The 13 critical factors that drive leadership failure

“In my experience, we rarely talk about or receive instruction on the causes of leadership failure unless there’s trouble. … We tend to talk a lot about leadership success and having the right stuff but there is much to be learned by looking at why leaders fail to deliver.” — Division president’s observation, Fortune 1000 Service Organization

 

The opening quote above from a seasoned leader raises an interesting thought: Organizations are quick to talk about leader success yet are often found to be wanting in discussing the critically important issue of why leaders fail.

As practitioners working in the leadership development and human capital space for the past 35 years,

we have been engaged in a stream of systematic applied research, consulting, training and coaching to identify the attributes of high-performance leaders around the world. We find repeatedly that high performing leaders do not possess superpowers, but rather perform the fundamentals practices of leadership and management with great precision, discipline and acumen. They consistently view themselves as works in progress and are serious lifelong learners.

At the same time, we have been engaged in a parallel stream of research and practice to explore a question that organizations don’t like to talk about: Why do leaders fail? And while failure can be described in many different ways for purposes of this discussion, we define failure as “the inability of a leader to deliver the desired results through others that their organization needs in a timely, appropriate and sustainable fashion.”

With this focus, we have learned a great deal about why business leaders fail by creating platforms where leaders themselves can openly and honestly share their leadership experiences, thinking and adventures – the good, the bad and the ugly. One of the key things we have learned of late is that in periods of rapid organizational change, leadership failure is more likely for several important reasons.

First, organizational change is typically driven by the fact that performance is not where it needs to be;

thus there is increased pressure on leaders to deliver better results sooner. Secondly, periods of rapid change expose leadership deficiencies or gaps that, if left unchecked, can quickly create a scenario where both leader and organizational performance come crashing down. And thirdly, an organization’s workforce is in greater need of effective leadership during periods of change. When leadership is found lacking, a “snowball effect” of other workforce problems emerge, creating additional hardship for leader and organization alike.

With this backdrop, we conducted a series of focus groups with over 1,100 business leaders who were asked the following question as part of a leadership development exercise: “Based on your experience, why do leaders fail to deliver desired results in rapidly changing organizations?” These leaders were from over 111 different North American service and manufacturing organizations with over 25.9 years work experience on average and 14.8 years of leadership experience. Our sample was 22% senior leaders, 46% middle managers and 34% front-line leaders.

Participants were asked to answer this question individually and were then assigned to five-person focus groups to discuss and develop a rank ordered top 10 list of why leaders fail based on their experience. The response sets of each of these 220-plus focus groups were content analyzed, frequency counts were tabulated and the findings represent the foundation for this discussion.

The key leadership failure factors

With this backdrop, let us discuss the top 13 “leadership failure factors,” identified by focus groups in this qualitative study that drive leadership failure. Our discussion will include some of the key phrases and direct quotes that emerged from this analysis giving leaders a voice from their workplace trenches while providing key practices necessary to prevent leadership failure.

Factor No. 1

Failing to create focus by clarifying team direction and individual performance expectations. When any leader fails to provide a clear sense of direction to a work group, department or even division, bad things happen. Our focus groups make this perfectly clear that in periods of transition, people are looking for a clear sense of purpose and clear picture of where things are headed. This straightforward activity can help alleviate uncertainty and doubt and can give employees purpose which creates focus.

At the team level, people want a clearly defined mission and direction. At the individual level, people operating in ambiguous environments want an unambiguous picture of what activities and results they should be pursuing and how they should be investing their time. People need clear direction and focus on the things that are most important. They want to know, in no uncertain terms, their boss’s performance expectations regardless of their level in the organization. Our leaders made it very clear that failing to clarify team’s direction and individual roles goals or responsibilities creates real trouble.

Key practice: All leaders must provide a clear sense of direction and clarify performance expectations to “reframe” where the work group is going and what individual roles must be performed for operational success.

Factor No. 2

Ineffective 360-degree communication talents/practices. Another critical factor driving leadership failure is a leader’s inability to communicate effectively in a 360-degree fashion. Leaders must communicate effectively with customers, suppliers, vendors, superiors, co-workers and direct reports. When they don’t bad things happen!

