The last months have felt like a bit of a whirlwind – big stakes, a lot of pressure, and plenty of situations where I’ve seen both trust- and fear-driven leadership up close, including in my own behaviour. I’ve been working on this article for a while in pieces, and I’m finally at a point where I can step back for a few days, let things settle, and look at it with a clearer head. Writing this now is partly selfish – it’s my way of making sense of what I’ve lived through – and partly a hope that it gives other leaders a language and a mirror before they cross lines they don’t actually want to cross.
Diving in
I’ve worked under both kinds of leaders: the ones who run on trust and the ones who run on fear. Under one, my pulse would go up before every meeting. I would rehearse answers in my head, edit my thoughts down to whatever felt “safe enough” to say, and go into the call with my shoulders slightly tense. Technically it was “just work” – but my body told a different story. Under another, I felt almost the opposite. My manager made it very clear from day one: “You own this. I’m here if you need me – but this is your field.” The pressure did not disappear, but it became a very different kind of pressure. I wanted to make it work because someone had put real trust into my hands.
Those experiences did more for my understanding of leadership than any framework. Later, when I came across Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, or Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, they simply gave language to something I had felt in my own body: leadership can either create psychological safety and accountability – or anxiety, micromanagement, and quiet disengagement. Over time, I realised that most of what I was feeling could be traced back to three simple levers a leader controls: Demand, Dignity and Distance. I’ll come back to these, but keep them in the back of your mind as you read on.
In this article, I look at both styles in detail, combine research with real-world examples, and pull in a few moments from my own career. The goal is simple: to be brutally honest about what trust and fear actually buy you as a leader – and what they silently destroy.
Leadership through trust and empowerment – the Theory Y lens
A trust-based leadership style starts with a simple assumption: most people want to do good work if you give them a fair environment, a clear direction, and the tools to succeed. That’s essentially what McGregor called Theory Y: people are self-motivated, capable of self-direction, and will take responsibility if you create the right conditions. In practice, this shows up in a few recognisable ways:
- Leaders share context and direction, not step-by-step instructions.
- People are given real autonomy in how to solve problems.
- Mistakes are treated as data, not as ammunition.
- Dissenting views are not just tolerated but actively invited.
Patrick Lencioni’s work on team dysfunctions puts trust at the base of his now-famous pyramid. If people don’t feel safe to be honest – to admit weaknesses, to say “I don’t know”, to raise bad news early – everything above it becomes theatre. You get artificial harmony instead of real conflict, compliance instead of commitment, and blame instead of accountability.
Psychological safety is the lived version of that trust: the shared belief that you can speak up without being punished or humiliated. High-performing teams are almost boringly consistent here: you see open disagreement, people asking naïve questions without shame, and leaders who are willing to say “I got this wrong – let’s adjust”.
What trust looked like for me – “you own this”
Some years ago, I moved into a role where I was responsible for building up a new Solutions Architects team in the UK&I. My manager at the time, Chris Greenwood, made one thing very clear: I had real ownership. There were no daily control calls. No endless requests for status decks. There were, however, a few very sharp questions:
- How are you trying to build a team for this market?
- Which assumptions are you betting on?
- Where do you see the biggest risk – and what’s your plan B?
He gave me space to build the strategy and then backed me visibly in front of others, especially when our direction was not yet fully proven. When things went sideways – and they did – the conversation was never, “How could you let this happen?” but, “What did we learn, and what do we change now?” The pressure didn’t go away. If anything, it increased – because this time it was tied to trust, not fear. I worked harder, not because I was scared of being shouted at, but because I wanted to be worthy of the trust I had been given.Looking back, that environment combined high standards with psychological safety. I was expected to perform – but I was also treated like an adult. That combination is where trust-based leadership becomes a performance multiplier.
Leadership through fear and control – the Theory X lens
At the other end of the spectrum sits the fear-based style. McGregor’s Theory X assumes that people are naturally lazy, avoid responsibility, and need to be pushed, monitored, and controlled. On the surface, this style can look very effective:
- Decisions are fast, because they are centralised.
