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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Factors that Lead to Leadership Failure

Both HR professionals and CEOs agree that Failing to Build Relationships and a Team Environment and A Mismatch with Corporate Culture are the factors most likely to lead to a leader’s derailment.

Understanding the factors that most commonly influence leadership failure will inform your talent strategy and ensure leadership development is on target to deliver needed results. Business growth potential depends on the quality of talent, as does competitive differentiation.
Leadership turnover for non-performance or other leadership dissatisfaction issues continues to be higher than planned, especially since choices regarding senior leadership could be considered some of the most important corporate decisions a company can make.

To gain some insight as to possible sources of succession risk factors, we conducted research in partnership with Chally Group to identify the factors believed to contribute most to the failure of senior leaders in their organizations. The top 10 were as follows:

  1. Fails to Build Relationships and a Team Environment
  2. A Mismatch for the Corporate Culture
  3. Failure to Deliver Acceptable Results
  4. Unable to Win Company Support
  5. Lack of Appropriate Training
  6. Egotistical
  7. Lack of Vision
  8. Not Flexible
  9. Poor Management Skills
  10. Poor Communication

The costs associated with failure (at worst) or ineffective executive transitions are high, and lack of adequate support for talent during crucial periods can have long-term negative impacts for both leaders and the organization. This data only hints of what is to come. When considering the evolving workforce and the increasing importance of engagement on organizational transformation, high performance and productivity, the leader’s role becomes the organization’s greatest catalyst for success. Leaders need to be supported to fully understand the impact of their efforts and, in some cases, lack thereof. Leadership behaviors directly influence employee engagement levels.

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