In normal times any business leader will struggle when they cannot communicate effectively. But this is amplified in rapidly changing organizations where increased stress, more rapid pace and myriad workplace change can cause significant communication missteps, voids, misunderstandings and break-downs. And these missteps frequently occur at a time when people desperately need to be kept informed and have their voices heard.

In rapidly changing workplaces, leaders, at all levels, must listen and overcommunicate with their divisions, departments, work groups and individuals with the critical information that affects people’s ability to perform their duties and when they don’t failure is not far behind.

Key practice: Leaders must effectively share needed performance information, communicate one-on-one and with groups, be willing to listen, and answer questions on an ongoing basis if they are to succeed in their efforts to get desired results.

Factor No. 3

Emotional “unintelligence,” poor 360-degree working relationships, and hubris. To no one’s surprise, our focus groups identified a wide category of failure factors that fell into the category of a leader being “emotionally unintelligent.” An emotionally intelligent leader demonstrates self-monitoring, empathy and social awareness, and knows how to keep their egos in check. They realize that great working relationships are critically important to success. An emotionally intelligent leader realizes that change can breed fear, uncertainty and doubt that can be greatly reduced when a leader has strong 360-degree working relationships with the people around them built on trust.

Rapid change exposes poor working relationships and even accelerates their decline. A leader’s interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence are critically important to getting results as these skills can affect trust, communication, motivation, stress, morale and commitment among people the leader needs to deliver results. Failing to foster effective working relationships is a sure-fire way to impede adapting to change. When a leader has “people skills” deficiency and/or out-of-control ego, performance and results suffer!

Key practice: All leaders must develop their emotional intelligence and invest the time and energy necessary to build outstanding working relationships/networks keeping their egos in check.

Factor No. 4

Lack of personal integrity, character and trustworthiness. One of the more colorful components of participant discussions included the subject of character and the extent to which people could trust a leader. In periods of change, the credibility of a leader is on trial. If a leader is not perceived as being a person with character and integrity, it is very simple – people will not trust them!

At the same time, it is critically important that a leader demonstrate competency for the job they hold. When character and competency interact, they determine the extent to which a leader is “trustworthy” to his or her people. When a leader appears incompetent or is found to be lacking integrity, employees are slow or unwilling to follow their lead. When trust is lacking, myriad performance and morale problems, at both the individual and work-group level, spell failure. In the end, both of these interconnected factors speak to the issue of a leader’s credibility to the people that they are responsible for leading and in the words one focus group, “Credibility is everything!”

Key practice: It is imperative that organizations hire and develop leaders who have both the competency and character for each and every leadership position and that they be willing to take real action when trustworthiness is found wanting.

Factor No. 5

Lacking situational awareness and operating in the dark. It was readily apparent in our findings that when a leader does not know what is going on around them, failure should be no surprise. Participants described leaders who were “out of touch,” “operating in the dark,” “ill-informed,” “situationally unaware,” and “living in a vacuum,” to describe leaders who were unfamiliar with the “performance realities” of their operations.

Leaders not only need to know what individua/team performance goals or metrics to monitor, but also the activity and human behavior necessary for success. This requires having “ongoing situational awareness” of the things going on around them at multiple levels. Access to this “accurate reality” allows a leader to integrate information from these separate measures to develop a better overall understanding of how to predict and pinpoint problems that require their action. It also lets a leader know when to celebrate success.

Leaders who do not know how they are doing in terms of meeting important objectives or how these measures come together to produce an overall “performance picture,” are setting themselves up for failure. It is important to point out that monitoring performance against key performance standards and metrics alone is inadequate. Leaders must track and monitor the performance of people so that they can provide their followers with ongoing feedback to help people make adjustments accordingly.

Key practice 5: Results-oriented leaders constantly know where

they stand against key performance standards and metrics and develop habits so as to always know what is going on with the people and processes that drive performance.

