Poor leadership in the workplace can have devastating consequences and pose immense costs to an organization. The development of leadership competence is a serious task to be handled by organizations aiming to improve work productivity and promote employee performance and health.

A new study published in the Journal of Personnel Psychology examines the use of art as an intervention-based leadership program. The researchers propose that the use of dramatic art might serve to deepen an individual’s self-awareness, a known key asset when it comes to leadership effectiveness.

In the study, the researchers looked at the effects of both an art-based intervention versus a conventional leadership development program on participants’ leadership competence.

Art and the self-aware leader

Effective leadership in the workplace is imperative to ensure employee productivity and well-being. Poor leadership can be especially costly due to the fact that negative social experiences in the workplace are found to trump positive ones with respect to their psychological impact.

Poor leadership is usually characterized by a lack of action. In fact, recent leadership research has narrowed in on an especially devastating style of leadership: laissez-faire leadership due to poor stress coping.

Laissez-faire leadership is defined by the avoidance of responsibility, passivity and indifference; that is, a leader who doesn’t do much leading at all. This common style of leadership is linked with stress and interpersonal conflict because of a lack of organizational control. The inability to cope with stress often goes hand-in-hand with this style of leading and is usually what causes a leader to withdraw from his or her responsibilities.