Leadership in Action: Leadership Briefing - Leadership Effectiveness Hangs in the Balance

Lopsided Leaders

One of the principal findings of the study was a strong negative relationship between an executive's use of forceful leadership and enabling leadership. We observed a highly significant correlation of r = −.64 between co-workers' evaluations of the leaders' use of the two styles. For self-ratings, the same trend was observed but at the lower magnitude of r = −.37. These negative correlations reflect what we have termed a lopsided style of leading, in which the leader overdoes either the forceful or the enabling side of the equation and gives short shrift to the other side. The strength of these correlations indicates that lopsidedness is a fairly common phenomenon—executives tend to have a clearly preferred leadership style that ...