As you can see, the effects of poor leadership in an organization and workforce can be detrimental. Having unmotivated, unengaged employees leads to customers who aren’t being properly served. Essentially, high employee turnover means you are spending a fortune on replacing and training new hires while trying to get them up to speed.
When leaders are ineffective, they hurt the organization’s productivity and profits. The quality of ineffective leadership in workplace can lead to decreased productivity, reduced profits, turnover, employees quit but don’t leave, increased mistakes / waste, poor safety / increased accidents, poor employee engagement, wasted time and opportunities, departmental conflict.
Ineffective leaders have a negative impact on employees, on the company, and ultimately on the products or services they provide. Their behaviors often include intimidation, bullying, misrepresenting facts, rejecting input from employees, retaliation, blaming others, dishonesty, deceit, and anger. And this can lead to toxic working attitudes, staff segregation, loss of high-performing employees, and an unattractive workplace culture that is unlikely to inspire results from staff.
These toxic behaviors prevent the formation of a positive organizational climate, prevent other leaders from meeting their requirements, and thwart the organization from accomplishing its goals. Lets highlight some of the example of ineffective leadership in workplace;
7 Example of Ineffective Leadership in Workplace
Just like the external issues that organizations face that are detrimental to business, like economic downturn or a pandemic, leadership is an internal issue within a company’s control.
Ineffective leadership in workplace can have a negative impact on the company and might even damage the company’s bottom line. Below are the example of ineffective leadership in workplace leaders should avoid:
1. Lack of Mission and Vision
Most companies have a vision statement. Why don’t leaders? A lack of imagination can hinder the ability to lead and prevent a company from seizing opportunities to thrive. Many leaders get into the habit of being an ‘idea person,’ only to be stymied in realizing they don’t have the solution to every problem.
Lack of mission and vision is purely an example of ineffective leadership in workplace. The best leaders intentionally pursue worthy goals. Bad leaders prioritize their own goals over the organization’s. Without a direction, employees are at a loss. They don’t know what the goals are of the company and they don’t know why they are working with specific processes. They will accomplish only mechanically, not with any intelligent direction, towards a common goal.
2. Low Morale
The link between leadership and morale is not a new concept. It’s as ancient as war and just as critical for success in the workplace. Success depends on positive employee morale.
leadership in workplace wreck morale, and they generate an environment in which their followers feel as if they exist to simply act or react to the chaotic whims of their leader.
Also, poor leadership can result from employees feeling misdirected or uncertain about the company and their jobs. Poor communication contributes to this issue.
In some cases, failure to address negative employees or poor performers leads to low morale, because good employees often have to pick up the slack.
Tension between employees and Managers can affect productivity, performance and wellbeing. Additionally, employees feeling they are being let down or criticised by Managers can end up disillusioned and demoralised.
3. Failure to set goals
Bad leaders are only set goals for themselves, and they fail to build and secure any goal amongst their followers and the company.
Poor goal setting makes employees cynical, wastes their time and fosters confusion about where to concentrate on actions and energy.
A consequence of poor leadership is failing to inspire employees to deliver their best results and meet their potential.
In order to achieve the best results, employees at every level need to be committed to the company and to the attainment of goals, both financial and otherwise.
Without a supportive culture or encouraging Manager, financial goals are likely to be missed.
Read Also: 3 Reasons to Build A Common Language In The Workplace
4. Low quality team leadership
Low quality team leadership can lead to customer dissatisfaction. High quality team leadership results in a happier, more cohesive, and more productive team of employees who in turn provide better service to their customers. In addition, effective team leaders provide their team members with the resources to serve their customers most effectively.
5. Laziness
A lazy leader refrains from praising their team when they do a good job but is quick to blame them when something goes wrong. Such behavior from the leader in an organization results in a reserved relationship between them and the team, which negatively impacts the latter’s performance and outcomes of the business.
It can also lead to overall reduction in productivity. Productivity is the most impactful way that leadership helps or hinders the bottom line. Poor leadership negatively impacts employee satisfaction, which in turn negatively impacts employee productivity.
6. Lack of Motivation
Toxic leaders are unethical and unprincipled. Their dishonesty doesn’t in anyway motivate the workforce and can infect an organization like a virus and lead to a corrupt culture.
Ineffective leaders may react emotionally to situations rather than rationally. They may express excessive angry or sad emotions when confronted with stressful situations. Effective leaders listen before they react and take time or create space before responding to a potentially emotional comment or event. Effective leaders also choose to apologize for unacceptable emotional behavior if it occurs.
Employees who have a clear direction and strong leadership from their direct managers/supervisors are more likely to perform better, while employees who lack direction are more likely to feel stressed and unmotivated.
Additionally, employees who are lacking direction and recognition will have overall low morale. This is a recipe for a negative work environment.
7. Easy to aggression
An overly-aggressive leader is harsh, belligerent, bullying, autocratic and generally insensitive to the needs and feelings of others. Leaders of this ilk tend to be excessively demanding and primarily focused on tasks and results with little of no regard for the employees.
Ineffective leaders may resort to bullying behavior if they become stressed or feel like they are losing control over their team.
Examples of bullying may include threatening an employee with termination, criticizing a coworker’s physical appearance or personality and scolding a team member in public.
Effective leaders choose to handle conflicts in private and keep conversations professional about job-related tasks or performance.
