Avoidant Leaders are focused on productivity and the needs of the business. They are self-directed, highly functional and independent. They know what they want to achieve and do extremely well when working on their own. They can be in a senior role in an organization or are a successful entrepreneur. As entrepreneurs, they thrive during the first stages of the business when there is a need for a “hands-off” leadership style. They have great skills at designing a product, business development, sales, etc. Avoidant Leaders delegate responsibility and authority to their subordinates, making people feel they are capable of doing much more than they are able to. This is a strong motivator for the right kind of employee who wants the opportunity to prove themselves. They give people the autonomy they need to succeed without the guidance and feedback to ensure they do. However, Avoidant Leaders have difficulty when it comes to expecting things from others and engaging in productive performance dialogue with direct reports.

1. AVOIDANT LEADERS
Part 2 of 4 Dysfunctional Leadership Styles Series:
APOINT OF VIEW PAPER BY THE EXPERTS IN BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE AND ACHIEVING ORGANIZATIONAL POTENTIAL

2. Practical Insight
THE NEWSLETTER OF CALIBER LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS JANUARY 2016
4 Dysfunctions of Leaders
This article is the second in a
series of articles on dysfunctional
leaders. Each of the articles
provides insight into the 4
Dysfunctional Styles:
 Narcissistic
 Avoidant
 Patriarchal (Autocratic)
 Matriarchal (Nurturing)
Each of the dysfunctional
leadership styles:
 has natural talents and
abilities that when directed
can be used in the service of
the organization;
 has specific behaviors that
they use to achieve their
own agenda that get in the
way of the organizations
goals;
 have to be managed and
coached in order to shift
from functional to
dysfunctional behaviors;
 can be developed over time
to add value to the
organization.
We customize our leadership
development and coaching
services to meet the needs of your
leaders and organizations.
www..caliberleadership.com
adranitsaris@caliberleadership.com
hhilliard@caliberleadership.com
416.406.3939
The Avoidant Leadership Style
Part 2 of our 4 Dysfunctional Leadership Styles Series
In our first article on the dysfunctional leadership styles, we discussed the
Narcissistic Leadership Style and how they depend on others affirming their value in
order for them to feel okay about themselves. Avoidant Leaders are just the opposite.
They want to achieve their business objectives without drawing a lot of attention to
themselves. These independent people want to be left alone to do their own thing
and are afraid that if they engage too much with people, they will get bogged down
unnecessarily. Also known as the Adaptive Leadership Style, Avoidant Leaders
want to have the freedom to achieve their goals and potential in the way they see fit
and expect others to do the same.
Underlying this leadership behavioral pattern is a person who keeps themselves
emotionally isolated for fear of being hurt,
rejected or devalued. They have difficulty
knowing what they are entitled to ask of
others and a fear of being exposed for their
inadequacies. Despite their roles in
organizations, they have difficulty
defining, deciding and asserting
themselves. They often suffer from the
Impostor Syndrome, never quite feeling
like they deserve their position despite
how hard they have worked for it and
deserve it. Secretly and silently, they fear
being found out.
Avoidant Leaders maintain their self-protective position by through using rational
defences. They look at things objectively, having the ability to detach and absolve
themselves from any responsibility for what is going on. They will also change their
position in order to avoid interpersonal engagement. Unable to tolerate the negative
emotions of others, they avoid conflict and issues rather than feeling empowered to
resolve them.
Avoidant Leaders are focused on productivity and the needs of the business. They
are self-directed, highly functional and independent. They know what they want to
achieve and do extremely well when working on their own. They can be in a senior
role in an organization or are a successful entrepreneur. As entrepreneurs, they
thrive during the first stages of the business when there is a need for a “hands-off”
leadership style. They have great skills at designing a product, business
development, sales, etc. Avoidant Leaders delegate responsibility and authority to
their subordinates, making people feel they are capable of doing much more than
they are able to. This is a strong motivator for the right kind of employee who wants
© 2016 Caliber Leadership Systems

