Some concepts are pretty powerful. In the sense, that just being aware of them provide higher odds of succeed in life. Some are non obvious or even counter-intuitive. One of those is the sense of agency.
So, what is sense of agency and why is it important to have a strong sense of agency? it refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences. It is the feeling of being an agent, of a connection between our actions and the outcomes, when not explicitly thinking about it. Experiencing control over the outcomes. There are different theories that explain how it works and how we measure it. My take away for you is that its impact is transformational.
Your sense of agency is intrinsically connected with your context. In my case, moving from working in a big tech company to operating independently. As consultant and founder, provided a higher and deeper sense of agency. I had it before, I am not saying you can not have leverage in a company. My point that the output of your leverage; The extent of impact. As well as your perception of control are influenced by your environment.
It is literally one of the secrets of life according to Steve Jobs, “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world-try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. But life-that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it-you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”
It is important for you. It is paramount when you work in a product development team. Instilling it in your team mates. Nurturing the feeling ownership in the different stakeholders. The impact they make, it is the way to succeed creating great products. It took me some time to learn this. How crucial is to create space. To encourage providing inputs for less vocal members of the teams. Cultivating that sense of agency and autonomy. For all the participants in the production process.
There are relatively extensive research around it from a psychological point of view. The mechanisms in play as well as the different evolutive motivations for it. One of my favourite concepts!
