Question

Discuss how substitutes and neutralizers challenge the effectiveness of leadership.

Answer 1

Leadership substitute is a concept where few characters like individual, environment, tasks etc tends to reduce the value of the leaders ability to influence his subordinates and their performance.

Leadership neutralizer is a factor wherein a leader’s behaviour does not make any difference in the follower’s performance.

The substitutes and neutralizers challenge the effectiveness of leadership as explained below:

1. A leader would get demotivated when some factor acts in place of a formal leader and makes his leadership skills unnecessary, these factors may be high skill level of subordinates or highly motivated team which do not boughter a leader’s space.

2. Due to leadership neutralizer the power and control of a leader would reduce and hence the leader may not have any influence which creates a physical distance between the team and the leader.

3. These two factors make a leader redundant or unnecessary which reduces their effectiveness at work.

4. Even the positive behaviours of the leader do not work under neutralizer concept and hence the leader would not show any sign of positiveness.