How to Fail at being a CEO & Leader

If you have worked for enough companies, had enough mentors, observed enough startups, been around Venture capital, talked to enough people; you begin to observe a lot of leadership.

There are different types of Leaders, all with their own inherent weaknesses, indeed nobody is perfect. But what if there were behaviors that we could control, little things that sabotage ourselves as leaders?

Refining Emotional Intelligence 

Would not those traits and tendencies be good to know, if we truly wanted to become a better person, and in doing so become a better CEO, a better manager, a better team player?

CEOs are under the illusion that they only have to answer to the board, to venture capital, to their share holders, but is this really true? How a leader treats employees affects morale, effects how empowered other people are in the company and this impacts work productivity, innovation and problem solving.

As an employee, it's ironic sometimes at the workplace, you learn the most from the poorest leaders you are exposed to. For all the articles we have read on leadership, what if we flip the perspective and frame of reference, what if we name those tendencies in our bosses, CEOs and leaders we have known that made them jeopardize their own companies, what would those experiences look and feel like?

How to Fail at being a CEO & Leader

-1- They don't make others feel safe. 

• Over-selling the company, product or a new employee's role in such a way that isn't realistic, where you are setting up the new hire to disillusionment about the company, product or role. 
• Over promising, under delivering. 
• Micromanaging others and failing to delegate. 
• Criticizing specific employees in public.
• Failing to be credible, authentic or consistent. 
• Acting on emotion and impulse rather than logic, fairness and compassion. 

-2- Not Listening

• Thinking because of experience you are right and know more than the employee (potential). 
• Dismissing other ideas that are not your own.
• Wanting to take credit for the work of others. 
• Acting Superior and high-handed.
• Manipulating others to follow your own dictates.
• Elitism: favoring a small core of people over everyone else.
• Feeling threatened by those who have differing viewpoints or may not fully "buy-in" to your own vision of things.
• Using your "history of success" as an argument to over-ride the views of others. 

-3- Rigid Authority 

• Lacking transparency  in use of power with coercion, dishonesty and isolating perceived "office opponents"(playing divide and conquer).
• Assuming you know what is best (even in departments that do not/should not report to you).
• Managing unpredictably (Good cop bad cop), one moment friendly, the next through fear and intimidation. 
• Being a workaholic, obsessive and holding others to those standards as "normal".
• Being a demanding "perfectionist" while not holding yourself to the same standards. 
• Lack of empathy and ineffective or selective use of praise, encouragement and balancing 2 complements per each of your critique (sandwiching). 
• Demeaning the intelligence of others with rambling speeches devoid of strategic input and the overuse of over simplified analogies. 
• Not taking the advice of mentors and the opinions of others into full consideration. 

-4- Not Leading by Example

• Not taking an active role in empowering, motivating and managing office moral (because you are too busy doing "real" work). 
• Not taking responsibility for company's failures; blaming others. 
• Assuming "fake" humility while remaining dogmatically superior. 
• Wanting to take the credit and be the "hero" of the company. 
• Over relying on charisma in place of other real qualities of teamwork.
• Using authority and not knowing the limits of that authority.
• Not knowing the boundaries of where your role begins and ends. 

-5- Being a Passive Inspirer 

• Not empowering leadership in the c-level executives of the company.
• Not motivating others to learn by taking risks (being overly cautious and limiting others). 
• Not being emotionally aware of the diversity and different needs of team members to truly feel empowered. 
• Not being available to employees and creating hierarchy when it's not truly necessary. 
• Taking on too much yourself, at the risk of not making deadlines and compromising the quality of work. 
• Not setting aside time for creativity, team-building, harmony & rapport development and investing enough in team culture at the perceived expense of "productivity". 
• Being overly conservative, traditional and old-school without adapting to the new era of industrial psychological, technology and contemporary leadership practices.  

• Being too slow to adapt. 

These are just some behaviors often cited in the literature and observed by us as people in the workplace. 

What are behaviors or traits you have observed that are conducive to failure as a leader or CEO?