How Many of Your Leaders Are Along for the Ride?

A dozen executives were seated around the conference table. After the typical opening niceties, the CEO cleared her throat and asked, “What are the options to improve our gross margins by at least 20 percent?”

A few leaders in the room spoke up, but pointed to the causes: market pressure, talent gaps, lagging execution, a competitor who just made a bold move. They articulated the challenges to the firm’s gross margins clearly and, for the most part, accurately. But that wasn’t the question to be answered.

By the time the conversation concluded, only five of the twelve executives in the room actively proposed solutions and volunteered to lead next steps. Beyond those few, the other attendees either nodded along without offering much unless directly questioned or reiterated the problems and challenges facing the firm.

The meeting concluded with the majority of the leaders saying things like “This was really helpful,” “Great teamwork today,” and “It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.”

Comments like these coming from business leaders make them sound like they’re spectators watching a game rather than players on the field, in the action, trying to win.

This is a common, highly unproductive dynamic on senior teams.

There are two types of people on most leadership teams at high-growth firms: those who actively drive the business forward, and those who seem along for the ride – the passengers. Most CEOs assume each of their key seats is occupied by a driver. In my experience, they’re often wrong, and it costs them dearly—in frustration, in lost productivity, and in a culture that tolerates passivity.

Your organization’s success depends on an executive team of drivers, not passengers.

The Driver vs. Passenger Dynamic

At any given moment, every person in a company occupies one of two roles: driver or passenger.

A Driver is wired to act. They don’t wait to be told what to do; they see it and take action. When a problem surfaces, they instinctively bring solutions to the table. They follow through on their commitments and push the organization forward even when it’s uncomfortable. In meetings, they’re engaged, full of productive ideas, decisive, and biased toward taking action.

A Passenger, on the other hand, occupies their seat but doesn’t actively operate the vehicle. They’re present, often pleasant, and reasonably competent at naming what’s wrong. They’re skilled at appearing engaged: nodding along, asking the occasional question, and expressing enthusiasm for other people’s ideas without volunteering to carry some of the weight. They’re biased to be reactive rather than proactive, and when it comes time to step up, they typically step back.

Here’s a real-world example of how these different roles play out:

A driver who has accountability for an at-risk customer, doesn’t wait to be told to act. He schedules a call with the client, shows up prepared with questions and ideas, and comes back to his team with three concrete options and a recommendation of which make the most sense to pursue.

A passenger in the same situation, mentions the customer’s order volume has been flat and that they’re “difficult to deal with” during a meeting. When pressed, he might agree to “keep an eye on it” without ever acknowledging it’s his problem to solve.

The differences here have nothing to do with intelligence, capability, training, or tenure. It’s how each individual is wired to respond when the path forward requires them to step up and take ownership—particularly when something feels uncomfortable or challenging to them.

The Passenger Tax

On the surface, having passengers in leadership roles might not feel like an existential threat to your business. But tolerating this dynamic creates a heavy tax that affects organizations on multiple levels.

The most obvious cost is work distribution. On every team with a mix of drivers and passengers, a small number of people–the drivers–routinely do a massively disproportionate share of the work. They absorb what the passengers avoid and, over time, this becomes normalized. Teams begin to reorganize themselves around who can be counted on, which–surprise!–are the drivers.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t notice. It’s painfully clear to every driver who’s contributing and who isn’t, and while they may not say it directly, it wears on them—not just because of the workload, but because of what it says about the team leader’s standards, leadership, and consideration for people. Never forget that your most capable people have other options and can and do vote with their feet.

But perhaps the most damaging impact is the multiplication effect in organizations where passengers become normalized. Simply put, passenger behavior breeds more passenger behavior. When teams see leaders operating without accountability, without proactivity, and without initiative, they follow. Passivity, when tolerated, becomes expected–from the top all the way down.

None of these costs are compatible with a healthy culture and sustainable growth. Scaling a business demands relentless positive momentum, and when passengers occupy key seats, there are fewer people driving the firm forward.

How Passengers Hide in Plain Sight

Given the stakes, it’s surprising that many leaders fail to see this dynamic until it’s created full-blown toxicity on the team and undermines execution. Here’s why: passengers can be difficult to identify.

When two people “collaborate” on something, it can be genuinely hard to tell from the outside whether one of them is driving and the other is along for the ride. Passengers often contribute just enough to maintain the appearance of engagement via a thoughtful comment here and a reasonable question there. They are rarely people who visibly drop the ball because they carry so few. Instead, they’re far more likely to be standing nearby when someone else picks one up.

The language patterns of passengers provide particularly effective camouflage. Remember the chorus of noncommittal comments after the leadership meeting in the opening story? Passive communication like this can take a myriad of forms:

“That’s a great point.”
“We need to think carefully about this.”
“Glad to be involved in this.”
“I’ll defer to the team on this one.”
“Happy to help however I can.”

None of these statements is inherently wrong and, on the surface, they seem both collaborative and participatory. But none create value or include a commitment to act—and that’s the crux of the issue.

Beyond the rosey, obfuscating language, it’s worth noting that passengers are often tough to spot because “driver” and “passenger” aren’t fixed identities. Leaders can be drivers in some domains and passengers in others. This pattern tends to correlate strongly with one’s comfort zones; a leader is more likely to exhibit passenger behavior when they feel uncertain, fearful, or out of their depth. For example, a leader might drive and excel in building client relationships but show up as a passenger to avoid providing direct feedback to someone on their team.