3. the opportunity to prove themselves.
They give people the autonomy they
need to succeed without the guidance
and feedback to ensure they do.
However, Avoidant Leaders have
difficulty when it comes to expecting
things from others and engaging in
productive performance dialogue with
direct reports.
While there are many Avoidant
Leadership Behaviors, the
following are examples of the
more frequent ones and the type
of organizational issues they
create.
AVOIDANT BEHAVIOR
The Avoidant Leader tends to abdicate
authority to others and avoids making
decisions. They don’t get involved with
their employees unless they have to and
will work behind a closed door. They
may present an attitude that says “I am so
busy, don’t bother me” or meet employee
requests with annoyance in their voice.
In addition, Avoidant Leaders will
frequently change his or her mind.
Because they don’t want to have to get
involved with others, they can appear to
“flip-flop” on plans and decisions. They
seem to be in agreement with whomever
they are speaking with, creating conflict
for their subordinates.
RESULT: INSECURITY, CHAOS &
INSTABILITY
While the Avoidant Leader’s approach
works well when with highly motivated
and experienced employees, it doesn’t
during stages of growth where a directive
leadership style is called for or where
employees need direction and correction
to do their best work. These leaders
create issues on teams because they leave
a power vacuum to be filled. Conflict and
power struggles can occur between team
members that the Avoidant Leader is
oblivious to. With no one really leading,
employees stay insecure and unsure of
how to be successful in their roles and on
their teams.
NO TOP DOWN DECSION MAKING
The Avoidant Leader finds it difficult to
be decisive. They give their subordinates
the power to make their own decisions
about the work and the freedom to do
work in their own way. By doing this,
they abdicate responsibility for the final
outcome. Rather than engaging with
employees as a work unit, they set it up
in a way that everyone is responsible for
themselves. They don’t like people
interfering with they way they want to
do things and although they will answer
technical questions, they avoid making
decisions about how to do something or
giving feedback about a proposed
approach.
RESULT: LACK OF TEAM COHESION
This leader will take everyone’s ideas into
account to avoid conflict. In team
meetings, they don’t use rules of order
and let infighting and dysfunctional
behavior amongst team members exist.
They may seem to others that they are
incapable of leading, managing or
correcting the performance of their
subordinates or team. When conflict
CALIBER LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS — Dysfunctions of Leaders—Avoidant Behavior JANUARY 2016 Page 2
© 2016 Caliber Leadership Systems

4. exists, the Avoidant Leader withdraws,
leaving his team to work it out on their
own. They expect that employees engage
with each other and develop conflict
skills that they don’t develop themselves.
The type of dysfunctional power
dynamics that occur between employees
on the Avoidant Leader’s team will get in
the way of setting and achieving goals.
Often, the most dysfunctional employee’s
behavior creates a barrier to the growth
and cohesiveness of the team. Team
meetings become a waste of valuable
time and costs the business large amounts
of money in lost productivity.
DON’T GIVE EXPECTATIONS
These leaders have difficulty asserting
their authority and telling people what
they have to do and how to do it. The
Avoidant Leader assumes employees
know what they should be doing and
don’t feel it’s their job to define
expectations or motivate them when
employees lose momentum. Excessively
permissive, they allow employees to do
things their own way instead of staying
involved to ensure they are doing their
job correctly.
RESULT: UNDERPERFORMANCE
Because the standards and expectations
given by the Avoidant Leader are
unclear, contradictory or too low,
employees don’t always know what is
really expected of them. For a time, the
Avoidant Leader will make excuses for
employees who fail to deliver what they
expect and may complain to others rather
than go to the employee themselves and
correct their performance. This leads to
further problems on the team and under
performing employees who may not even
know they are doing anything wrong.
FAILURE TO ASSERT AUTHORITY
Avoidant Leaders don’t like to use their
position power or personal authority to
get things done. They act more like a
colleague than a leader, saying “Yes”
when them mean “No”. They will
observe an employee doing something
differently than what they expected and
not correct them. Internally, they
rationalize why the employee’s way is
probably right so they don’t have to
assert themselves or get involved. They
avoid the unpleasant feelings they feel
when they point out to someone they are
wrong or create disappointment by
saying “no”.
RESULT: SUBSTANDARD RESULTS
When there is no clear definition of
performance expectation and little
performance correction, employees will
work hard to do what they think is
expected of them. Too often, with this
type of leadership, employees waste time
on initiatives that fail to meet the goals of
the Advoidant Leader.
RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY
Because the Avoidant Leader doesn’t deal
with employee behavior, they allow
employees to overstep the boundaries of
their positions. An ambitious employee
may aggressively confront them privately
or publicly without being called on their
behavior. Avoidant Leaders act as though
everyone has a right to behave the way
they want and say what they want to say.
They don’t recognize when they are
being disrespected as their first response
is to avoid and adapt to whatever is
happening. The Avoidant Leader doesn’t
realize the role they play in the
dysfunctional behavior of their
employees or team.
RESULT: LOSS OF RESPECT FOR
LEADER
The Avoidant Leader tries not to engage
in interpersonal dynamics. They keep a
low profile, stay out of trouble, and leave
people alone as much as possible.
Subordinates and coworkers may respect
the Avoidant Leader for the work they
CALIBER LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS — Dysfunctions of Leaders—Avoidant Behavior JANUARY 2016 Page 3
© 2016 Caliber Leadership Systems
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5. do, but lose respect for them as a leader
and person. They don’t trust that the
Avoidant Leader will be direct and
honest with them, creating an
environment of mistrust. At worst,
employees take advantage of the lack of
firm leadership and decide on their own
what work they want to do and when.
This leads to a lack of individual and
collective responsibility for the team’s
success, resulting in some degree of
disorder, disobedience and chaos as
people “do their own thing.”
FAILURE TO MOTIVATE
The gap created by the Avoidant Leader
becomes more significant as a business
grows. When companies are smaller,
employees will step into the gap and do
what needs to get done, even if the leader
should be doing it. However, the need of
employees for a leader who motivates,
values and engages with them will
remain unmet. As the business grows,
this leadership gap becomes greater and
employees become less tolerant of the
Avoidant Leader’s disengagement.
RESULT: EMPLOYEE DISENGAGEMENT
Because they don’t invest in developing,
coaching or mentoring their employees,
Avoidant Leaders can end up with a team
of disengaged employees that can’t meet
the needs of the business as it grows. The
dysfunctional behavior the Avoidant
Leader demonstrates becomes the norm
for the culture with employees avoiding
conflict, failing to communicate or
engage with others, fostering silos and
power struggles.
In order for Avoidant Leaders to develop,
they have to be willing to face their fear
of exercising their authority and it’s
potential negative consequences.
Developing assertiveness, building
tolerance to their emotions and those of
others are critical to their long-term
success as leaders.
There are three key barriers that
need to be addressed in order to
develop Avoidant Leaders:
FEAR OF INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT:
Avoidant Leaders believe they are
empowering their employees rather than
abdicating responsibility. They are self-
protective rather than insightful. Their
ability to rationalize why they should not
say or do anything that might create
conflict overrides what they know is the
right thing to do.
LACK OF ENGAGEMENT: Even though
their behavior is dysfunctional, they
don’t change it – because they fear a
negative outcome. They may listen to
what an employee needs, say they will
change, and continue to do things the
same way.
INABILITY TO SEE THEY ARE THE
PROBLEM: Avoidant Leaders believe
performance problems are the fault of the
employee. They complain about the
behavior of their direct reports without
changing their own. They tend to
believe that people should know what to
do without having to tell them.
CALIBER LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS — Dysfunctions of Leaders—Avoidant Behavior JANUARY 2016 Page 4
© 2016 Caliber Leadership Systems

