There’s a growing genre of workplace advice circulating right now, and it deserves closer scrutiny because of what this advice unofficially makes acceptable.
Across recruitment commentary, HR content and increasingly on social platforms, employees are being told how to stay relevant, how to future-proof themselves, how to think like leaders and how to take on more responsibility to survive what is framed as a new era of work.
While the language is confident, reassuring and often presented as being “for the people”. Listen carefully to hear something important missing. What’s being encouraged and what’s being avoided.
What’s being encouraged and what’s deliberately left unsaid
The message being absorbed by workers is to stretch further, anticipate more, fill the gaps and behave like a boss even though you’re not one. This, on its own, isn’t unethical. Ambitious people have always opted to go above and beyond to secure their advancement.
- The ethical issue arises in what is deliberately left unsaid:
- The lack of conversation about renegotiating roles.
- The missing discussion of authority or protection.
- The failure to acknowledge the transfer of responsibility.
- The lack of reward keeping pace with expectation.
Instead, people adapt while the structure stays static. While businesses benefit from that stretch, individuals are left carrying risk they never formally agreed to hold.
“Ethics don’t disappear, they’re put to one side”
When ethics are treated as optional
When ethics are treated as optional and sidelined, it becomes easier to justify imbalance. Looking the other way becomes convenient so responsibility can be shifted downward without having to be named.
This advice culture doesn’t challenge that behaviour. It normalises it.
By framing the situation as inevitable (“this is just how work is now”), responsibility is removed from leadership and placed squarely on the individual. Adapt or fall behind. Stretch or become irrelevant.
The framing is not neutral. It actively sides with practices that benefit from people doing more without having to renegotiate the exchange.
The consequences of pretence
When employees begin acting like leaders without authority, clarity, or protection, several things occur at once.
- Expectations rise without being explicit.
- Accountability blurs.
- Mistakes become personal rather than structural.
- Fear replaces certainty.
From the outside, this can look like initiative but inside, it often feels like pressure without safety. When leadership eventually notices this stretch and chooses not to intervene because output improves, it makes management easier and the numbers look better; that silence is not accidental.
It is a choice. Whether it is ethical or not is dependent on their actions (or omissions).
The legal reality most advice ignores
There is a practical dimension here that advice culture conveniently avoids. In law, the concept of consideration exists to ensure that both parties understand what is being exchanged; what is being given and received.
When responsibility expands but agreements do not, both sides are exposed. The business assumes loyalty and capability it has not secured. Whereas the individual assumes recognition and protection that has not been promised.
This is not sustainable and when it unravels, it rarely does so cleanly.
How this damages the wider ecosystem
This pattern doesn’t just harm individuals. It damages businesses that come later, including those trying to do things properly. People who have been stretched without recognition don’t arrive neutral in their next role. They arrive cautious, distrustful and guarded. Afraid of being used again.
So even ethical businesses find themselves paying the price for unethical practices elsewhere.
Not through one dramatic failure but through thousands of quiet resolutions to benefit from effort without owning the responsibility that comes with it.
Growth is not the problem. Abdication is.
To be clear, adaptation is not the issue nor ambition or individuals stepping up. The issue is responsibility moving faster than structure and leadership, allowing that to happen because it suits the moment.
Handing someone the reins without ensuring clarity, capability, authority and support puts both the individual and the business at risk. Acting “like a boss” implies decision-making power, yet most leadership teams are not prepared to live with the consequences when things go wrong.
That isn’t empowerment.
“It’s abdication dressed up as progress.”
What steady leadership actually requires
Healthy businesses don’t rely on individuals to guess what’s needed.
- They pause to name what has changed.
- They rebalance expectations as reality shifts.
- They recognise contribution as it evolves.
- They intervene early not after damage is done.
This isn’t bureaucracy.
It’s management.
It’s how a business retains clarity, protects its people, and restores the quiet hum that comes from everyone knowing where they stand and what they’re carrying.
The question leadership can no longer avoid
If a team is adapting, stretching, and holding more than they were ever hired for, the question isn’t whether they should cope better. The question is whether the founder has been willing to name what the business now depends on and take responsibility for it.
Not calling a thing a thing doesn’t make it disappear. It simply allows others to carry the cost in silence.
And silence, in leadership, is never neutral.
