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There's a fine line between successful and failed leadership. These five dynamics will push you right over it.
inc.co m http://www.inc.co m/samuel-bacharach/five-reaso ns-leaders-fail.html?cid=em01013week07c 5 Reasons Leaders Fail PRAGMATIC LEADERSHIP PRAGMATIC LEADERSHIP | Samuel Bacharach Feb 11, 2013 There's a f ine line between successf ul and f ailed leadership. These f ive dynamics will push you right over it. kharied/Flickr The very traits that make a strong leader, if taken to their extreme, can set a leader up f or f ailure. 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 successf ul leadership and f ailed leadership. Consider what happens when: Conf idence becomes ego. Everyone loves a conf ident 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 conf idence, it generally means he or she also has a surf eit of ego. Ego changes the conversation so that it becomes all about the leader. Ego is the primary reason leaders f ail. Teams become groupt hink. Teams are great. Teams help leaders get stuf f 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 suf f ers f or it. With groupthink, possible innovations are lost, and creativity stagnates. Vision becomes obsession. All leaders need a vision. T hey have to have some core idea of what they are all about and what they’d like to achieve, not only personally but also f or 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 f lounder without direction, or too much, and expects them to take on too much responsibility without support or interaction f rom the leader. Determination becomes inflexibility. This is a corollary to “vision becomes obsession,” but it speaks to a dif f erent level of trouble. A leader knows what has to be done, but if outside f orces 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 sacrif ice goals or end intent, but it does mean that the leader has to consider dif f erent paths to getting there. As this list shows, leaders f ail due to certain social-psychological blinders that inhibit their capacity to work in a context of open and candid teams. Leaders f ail because they allow themselves to become narrow, while thinking that they are being broad and inclusive. Rather than being agile and ref lective, leaders f ail when they are overly f ocused and listen only to their own intentions. Samuel Bacharach is prof essor of labor management at Cornell and director of Cornell's Institute of Workplace Studies. He co- f ounded the Bacharach Leadership Group and blogs at BacharachBlog.com. Among his books: Get Them on Your Side and Keep Them on Your Side. @samuelbacharach