Leave Leadership: Why Not do Anything is as Bad as Doing Something Wrong

 

When we talk about leadership styles, we often think of the behavior and skills of leader who are good or bad. If you follow our blogs long enough, you may remember that we frequently discuss the positive results of the style of transformational leadership, ethical leadership and other traits of successful leaders, such as being humble and humorous. Or, you may remember some of the poor behavior of the leader, such as being abusive, selfish, manipulator or a tyrant.

However, there is another type of leadership that deserves to be discussed, the ledership of a faire. "Leave (pronounced Leh Seh Fare)" is French to "let go". He refers to a leadership style where the leader is undecided, not involved, withdrawn if necessary and reluctant to take a position during critical moments.  Quite simply, he describes the type of leader who lives in the position - But does not provide any real leadership per unit. They have more or less abdicated responsibilities and tasks assigned to them.

With the lease of a factor, decisions are often delayed; Comments, awards, punishment, participation and interventions are absent. This type of leader also applies no effort to motivate followers, recognize their contributions or their performance and does not bother to meet the needs of their subscribers.

At the individual level, a lack of adequate leadership can create frustration within the working group (people do not know what they have to do) and increase the exposure of subordinates to intimidation at work (due to lack of intervention), which can in turn cause high levels of stress among the subordinates. In addition, the lack of rewards or punishments due to the direction of the leave-faire can lead to low satisfaction with regard to of the leader, a low efficiency of the subordinate leader and a low performance in general (due to the lack of motivation and guidance).

At the organizational level, being undecided and not involved, the lesse-faire leaders can lose the organization of important opportunities. Damage can be particularly expensive when the market environment is unstable and changes quickly. Worse still, the ledership of a factor can cause mismanagement of crises. When these leaders do not correct the errors and gaps in the system when the problem emerges, these problems can become more serious and start wreaking havoc in the team or organization.

We can find traces of this style of leadership in certain recent public events. Before the flint water crisis draws the attention of the whole nation at the end of 2015, Flint citizens had been potable with high levels for more than a year. Despite multiple signs of dangerous water - high levels of detected bacteria, a local factory of General Motors ceases to use flint tap water due to corrodent engine parts, flint residents complaining of Health problems caused by city water and a team of scientists finding an extremely high level lead in four flint houses - the city has rejected the proposal to reconnect to a safer source of water and simply told the public concerned to relax. This insufficient leadership has led more than 100,000 residents to be exposed to dangerous lead levels, including 6,000 to 12,000 children. If city officials had reacted to the problem at the first sight, instead of trying to smooth out the trouble, such a tragic event could have been finished at its early stage.

Consequently, compared to other counter-productive leadership behaviors, the leadership of a factor can do more damage to a long-term organization. Organizations should raise awareness of such leadership and its negative impacts. During the selection, evaluation or development of leaders, organizations must use a systematic and complete approach to avoid the lessee behavior which can create a toxic working environment.

bibliography

1. Bass, B. M. (1997). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Leadership: Understanding the dynamics of power and influence in organizations, 318-333.
2. Bass, B.M., & Avolio, B.J. (1990). Developing transformational leadership: 1992 and beyond. Journal of European Industrial Training, 14, 21-27.
3. Hinkin, T.R., & Schriesheim, C.A. (2008). An examination of “nonleadership”: From Laissez-Faire leadership to leader reward omission and punishment omission. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 1234-1248.
4. Skogstad, A., Einarsen, S., Torsheim, T., Aasland, M. S., & Hetland, H. (2007). The destructiveness of laissez-faire leadership behavior. Journal of occupational health psychology, 12, 80-92.