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Sohini is in charge of leading daily operations at a popular restaurant. Her preferred approach is to allow her employees to take care of their responsibilities themselves. This leadership style works well for Sohini’s enterprise, as most of her team members have been in the restaurant business for years. She’s aware they are highly skilled and have the expertise to carry out their duties. She only has to check in with them at regular intervals to ensure everyone on the team is keeping productivity levels high. She trusts them to help the business thrive without regular guidance from her.
The kind of trust Sohini exhibits in her team members makes her a laissez-faire leader.
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What Is Laissez-Faire Leadership?
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Laissez-Faire Leadership Style Examples
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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Laissez-Faire Leadership
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Disadvantages Of Laissez-Faire Leadership
What Is Laissez-Faire Leadership?
Let’s first look at the laissez-faire leadership meaning. Merriam-Webster defines laissez-faire leadership as ‘a philosophy or practice characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference, especially with individual freedom of choice and action’.
In other words, an organization enjoys laissez-faire leadership when its leaders adopt a hands-off approach, leaving the decision-making to their team members. Laissez-faire leadership is also known as free-rein leadership, implying that team members have the freedom to enact their own processes to ensure that the goals, programs and policies outlined by the leadership are fulfilled. It also involves:
- Extending training and support to the entire team
- Letting them make mistakes
- Assuming responsibility for their failures
- Praising work that’s well done
- Rewarding high-performing teams
- Intervening only if it’s absolutely necessary
Laissez-faire leaders can achieve success by putting together a strong team and then getting out of their way. But laissez-faire leadership characteristics go beyond just the hands-off approach.
Laissez-Faire Leadership Style Examples
The free-rein leadership or laissez-faire leadership style has its critics. They believe that among several leadership styles, free-rein leadership causes the lowest levels of productivity. However, there are several famous laissez-faire leaders, such as Andrew Mellon and Warren Buffet, who’ve proved that the laissez-faire style of leadership has benefits and can lead to success. Let’s look at some laissez-faire leadership style examples:
1. Listening To Team Members
Take a case where an employee approaches a team lead with a problem. In a good example of laissez-faire leadership, the leader would hear the employee out, and then propose a meeting of the whole team where the matter could be openly discussed. In this way, the leader avoids telling the team how to solve the problem, allowing them to sort it out for themselves.
2. Having A Well-Rounded Vision
A clear plan is fundamental to the success of the laissez-faire leadership style. Unless leaders are fully convinced of their own vision for their team or their organization, they’ll be unable to delegate responsibility fully. Laissez-faire leadership is also known as ‘delegative leadership’ because it involves handing over decision-making powers to others without overseeing them. A good laissez-faire leader’s vision for the business is so clear that they have no doubt about the team’s ability to understand and execute it.
3. Placing Trust In Others
Trust plays different roles in this example of laissez-faire leadership. One aspect is the ability of leaders to trust their own teams. The other is the leader’s capacity to foster trust among team members. Balancing both is a true test of the laissez-faire style of leadership.
Let’s say an employee approaches the leader to tell them another team member is not working as hard as everyone else. What should the leader do? On one hand, they must demonstrate their faith in the entire team is intact. On the other, they must ensure the trust among the group members does not crumble. In this situation, a good laissez-faire leader might set up a meeting with the team member to ask if they’re facing any problems.
It’s important to note that the leader doesn’t take the team member to task. Instead, they create an environment where the member can reflect and come up with a workable solution of their own. Allowing individual employees such autonomy is the hallmark of free-rein leadership and helps them work more effectively.
It’s important to understand how each example of laissez-faire leadership can play out, as they determine whether laissez-faire leaders will be successful or not.
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Laissez-Faire Leadership
Much like other leadership styles, there are several advantages and disadvantages of laissez-faire leadership. Let’s take a look at what makes the laissez-faire leadership style successful in some cases and not in others with these advantages of laissez-faire leadership:
1. Fostering Personal Growth
Because the laissez-faire style of leadership discourages micro-managing, team members are given the opportunity to be hands-on about their goals. This motivates them to deliver optimal performance and enhances their own growth and development as leaders and team players.
