The managerial co-dependency trap: when the leader stops deciding

Maurizio-Antonio Ridolfi
Jun 2
3 min read

Updated: Jun 5

📋 SUMMARY

A leader who systematically seeks a manager's approval ends up no longer deciding anything alone. This drift isn't a matter of personality, but of governance and poorly defined roles.

Here I describe how managerial co-dependency takes hold, what it really costs, and how to reset a clear decision-making framework without breaking trust or the team.

There's a phrase I hear more often than you'd think in SMEs:

« I'll check with him/her. »

At first, there's nothing alarming about it. A leader trusts one of their managers, asks for their opinion before deciding, relies on their perspective.

It's even healthy: an isolated leader who decides everything alone is another kind of risk.

The problem isn't consultation.

It's what happens when consultation no longer has any limit.

How managerial co-dependency takes hold?

I once observed a situation that captures the mechanism well. A leader had gotten into the habit of submitting every strategic matter to one of their managers. At first, it was occasional. Then it broadened: budgets, hiring, strategic direction, internal trade-offs.

Little by little, nothing got decided without his/her green light.

The tipping point didn't happen in a single day. It happened decision after decision. Each « I'll check with him/her » seemed reasonable, taken in isolation. Added up, they shifted the company's center of gravity.

Today, this leader no longer feels legitimate enough to reset a framework. Redefining this manager's scope would mean, in their eyes, admitting they let something slip. So they say nothing. And the empty space keeps filling up.

That's what managerial co-dependency is: a leader who no longer dares to decide without approval, and a manager who decides in their place, not out of ambition, but because no one ever drew the line.

What this confusion really costs...

The consequences are rarely spectacular. They settle in quietly.

First, slowness. When every decision has to go through a single person, that person becomes a bottleneck. Files pile up. The company reacts more slowly.

Next, confusion within the team. Employees no longer know who to turn to. Officially, the leader leads.

Unofficially, everyone has figured out who really approves. This gap between the official org chart and the real distribution of power creates a diffuse unease.

There's also the risk of dependence on a single person. If that manager leaves, falls ill, or walks out the door, the company is left without a decision-making backbone. Everything rested on them, without anyone ever deciding it should.

Finally, the wear and tear on the leader themselves. Living with the sense that you no longer control your own choices is exhausting. Many end up fading even further into the background, which deepens the spiral.

Resetting a framework without breaking trust

The good news is that nothing is set in stone.

You don't fix a governance drift by abruptly taking back power, that humiliates and puts people on the defensive. You fix it by clarifying, calmly, who does what.

The first step is to write the roles down in black and white. Who has the final say on which matters? Who should be consulted, without holding veto power? Who executes? As long as these answers stay implicit, they get settled in favor of whoever occupies the ground.

The second step is to distinguish three things that often get confused: deciding, consulting, executing. A manager can have a valuable opinion on a decision without being the one who decides. Acknowledging the value of their perspective while keeping the final say is not a disavowal. It's putting everyone back in their rightful place.

The third is to frame this as an organizational decision, not as a settling of scores. You don't take power back « against » someone. You clarify how things work « for » the company. That nuance changes everything in how it's received.

A clear decision-making framework doesn't reduce trust. It makes it possible.

Because everyone knows what they have a say over, and what they don't.

It's precisely this clarity that makes it possible to truly delegate, without abdicating.

What about you: in your organization, do you delegate decisions, or do you let them slip away for lack of a framework?