For an ecology of dispensability

Faced with the vertical management that dominates and alienates, another path exists: that of an authority that aims for its own dispensability, of a transmission that liberates rather than enslaves.

The toxic legacy of vertical power

Contemporary professional structures still bear the traces of an inherited model of domination: that of management by fear, systematic devaluation, and the permanent injunction to “be strong” and hide one’s emotions. This organizational culture, far from being anecdotal, profoundly shapes our relationship to work, to authority, and to ourselves. It is based on mechanisms of identification where the individual ends up confusing their being with their social function, creating a narcissistic fragility that perpetuates relationships of domination. As Pierre Bourdieu explains in Masculine Domination (1998), “symbolic violence is instituted through the adhesion that the dominated person cannot fail to grant to the dominant person when, in order to think about the dominant person and about themselves, they have at their disposal only instruments of knowledge that they have in common with them.”

But another path is possible: that of management that would aim for its own dispensability, of a transmission that would liberate rather than enslave, of a recognition of vulnerability as a creative force. This approach invites us to radically rethink our conceptions of authority, professional identity, and human relations, in line with the liberated company movement theorized by Isaac Getz and Brian M. Carney in Freedom, Inc. (2012).

The concept of dispensability

Dispensability does not mean uselessness. Rather, it refers to the ability of a person in a position of authority to create the conditions for collective autonomy, to the point where their presence is no longer essential for the proper functioning of the group. It is the paradox of a power that succeeds by making itself superfluous.

Alexandre Gérard, in The boss who no longer wanted to be a chief (2017), testifies to this transformation:

“I understood that my role was no longer to tell people what to do, but to create the conditions for them to make the best decisions themselves. The day I realized that the company ran better without me than with me, I knew I had succeeded in my transformation from chief to leader-gardener. My greatest pride? Having become useless on a daily basis, and yet more useful than ever in building the framework that allows everyone to flourish.”

This conception breaks with the traditional idea of the indispensable leader, a figure without whom everything would collapse. It assumes, on the contrary, that true managerial success is measured by the ability of teams to function with full awareness, with or without the presence of the leader. Dispensability thus becomes the ethical horizon of an authority that sees itself as transitional and formative rather than permanent and overarching.

The conditions for dispensability

For such dispensability to be possible, several conditions must be met:

• The dissociation between being and function: The person occupying a position of authority must first make this fundamental distinction within themselves. Identifying completely with one’s social role creates an unhealthy mutual dependence: the leader needs their subordinates to exist, and vice versa. This narcissistic fragility leads to keeping others in dependence to protect one’s own ego. Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness (1943), already distinguished between being-in-itself and being-for-itself, reminding us that “existence precedes essence,” as we are not defined by our roles but by our freedom to detach from them.
• The acceptance of vulnerability: Recognizing and valuing vulnerability (one’s own as well as that of others) transforms what is perceived as a weakness into a resource. Hypersensitivity, shyness, and emotionality become gateways to the world, abilities to perceive nuances that others ignore. Brené Brown, in The Power of Vulnerability (2012), states that “vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”
• Transmission as a process of autonomization: To transmit is not to impose knowledge from a position of authority, but to recognize the other in their capacity to learn, to grow, to become autonomous. It is to create a safe space where each person can explore their potential without fear of judgment.

Identity beyond function

Our society tends to reduce people to their professional function. To the question “Who are you?”, the expected answer is a title, a job, a status. This reduction operates a confusion between being and doing, between a person’s essence and their temporary social activity.

This confusion is not without consequences. It creates an existential vulnerability: to lose one’s job is to risk losing oneself. It also maintains unhealthy power dynamics: a person who identifies completely with their leadership role, for example, cannot conceive of leaving it without psychically collapsing. Christophe Dejours, in Suffering in France (1998), analyzes how “over-investment in work can become a defense against existential anxiety, but at the cost of an alienation that weakens the very identity of the subject.”

Faced with this reduction, it is, in my opinion, a matter of cultivating a richer and more fluid conception of identity. Introducing oneself first by one’s tastes, one’s passions, one’s relationships, before mentioning one’s professional activity, for example, is to affirm that our value does not lie in our status but in the richness of our being.

This approach is not just a personal quirk. It has profound implications for how we conceive of professional relationships and the exercise of authority. A leader who does not fully identify with their function can more easily conceive of transmitting it, sharing it, or even relinquishing it. They can accompany without dominating, guide without coercing. Frédéric Laloux, in Reinventing Organizations (2014), shows how the most innovative organizations are those where “roles are fluid, where authority is distributed, where each person can express their wholeness without being reduced to their function.”

