Disadvantages of Affiliative Leadership Style

Affiliative leadership is considered one of the best leadership styles. Apart from people who have been working in an autocratic leadership environment, almost all employees prefer affiliative leadership. Affiliative leaders do not consider themselves the only authority and allow the team to participate in conversation and brainstorming sessions. It creates a sense of responsibility and increases the team’s morale. However, this leadership style also comes with a few cons and challenges. The leader and the team may face problems sometimes, like all other leadership styles. Sometimes, these leaders may be more lenient than needed or avoid confrontation to keep the atmosphere friendly. This can lead to problems in the long run.

Keep reading to understand all the disadvantages of the affiliative leadership style. But first, let’s tell you briefly about this leadership style.

What is the Affiliative Leadership Style?

Affiliative leaders focus on the employees within the team and maintaining healthy relationships within the department or organization. Thus, the main interest of affiliative leadership is to create a friendly atmosphere instead of being overly strict. It enables the team members to give their suggestions and improve functioning through feedback.

Affiliative leadership can be defined as a people-first approach to creating and sustaining a harmonious environment. These leaders make sure to get tasks done through teamwork and build emotional connections and bonds within the team. It helps the leaders avoid conflict among employees and solve problems within the team easily. The leader also connects to every employee personally to develop meaningful relationships that do not seem fake.

These leaders become friends with their subordinates or team to prevent communication barriers. Yet, these characteristics of affiliative leaders can sometimes be more harmful than good for the organization and the team. The team members might not realize that they still have to consider the orders of their leader. Eventually, these leaders may also overlook underperforming employees to avoid confrontation. It can lead to significant problems for the company in the long term.

Let’s tell you about all the disadvantages of the affiliative leadership style in detail.

Disadvantages of Affiliative Leadership Style

Overlooking Underperformance

Overlooking underperformance is a major problem in affiliative leadership that exhibits their conflict-avoiding attitude. It can sometimes be difficult to manage underperforming employees as leaders. Most underperforming team members come up with excuses that the managers and leaders might not be able to question further. Affiliative leaders avoid such situations by avoiding confrontation with low-productive employees.

Reduced Productivity

Most teams run under affiliative leadership have one or two underperforming employees. But, the leaders avoid confrontation and let them be as they are. The other team members observe this and wonder why they are putting in the extra effort. There is a high chance that other team members will also become unproductive when the low-performing employees go unnoticed. Thus, affiliative leaders need to be more attentive and straightforward without being rude to their team.

Lack of Leadership

Talking about a leadership style, it does not really make clear sense how there could be no leadership. Right? But it is so in the case of leadership styles that are not centralized. Sometimes, the team members take up leadership and make decisions without consulting the leaders. This leads to issues within the team when one or some of the team members start dictating orders to others. The affiliative leadership style does not work well for employees who need constant constructive feedback to perform well.

Avoiding Conflict

As mentioned above, affiliative leaders focus on creating relationships and bonds between team members to avoid conflict. The primary reason is to prevent conflict in the team or department because they are not the best at handling conflict. Affiliative leaders avoid dealing with conflict and prefer if the team members sort out the issues on their own. Confrontation is one of the aspects of leadership these leaders dread. Eventually, they may also ignore underperforming employees as mentioned earlier.

Complacent Team Attitude

Almost all leadership workshops tell you to provide positive feedback to the team members and tell them how they are an important part of the team. But, like everything else, excess praise can also be detrimental to work. When the leaders keep telling their team how they are amazing at what they do, the team does not find gaps in their skills. Another approach is the complacent attitude leading to halted growth. The team members stop learning to improve themselves and may be left behind. When the employees think they have reached their high of working in an organization, they may also move to another company.

Deviation from Company Mission

Sometimes affiliative leaders are so concerned about the welfare of their team that they forget the mission and vision they are working towards. Their team becomes their main focus, and the leadership puts efforts into their team instead of company welfare. While they might not see or understand it initially, it begins to show eventually. Their team also ignores the big picture and only focuses on solving problems that arise within the group. It restricts their ability to see how their performance is impacting company operations.

