101: Leadership failures

The irony in leadership is traits that make a strong leader can eventually – if taken to the extreme – produce failure. Successful leaders must constantly practice self-reflection to ensure positives don’t turn into negatives. The capacity to adapt to change is a big factor in leadership success. Here are traits of leaders whose good qualities went wrong, at the expense of their organizations. They try to do it all. Good leaders always delegate, not too much (but not too little). “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,” writes Samuel Bacharach at Inc.com. They ignore the truth. The ability to accept cold, hard facts and ugly truths is what helps shape a leader, says Nick Hargreaves at LinkedIn. “Failure often happens when managers and bosses tweak and make the data fit into their preconceived ideas,” he writes, which is tempting, and may be happening without them even being aware it’s happening. Great leaders decide their next move based on data they have, no matter how unpleasant that data may be. Their confidence gets out of hand. It can turn into arrogance, often fueled by the pressure to prove themselves after they’re promoted or hired. Arrogance can breed unilateral decisions, which are never good, says Entrepreneur.com’s Kerry Siggins. “They forget that they are there to serve others. These leaders believe they know it all and stop listening. They ignore what people say, or worse, criticize them when they share differing points of view,” says Siggins. “They think they are better than the people who are creating value — their employees,” when a winning strategy is to listen, ask questions, and give credit to the team.