Factor No. 6

Failing to develop themselves for success. Our focus groups consistently coalesced around an important concept: Leaders must constantly develop themselves to meet the changing demands of their very demanding jobs. To not do so exposes a leader’s weaknesses that can lead to both failure and career derailment.

When a job changes or a leader takes a promotion, any leader can easily find themselves “in over their heads” or

“lacking the requisite skills” for success. Thus, it is imperative that every leader practice continuous improvement with their talent development by creating and executing an ongoing develop-mental action plan. This action plan might include formal training, targeted developmental assignments, employing a personal coach, additional formal education, participating in an assessment center or reading books targeting specific needs. To have leadership skill deficiencies is understandable. To not take action to remove these deficiencies is not!

Key practice: Organizations and leaders must engage in serious leadership development on an ongoing, targeted, and discipline basis to ensure that leaders have the appropriate compe-tencies for success.

Factor No. 7

Failure to equip, develop, and coach their people for success. The legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes once said, “You win with people!” But apparently far too many leaders never got the text. It’s important to note that our focus groups revealed that the leaders who do not invest in equipping and developing their people will never optimize performance. While successful leaders are almost always credited with being great coaches who make developing their people a top priority, ineffective leaders are the polar opposite.

In a workplace that is constantly changing, employees generally realize their skills and talents need to constantly be refined and upgraded. When a leader does not make this a top priority, it not only will cause employees skills to stagnate, it will also have a detrimental impact on employees by damaging their morale and increasing the likelihood of less-than-optimal performance. When a leader is a people developer and coach, they provide ongoing feedback and development opportunities that equip their people for optimal performance.

Key practice: Successful leaders equip their people for success by making sure they have the tools, technology, and talent for success with ongoing, targeted, and meaningful coaching and development initiatives.

Factor No. 8

Failing to engage, empower, motivate and create ownership. One of the characteristics of great leaders is that they know how to bring out the best in their people and create a workplace climate where people are empowered and motivated to do great work owning the outcomes. Conversely, leaders are destined to fail when they do not know how to or care to engage, motivate and empower their people. Our focus groups called leaders like this “de-motivators,” frustraters,” “energy vampires,” and summarily, “leaders who suck the life out of their people.”

Bad working relationships, communication breakdowns, unclear performance expectations, lack of feedback, unresolved workplace conflicts, workplace inequities, unresolved performance barriers and the like are just a few of the things that are hallmarks of de-motivators. A leader is destined to fail when they do not know how to engage and empower their people and implement the well-documented leadership practices that can create a high-performance workplace.

Key practice: Effective leaders set goals, clarify performance expectations, engage, create ownership, communicate, empower, provide feedback, link rewards to performance and have great working relationships where they can employ these key practices.

Factor No. 9

Inability to nurture teamwork, collaboration and cooperation. The modern workplace has been described as the “ultimate team sport” and participants made this point perfectly clear. When a workgroup, at any level of an organization, is not led in a fashion

to foster teamwork, collaboration and cooperation, a cornucopia of performance problems is not far behind. When a leader does not know how to develop teamwork, or at least cooperation among people at minimum, getting desired results can become a more daunting proposition. When a leader is described as a “Lone Ranger,” “an army of one,” or “an owner-operator” they are not leading by example in this regard.

A leader must create an environment where people are encouraged to cooperate, coordinate, collaborate and communicate if performance is to be maximized. While the word “team”

is consistently overused in organizations, the talent for actually developing teamwork and cooperation is without a doubt essential.

Key practice: Leaders must take ongoing action to promote teamwork and conduct team-building exercises that can include cross-training, training in teams, team-based problem-solving and team-oriented communication practices, among others.

Factor No. 10

Failing to remove performance roadblocks, solve problems and drive real change. There are always roadblocks on the path to getting results, and when a leader does not remove these barriers in a timely fashion, frustration and failure occur. These problems can take on many forms, according to our participants, including technology challenges, lack of resources, poor operating procedures, bad systems, lack of training and lack of teamwork. Performance roadblocks can also include labor-management conflicts, employee inter-personal spats and interdepartmental “range wars,” among others.

