Learned Helplessness at Work: Why Removing Hierarchy Isn't Enough
A great new academic paper on self-managing organizations was just published. It's one of those papers I secretly wish I had written myself.
In The Human Side of Self-Managing Organizations: Unlearning the Learned Helplessness, researcher Veiko Valkiainen explores why so many self-management transformations fail. To find out, he conducted a 12-month ethnographic study inside a post-Soviet manufacturing firm that transitioned to self-management using Holacracy.
His starting assumption was familiar: remove hierarchy, distribute authority, and people will naturally step up and thrive. But that's not what happened.
Some people flourished. Others hesitated. And some reverted to old habits, seeking validation from former managers and quietly recreating informal hierarchies. Instead of confidently stepping into their new authority, many struggled with their newfound freedom.
Valkiainen describes this as unlearning learned helplessness.
What Is Learned Helplessness at Work?
The concept of learned helplessness originally comes from psychology, introduced by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in 1967. It describes what happens when people are repeatedly exposed to situations they cannot control. Over time, they stop trying. Even when control becomes possible again, they still feel powerless.
Applied to the workplace, Valkiainen argues that long-standing hierarchies condition people in a similar way. When employees spend years under strict managerial control, they learn to prioritize compliance over initiative. They adapt to close supervision. They stop taking ownership. Learned helplessness at work doesn't develop overnight. It's the result of years of conditioning in environments where initiative was never rewarded or even allowed.
This shows up in two reinforcing patterns. First, employees get used to deferring, instinctively seeking approval before acting. They must relearn how to step up instead of waiting. Second, former managers develop what Valkiainen calls a strongness reflex: the urge to step in, guide, or decide, even when their authority has formally disappeared. They must learn to step back and let go.
These two behaviors feed each other. Deference invites intervention. Intervention strengthens deference. If nothing interrupts this loop, informal hierarchy quietly rebuilds itself.
Hesitation, Anxiety, and Uncertainty
That is exactly what Valkiainen observed. Years inside a rigid, top-down system had trained people to wait for permission, escalate problems upward, avoid ownership of difficult decisions, and rely on managers to resolve ambiguity.
So when the hierarchy disappeared, autonomy did not immediately emerge. What emerged first was hesitation, anxiety, and uncertainty. The research shows that learned helplessness at work operates across three dimensions: cognitive (people fail to recognize they now have control), motivational (they default to passivity even when they could act), and emotional (anxiety and disengagement take hold).
Only after people gradually unlearned old patterns, and developed the confidence and emotional capacity to use their authority, did the new system start to function.
What I take away from the study is simple but profound: you can remove hierarchy faster than people can unlearn hierarchy.
Fromm Already Saw This Coming
While reading the paper, I was reminded of an idea much older than modern organizational design. In 1941, social psychologist Erich Fromm wrote Escape from Freedom, trying to understand why humans sometimes struggle with freedom itself.
Fromm distinguished between two kinds of freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from authority, constraints, and control. Positive freedom is the freedom to act responsibly, creatively, and autonomously.
His insight was counterintuitive: removing external control does not automatically create autonomous individuals. Instead, it can create hesitation, anxiety, and uncertainty before it creates agency. When traditional authority disappears, people can feel exposed rather than empowered. Because now they must rely on internal judgment instead of external direction. Something hierarchical environments never taught them to develop.
In simpler terms: negative freedom is structural. Positive freedom is developmental. And that distinction explains why so many organizational transformations struggle.
"You Dropped Us in a Jungle"
I heard this firsthand in one of the companies acquired through our impact fund. Our transformation approach focused first on a flat structure and self-managing systems. Hierarchy removed, authority distributed, autonomous teams introduced. From a structural perspective, the transformation worked.
But months later, when I interviewed every employee, one person said something I'll never forget: "You dropped us in a jungle without teaching us the skills to survive in the jungle."
The metaphor was painfully accurate. For years, people had been conditioned to be successful in a hierarchical environment. Suddenly they had autonomy. But autonomy without preparation did not feel like liberation. It felt like a jungle.
Only after introducing extensive training in human skills like self-awareness, personal leadership, emotional intelligence, and solution-driven communication did something shift. That was when people said they started to thrive. The structure hadn't changed much anymore. What changed was their ability to live with freedom.
The Missing Step in Most Transformations
Many organizations assume transformation works like this: change structure → behaviour changes → performance improves.
For a long time, I believed this too. But increasingly, I see a different pattern: change structure → psychological shock → capability development → performance improves.
The first step creates negative freedom. The second step enables positive freedom. Skip the second, and people often recreate informal hierarchy. Not because they love control, but because they hate anxiety. Leaders who want to overcome learned helplessness at work need to understand that structural redesign is only the beginning.
Knowing the problem is only half the battle. Now comes the harder part: doing something about it.
Structural redesign removes hierarchy. But as this research makes clear, it doesn't automatically create autonomous, confident people. That second phase (developing the human capability to actually live with freedom) is where most transformations succeed or fall apart.
The Corporate Rebels Masterclass was built for exactly this. In 6 weeks, you'll work through both phases with a cohort of founders, transformation leads, and changemakers from around the world, learning from 200+ pioneering organizations that have already walked this path.
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A Two-Phase Approach to Transformation
This insight fundamentally reshaped how I think about transformation. Today, I deliberately separate two phases.
Phase 1: Create negative freedom (system change). Redesign the organization to distribute authority through structural shifts: a network of autonomous teams, role-based responsibilities, peer-based coordination, open information, and fair salary calibration. These changes remove structural dependency on hierarchy. They create freedom from the boss.
Phase 2: Develop positive freedom (human capability). To make autonomy sustainable, invest equally in capability development: self-awareness, solution-driven communication, personal leadership, open-book management, and emotional intelligence. These trainings help people internalize authority instead of depending on it. They create freedom to be your own boss.
Valkiainen's research identifies three boundary conditions that make this second phase work: clarity of role boundaries, purpose-driven proactive behaviour, and complex social interaction. Together, they counteract learned helplessness at work across its cognitive, motivational, and emotional dimensions.
Not everyone transforms freedom into agency at the same pace. For some, it takes much longer than for others. But without this second phase, structural change alone rarely holds.
Freedom Is a Two-Step Process
The biggest lesson for me has been this: self-management is not just an organizational redesign. It is just as much a human development journey.
Structure can liberate people from hierarchy. But only personal development liberates the self.
Because freedom, it turns out, is not the end of transformation. It's just the beginning.
Ready to stop dropping people in the jungle?
Structural redesign is the beginning, not the finish line. The second phase of transformation, developing the human capability to actually live with freedom, is where most organizations succeed or fall apart. The good news: you don't have to figure it out alone.
The Corporate Rebels Masterclass covers both phases in 6 weeks. You'll work through real implementation blueprints from 200+ pioneering organizations, alongside a cohort of founders and transformation leads who are walking the same path.
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