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This holiday season, it’s likely that you gathered with a group of family or friends. As the table filled and conversation deepened, the youngest members were likely ushered away. “You’ll have more fun over there,” an adult said, pointing toward a smaller table with paper plates, juice boxes, and a vague promise of fun. The kids comply, not because they agree, but because they’re told this is where they belong.
Most companies treat employees like children at the kiddie table: present, necessary, but excluded from the real happenings. Leadership gathers at the “adult table,” where strategy is debated, risks are weighed, and decisions are made. Employees are invited to execute, not to contribute. They’re informed after the fact, not engaged beforehand. At the kiddie table, children are given tasks: eat your food, stay in your seat, don’t make a mess. At work, employees are given job descriptions, KPIs, and tightly scoped responsibilities. “That’s above your pay grade,” is the corporate equivalent of “You wouldn’t understand.” What’s lost in both scenarios is potential.
Why the kiddie table kills performance
Research from the Journal of Business and Management shows people’s professional behavior tends to follow the expectations given them. In the Golem effect, leaders expect low performance from a subordinate, causing the very behavior they predict. If the Golem effect lowers employee performance, the Pygmalion effect does the opposite—here, a leader anticipates high performance, which improves performance outcomes.
Children at the kiddie table are far more perceptive than adults give them credit for. They hear snippets of conversation, notice tension, excitement, and contradiction, and ask inconvenient questions. Sometimes, they say things that cut through the noise with surprising clarity. However, because they are young, their insights are dismissed.
Employees are no different. The people closest to the work—customers, systems, and friction points—often see problems and opportunities long before leadership does. Yet many organizations treat that proximity as a liability rather than an asset. Input is filtered, sanitized, or ignored entirely. Control feels safer than trust.
Nurturing responsible contributors
On the flip side, when you treat people like partners, they act like partners—empowered, decisive, resilient, and capable of carrying real weight when things get tough. This isn’t just a pep talk. It’s how psychological ownership works. The Journal of Consumer Research found that when people feel a sense of ownership over a task or organization, they go above and beyond to protect and improve it. In other words, if I feel like I’m at the grownups’ table, I’ll act like a grownup.
Like overprotective parents, leaders often believe they’re sheltering their teams by keeping finances, potential layoffs, and client risk private. But insulation breeds infantilization. If employees don’t see the true economics, they can’t connect their work to outcomes.
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Bill Fotsch
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