Ambidextrous Leadership: A different view

Leadership research primarily focuses on the positive effects and frequently neglects the negative effects associated with particular leadership styles. As an alternative to the approaches that currently dominate the leadership literature, we propose a model of ambidextrous leadership of teams and individuals charged with complex tasks. Our basic assumption is that ambidexterity - that is, the combination of seemingly opposing, but complementary leadership strategies - enables each strategy to offset the negative effects of its respective opposite strategy and that this, in turn, enables a preponderance of the positive over the negative effects of each strategy. We apply this idea to four leadership dimensions - the distribution of decision-making powers, the time guidelines, the interpretation of knowledge, and the leader's facilitation of communication, respectively - and discuss the ways in which our model differs from established approaches in the leadership literature.