From Command to Grace

About the Author

David Gerring has 40 years of project delivery experience as a passionate Servant Leader and Release Train Engineer helping organizations adopt Agile and successful program/project practices to achieve high performing teams and better results through continuous improvement.

A Decade of Redefining Project Leadership

In 2015, I published a blog post capturing my evolving views on project delivery focused on the limitations I saw in the traditional command-and-control model I was trained to follow. At that time, I was an emerging agilist, just beginning to recognize that managing Agile projects required more than new tools or ceremonies. It demanded a fundamental shift in how we think about authority, ownership, and human dynamics.

As a classically trained project manager, my expected role was to create outcomes by directing activities through structure, accountability, and control. This approach did produce results, but as I began to work more deeply in Agile environments, I saw something I hadn’t been trained to value: the collective intelligence, motivation, and performance of a team, when allowed to thrive in the right environment, produced better results.

What I came to realize was that my focus was off. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the conditions that enable project success, including:

• Stakeholder alignment around the delivery approach
• Clear roles, responsibilities, and accountability
• Teams with the right mix of skill, experience, and intrinsic motivation
• A project culture and team interaction dynamics rooted in collaboration and empowerment
• An explicit agreement to act with grace in the face of challenges

Commanding and directing tasks, no matter how precisely, didn’t lead to sustainable success. Even with highly skilled individuals, the absence of team cohesion, shared purpose, and psychological safety often resulted in underperformance, strained relationships, and frustrated clients. I could bully a project to the finish line, but it often came at a cost: to team morale, to client trust, and to the experience of the work itself.

Over time, my governance mindset began to shift. I moved away from a leadership model rooted in authority, rigidity, and hierarchy, and toward one centered on trust, clarity, and shared responsibility. That meant:

• Valuing team performance over individual heroics
• Emphasizing authenticity in communication
• Building trust rather than compliance
• Choosing to manage with grace, especially during elevated tensions

After a decade of practicing this new posture, what I now call graceful governance, the results have been both meaningful and consistent:

• Clients recognized delivery value without the emotional overhead often caused by reactive or heavy-handed leadership. When a recent eight-year engagement at a company with 11,000 employees came to a close, the CIO personally reached out to express appreciation for the difference I had made.
• Directors didn’t just accept my input, rather they actively sought it, trusting me as a thought partner in delivery and design.
• Team members remained engaged across multiple project lifecycles, often requesting to continue working together, and referring others from their networks to join the team.
• Vendors and partners became true collaborators. The need for coercive tactics disappeared. Instead, we focused on outcomes that served everyone.

What changed? I stopped believing that teams and people needed to be commanded or controlled. They don’t! What they need is leadership that listens, aligns, clears barriers, and trusts them to deliver.

In fact, I no longer use the language of “command and control” to describe my role. It no longer fits the way I think, lead, or serve. In fact, the phrase makes me uncomfortable. Instead, I’ve committed to fulfilling my responsibilities with clarity, humility, and grace, striving to get better each day as a practitioner, consultant, and colleague. Graceful execution means building the kind of environment where trust, collaboration, clear communication, and role clarity are the norm, not the exception.

However, I also recognize command and control is a fundamental trait of organizations and is distinguishable from leadership styles. We still need it to define the behind-the-scenes stuff, such as reporting hierarchy, HR policies, and other protocols that guide macro organizational behavior. This is the appropriate context for exercising command and control.

For me, grace isn’t a tactic, it’s a posture. It’s how I choose to show up. And if you’re rethinking how you lead, I’d offer this: your team doesn’t need to be commanded, rather engage with trust, speak with clarity, and act with grace. You’ll be surprised how often your team rises to meet you there.