How to avoid the top seven traps for new leaders

It′s a common sense between some authors and careers experts that many seeds of consecration or destruction for new leaders - who are taking over a new role within the current organization or in a new company - are mostly sown in the first hundred days of their new challenge. Most executives failures, then, are not the result of strategic skills such as insufficient intelligence, questionable motivations, dishonesty, or even lack of leadership capabilities.

It normally happens due to "softer" issues, such as communication mishaps, misaligned expectations, the need to be loved, and the notion that they have to be the savior are more often than not the real culprits, especially in the first days

In Why CEOs fail, David Dotlich and Peter Cairo discuss eleven personality traits that their research showed can derail a career. Arrogance, excessive caution, volatility, and melodrama can indeed all be some causes of failure according the authors. Sidney Finkelstein completed another large research on leadership failure and appoint in his book, Why Smart Executives Fail, that executives failures is the result of a series of destructive behaviors (seven, to be more precise):

1. They see themselves and their companies as dominating their competitive environments, even if this view is out of step with reality.

2. They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their own self-image/interests and the company′s image/interests.

3. They think they have all the answers, often impressing others with the speed and decisiveness with which they deal with significant issues.

4. They make sure that everyone is 100 percent behind them, ruthlessly eliminating who disagrees with their views.

5. They are the consummate company spokespersons, obsessed with managing the image of their company and themselves, often devoting the largest portion of their time to image management.

6. They underestimate key major obstacles, treating them instead as temporary impediments to be simply removed or circumvented.

7. They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past, clinging to the strategies and tactics that made successful in the first place.

Based on my own experience I would add some other three points...Setting unrealistic expectations, Lack of emotional intelligence and Leadership that don′t listen.

How about you? Dou you agree? What are your thoughts about that?

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About the author

Rodrigo Portes - Senior Executive with more than 24 years of experience in sales, marketing, business development, P&L and Key Account Management, working in leadership positions in reputed multinational corporations, such as Phoenix Contact, Cummins, GE, Siemens, Carnevalli, Parker Hannifin and Rockwell Automation, in the segments of Industrial Automation, Energy, Machinery & Equipment.