The Agency Advantage: What Does Individual Agency Look Like at Work?

Part 2 – The Agency Advantage is a three-part series exploring one of the most underrated drivers of organisational performance: agency. Whether you are leading a team through change or designing the conditions for your people to thrive, this series will take you through what agency is, how it shows up at work, and what leaders can do to strengthen it.

Introduction

In our first article, we laid out the case for why agency matters, especially as organisations

navigate the pace of change today. But understanding the concept is only half the battle. What we find most striking in practice is how visibly agency, or the lack of it, shows up in everyday work. Even with the exact same resources and opportunities, employees may respond to the same change very differently. A major part of this is their level of individual agency and how they connect with the “why” behind their work. In this article, we explore these dynamics through real workplace behaviours.

How Agency Reveals Itself at Work

At an individual level, agency is reflected in how a person responds when they encounter friction and ambiguity.

Across all levels of the organisation, people with higher agency tend to approach obstacles as problems to work through rather than reasons to stop. They actively look for information and speak up when issues arise, while remaining open to experimentation, adapting to changing situations, and taking responsibility when outcomes fall short.

In contrast, lower agency behaviour tends to be more reactive. Employees with these tendencies are hesitant to step out of their comfort zones, and even with clear direction, may struggle to execute effectively if they do not embrace the change. Some attribute setbacks to external constraints, while others stay silent about problems to avoid discomfort or conflict.

Instead of asking, “How can we make this work?”, the focus gradually shifts toward why action feels risky or becomes somebody else’s responsibility. This distinction matters because modern workplaces are changing faster than structures can fully stabilise around them. Employees are more willing to speak up when unresolved issues are framed as creating broader risks for the team rather than just individual consequences. 

Building the Confidence to Act

One of the strongest drivers of individual agency is self-efficacy – simply put, a person's belief in their ability to complete a specific task or navigate a particular obstacle successfully. In practice, it shapes whether someone approaches uncertainty with initiative or waits for someone else to move first.

However, belief alone does not always translate into action. Self-efficacy answers the question “Can I do this?” but agency also depends on mindset, which governs “Do I want to do this?” and “Will I step forward?” Individuals may have the capability and confidence to act, yet still hold back due to competing priorities, fear of consequences, or a habitual reliance on direction. A proactive, ownership-oriented mindset is what converts confidence into intent.

This makes self-agency a combination of both belief and willingness. When individuals see themselves as accountable contributors, rather than passive executors, they are more likely to initiate, experiment, and learn through action. Without this mindset shift, even high self-efficacy can remain dormant.

Agency in the Age of AI

Nothing has made the agency gap more visible than AI. Our team has observed the same AI rollout play out in two different groups in the same organisation with completely different results. In a group with higher agency, people were already stress-testing the tool before any formal training session. They were comparing outputs, questioning what the AI model got wrong, and figuring out where it added real value vs. where human judgment was irreplaceable. In the lower-agency team, people waited for the official process, and many are still waiting. 

The proportion of employees who use AI and admit to accepting outputs without checking them remains concerningly high. In high-stakes decisions, hallucinations from AI flag major organisational risks including reputational damage and operational mistakes, particularly when AI is used in sensitive business contexts or decisions where reliability is essential. 

This risk is compounded as the technology evolves. As AI becomes more embedded into everyday workflows, we see an interesting shift from generative AI – where people are using tools like ChatGPT or Copilot to draft, summarise, or generate content – to agentic AI, where systems are being given goals and the autonomy to take sequences of actions to achieve them. 

In agentic AI contexts, the role of individual agency becomes even more critical. When an AI agent is briefed to manage a workflow, synthesise information from multiple systems, or execute a multi-step process on your behalf, the person steering it needs to understand what they're delegating, what guardrails matter, and when to intervene. Setting clear intent, monitoring outputs, and knowing when to override the system is a deeply human skill, and it's one that only people with high agency tend to exercise well. 

How Individuals Can Build and Embrace Agency

Agency is a practice, and can be deliberately cultivated, both by individuals and by the organisations around them. Here are the shifts that make the biggest difference.

(1) Start with the 'Why' Before the 'What' 

People with high agency understand the purpose. If you're finding yourself waiting to be told what to do, a good first step is to actively seek out the 'why' behind what your organisation is trying to change and what “value” you are delivering to the stakeholders. That connection between individual contribution and broader direction is often the spark that turns compliance into ownership. 

(2) Treat Ambiguity as Invitation, Not Instruction to Pause 

One of the clearest markers of high agency in individuals is their relationship with uncertainty. Rather than waiting for a complete brief, they ask: what do I know enough about to take a first step? Developing this habit is one of the most practical ways to build agency muscle. Watch over what might go wrong and be ready to iterate your approach.

(3) Build Your AI Judgment, Not Just Your AI Fluency 

Particularly in the context of AI adoption, the skill every professional should develop is critical evaluation. Use the tools, but also challenge the outputs. Understand where AI adds value and where it introduces risk. As agentic AI tools become more prevalent, invest in the skill of clear intent-setting: the ability to brief an AI system with enough precision that it can act on your behalf without creating more problems than it solves. 

(4) Speak Up Earlier Than Feels Comfortable 

Silence is the most common way agency leaks out of organisations. The next time you're in a room and you have a view that nobody else has voiced, say it. High-agency individuals understand that speaking up is a form of contribution, not destruction. 

(5) Own Your Outcomes, Including the Ones That Don't Land 

One of the quieter markers of agency is how people respond when something doesn't go to plan. High-agency individuals don't deflect to external constraints or blame the process. They ask what they could have done differently, extract the learning, and move. When one person in a team does this well, it changes the standard for everyone around them.

Agency is the Multiplier

Individual agency is the multiplier behind every other investment organisations make in their people. Two teams with the same resources, the same tools, and the same strategic brief will produce vastly different results if one is operating with high agency and the other isn't. The behaviours described in this article are small in isolation. But, compounded across a team and over time, they determine whether transformation actually takes hold. 

At aAdvantage Consulting, our work in Human Capital and Culture Transformation starts from the simple premise that sustainable change depends on the people doing the work. We partner with clients to transform this mindset into performance, shifting teams from passive compliance to active ownership so that digital and AI initiatives can finally scale beyond the pilot stage.

In the next and final article, we explore what leaders and organisations can do to create an environment where individual agency is encouraged, supported, and able to thrive.