.

If it becomes too automatic, it starts to conceal rather than clarify.  Systems built on hierarchy can unintentionally silence the very people with the insight to prevent failure.

When we defer to authority without questioning competence, when rank is trusted more than understanding, we build elegant, polite, highly professional systems that break.. quietly and dangerously.

This isn’t a people problem.  It’s a structural one and it’s more common than we think, especially in industries where the route to leadership is fast, uneven, or ambiguous.

Respect Expertise, not just Rank.

To solve this, we don’t need to tear down hierarchy, we just need to understand it better.

There’s a difference between authority and expertise.

Authority is positional: a product of role, title, or structure.  Expertise is contextual: a product of experience, clarity and often proximity to the problem.

In resilient organisations, we don’t have to choose one over the other.  We build systems where both are recognised and where decision-making respects competence, not just command.

This distinction matters, because people tend to defer upward in times of stress.  That’s natural, but unless the person “up there” is genuinely equipped for the situation, not just by title, but by training, the team may be following clarity without substance.

This is where the path to leadership becomes crucial.

In some industries, authority is tightly coupled to capability.  In others, that link is more tenuous.

There is more than one route to Leadership.

Understanding the Route to Leadership.

In aviation, the military and other safety-critical domains, leadership is earned through rigorous assessment.  

Command is not a perk.  It’s a responsibility, granted only after repeated demonstrations of total readiness under stress.

If you were to draw up a comparative leadership analysis, you’d find that these domains share several key features:

• Leadership is trained, not assumed.

  
  

• Accountability is personal and visible.

  
  

• Decision-making is practised under pressure.

  
  

• Calmness and communication are prerequisites for authority.

  
  
  
  

In these environments, deference is less dangerous, because leadership has been forged, not granted.

In business, the route to leadership often looks different.  It’s shaped by headhunting, internal succession planning, or talent spotting. 

High-potential individuals may be identified early and placed on fast tracks, through interviews, assessment centres, or internal sponsorship.

These processes aim to be rigorous.  They’re designed to select for aptitude, cultural fit, leadership potential and, in many cases, to actively address historic inequities through targeted inclusion initiatives.

That ambition matters.  Representation matters.  But selection, even when it’s thoughtful and fair, is not the same as development.

The real question is what happens after someone is chosen.

How much behavioural training is offered?  How much testing under pressure?  How often is leadership developed, not just in theory, but in the lived complexity of fast decisions, emotional weight and visible accountability?

Too often, the system stops at selection.  Once appointed, leaders are expected to perform, not to keep learning how.

That’s not empowerment.  It’s abandonment.

It looks like opportunity, but it can feel like exposure. 

One leader described this experience simply:

“It was a year of pretending I was fine.”

The most common advice they heard?

“Fake it till you make it.”

This is not how capability grows. 

Astronaut Chris Hadfield put it clearly: “The greatest remedy to fear is competence.”

Competence comes from deliberate training and deliberate training comes from systems that are built to support, not just select.

If we want leadership that’s both representative and resilient, then investing in development after appointment is not optional. 

It’s the ethical completion of the promise we made when we said:

“You belong here.”

Leading and following are interchangeable.

From Following to Thinking: what needs to change.

If we want resilient organisations, we need to move from cultures of deference to cultures of participation. 

That doesn’t mean chaos, nor does it mean consensus on everything.  It means:

• Teaching people to challenge well, not just to speak up, but to do so constructively.

  
  

• Inviting feedback from below, recognising that the best information may live lower in the structure.

  
  

• Separating leadership title from leadership readiness, not everyone with authority has insight and not everyone with insight has authority.

  
  
  
  

Aviation tackled this challenge with Crew Resource Management (CRM), a structured way of ensuring all voices are heard, even in high-hierarchy environments.  

The captain remains in command, but everyone is trained to notice, contribute and challenge when safety is at stake.

This is called “designed competence.”

In business, we can learn from this.

We can train people not just in technical skills, but in behavioural fluency, communication under pressure, clarity in uncertainty, decision-making that includes multiple inputs but lands cleanly.

We can equip leaders to welcome challenge, without losing face, control, or confidence.

Leadership is Earned through Clarity, not just Position.

The systems leaders shape through routines, structures and everyday behaviour gradually teach everyone what to expect, what is safe to challenge and what isn’t.

When things go wrong, pointing to individuals misses the point. It’s often the system itself that reinforced the behaviour.

Deference isn’t about weakness. It’s often the result of habit, past experience or subtle cues that discourage challenge.

Similarly, leaders who rely heavily on their authority are not necessarily acting out of ego.

Many are under real pressure, accountable for outcomes they can’t fully control and have never been equipped with the behavioural training to lead through uncertainty.

This can change.

We can build cultures where leadership is tested, shared and supported. Where authority creates space rather than closing it and where the best ideas rise, regardless of who holds the title.

We can each ask ourselves, in every decision:

Am I following clarity, or just volume?

Am I leading with depth, or just with confidence?

Because once we stop deferring blindly, another question arrives:

How do we let go?

How do we pass the weight without pulling it back?

That’s what we’ll explore next.