Top 5 Leadership Fails and 3 Steps to Avoid Them

I wasn't Iooking for failure when I bumped into something that pointed it out to me. (Sort of like the story of my life).

At any rate, I found this article on why leaders fail that Samuel B. Bacharach** wrote for Inc. Magazine. He brings up some interesting issues. Which I think are, of course, easily solved. In three steps, actually.

Top Five Fails (Reader's Digest version)

1. Confidence becomes ego. Ego changes the conversation so that it becomes all about the leader.

2. Teams become groupthink. 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.

3. 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. (I agree!) However, a determined vision can easily slip into obsession, alienating his or her team, customers, and business partners.

4. Delegation becomes chaotic. 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.

5. Determination becomes inflexibility. If outside forces and events indicate that the leader is taking the wrong path, then he or she has to make corrections and adjustments.

The 3 Steps to avoid all these Leadership Failures

Step 1 - Create your crystal clear Ultimate Vision (UV) for Success

Step 2 - Share it with your team

Step 3 - Have the team members create their own UV for Success that feeds into yours.

Done. Disaster averted. Leadership Success!


Steps 1 – 3 are the process of creating an Activated Organization.

The process of Activating your Organization eliminates all these failures.

• It starts with the leader’s vision. Ego becomes a non-issue because it’s already all about the leader.

• Every team member has their own vision within the vision based on their targets for themselves and the organization. Autonomy = creativity

• No chance for alienation because everyone has a unique place in the vision.

• At the risk of sounding repetitive, self- designed visions eliminates the issue of delegation, as everyone designs their contributions. (“What if no one chooses tasks that need to be done” is a topic for another time, but don’t worry. It’s easily handled)

• Intrinsic in the Activation process is the flexibility to change directions while maintaining targets.

Who knew it could be so easy?

To learn more about what Organization Activation is and how it works, click here

**Samuel B. Bacharach is the McKelvey-Grant professor in the department of organizational behavior at Cornell University's ILR School, and is director of Cornell's Institute for Workplace Studies in New York City.He seems like a pretty good source for this info, don’t you think?

http://www.inc.com/samuel-bacharach/five-reasons-leaders-fail.html#ixzz3A0wgI9zr