A leader can display a cooperative attitude, readily agree to requests and seem easy to get along with, while putting up a silent resistance that gradually undermines trust and collective performance. This passive-aggressive behaviour, often hard to spot, can damage working relationships, slow projects down and harm team engagement.
Research by Hogan Assessments sheds light on these behaviours through the Leisurely dimension, one of the 11 personality derailers measured by the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) inventory.
This article explores the telltale signs of passive-aggressive leadership, its consequences for how teams function, and the development levers that can help the leaders concerned become more reliable, communicate better and increase their managerial impact.
Working with passive-aggressive people can be particularly hard. They take on requests willingly and with a smile, yet nothing guarantees they will honour their commitments. Some projects seem to grind to a halt on their desk, while some tasks receive less attention and effort than planned.
When a leader behaves this way, the consequences for their team can be especially damaging.
Passive aggression can belong to a wider set of counterproductive behaviours that Hogan captures in the Leisurely dimension.
A pleasant, cooperative attitude is usually a real asset in a leader or an employee. But this quality can turn into a weakness when it is used to hide negative emotions and ends up affecting engagement, trust and productivity.
Hogan Assessments evaluates three broad facets of personality:
The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) inventory identifies the derailers linked to the dark side of personality.
These behaviours can become counterproductive in situations of stress, pressure, complacency or boredom. This is what Hogan calls derailment.
In everyday functioning, these tendencies can be genuine strengths. Once derailment occurs, however, they can damage working relationships and harm a career.
The Leisurely dimension measures a continuum of behaviours ranging from a cooperative, openly expressive attitude to an independent stance marked by quiet resistance.
At their most positive, people with a high score on this dimension can come across as pleasant, diplomatic and easy to deal with at work.
They generally try to protect their time, their working pace and their autonomy, and they place great value on their independence.
When the tendency becomes excessive, on the other hand, they can be seen as stubborn, uncooperative and irritated by interruptions or by supervision of their work.
Leisurely is one of the 11 personality derailers measured by the HDS.
Because they may resent authority and be annoyed by interruptions, people with a strong Leisurely tendency can gradually distance themselves from others.
Their behaviour can then cause productivity delays and lead them to pursue personal goals that are not necessarily aligned with those of their team or their organisation.
They say "yes" when they think "no".
As this gap between words and actions repeats itself, broken commitments end up damaging their professional reputation and their relationships with colleagues.
In the video accompanying the original article, Jaclyn Menendez, PhD, head of talent management solutions consulting at Hogan Assessments, explains how Leisurely behaviours manifest as silent resistance.
She highlights in particular a distinction that is key to understanding this kind of leadership: agreeing to a request does not necessarily mean truly buying into it.
This nuance matters especially in workplaces where displayed cooperation can hide reluctance, frustration or a lack of commitment.
A leader's passive-aggressive behaviours can undermine the trust and effectiveness of their team.
Seemingly harmless habits, such as regularly keeping people waiting, can gradually create interpersonal tension.
Likewise, when a manager says one thing but consistently does another, they weaken their team's psychological safety.
The core problem lies in the gap between what the leader shows and what they really feel.
This inconsistency makes their behaviour harder to anticipate and can feed a climate of uncertainty within the group.
When negative emotions that are usually concealed start to weigh heavily on their behaviour, leaders with a Leisurely tendency can be seen as stubborn, sulky or irritable.
These manifestations can take various forms.
For example, a leader may put off certain tasks or miss deadlines when they consider the work requested to be unimportant.
They may also produce work of a quality well below what they are actually capable of.
Other behaviours can appear: resistance to requests or to feedback, resentment of interruptions, or a tendency to favour their own interests over those of the team.
These attitudes do not necessarily lead to open confrontation. On the contrary, they can settle in quietly, which makes them particularly tricky to identify and manage.
A leader whose behaviour lacks reliability gradually teaches their team that it cannot count on them.
When requests for help trigger delays that look like a form of retaliation, team members learn to stop turning to their manager.
Over time, they may even stop telling them what they need altogether.
This situation deeply weakens the managerial relationship. The leader gradually loses their supporting role, while the team deprives itself of a contact who is essential to how it works.
With greater strategic self-awareness of their behaviour, leaders with a Leisurely tendency can keep their independence and diplomacy while making sure that their "yes" truly reflects a commitment.
These leaders often prioritise personal goals that may differ from those of their team, their department or their organisation.
They may also be reluctant to engage in leadership development unless they are convinced that change will bring them tangible benefits.
In this context, an exercise to identify shared goals and values can help them reconnect with their team's collective mission.
The aim is to build stronger alignment between their individual motivations and the expectations of their working environment.
Few approaches work as well as open communication when it comes to shifting Leisurely behaviours.
Developing the ability to set boundaries can help a passive-aggressive leader recognise the situations in which it is legitimate to turn a request down.
In the same way, building assertiveness helps them learn to say no in a clear, direct and professional manner.
The goal is not to suppress their need for autonomy, but to let them express it without falling back on indirect forms of resistance.
Role plays with a Hogan-certified coach can, for instance, help the leader explore constructive and appropriate ways of voicing frustration or irritation at work.
This approach encourages more authentic communication while limiting the tensions and misunderstandings that can affect working relationships.
To earn trust through their reliability, leaders with Leisurely tendencies need to learn to set achievable deadlines and to communicate them clearly to their team.
It is also essential that they limit the number of commitments they make.
Better to make fewer commitments and keep every one of them than to multiply promises that cannot be honoured.
It is precisely this consistency between words and actions that gradually strengthens perceived reliability and restores trust.
For a leader, credibility rests not only on the quality of their intentions, but also on their ability to turn their commitments into concrete action.
Passive-aggressive leadership shows how far seemingly harmless behaviours can have significant consequences for team dynamics.
Surface-level cooperation, broken commitments or silent resistance can gradually erode trust, psychological safety and team effectiveness.
Even so, Leisurely tendencies are not a fate. When they are understood and supported, the qualities of independence, diplomacy and autonomy can continue to express themselves constructively.
Personality assessment, notably through Hogan Assessments inventories, makes it possible to identify the derailers likely to limit leadership potential and to guide targeted coaching and support.
Building this understanding of personality into a Talent Management and skills development strategy helps create management that is more self-aware, more reliable and more sustainable.
For HR directors, Talent Management leads and executives, the stakes are strategic: helping leaders understand their behaviour in order to strengthen the quality of working relationships, collective performance and the lasting success of organisations.
Jaclyn Menendez, PhD, leads consulting within the Talent Solutions team at Hogan Assessments.
The 11 derailers series: Excitable · Skeptical · Cautious · Reserved (coming soon) · Leisurely · Bold · Mischievous · Colorful · Imaginative · Diligent · Dutiful
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: How to Work Successfully with Passive-Aggressive Leaders
