Privileging the judgments of your subordinates forms part of a key leadership practice that we call “downward deference.” When leaders with positional power yield to the expertise of lower power workers and attempt to reduce the social distance between them, we find those leaders enjoy higher job performance ratings and are promoted to higher executive levels over time compared with those who don’t practice downward deference.

Especially for leaders responsible for advancing organizational goals in foreign markets where they have limited expertise, networks and influence, practicing downward deference is as much a matter of necessity as it is a performance enhancer. Here we explain the conditions and outcomes that make downward deference a winning practice.

Often when we hear “deference,” we think of a lowly worker going cap in hand to the boss who manifests like some sort of great-and-powerful Oz figure. In the popular imagination, deference normally flows upward, from low to high, and woe betide the insolent subordinates who fail to pay proper respect to those above them. This conception of “deference as domination” is consolidated in formal hierarchical constructs that reinforce social distance and carry penalties for those who subvert the order.

We opt for a different definition of deference as “accommodating others,” and we flip it to flow downward, from high to low. In short, downward deference is about reducing your own position relative to another in order to be equal. For leaders, it means relying on your subordinates to bridge gaps in your own knowledge and expertise, and in doing so, advancing organizational goals together.