"When Trust Feels Like Abdication"

Ever had that feeling that something’s off—but you hesitate to step in?​
You tell yourself, “I trust the team.”​
You don’t want to hover. You don’t want to smother.
And above all, you don’t want to be that manager.

The micromanager.

So instead, you watch. Quietly.
Hoping things will turn around.
Until one day, it’s clear: they won’t.

A Team Lead I know found themselves here not long ago.

One of their engineers, someone they’d managed for years, started taking longer to complete work. Nothing outrageous, but enough to raise eyebrows. The Team Lead started paying closer attention. Not to catch them out, but to understand.

Eventually, they raised it. Calmly, respectfully.
The result? Accusations of micromanagement.
The engineer felt singled out. Picked on.
The trust, once mutual, now felt broken.

This is the fear so many of us carry:
That any move to intervene will be seen as controlling. That our attempts to help will be misunderstood.
So we stay hands-off. And call it trust.

But sometimes, trust is used to avoid conflict.
Sometimes, trust is just fear in disguise.

And when we wait too long to act, we often end up overcorrecting—swinging from silence to scrutiny, in a way that does feel like micromanagement. Especially to the person on the receiving end.

So here’s the tension I’m sitting with:
How do we stay close enough to help without making people feel watched?
How do we act early enough to support, but not so early it feels like control?

There’s no formula.
Just real humans, working things out together.
One moment, one relationship, one conversation at a time.

Until next time,
Dermot
​The Messy Middle

​

✉️ Enjoying The Messy Middle?​
If this sparked something useful, consider forwarding it to a colleague or friend, it might help them too.

If someone sent this email your way and you’d like to get it direct, you can sign up here.