This raises a critical question: if the passenger-driver dynamic is context-dependent, can people who are passengers learn how to become drivers?

Making the Shift

My answer, based on more than two decades of coaching executive leaders and teams through exactly this challenge, is yes. Passengers can become drivers. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times—my role as a coach is often to help my clients identify areas where they’re behaving like passengers and to foster driver behaviors instead.

This doesn’t just happen, however. It requires direct intervention and the passenger’s willingness to sit with genuine discomfort and do the work of change. But with enough discipline, it’s certainly possible to make the transition. Here’s how:

Step 1: Identify your passengers.

Don’t rely on charisma or charm. Take an honest look at your leaders and how they operate, both in the short term and with respect to longer-term initiatives. For each person on your team, ask yourself:

Do they follow through on their commitments?
Do they surface problems along with proposed solutions, or do they only surface problems?
Do they tell me what they’ve done, or do they wait to be told to act?
Do they carry their fair share of the team’s collective burden, or are they consistently lighter-loaded than their role demands?

These answers will point you toward your passengers. Pay close enough attention, and they’ll also point you toward specific zones where otherwise-capable leaders have discreetly checked out.

Step 2: Set clear expectations.

Vague expectations produce vague behaviors. If you want drivers, you have to be explicit about what driving looks like in each leadership seat—for your CFO, your VP of Operations, your sales leader–everyone. What accountability and initiative look like is often role-specific and needs to be communicated clearly rather than assumed.

Step 3: Set non-negotiable behavior standards.

Starting today, driver behavior is no longer a nice-to-have in your organization. Make that explicit—name the consequences of passivity and mean it. Do the same for driver behavior: make it unmistakably clear that initiative, accountability, and follow-through are recognized and rewarded.

Step 4: Sharpen driver behaviors in individual areas.

For each leader operating as a passenger in a specific domain, name it, target it, and improve it through ongoing feedback, coaching, and course-correction. This might mean stretching them into situations where avoidance becomes untenable. It will certainly mean establishing accountability within their role and for the process of transitioning to driver. For some on your team, you might consider engaging an outside professional to coach and develop them. Meaningful progress rarely happens without an external impetus, because the comfort of their passivity is precisely the problem you’re trying to overcome.

When you commit to this process, some of your leaders will surprise you in a good way. They may have drifted into passive patterns without noticing, and will step up when you clarify your expectations and provide them support. Others will struggle but improve incrementally. And, inevitably, others will make it clear through their ongoing actions that they’re either not willing or not able to make the shift.

For those in that last group, the honest conclusion is that they’re in the wrong role. Keeping them there won’t serve them, your team, or your organization. The kindest and most professional thing you can do in this situation is to transition them out, freeing up the seat for someone who will drive.

Building a Culture of Drivers

Remember the multiplication effect I described earlier? It cuts both ways. Just as passenger behavior breeds passivity, driver behavior—when it’s recognized and rewarded—breeds more driving.

But just like turning passengers into drivers, building a driver-first culture isn’t a one-and-done initiative. It’s a process that must be sustained over time, beginning with the following fundamentals:

Start at the top. Nothing undermines a driver culture faster than executives who are exempt from the standard they establish for others. If passenger behavior exists in senior leadership, address it visibly and unequivocally.
Hire for it. Evaluate driver tendencies explicitly when filling leadership roles. Behavioral interview questions, reference conversations, and even how a candidate engages in the hiring process itself will tell you a great deal.
Build accountability into how you run the business. Meeting structures, ongoing performance conversations, and decision-making processes should all make passivity visible and difficult to maintain. (For more on making faster, better decisions, read my article on Decision Velocity here.)
Reward driver behavior publicly and specifically. Call it out when you see it. Make it clear what you’re celebrating and why. Done consistently, this sends a clear message about what your organization values and expects.
Extinguish passenger behavior. Deliver timely, direct 1-on-1 feedback and clarify your expectations around driver behavior when you observe passenger behavior.

Finally, and most importantly, lead by example. This is non-negotiable. If you’re asking others to be drivers, you have to be visibly, unambiguously driving—especially in the areas where it’s hardest for you. Because your team is watching, all the time, and they learn far more from the behaviors you model than from the words you speak.

The Choice in Front of You

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” — Attributed to Michael Jordan

Having a seat at the leadership table is not the same as leading. These two things are frequently confused at great cost. Although a title may confer authority, it does not automatically confer the drive, initiative, or accountability that leadership demands.

Passengers in leadership seats cause disproportionately concentrated work, eroded morale, sluggish execution, and a contaminated company culture. Drivers, on the other hand, create momentum. Drivers raise the collective standard and make everyone around them better. Learn to spot the difference, and to build a culture of drivers within your organization, and you’ll be amazed at how much faster and further your business can go.

Here’s my challenge: take an inventory of your leadership team. Not a polite one—an honest one. Identify your passengers. Then take active steps I’ve outlined above to close the gap, one way or another.

Don’t become a passenger yourself! Take action to build a culture of drivers on your team and throughout your firm.

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