- People respond quickly, because they are afraid of consequences.
- There is a lot of visible activity, because nobody wants to be the one who is “caught out”.
But underneath, a very different dynamic develops.
What fear looked like for me – tension before certain meetings
I’ve also been in situations where my body reacted before my brain had fully processed what was going on. Before certain 1:1s or leadership meetings, my pulse would rise. My thoughts would narrow down to: What is the safest way to answer their questions? What should I avoid mentioning? Which topics are risky right now? Over time, I noticed a few patterns in myself:
- I stopped bringing early warnings – because bad news didn’t seem to be met with curiosity, but with visible irritation.
- I spent more time “managing upwards” than managing the actual work.
- I started self-censoring in meetings, especially when more senior people were around.
In that kind of climate, psychological safety shrinks quickly. On the surface, you can still see performance – deadlines met, projects delivered – but much of it is driven by anxiety rather than commitment. The cost shows up quietly: slower learning, hidden problems, a team that is technically busy but emotionally half checked out.
Demand, dignity and distance – when the balance breaks
In my own leadership work, I often think in terms of three simple levers: Demand, Dignity, and Distance.
- Demand is about the level of expectation: how high you set the bar.
- Dignity is about how you treat people while holding that bar: do they feel respected, even when they are challenged?
- Distance is about the space between leader and team: are you close enough to understand reality, but not so entangled that you manage your own anxiety through control?
Healthy leadership plays with all three – high demand, protected dignity, conscious distance.
The “public correction” – when feedback misses the mark
There was one episode with a manager that stayed with me. In a larger round with other managers, the conversation gradually turned into a very detailed review of my gaps and missteps. For a long stretch of that meeting, I was essentially the live case study.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: on the facts, he wasn’t wrong. The topics he raised were real. But the way it landed – the setting, the tone, the one-way traffic – felt less like being held accountable and more like standing in front of the class.
In moments like that, all three Ds can be off at once:
- The demand landed suddenly, in public, after a long period without clear, consistent expectations.
- My dignity was collateral damage – the message was delivered in front of peers, with no real chance for dialogue or context.
- The distance was wrong in both directions – too distant beforehand to coach and course-correct, and then uncomfortably close in the moment of public correction.
The result was not higher performance; it was shame, defensiveness, and a quiet withdrawal of trust. I didn’t walk out of that room thinking, “Great, I have a clear path to improve,” but rather, “I never want to stand there again,” and my behaviour adapted accordingly: I became more cautious, more guarded, and spent more energy avoiding exposure than actually learning. The facts of the feedback were not the problem; it was the way they were delivered and the underlying posture – it felt less like “let’s make you successful” and more like “let’s make a point”.
Leaders sometimes confuse this with “raising the bar”. In reality, they are raising the temperature while letting the structure and support collapse.
I should also say: that episode isn’t where the story ends. My first reaction was pure avoidance – I just never wanted to be in that position again. It took a while before I could look at it with anything other than adrenaline in my system. Over time, with a bit of distance, I could see both things at once: the very real impact it had on me, and the fact that there were important truths buried in that feedback. We later had a couple of honest conversations about that meeting. We didn’t rewrite history, but we did put it into context. That helped me separate intent from impact, take the learning on board properly (admittedly later than it could have been), and get back to a more normal way of operating.
Today I don’t carry that moment as a grudge, but as a reminder of how fast Demand can overwhelm Dignity and Distance when the pressure is high – including in my own leadership.
Short-term speed vs long-term stability
Fear-based leadership can work in the short term. If you need an urgent response – a critical incident, a crisis, a last-minute customer issue – a very directive, high-pressure style can indeed move things quickly. But there is a price:
- People stop taking smart risks, because failure is too expensive.
- Problems are hidden until they explode, because nobody wants to be associated with bad news.
- Creativity drops, because the safest path is to follow orders.
