What makes you a Bad Leader (and what to do about it)?

Over the past three decades, much has changed. Al Gore invented the internet. Email, smart phones, electric vehicles, and now AI, continue to change and evolve how we get things done. It's progress, innovation, technological advances... so why haven't we been able to crack the code on bad leaders??

No one is immune. We have all had poor (or in my case, extremely poor) leaders that we had to answer to throughout our career. But the questions around why this is tolerated and why we haven't made much progress to improve leadership is mind boggling. Let's look at some root causes of bad leaders to drive awareness of what to avoid when we add a new leader into our business.?

Starting with personality traits that must be vetted prior to hiring or promoting a people leader, let's look at ?negative characteristics that create bad leaders that must be avoided.?

Top 5 Bad Leader Traits:

1. Narcissistic: Believing that everything revolves around themselves and their needs. Ignoring others, lacking inclusion, and closed-minded.
2. Self-serving: Absent of organization goal buy-in or company vision, these people are only interested in personal gain, self-promotion, and advancing their own career agenda.
3. Micromanaging: Control around the minut details of daily activity and quick to disparage efforts that don't meet their standards.?
4. Infallible: They believe they always know what's best and truly believe they are always right, even if they don't have any knowledge about the topic.?
5. Never leads by example: Always a 'do as I say, not as I do' mentality. Takes credit for others ideas or wins. Delegate all tasks, regardless of their importance. Tend to be disconnected and apathetic.?

Avoid aligning with anyone that demonstrates these negative traits. Instead, start with key positive attributes and behavioral traits that are required to be a people leader. Before you decide to promote from within or hire externally, ensure that the person brings both a cultural fit (practices or demonstrates your core values) and a motivational fit (able to focus on performance and inspire others to do the same).?

The crucial elements that a person must possess to become a great people leader are:

1. High Emotional Intelligence: This includes strong self-awareness, excellent social awareness, empathy, and self-motivation. Always being respectful towards others. ?
2. Growth Mindset: Someone that invests in others, mentors and coaches to bring out potential, and aligns subordinates towards promotion. Always looking to learn and share their knowledge and expertise.?
3. Humility: Allowing others to shine and supporting each other in an environment where the only agenda is driving successful organizational outcomes.?
4. Authenticity: Being real, vulnerable, caring, transparent, and genuine in your relationship development and communication. Always following through on their commitments and practices the under promise/over deliver approach. ?
5. Active Listener: Great leaders tend to remain calm, listen with the intent to understand, and take action on new insights. Listening proactively makes people feel special, gives your team a voice, and builds trust.?

Hire and promote people around these five traits going forward and never compromise. Also, feel free to create your own Top 5 list of key behavioral traits that match your organizational goals. Either way, adapt and upgrade your criteria yo avoid bad leaders infesting your company.?

Investment in leadership development, team building activities, and professional growth creates a winning formula to not only retain top leaders, but also to create great leaders.?

Let's explore some Bad Leader scenarios and what to do to drive positivity, connection, engagement, performance, and results to your organization.?

Bad Leader Scenario #1:

The Comfort Zone Leader that only hires former subordinates from previous roles or, worse yet, personal friends, to lead their teams. This bad leader sets nepotism as their priority. They treat 'their people' with biased favoritism, even when the are not the best resource available. The often act as a monarchy in their little world.?

Actions to take:?

Create a meritocracy. According to Merriam-Webster.com, a?meritocracy means a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit.?

Bad Leader Scenario #2:

The Disconnected Leader that delegates everything, yet always seems to take all the credit. This is also known as the Credit Manager. They treat their leadership role as chore. They are completely out of touch with their team, provide no guidance or direction, are poor listeners, and don't provide any feedback of value. They 'lead' from afar and are mostly sequestered in their office, probably playing solitaire. This creates all-time low morale.

Actions to take:

Replace or demote this manager as it's extremely difficult to change these negative behaviors. This manager was likely moved into a leadership role out of business necessity at that time, however, keeping them in a people leadership role will have negative long-term impacts on the future growth and results of the company. Infuse energy, ideas, expertise, and passion into this leadership role by hiring better. Focus on employee engagement programs and establish regular one-on-one meetings to provide each person a voice.?