Avoiding Uncomfortable Situations

Similar to their efforts to provide negative or constructive feedback, these leaders also avoid other situations that make them uncomfortable. Besides focusing on the relationship and emotions in the team, affiliative leaders also care for their feelings. When they provide an easygoing atmosphere to the team, they also want to feel happy at the end of the day. So, they tend to avoid situations that would cause discomfort to them. It may build irritation in the team when the leaders avoid the problems that have been pointed out by the team.

Difficulty in Managing Complex Problems

Affiliative leaders are not adept at solving complex problems as they require the accountability of the team members. Usually, these leaders offer positive feedback to keep the morale high in their teams. Yet, besides offering positive feedback, they eliminate constructive feedback. When the problems are not fixed in the initial stages through constructive feedback, they keep growing. The leader’s inability to deal with complex issues can cause serious problems for the team as well as the company.

Emotional Dependence on Leader

As the leader acts as a bonding gum between the team members to keep them gelled, the team might start depending on the leader for emotional support. They might be unable to give their best in situations where the leader is unavailable to support the team. Conflicts may arise, and things may fall because of the unrealistic emotional dependency on the leader.

Bad Choice for Transformational Changes

Some companies undergo revolutionary changes when they merge with another company or are acquired by different management. It is challenging for everyone to adjust to a new environment immediately. But, the dependency of employees on affiliative leaders adds to the trouble. Their team members do not welcome the change and try to run away from it. They are more resistant to changes and do not want to work under another leader.

Now that you know all the disadvantages of affiliative leadership, it is time to learn how to avoid these problems and be an effective affiliative leader.

How to be an Effective Affiliative Leader?

Be a Life-Long Learner

The first step to being an effective leader is becoming a life-long learner. When people get leadership roles, they believe they know everything they should know. With changing times, leaders also need to improve their working methods and efficiency to avoid problems within the team and organization. However, a lack of learning attitude may prevent them from being effective leaders. Thus, you must be open to learning new techniques and strategies to lead your team better.

Offer Constructive Criticism

Affiliative leaders are more focused on giving positive feedback to keep the team motivated all the time. Yet, sometimes, it leads to uncommunicated issues in processes that should have been addressed in time. Affiliative leaders should focus on providing constructive feedback so the employees can fill in gaps that can cause trouble later.

Do not Avoid Conflict

Typically, it is better to avoid conflict within the team by creating a harmonious and positive environment. But, it is also important to face conflict when it arises within the team. Be confident in your abilities and confront the team members when needed without thinking twice. These conflicts may keep growing and impact the relationship between the employees.

Track Employee Performance

One of the reasons why employees like working under affiliative leadership is that these leaders typically tend to overlook underperforming employees. To be an effective leader, make sure to track the progress of all employees and discuss it with them. When you ignore underperforming employees, other team members get the message that it is okay not to give the required input. Monitoring employee performance will let them know that you will not put up with consistently low-performing employees.

Share Goals Clearly

Affiliative leaders must communicate clearly and share the goals with their team. When you share the mutual goals the team needs to work towards, they trust you and are motivated to work to achieve the goal efficiently. Make sure to communicate the aim of the team as well as the mission and vision of the organization.

Watch their Body Language

Your team members might come up with excuses for confrontation about their idle behavior. You can judge their honesty and integrity by analyzing their body language to see if they are telling the truth. Their body language when working in the team also shows how seriously they take their work.

The Bottom Line

Affiliative leadership is one of the most powerful leadership models that has its strength in feedback from the team. It offers creativity and leadership-within-leadership while creating friendly relationships between employees. However, there are also a few disadvantages of affiliative leadership. These leaders tend to overlook underperforming employees, leading to reduced productivity.

Furthermore, they may promote complacency, avoid conflict, prevent transformational changes, and increase emotional dependence on the leader. However, you can avoid these situations by learning strategies to help you to be an effective affiliative leader. Affiliative leaders share the goals with the team and deal with conflict where needed. Ask for suggestions and provide constructive feedback when needed.