Trickle-Down Leadership: Letting Your Team Take Over

Company behaviours, in general, can usually be tied back to the behaviours of its leaders. If you have positive, focused, driven behaviours from your leaders, this sets an example for the team. It’s contagious. People rise to the expectation or standards set by the leaders, but the same holds true for negative behaviours. This is a core idea behind the method of trickle-down leadership.

Trickle-down leadership is the idea that attitudes and efforts displayed by leaders have a direct effect on those within the team. When the team regularly sees poor behaviour, it is considered acceptable, and they will respond accordingly. By unintentionally communicating a lack of effort or inspiration, a leader can deflate even the most positive within the team.

Creating an unintentional negative culture 

Let’s take lazy behaviours as an example. They can begin as a result of distractions or lack of focus. Do you have the “hurry up and forget it” attitude in your workplace. New ideas can distract people from whatever they were working on to give focus to the new thing. As a result, significant work will be done, leadership will forget about a task altogether, and questions arise about who is spending time on what and why.

This can result in a team that learns not to respond to new ideas, developing lazy attitudes, not following directions and offering minimum effort. Eventually, a general lack of respect for management or new initiatives will follow.

Turning it around with trickle-down leadership

It is vital that you ensure all of your leaders avoid displaying negative behaviours. If you are the leader, ask for an honest assessment from your leadership team to understand if you need to make changes.

If you are the staff member, a potentially difficult conversation with the leader may be necessary to highlight behaviours that harm the organisation.

Trickle-down leadership acknowledges the effects of leadership attitudes on the overall team while also providing more autonomy and accountability to the staff. Avoid micro-managing and let your team take over a little! Empowering employees to have control over their work means choice, independence, solitude, and empowerment; key drivers of happiness in the workplace.

Don’t forget to have a little fun

At Banana Life, we offer a range of games that allow you to have some fun with your team; no matter where they are. Let’s chat today about which of our remote, online, hosted events will be the perfect way to give your staff an event they can let their hair down at!