Trust-based leadership, by contrast, can sometimes feel slower at the beginning. You spend more time on context, on questions, on making sure people understand why something matters. You invest in psychological safety, which doesn’t show up in your metrics next week.Yet over time, the pattern reverses:
- Trusted teams surface issues early, when they are still fixable.
- People challenge flawed decisions before they become expensive.
- Energy that would have gone into managing fear is now available for the actual work.
If you zoom out far enough, trust is not the “soft” option. It’s simply the more sustainable one.
When I almost crossed the line myself
It would be convenient to stop here and pretend I’ve always stayed safely on the trust side. That would also be untrue.
In one period of my career, I was under significant pressure myself – from above and from customers. Things were moving fast, stakes were high, and the margin for error felt thin. Without fully noticing it at first, I started tightening the screws. Nothing dramatic at the beginning:
- Shorter timelines, fewer open discussions.
- Clear directives instead of open questions.
- Very direct feedback when something was off.
From the inside, my intention was to protect the team and the customer and to stabilise the situation. From the outside, some of that behaviour will have felt uncomfortably close to the fear-driven style I criticise in this article.
Seen through the lens of Demand, Dignity, Distance, the risk becomes clearer: urgency can quietly push demand up while dignity and distance collapse. I was asking for speed without always re-anchoring trust – without saying, “We need to move fast now, and I still have your back.”
That’s a mistake I try not to repeat. High demand and high trust are not enemies – but they only coexist if dignity stays intact.
Klartext: trust is not naïve
It’s easy to caricature trust-based leadership as soft, naïve or conflict-avoidant. That’s not what I’m arguing for.
Trust does not mean:
- ignoring performance issues,
- avoiding difficult conversations, or
- handing out autonomy without guardrails.
Trust does mean:
- treating people like adults, even when they fail;
- being transparent about goals, constraints, and consequences;
- creating “clean pressure” – urgency around the work, not anxiety about the leader.
Fear says, “Deliver, or else.” Trust says, “This matters. You’re accountable. And you won’t be humiliated for being honest.” One creates compliance. The other creates commitment.
Impact on morale and culture – thriving vs surviving
These two styles don’t just change how people behave; they change how it feels to be part of a team.
In a fear-led environment:
- People scan for danger – who is in a bad mood, which topics are risky, where the traps are.
- Meetings become performance stages rather than working sessions.
- Gossip and underground communication flourish, because it’s safer to speak sideways than upwards.
You can feel the nervous energy in the room. People are busy, but not necessarily productive. They are surviving, not thriving.
In a trust-led environment:
- People argue about ideas, not about whether it’s safe to have the argument.
- Feedback is normalised, not treated as an exceptional event.
- Leaders are present and demanding – but their presence calms the room instead of tightening it.
This doesn’t mean everything is cosy. High-trust teams can be brutally direct with each other. The difference is that the brutality is about the work, not about the person.
Conclusion – what I choose, and why
In my own journey, I’ve seen what both styles produce.
I’ve felt the physical reaction of walking into a fear-led room – the tension, the self-censorship, the waste of energy in managing the leader instead of the work. I’ve also experienced the pull of a trust-based environment, where you work incredibly hard not because someone is breathing down your neck, but because someone has visibly put their trust in you.
I don’t pretend that trust solves everything. Nor do I believe that leaders can always afford endless time to build it before making hard decisions. But when I look at the teams that truly created something meaningful – for customers, for the business, and for themselves – there is a clear pattern: high trust, high standards, and the courage to have real conversations without fear. In the end, leadership is less about slogans and more about how consistently we balance Demand, Dignity and Distance. High standards without humiliation. Proximity without micromanagement. Pressure on the work, not on people’s sense of worth.
Fear can light a fire under people. Trust lights the way – and keeps people walking with you when the first flames die down.
As leaders, we don’t control everything. But we do control the climate around us. And the choice between trust and fear is not just about style; it is about the kind of organisation we build, and the kind of human beings we become while building it.