5 Reasons Leaders Fail
There's a fine line between
successful and failed leadership. These five dynamics will push you right over
it.
The very traits that make a strong
leader, if taken to their extreme, can set a leader up for failure. What may be
viewed a leadership positive, if allowed to run unchecked, can turn into a
leadership negative. The result is a very thin line between successful
leadership and failed leadership.
Consider what happens when:
Confidence becomes ego. Everyone loves a confident leader. Who isn’t won over by the
leader who strides into the room, commands attention, and takes control of the
situation? But when a leader has an excess of confidence, it generally means he
or she also has a surfeit of ego. Ego changes the conversation so that it
becomes all about the leader. Ego is the primary reason leaders fail.
Teams become groupthink. Teams are great. Teams help leaders get stuff done. But if
the team or teams become single-minded in nature, and are not encouraged by the
leader to engage in creative thinking, groupthink sets in. It is the leader who
suffers for it. With groupthink, possible innovations are lost, and creativity
stagnates.
Vision becomes obsession. All leaders need a vision. They have to have some core idea
of what they are all about and what they’d like to achieve, not only personally
but also for the organization. However, a determined vision can easily slip
into obsession. When this happens, the leader risks alienating his or her team,
customers, and business partners.
Delegation becomes chaotic. No leader can do everything, and good leaders delegate. A
problem arises when the leader delegates too little, leaving people to flounder
without direction, or too much, and expects them to take on too much responsibility
without support or interaction from the leader.
Determination becomes inflexibility.
This is a corollary to “vision
becomes obsession,” but it speaks to a different level of trouble. A leader
knows what has to be done, but if outside forces and events indicate that the
leader is taking the wrong path, then he or she has to make corrections and
adjustments. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a leader has to sacrifice goals
or end intent, but it does mean that the leader has to consider different paths
to getting there.
As this list shows, leaders fail due
to certain social-psychological blinders that inhibit their capacity to work in
a context of open and candid teams. Leaders fail because they allow themselves
to become narrow, while thinking that they are being broad and inclusive.
Rather than being agile and reflective, leaders fail when they are overly
focused and listen only to their own intentions.
http://www.inc.com/samuel-bacharach/five-reasons-leaders-fail.html?cid=em01013week07c
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