2. Strengthening Decision-Making
A highly-structured work environment has established processes; it doesn’t always offer the chance for innovative decision-making. In a laissez-faire work structure, team members have the autonomy to reach a goal or fix an issue in the best possible way, even if it doesn’t adhere to traditional methods of problem-solving. Laissez-faire leadership allows teams to work optimally, and not just by the book.
3. Speeding Up Decision-Making
Time is of the essence even while making the right decisions. As team members in a laissez-faire work environment do not necessarily have to wait for a go-ahead from their leader, they can make speedy decisions and execute them swiftly.
4. Giving Importance To Expertise
This is an important dimension of laissez-faire leadership meaning. Laissez-faire leaders recognize their employees’ expertise and defer to them when it comes to making decisions. This is another reason why laissez-faire leadership is also known as free rein leadership; for the most part, the experts are treated as the leaders.
5. Encouraging Creativity
Certain businesses thrive under laissez-faire leadership as it offers a great degree of freedom to creative people. Giving importance to innovation can be crucial to an organization’s success, especially in the case of startups. For instance, it can lead to the creation of novel products or services that attract a sizable client base.
It must be remembered that the laissez-faire leadership style works best when team members have years of expertise as well as the ability to work without supervision. As these employees are highly-skilled and can function efficiently as autonomous individuals, they possess the ability to accomplish goals without needing constant direction from a leader.
The absence of these qualities in a laissez-faire work environment can lead to several problems. In such situations, the laissez-faire leadership style does not work.
Disadvantages Of Laissez-Faire Leadership
A business might suffer on account of an uninterested leader, a team that does not possess the requisite skills, or, in the worst case, both. What are some of the disadvantages of laissez-faire leadership?
1. Poorly-Defined Roles Within A Team
Problems arise when team members aren’t able to thrive without a leader showing them the way. In such situations, the laissez-faire style of leadership will fail as team members are unclear about their duties or how to go about their tasks.
2. Absence Of Accountability
Laissez-faire leadership demands integrity from the leader; it’s their job to take responsibility for the failures of their team. Unfortunately, laissez-faire leaders can sometimes use the hands-off approach as a means to evade accountability, thereby putting the onus entirely on their employees. Such an approach can be detrimental to the department or the organization as a whole.
3. Perceived Lack Of Interest In The Team
An excellent example of laissez-faire leadership is showing an interest in what one’s team is doing. For the hands-off approach to work, leaders must still monitor their team closely from afar. In this way, they can gauge when it’s necessary to intervene. If leaders aren’t interested in the progress of their employees, the team will be in disarray. This will jeopardize the business’s ability to reach its goals.
4. Poor Time Management
It’s imperative for laissez-faire leaders to outline clear milestones for their team, and to employ people equipped to meet challenges. An inexperienced or unskilled team left to their own devices will be unable to formulate a coherent plan of action for accomplishing the leader’s goals. They’ll end up wasting time arguing or trying to decipher what the leader wants from them. Such faulty time management will result in missed deadlines and unmet goals, neither of which bodes well for an organization.
5. Friction Among Team Members
Even when all members of a team are in control of their own work, a situation may still arise where no one knows who’ll take the final decision. Such uncertainty can create a hostile work environment even among experts, leading to power struggles within a seemingly autonomous team.
Leadership, whether hands-off or hands-on, is a tremendous responsibility. Harappa’s Leading Self course is designed to help ambitious professionals get on the path to becoming the best possible version of themselves. Learners will be taught how to take ownership, embrace opportunities for growth and development, harness crucial skills and overcome barriers to successfully navigate obstacles. With the help of frameworks and techniques such as the Performance Equation and The Ladder of Learning, aspiring leaders will learn how to fulfill their potential by reducing interferences and optimizing their competence and skills. The Leading Self course provides the ideal gateway for the leaders of tomorrow to cultivate a growth mindset and step out of their comfort zones.
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as What Is Leadership, Difference Between Leadership And Management Characteristics of Charismatic Leadership Style, Important Leadership Qualities to advance in your career.
