How can leadership negatively affect the success of a company?

A renowned leadership coach, John Maxwell, once said that everything rises and falls on leadership (Maxwell, 2007). Successful companies have one thing in common: they are led by visionary leaders who inspire and motivate their teams. Those that fail are led by short-sighted leaders who see everything as everyone else’s fought.

Visionary Leadership

Visionary leaders steer their companies towards success by taking calculated risks. They strive to turn challenges into opportunities for growth. They go beyond the call of duty to model success to their teams. They listen to their employees and create a working environment that encourages creativity and passion. When things go wrong, they take responsibility for everyone’s failures. Success is however attributed to every member of the team (Kouzes & Posner , 2017).

That’s the good side of leadership. There’s a negative side as well.

Impacts of Poor Leadership

While successful companies are led by visionary leaders, failing or failed organizations have weak leadership to blame (Shaw, 2014). Instead of inspiring their teams to greater productivity and success, they berate them at every turn. To them, leadership is about railroading everyone and whipping them into line.

The problem with this type of leadership is that it is counter-productive. Abraham Lincoln once said that the “best way to predict the future is to create it” (Scopettah Books). Of course, only visionary leaders have the ability to predict the future and steer their companies towards success. Negative leadership, on the other hand, is myopic and lacks strategy (Edgar, 2004). It lacks the foresight to motivate and inspire their teams towards growth.

One of the most successful companies in the world, Apple Inc., whose valuation recently reached $3 Trillion, was founded by a visionary leader, Steve Jobs, who believed in making tomorrow’s products today. He challenged his teams to continually innovate by pushing themselves beyond the limits of reality. In what one of his employees referred to as Reality Distortion Field, Jobs would create almost-impossible scenarios to push his designers to develop products of the future (Isaacson, 2013).

Conclusion

Unlike the late Steve Jobs, short-sighted leaders lack the ability to push their teams beyond the limits of possibilities. They lead by dint of their position instead of establishing relationships and strengthening the bonds of their teams. In the end, this type of leadership negatively affects the growth of their companies.

References

Edgar, S. H. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Son.

Isaacson, W. (2013). Steve jobs: The exclusive biography. London: Little, Brown.

Kouzes, J., & Posner , B. (2017). The Leadership Challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

Maxwell, J. C. (2007). The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader : Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow. Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scopettah Books. (n.d.). The best way to predict future is to create it: Abraham Lincoln Inspirational Quote Notebook. Independently Published.

Shaw, R. B. (2014). Leadership blindspots: How successful leaders identify and overcome the weaknesses that matter (1st ed.). Nashville, TN: John Wiley & Sons.