Moving beyond the model of vertical transmission

The traditional model of transmission is based on verticality: those who know transmit to those who do not know, in a downward movement that reproduces relationships of domination. This conception ignores the richness that the learner brings to the pedagogical relationship.

Jacques Rancière, in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), overturns this vision:

“Whoever teaches without emancipating, stultifies. And he who emancipates doesn’t have to worry about what the emancipated person will learn. He will learn what he wants, perhaps nothing. He will know that he can learn because the same intelligence is at work in all the productions of human art, that one person can always understand the word of another.”

This radical conception places the equality of intelligences at the heart of the educational process. A truly emancipatory transmission recognizes the circularity of the process: we only truly transmit what we agree to receive in return. The person who educates is also educated by their students, the parent learns from their child, the leader grows through contact with their teams. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), expressed it thus: “No one educates anyone, no one educates themselves alone, people educate each other, mediated by the world.”

The gestures of liberating transmission

This transmission is embodied in seemingly modest but profoundly transformative gestures:

• Recognizing strength in vulnerability: Telling someone that their hypersensitivity is “a great quality” rather than a flaw operates a reversal. It is to recognize the person for who they are, not for who they should be according to social norms. Axel Honneth, in The Struggle for Recognition (1992), shows that “it is through mutual recognition that we constitute ourselves as autonomous and dignified subjects.”
• Giving tools rather than answers: Faced with difficulty, it is not a matter of minimizing it (“it’s nothing”) or imposing a solution, but of accompanying the person in their own search. “What do you do with it? What solutions do you find?” are questions that make the other party a stakeholder in their own emancipation. Rancière also says: “The student must see everything for himself, compare incessantly and always answer the triple question: what do you see? what do you think of it? what do you do with it?”
• Placing difficulty within a horizon of meaning: Acknowledging the pain while opening up a perspective (“Your learnings of today will serve you all your life”) allows one to get through the ordeal without denying it.

Relational autonomy: rethinking bonds without possession

True autonomy consists neither in total dependence on the other, nor in an illusory independence. It lies in this capacity to build bonds that respect the radical otherness of each person while allowing for deep intimacy.

This relational autonomy is learned in all areas of life: professional, family, romantic. It presupposes renouncing the temptation to possess the other, to reduce them to what one expects of them, in order to welcome what that person brings that is unexpected and irreducible. Emmanuel Levinas, in Totality and Infinity (1961), posits: “the face of the other forbids me to reduce him to my categories, he is the infinity that overflows all totality.”

Relational autonomy requires constant work of communication, negotiation, and mutual recognition. It cannot rely on pre-established social scenarios but must invent its own forms, its own rules, respecting the limits and desires of each person.

This work is demanding. It confronts the most archaic fears: fear of abandonment, fear of fusion, fear of the other’s freedom. But it is in this confrontation that a truly emancipatory relationship is built, where the freedom of the other does not threaten but enriches. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949), already explored these territories: “To love is to want the other’s freedom, it is to recognize the other as a subject and not as an object.” This de facto deconstructs the emancipatory relevance of the hypocritical patriarchal monogamous model of Western societies (criticized head-on as early as the 18^th century by Charles Fourier, an early and avowed figure of feminism).

Towards a politics of recognition

These reflections sketch the outlines of a radically different approach to human relations, whether professional, educational, or intimate. At the heart of this approach is recognition: recognizing the other in their singularity, in their vulnerability, in their capacity to become autonomous.

This politics of recognition is not naive. It does not deny the persistence of power relations, the inertia of institutions, the difficulty of change. But it bets on the transformative power of daily micro-revolutions: each gesture of recognition, each space of autonomy created, each transmission that liberates rather than enslaves, progressively weaves a different fabric of reality. As Jean-François Zobrist, former director of the FAVI foundry and a figure of the liberated company, says in The beautiful story of FAVI (2014): “You don’t change people, you change the environment and people change themselves.”

The horizon of dispensability, becoming dispensable as a leader, as a parent, as a teacher, is not a renunciation but the ultimate fulfillment of these roles. It is to have transmitted, accompanied, recognized well enough so that the other no longer needs us to continue on their path. It is the proof that we have contributed not to creating dependence, but freedom.

Thanks to Carole Ziem for the discussions that were the source of this reflection.