When a leader does not demonstrate proficiency, passion and prowess about removing performance and problems roadblocks, they lose twice. First, is the damage caused by the problem itself. Secondly, is the problem caused by the message they send to their people that they are not serious about helping them get their work done, both of which are performance and career derailers.

Key practice: It is imperative that leaders use their ongoing awareness of their operation, performance and people to identify performance roadblocks and problems and engage in activities to remove these barriers as quickly as possible with an eye on making it easier for their people to deliver desired results.

Factor No. 11

Wasting the scare time resource. For any number of reasons, modern leaders operate under exceptionally tight deadlines, myriad competing activities and the edict to constantly improve performance. This makes it clear that time is one of a leader’s most important resources that must be properly applied to value-added activities that are tied directly to delivering desired results.

Focus groups made it clear that many leaders are not good “time stewards” and “do not properly invest” their scarce time resource to increase the likelihood of delivering desired results, thus wasting their time and the time of their direct reports. Endless and ineffective meetings, overuse of emails, meaningless reports, broken processes and organizational bottlenecks were just a few of the “time wasters” mentioned in these discussions. Leaders must be extremely mindful and using their time and the collective time of their direct reports. Every leader is busy, but the real question is, “busy doing what?”

Key practice: Leaders at all levels must become more proficient at time and priority management and invest their collective time resources in the value-added activities that deliver desired results while removing nonvalue-added activities.

Factor No. 12

Poor planning and crisis-driven modus operandi. According to our participants, the old adage is true: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” When leaders do not plan effectively, they can find themselves and the people they represent in a constant reactionary, crisis-driven mode which damages efficiency, productivity, morale and employee confidence.

Effective planning requires leaders to systematically anticipate future events, needs and activities and take proactive steps to prepare their operations to contend with these challenges and opportunities. Failing to plan erodes an operation’s ability to get results and rapidly degrades the credibility of leader with his or her people. Poor planning practices and reactionary behavior create disruptive crises that damage performance and morale – when this practice becomes the norm, real trouble is coming!

Key practice: Effective leaders engage in proactive planning activities commensurate with the position they hold that allow them the opportunity to prepare themselves and their people for what is coming and how to maximize future performance.

Factor No. 13

“Avoidance behaviors.” Our final factor driving leadership failure focuses on a leader’s “inability or unwillingness” to engage in key leadership behaviors that include holding people accountable, having difficult conversations and following up. These are critically important leadership skills in normal times but become even more so in periods of rapid change.

Focus groups stated that the absence of these critical leader behaviors typically represented an “abdication of leadership responsibility” in the short run, creating significant “pain points” in the long run. Ineffective leaders were accused of “lacking courage,” “being afraid of conflict,” “being too nice,” “demonstrating an unwillingness to address performance problems” and “not holding people’s feet to the fire.” These leadership “avoidance behaviors” send a powerful message to organizational members that a leader is not serious and caring about the success of their people, teams and organizations.

Key practice: Leaders at all levels must be skilled, motivated and courageous enough to hold people accountable, have difficult conversations to improve performance, and follow-up on activities to ensure progress and effective performance.

A call for action

We are sure that the findings of our focus groups are by no means surprising to you, but we would ask a simple and critically important question: Do you see any of these leadership failure factors entrenched in your current leadership activity and style?

Take the time to answer the 13 questions in the accompanying appendix to think through these important questions. If your answers are all positive, then take the time to solicit the input of your people to make sure. And if your answer is still no, then thanks for being a great leader on that factor.

If, however, your answer are less than positive, thanks for taking a look in the mirror and for being honest with yourself. So here are two important questions to help you act on any question that you believe needs attention:

• “What are the consequences of this particular failure factor to my performance and career?
• “What am I going to do about fixing it ASAP?”

Your answer to these questions is critically important so we wish you well in taking action by developing and implementing a real action plan to remove any potential threats to your leadership effectiveness. In the end, your ability to address these issues will have a profound impact on your leadership effectiveness, your ability to deliver desired results, and ultimately your career success!