Lead From the Front: Pros and Cons of the Leadership Style

As a leadership style, leading from the front means playing an active and visible role in the everyday running of a company or organization. Business leaders who adopt this style choose to connect with team members, customers, and stakeholders on the “front line” of the operation.

Those who lead from behind often consider themselves more effective leaders when they take a long view of an organization’s needs. This style of leadership entails applying leadership skills from a distance and creating a roadmap for the rest of the team to follow rather than directly engaging with projects and operations.

As a leadership model, leading from behind relies on the collective genius of the organization rather than the individual genius of upper management.

Leading from the front can be a more effective strategy than leading from behind, depending on the size of your organization and the specific challenge your team faces. Here are some of its most beneficial potential effects:

1. 1. Better morale: Establishing yourself as empathetic and communicative is an important part of becoming a better leader. Leading from the front allows you to interact directly with employees, whether they’re in leadership roles or lower-level positions. This strategy can boost morale and create greater organizational cohesion.
2. 2. Greater flexibility: Leading from the front can give you the chance to be more responsive to crises or difficult situations. Since those who lead from the front often have access to on-the-ground information, they can react quickly and directly as a situation changes.
3. 3. More holistic decision-making: Leading from the front often involves spending time with different people at different levels and from different parts of the organization. As a result, when people who lead from the front need to make major decisions, they have access to perspectives and data from a wide range of sources.

Leading from the front comes with its own risks and potential drawbacks.

1. 1. Micromanaging: Being directly involved in operations can sometimes mean getting in the way of managers and employees trying to do their jobs. In other words, being too visible can create a toxic work environment, either because employees feel watched or crowded in their work. Micromanaging can deprive employees of the freedom they need to take charge and grow.
2. 2. Information overload: One of the differences between good leaders and great leaders is that the latter ideally know when they need more research or data and when those resources can become a hindrance. While it’s important to investigate multiple facets of a problem or issue, doing so to excess can lead to decision paralysis.
3. 3. Strategic myopia: Effective leadership requires making long-term or big-picture decisions, which can be difficult if a leader is too close to the action. Such down-the-road thinking may require stepping back and viewing the organization as a whole.

The benefits and drawbacks of leading from behind are largely the converses of leading from the front. The best leaders are often the ones who can work out a balance between stepping in and stepping back.

Leading from behind and distributing leadership responsibilities throughout the organization allows upper management to take a top-down view, which can often provide clarity in ways that being in the weeds can’t.

By stepping back from direct management, leaders can create a more independent and empowered workforce with more confidence and opportunities for creative thinking, innovation, and spontaneous teamwork.

Leading from behind has a couple of disadvantages in the workplace. At smaller or newer companies like startups, leading from behind can quickly become an ineffective management style if it makes employees feel alienated or resentful.

Distance from operations can be beneficial for decision-making but deleterious from a cultural perspective if it creates the impression that management is letting the rank and file do all the work rather than contributing to a feeling of empowerment.

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