This is the English translation of the article published on “HR On Line” (November 17th 2025)
In managerial language, delegation and autonomy are often treated as if they were the same thing. In reality, they represent two profoundly different logics.
Delegation is a vertical act: it means transferring to a collaborator a piece of one’s own work—with a level of discretion that may vary—while keeping ownership of that work in the hands of the manager.
Autonomy, on the other hand, implies a redistribution of decision-making power that creates a context in which the responsibility to understand what is important to do, and to do it, is shifted to another actor.
Delegation without decision-making power exists—and is an everyday story. Autonomy without decision-making power cannot exist. Delegation is an act that does not transform the context; autonomy creates a new ecosystem. And if delegation frees up time, autonomy frees up energy.
This distinction becomes crucial when speed of perception, response, and adaptation is needed.
Systems based on delegation remain slow. Systems that build autonomy develop the ability to perceive and respond at all levels, improving the quality of decisions and fueling continuous learning and innovation.
The concept is simple.
Delegation makes it possible to execute well what is requested. Autonomy enables people to understand what is truly needed and to accomplish it more quickly. Because while delegation maintains the distance between problems and decisions—typical of the traditional hierarchy—autonomy increases the proximity between decisions, problems, and opportunities.
The difference between delegation and autonomy becomes clear when the focus shifts to teams.
We are still used to considering performance as the result of individual activity. In reality, in today’s world, while the individual contribution remains very important, performance is above all the product of how people work together.
For some time now, the basic organizational unit has no longer been the individual but the team.
Indeed, many organizations ask teams to be proactive. This often happens without giving them real decision-making power. As a result, people learn to do well what is requested, without ever asking themselves what is truly needed.
But if performance is played out within the team, does it make sense that a team has no decision-making autonomy regarding everyday problems connected to its own work—problems for which it has the skills to solve?
Only by gradually learning to manage autonomy can a team—the fundamental cell of the modern organization—develop the ability to perceive and respond not because it is pushed from above, but because it is connected to the flow of work it feels responsible for, understanding what is important to do and how their decisions fit into the larger picture.
Naturally, expanding autonomy is a process that must be built. Teams need to be guided as they grow. In summary, three conditions must be created.
The first is to define clear boundaries and rules: every team must know which decisions it can make on its own and which require coordination; otherwise autonomy becomes confusion. And these boundaries expand consistently with the growth of the team’s decision-making capability.
The second is to cultivate psychological safety—that emergent characteristic of the climate that encourages people to contribute, challenge, disagree, and learn from mistakes without fear.
The third is to give the team access to the data and information needed to make decisions, along with the tools for continuous learning and self-regulation: metrics, retrospectives, feedback.
Shifting the focus from delegation to the development of autonomy also changes leadership.
More than managers who control and decide, we need managers who design and build the context in which others can decide. Autonomy requires leaders who share goals without prescribing every step, who build trust and self-regulation instead of constant monitoring, who interpret mistakes as part of the process rather than as failures.
It is not the leadership of “I’ll let you do it,” but the leadership that creates decision-making architectures: clarity of goals, boundaries, rules, trust, and plenty of feedback.
The benefits are systemic. People develop decision-making skills and a sense of ownership, grow more quickly, learn to set priorities and manage complex situations. Managers regain time and can devote themselves to more strategic aspects while fostering the growth of a team increasingly capable of facing challenges. Customers receive faster responses and more relevant solutions. The organization as a whole becomes more resilient and innovative.
But above all, autonomy generates a living culture: an environment in which performance arises from the ability to contribute, not from the execution of top-down instructions. This is where future competitiveness is at stake.
by Marina Capizzi, co-founder of PRIMATE Consulting, Master Certified Coach ICF, author of Hierarchy to Die or to Thrive?