Are You Displaying These Poor Leadership Qualities? Here's How to Change.

During this strange time of isolation and uncertainty, we’re all spending a lot of time evaluating our leaders — arguing about whether they closed businesses too early or not early enough, whether they’re overreacting or underreacting. I want to posit the question: What if NY Governor Andrew Cuomo had shut New York down two months earlier and 10 people had died instead of thousands? 

Certainly, some would have praised his leadership, but others would have attacked him for needlessly harming the economy. That’s one of the difficult things about being a leader. There are few easy decisions, and you will never please everyone.

Making the wrong choice doesn’t make you a poor leader. Being unable to make any choice because you’re trying to please everyone? That could. 

There are dozens of qualities that interfere with the ability to lead effectively. I’m sharing a few that I see most frequently and how to fix them. 

1. Lacking visibility 

2. Being inauthentic

3. Being inflexible

4. Indecisiveness.

Not showing up

One of the qualities that most negatively impacts leaders is a failure to be visible to their team. When I was a CEO early in my career, our VP of HR, Donna, came to me and said, “Look, I know you’re overwhelmed and have a lot to do. I need you to eat lunch in the cafeteria with everyone else.” 

I’d been eating lunch at my desk, not because I wanted to hide out. I was working. 

The problem was that the employees needed to see me and hear from me. They needed to feel like they weren’t out there operating in the dark. And that’s what it can feel like when a leader isn’t visible or doesn’t communicate enough. 

I had to overcome my introverted preference to remain in the background so that my team had regular opportunities to connect with me. A leader that sees his employees at a monthly all-hands meeting and rarely interacts with them in between isn’t providing the inspiration or guidance that a team needs to stay engaged and on track.

How to fix it: There are a variety of reasons a leader may have a lack of visibility. They may have anxiety about that type of interaction, they may not have carved out time in their schedule, or they may not realize that visibility is important. 

The key is to create frequent, meaningful opportunities to connect with employees and provide information and guidance. A mix of one-on-one and group meetings and events helps to provide the individualized support employees need as well as more collaborative sessions. 

A note about visibility: People can sometimes forget that, as a leader, you are always on — in your office, in the cafeteria, on a Zoom call, at a holiday party. When you communicate with your team, even if you view the conversation as a discussion between colleagues or peers, they take that information as gospel. If you say something, they will act on it.

See also: 7 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

Lack of authenticity

We’ve all heard this advice: when you say you’re going to do something, do it. It’s an excellent rule of thumb — and it’s not quite enough.

Authenticity involves both self-awareness and transparency. A sense of being inauthentic can crop up in ways that aren’t so straightforward. 

For instance, say one of your core values is transparency. You consistently reinforce that value with your team, and you truly believe it’s critical to your success as an organization. You brief employees monthly on the company’s successes and failures, including sharing revenue numbers. 

You hold back the profitability numbers, though. You worry that they won’t understand the ups and downs of business profitability, that the business owner might be making too much money when things are good — or might worry that a bad month could signal layoffs. 

You’re not intending to be inauthentic, but in your team’s perception, that transparency value only seems to go so far. 

How to fix it: Lack of authenticity is often something that needs to be fixed from the outside in. Most people need a partner to help them understand when their behaviors don’t align with their intentions. Self-awareness cannot be achieved alone.

I worked with someone who lost their temper and wanted to stop. The problem is that once it triggers and they lose their temper, it’s difficult to access self-awareness about what was happening. We realized that if they could catch themself a few seconds before they blew their top, they could prevent it. They coached someone else in the organization to see when it was about to happen and give a signal. It helped to have someone else see what they couldn’t. 

Lack of flexibility

A lack of flexibility can show up for a leader in a number of ways. 

New leaders sometimes try to compensate for their lack of experience in leadership positions by taking a “My Way is the Right Way” stance. It rarely serves them well. They don’t delegate effectively — by letting people do their jobs in their own way. Delegating a task but then micromanaging every element of it turns off employees and blows any opportunities that might have come from considering an idea that wasn’t in a leader’s original plan. 

Inflexibility can also show up as risk aversion. A leader is only looking at their business from the inside out (instead of the outside in), and they’re missing out on business opportunities because they’re not being open minded. They’ve pulled back on the visionary elements of what they do and are, as they say, stuck in a rut. 

How to fix it: If you lean toward rigidity, bringing more flexibility into your leadership practices is challenging. Consider delegating accountability to mitigate your inflexibility. Of course, there are some accountabilities that you’ll always keep because you’re in charge, there are some goals you could likely delegate accountability for — especially if they’re in an area where you struggle to be flexible. 

If you’re not flexible, you could be limiting your organization or making it less efficient. Delegating allows you to hand that off to someone who is better qualified to manage it or simple wired differently. 

A “don’t do” list (with those tasks that aren’t a good use of your skills or time) can help remind you that certain things don’t need to be given your stamp of approval. 

See also: How to Build an Effective Leadership Team

Indecisiveness

Remember Governor Cuomo? Like all leaders, he had to make choices. 

While the stakes are lower for most of us heading up a team or an organization, you may still battle with the fear of making “the wrong” decision. The truth is, most decisions aren’t clearly right or wrong. And no matter what you decide, you will not make everyone happy. 

A study of 17,000 c-suite executives showed that the most successful leaders are those who decide quickly and with commitment, not those who make the most perfect decisions. The ability to decide and then lead a team with conviction is more important than the quality of the decision. Constantly waffling back and forth or becoming paralyzed by the decision-making process can have real consequences — employee confusion, missed chances, and failure to scale, to name a few.

One of the most common moments of indecisiveness I see is when people waffle about hiring a particular candidate. In a tight job market, a little bit of indecision can lead to a candidate that’s no longer available. 

As Steve Jobs famously said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” You’ll never have all the information to make the 100% perfect decision because you can’t see into the future. But you can pick the next dot on the path. 

How to fix it: You’ve heard it before that whenever you don’t make a decision, you are making a decision. For instance, not making the final call about hiring a job candidate means you’re deciding that it’s okay if they move on to another position. If you’re struggling to be decisive, ask yourself what decision you’re actually making right now, what goal needs to be accomplished. That question may help push you out of indecisiveness and into action. 

Also considering setting deadlines for making decisions - create a milestone. Put the date into your calendar and share it with colleagues. Create accountability to make decisions, knowing actions are dependent on having done so.

Final thoughts

This list could have been pages long. Just as there are dozens of qualities that make a great leader, there are many qualities that make a poor one. I considered adding one of the worst: a lack of integrity. Unfortunately, decades of experience have shown me that those without integrity rarely define themselves that way and are often not looking to improve. Enron’s CFO Andrew Fastow, who now teaches ethics, is the rare success story — but I’m loath to recommend jail time as the path to becoming a better leader. 

For those of us who want to be effective leaders, the key is to stay committed to practicing greater levels of self-awareness. It’s always the first step toward making a change in your behavior. Chances are, we’ve been in your shoes, and we can help you transform any poor leadership qualities into opportunities for growth. Send us a message.