Chapter IV — Responsibility Without Power
The Quiet Inversion
It begins so gradually that you cannot identify the moment it starts. Perhaps there was a time when the division of labour was balanced, or at least when the imbalance was small enough to overlook. One person handled one domain, the other handled another. Both contributed. Both carried weight.
Then, slowly, the balance shifts. One person begins doing less. Not dramatically — just a slight reduction in follow-through, a gradual withdrawal from the operational details. The other person compensates, picking up the slack without comment, because the work needs to be done and someone has to do it.
Over months, over years, the inversion becomes complete. One person now carries almost everything: the daily decisions, the staff management, the client relationships, the quality control, the problems that arise at inconvenient hours. The other person contributes almost nothing — yet continues to present themselves as the one in charge.
From the outside, the structure looks unchanged. But inside, you know the truth: you are running the operation, and they are running the narrative.
Confidence Without Execution
The person who does nothing speaks with certainty. They give orders. They announce plans. They make demands that assume authority they have not earned. But nothing follows. No execution. No follow-through. Each directive replaces the last without acknowledgement, as if continuity is something that applies only to other people.
At first, you try to keep track. You document what was agreed. You follow up on what was promised. But none of it matters. Their commitments are not commitments. Their plans are not plans. They are performances of authority — gestures that create the appearance of leadership without the substance. You stop expecting continuity. You absorb the cognitive dissonance of working with someone who behaves as if they are running things while contributing nothing to the actual running.
In the beginning, people believe them. They are persuasive. They project certainty. But that belief only lasts at the beginning. Over time, anyone who works closely with them learns what you already know: they can talk, and that is exactly what they do.
Carrying the Weight
While one person performs authority, the other carries the actual weight. You find yourself working alongside someone else — someone who was always there, doing the real work, keeping the operation functional. Together, you manage the day-to-day. You solve the problems. You maintain the relationships with staff, with clients, with everyone who depends on the structure continuing to function.
The person who claims to be in charge is elsewhere. Not contributing. Not present. Not interested in the unglamorous work of actually running something. They appear when visibility is required — for meetings they want to attend, for decisions they want to claim credit for, for moments when being seen as a leader matters more than doing the work of leading.
You maintain contact with them because the structure requires it. But you do not want to talk to them because they bring nothing back. Every conversation is a drain. Every interaction requires you to manage their emotions, accommodate their delusions, and pretend that their contributions are real.
Meanwhile, the operation continues to function — not because of them, but in spite of them. And they do not notice the difference.
The Grandiose Self-Assessment
What makes this dynamic particularly exhausting is the gap between how they see themselves and what they actually do.
They believe they are exceptional — not quietly, but in a way that requires constant declaration. They read a few books on a subject and announce they are on the same level as those who have spent decades mastering it. This is grandiosity — a self-assessment so disconnected from evidence that it cannot be corrected through normal feedback. When reality contradicts their self-image, they reinterpret. The problem is never their competence. It is circumstances. Other people. Bad luck.
The most revealing claim is the one about empathy — that they feel what others feel, that this is the quality that sets them apart. The claim follows the same structure as every other self-assessment: decided internally, never tested against reality, and defended against any evidence to the contrary.
And because they believe they are exceptional, they expect to be treated as such. Standard processes do not apply to them. When they miss something, the fault belongs to whoever failed to make an exception on their behalf.
What makes the grandiosity convincing at first is that it is not entirely baseless. The person may have a genuinely strong memory — they can read something once and recall terminology, facts, and references that make people assume they understand what they are talking about.
But memory is not reasoning. The person who memorises legal terminology cannot think through the consequences of their own legal actions. They absorb information but cannot connect it — cannot think forward from what they do today to what will happen tomorrow. This is why nothing they promise is ever built. Each action is reactive, driven by the feeling of the moment, without consideration of what follows.
The pattern becomes visible over time. The confidence reveals itself as performance. The knowledge turns out to be borrowed — memorised but not understood, displayed but never applied. By the time this becomes clear, you have already been carrying the weight for years.
How Exhaustion Replaces Agency
Over time, the weight you carry becomes indistinguishable from your sense of self. You no longer notice the effort because the effort has become continuous.
The exhaustion is not dramatic. It is cumulative and quiet — not enough to stop you, but enough to drain the energy that might otherwise be spent on your own priorities.
You stop imagining alternatives. Not because you cannot see them, but because you are too tired to pursue them. The thought of confrontation, of restructuring, of explaining why things need to change — it feels heavier than simply continuing. This is how exhaustion replaces agency. Not through a single defeat, but through the slow accumulation of effort that leaves nothing left for yourself.
The Invisible Worker
The most corrosive aspect of this dynamic is that you become invisible to the person you are carrying. They do not see the work you do — not because they are wilfully ignoring it, but because their internal model of reality does not include the possibility that someone else is responsible for outcomes they have claimed as their own.
When things go well, they assume it is because of their leadership. When problems arise, they assume it is because of someone else's failure. The actual source of the success — the hours of work, the careful decisions, the relationships you have maintained — does not register in their awareness.
You become infrastructure. Essential but unnoticed.
And here is the painful irony: the better you are at carrying the weight, the less visible your contribution becomes. When everything runs smoothly, they assume it runs by itself. When you solve problems before they escalate, they never learn the problems existed. Your competence makes their incompetence invisible — not just to others, but to themselves.
Why Trying Harder Deepens the Trap
The instinct, when you recognise this imbalance, is to try harder. But trying harder does not correct the dynamic. It deepens it.
The more you do, the more you confirm that doing is your role. The more seamlessly you manage, the more they expect seamless management as their due. The more problems you solve before they notice, the more they believe there were never any problems to solve.
Your effort does not create awareness. It creates entitlement. Your excellence at carrying the weight becomes the very thing that keeps you carrying it. The better you perform, the more invisible your performance becomes, and the less likely the other person is to recognise that anything needs to change.
The Question You Cannot Avoid
At some point, the question arrives — not as a sudden revelation, but as a slow accumulation.
How long can you carry someone else's share while they claim credit for the outcome? How long can you absorb the exhaustion, the grandiosity, the endless gap between what they believe and what you know to be true?
There are reasons to stay — real ones. Structures that cannot be dismantled overnight. People who rely on the system continuing to function.
But there comes a point when the cost of staying exceeds the cost of leaving. When the invisible work you have been doing finally becomes visible — at least to yourself — and you have to decide what to do with that knowledge. That decision builds quietly, over time, until one day the weight shifts, and you discover that you are ready to stop carrying what was never yours to carry alone.