6. Avoidant behavior is a form of
self-protection. Long-standing
self-protective patterns of
behavior can be changed and
new, productive responses and
patterns can be put in their place.
Based on our experience working with
Avoidant Leaders, they can develop their
leadership skills and emotional
intelligence by doing the following:
HIRE A LEADERSHIP COACH
The process of having a leadership coach
helps the Avoidant Leader develop
tolerance to personal discussions. The
Coach needs to understand their
personality structure, their defences and
be able to challenge their idea of what
people need without making them feel
inferior.
BUILD SELF-AWARENESS
Understanding the drivers of their
avoidant behavior, their detached stance
and their fear of their own authority is
critical to their development. They also
need to understand the impact of their
behavior on others and how it gets in the
way of them achieving their leadership
potential.
FACE THEIR FEARS
Avoidant Leaders must learn to stay
involved with direct reports and co-
workers and manage the anxiety this
produces. Getting help with a
communication strategy and coaching on
how to have performance discussions can
help them engage their people.
TAKE ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING
Avoidant Leaders benefit from learning
assertiveness skills and practicing them in
a safe environment. They need to be
given assertiveness goals to achieve at
work to build on their learnings. Tools
for writing how to approach employees,
such as a Feedback Planner or Issues
Resolution Planner allows them to train
their brain to think of what they will say
in advance and stay in control of the
conversation.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
TRAINING
Avoidant Leaders need to take
responsibility for the performance of
their direct reports. They need build the
required skills needed to ensure the
success of their direct reports and take a
realistic look at how they perform and
what they need to do to develop.
PARTICIPATE IN A LEADERSHIP
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
Avoidant Leaders must build awareness
of how they are contributing to their
team’s and employees’ dysfunction. They
need to learn how to identify and resolve
issues, deal with conflict and make
decisions for others. A team training
program gives them the opportunity to
learn and practice new skills while
building tolerance to engaging with
others.
- Join our webinar -
The Cost of Avoidant Leaders to
your Organization
Thursday Jan 28th at 1:30pm
For information on how we can help
you deal with Avoidant or other
dysfunctional leadership behavior in
your organization, contact us for a
complimentary consultation.
hhilliard@caliberleadership.com
adranitsaris@caliberleadership.com
CALIBER LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS — Dysfunctions of Leaders—Avoidant Behavior JANUARY 2016 Page 5
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