Is ambidextrous leadership the next game changer?

In a recent study on effective leadership, a Monash PhD candidate explores ambidextrous leadership and the potential benefits it can bring to an organisation.

Dual behaviours

From his research, Monash University PhD candidate Xingyu (Sean) Feng found that leaders who were able to effectively toggle between stricter management and looser supervision greatly improved team outcomes. Feng found that teams under this ambidextrous style of leadership reported more creativity and higher adaptability to organisational change.

Feng likened ambidextrous leadership to what he described as “dual behaviours” – where leaders actively switch between giving strict directions to workers and allowing workers to explore systems on their own. Feng said that this approach may seem inconsistent at first glance, but the benefit of this flexibility is that it works with different situations and people.

To reach these findings, Feng studied 20 companies across production, marketing, sales, and research and development using interviews, surveys, field interventions, and archival data to examine the efficacy of an ambidextrous leadership style. He concluded that this management style was particularly suitable for research and development departments, where innovation is vital.

Empowering workers to explore

It is the role of the HR department to encourage adaptable leadership styles among managers, Feng said. His research challenged the idea that focusing on one method of management was ideal. He said leaders should instead combine different leadership behaviours while developing the strategic skills and emotional intelligence to “detect the state” of workers, and support them in achieving their goals.

“You have to empower your followers to encourage them to explore, but sometimes you have to be very strict and ensure that they finish all [their] work,” Feng said. He added that while ambidextrous leadership provides a great opportunity for workers to apply their diverse knowledge, there is the potential for confusion among staff due to reduced explicit direction from the manager.

Recruitment is crucial for finding suitable managerial candidates who can adopt this approach, Feng said, as ideal leaders should be “very clever”, “very flexible”, and “able to process such skills”. Leaders should not just be flexible for flexibility’s sake – they must explain to workers how their ambidextrous approach fits into the “bigger picture”. To achieve this, he suggested that HR departments establish channels to allow for clear communication between workers and managers while their organisation transitions to ambidextrous leadership.