Employees cannot exercise good judgment when the definition of “right” depends on which version of the leader walks into the room.

I have worked with managers who were entirely reasonable—until they were under pressure.

On a calm Tuesday, they wanted initiative. “Use your judgment,” they would say. “You do not need me involved in every decision.”

Then a customer complained, an executive called, or a metric turned red. The same decision that looked like ownership yesterday suddenly became, “Why didn’t you check with me first?”

Employees notice that contradiction quickly.

They also learn from it. Not necessarily the lesson the manager intended, but a very practical one: before deciding what is right, first work out which version of the boss has arrived today.

When the rules move with the manager’s mood, judgment gives way to prediction.

The change that waited for permission

Picture a Service Management team that has agreed on guardrails for standard, low-risk changes. An experienced analyst is authorized to approve them when testing, rollback, and customer-impact criteria are met.

One week, she approves a routine certificate renewal exactly as designed. The manager praises her for keeping work moving.

Two weeks later, she approves an almost identical change. A customer asks an anxious question—not because anything failed, but because the notification reached the wrong stakeholder. This time the manager criticizes her in front of the team for acting without escalation.

After that, the analyst checks every change. So does everyone who watched.

The approval queue grows. Maintenance windows are missed. Engineers chase signatures for decisions the process already assigned. Customers wait longer, service delivery slows, and the organization concludes that employees “lack ownership.”

They do not lack ownership. They have learned that authority is conditional, and nobody has explained the condition.

If initiative is praised when outcomes are comfortable and punished when they are awkward, permission-seeking is a rational response.

People manage uncertainty before they manage work

Humans pay attention to patterns, especially patterns connected to social risk. When a leader’s response is inconsistent, employees become more cautious. They seek extra confirmation, copy more people, delay difficult news, and spend time reading tone that should have been spent reading the situation.

That is not a diagnosis, and it does not excuse poor decisions. Sometimes an employee genuinely exceeded authority. Sometimes new information changes the risk. The leadership failure is leaving people to infer that difference from the manager’s emotional temperature.

Experience has taught me to ask a simple question after a decision goes wrong: did the employee violate a clear guardrail, or did leadership reveal a rule that existed only after the outcome was known?

Those are very different problems.

Make the guardrails stronger than the moment

Good leaders can be disappointed, frustrated, even angry. Consistency does not mean becoming a corporate robot with a pulse.

It means the standard survives the emotion.

If authority changes under pressure, say so before the decision. If the employee followed the agreed process and the result was still uncomfortable, review the reasoning without rewriting the rules. And if the guardrail was unclear, own that before questioning someone’s judgment.

Self-awareness, emotional intelligence, transparency, and accountability are not soft extras here. They create the conditions in which people can act, learn, and recover without waiting for the manager’s mood forecast.

Empowerment is believable only when the guardrails still apply on a difficult day.

Employees should be thinking about the customer, the risk, and the work—not whether today is a good day to ask permission.

Discussion question: Do your employees know the rules—or have they learned to read the room?

If this pattern feels familiar—or you want to explore what steadier decision-making could look like in your organization—reach out. I’m always happy to have the conversation.