Bad Leader Scenario #3:

The Micromanagement Leader that is stuck in the 80's, insisting that everybody work from the office, follow SOP to the letter, adhere to all KPI metrics, bark orders, and treat people like replaceable numbers. This person has many insecurities and most likely were prematurely promoted and known no other way to lead. They create a work environment of control, mistrust, and monitor everything. They are the single point of contact for everything as to not be left out (heavy FOMO). This creates an extremely negative work environment where employees spend more time finding loopholes to meet the excessive and unrealistic demands, rather than performing their job. Loss of autonomy, high stress and anxiety, feeling of being undervalued, reduced self-confidence, and decreased creativity and performance all follow in this work environment.

Actions to take:

Create a flexible work schedule, bring autonomy back to the organization, allow work-from-home or hybrid work to be the norm, provide transparent communication, set clear expectations, course correct negative behaviors immediately, build around team dynamics, delegate to the best resources, build trust through actions, and challenge your team to plan and execute. Restore a focus on performance, results, and inclusion. Become open-minded to new ideas and innovation.

Bad Leader Scenario #4:

The Lacking Accountability Leader creates blame-shifting, lack of trust or integrity, reduces team morale, and stifles innovation. People live in fear and avoid taking risks as they know they will become the scapegoat for this leader. They never take responsibility for their words, actions or decisions, and do not hold themselves to the same high standards they impose on their team. This leader is full of excuses, they deflect criticism, are not coachable, and rarely provide feedback.

Actions to take:

Set open communication as the norm to gain powerful and honest assessment of leadership behaviors. Set clear professional goals and performance expectations early for each team member. Establishing semi-annual leadership performance reviews and 360 feedback will enable better awareness around each leaders performance, communication style, and effectiveness. Build an emphasis around ownership and being accountant at every level within your organization. Provide leadership development training opportunities, create a high impact performers (HIP) program and cut down your Blame Tree.?

If the Bad Leader is the Owner or Founder (again, I have tremendous experience here), stop wasting your time and find a new workplace as soon as possible. World-class organizations that have a people-first culture and positive work environment take hiring/promotion and leadership development seriously, as they know the impact that bad leaders can have on their reputation, growth, and success. Stop hiring or promoting bad leaders based upon personal relationships, lazy hiring practices, or poor interviewing processes.?

Consistently perform your due diligence for every hire and every internal promotion. Review their accomplishments and power stories carefully. Utilize behavioral-based interviewing and drill down, especially around negative results or issues shared. Creating an organization that places a premium on all leadership roles and makes it their priority to occupy every people leader role with strong people leaders that provide empathy, appreciation, respect, challenge, opportunity, and results will take you, and your company, to new heights.?

If you demonstrate bad leader qualities, there is still hope. You need to realign your mindset into a performance mindset, learn new skills, become open-minded to accept new ideas, learn to respect others, develop high emotional intelligence, lead by example, use empathy often, practice inclusion, believe in the company vision, live by organizational core values, and build your leadership development skills constantly. Otherwise, there are plenty of individual contributor roles out there. Being a strong leader of people takes focus, practice, and patience. Treat people how they want to be treated, build high-performance work teams, set clear expectations, support your team, listen actively, and, above all, hire and promote the right people.

Mark Krajnik, LSSGB, CPC, (The Culture Coach) is the CEO at Performance Mindset Associates (PMA). Mark is a tenured Talent Strategist, Executive Coach, and experienced people leader, and offers fractional chief people officer services. He is an Executive Talent Leader in recruitment operations, executive search, talent acquisition, L&D, culture coaching, human capital consulting, change management, and talent management. He is very passionate about people, building high-performance teams, creating retention-focused cultures, and career development. He brings a focus on performance, execution, creative problem solving, and goal achievement. Please go to performancemindset.co for more information or send an email to [email protected].