You set the targets, hired good people, yet the deadline looms large. In a bid to rescue the situation, you get more ‘hands-on’. Yet, the tighter you hold on, checking every decision and reviewing every step, the less your team appears to step up. This pattern repeats itself across the life sciences where a missed detail can delay a therapy for months. There’s something about the pressure and constraints that exist in this environment that can make control feel like the safer bet. But is it?

The Problem

The truth is that accountability comes from empowerment, not oversight. When leaders tighten control under pressure, they are usually trying to safeguard an outcome. What they inadvertently end up doing is remove the element that makes a team capable of delivering: room to act.

Most leaders respond to a wobble in performance by adding review steps or checking in more often. In regulated environments, this instinct feels justified. But teams managed this closely stop making decisions. Gallup’s 2026 research on workplace accountability found that micromanaged teams operate from fear, paralysis and confusion rather than personal responsibility, waiting to be told rather than owning the outcome. The team looks busier, but it becomes less accountable.

John Tomtishen has spent over two decades leading teams across the cell and gene therapy sector, from Novartis, where he helped build the foundation for Kymriah, which Novartis announced in 2017 as the first FDA-approved CAR-T cell therapy, to Legend Biotech, where he joined as its fifth US employee, to his current role leading global field application and strategic alliances at Catalent. Across a large pharma company, an early-stage biotech and a leading contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), he has arrived at the same principle. “If you don’t empower your teams,” he told me, “you can’t hold them accountable.”

The Solution: Why Empowerment Comes First

Step 1: Position People for Success, Then Step Back

The first move is to define what success looks like, then step back from dictating how to get there. Tomtishen calls this positioning people for success. “So empowerment,” he explained, “positioning them for success… giving them the freedom to operate within the role that they’re in.”

This works because the people closest to a problem, whether on a manufacturing line, in a regulatory submission or in a client conversation, usually see more routes to a solution than a leader operating from a distance. It also depends on the leader being someone the team trusts. Tomtishen ties this back to authenticity: “You need to show up as your real self,” he said. “When you do that, you gain trust and build trust within your team.” Without that trust, stepping back reads as neglect rather than confidence.

Tomtishen’s own move into leadership began the same way. A lab problem came up on his watch at Novartis, and rather than escalate it, he solved it himself. “We had an issue that popped up,” he told me, “and I just go right in and resolved it. I think that’s something where I knew that I could ultimately lead teams.” He now describes putting other people in that same position as one of the most rewarding parts of his own career. “One of the most gratifying things, how I’d define success,” he said, “[is] I love putting people in positions where they’re ultimately successful.”

Step 2: Stay Available Without Taking Over

Empowerment does not mean disappearing. Tomtishen is specific that a leader’s job is to remain present for guidance while resisting the pull to direct every move. “You really need to empower your teams to take that step back, support them on their journey,” he said. “Always be available to provide that guidance or insight.”

The distinction he draws is between direction and availability. Constant direction, in his experience, works against the outcome a leader wants, even when it comes from good intentions. “Giving them constant direction isn’t going to position them up for long-term success,” he told me on the Active Ingredients podcast. In practice, this means a leader answers questions, removes blockers and coaches on request, but does not pre-empt decisions the team is capable of making on its own.