What's the problem with laissez-faire and transactional (passive management by exception) styles of leadership? Both are leadership styles where the leader has great potential to improve. Passive MBE means the leader is watching over employees to catch them doing something wrong -- which gets annoying. L The problem with those two styles of leadership is that they are both passive and effective only with older generation employees. Laissez-faire can be used in somewhat rare situations where the employees are experts but the manager doesn't know much about the work. Both are passive and generally ineffective because the leader doesn't do much of anything that shows positive leadership.