Mannerisms of Poor Leadership

What is the hardest part of business leadership? Most of the time, leaders struggle with stepping back and being objective in the diagnosis and analysis of their organization’s situation. However, not all leaders are the same. While this is a struggle that is present among leadership, there are four common attributes of some leaders that stray them away from their main prerogative:     

Complacency

  Some leaders are keen to quickly become complacent. Even though an issue may be present in their organization, they somehow believe that their situation is not at risk. They coast. And that may only be true for very few industries and may only be valid in a few cases. However, it still taints a leader’s ability to see the world from their customer’s or employee’s perspectives.    

Subjectivity

    There are also leaders who are subjective. They make up their mind about what the problems are, who the best employees are, who the problematic employees are, etc. And they are jaded when it comes to particular people or blind to other people’s faults because they have lost all sense of objectivity.     

Risk-Taking

    There are other leaders who are risk-takers. They are not always prudent and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. They are not able to step back and see that they continuously repeat the same pattern with no change or improvement.     

Accusations

    Lastly, some leaders are always looking for someone or something to blame. They never take responsibility. This type of leader leaves their organization in fear of making mistakes or learning from their errors. This causes a lack of improvement within an organization. A leader’s job is to work with their organization, not against it. This type of leader fights against responsibility and as a result, their organization suffers.    These mannerisms are not specific only to certain leaders. Everyone may exhibit these tendencies. At some point, we all get in a certain mindset (even overly positive or naive), and we become set in our ways. However, leaders need to have the ability to step back, be objective, diagnose, and analyze where they are (which frequently changes as an organization) and what the best next step is.