Notes from Leadership Coaching
Leaders are encouraged to develop their strengths and sharpen their skills to maximize their effectiveness. Many resources include books, seminars, conferences, and qualified executive coaches. A coach can address your specific needs and customize an approach that perfectly fits your personality, circumstances, and goals.
Most leaders understand that all their beliefs and behaviors are exposed. They put their character on display every day. Employees rightfully attribute the organization’s success or failure to how the top leader leads.
While focusing on strengths is worthwhile and profitable, leaders can’t reach peak effectiveness without looking at their weaknesses. A leader’s prominence in the organization automatically designates their strengths as assets. Alternatively, their weaknesses can be considered liabilities, blocking the organization from reaching its potential.
Although not a fond exercise, some of the most significant personal growth can come from understanding what behavior blocks collective success. The best leaders make the decision to understand their liabilities, many of which they never notice. Turning them around to become assets will be the most valuable undertaking of their professional careers.
The Impact of Leadership Liabilities
Many leaders don’t recognize their liabilities or their detrimental effects on their organization. Every leader has weaknesses of some kind. The wisest are willing to learn about them and undo the damage they cause. After all, if the company struggles, the employees struggle, and this eventually comes full circle to cause the leader to struggle.
Most importantly, leadership liabilities have to do with personality rather than a lack of technical skills or knowledge. Knowledge can be acquired with relative ease. Leaders can also rely on the expertise of people around them to cover their technical skill shortcomings. However, leaders can’t look to others to compensate for their personality shortcomings. Only the leader can address these.
Even when other co-leaders bring effective assets to the organization, an ineffective leader with liabilities can undo them, as leadership experts Robert Anderson and William Adams explain in Scaling Leadership: Building organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most (Wiley, 2019). They succinctly stated that “leaders with liabilities simply get in their own way.”
Some leaders observe disappointing results and reason that they just need to work harder. They press more or put in longer hours to compensate for a perceived deficiency. This is rarely the solution. In fact, with an ineffective style or disruptive personality, working harder can exacerbate the liabilities. More of a bad thing is generally a worse thing.
Leaders who bring character or personality liabilities to their organizations see various debilitating results. Some outcomes are diminished productivity, morale, unity, loyalty, and progress. Ultimately, the organization is unsuccessful, and so is its leader.
Anderson and Adams point to three primary self-centric tendencies that cause leadership liabilities: disliking people, devaluing people, and having emotional deficiencies.
Leaders Who Dislike People
It may seem contradictory, but some leaders don’t like people. Although they technically need others to run a team, they behave in ways that indicate they have no need for them. This is a significant liability and is generally not difficult to spot.
Poor people skills are an indicator. Leaders who don’t treat people well signal their dislike for them. Common signs include not acknowledging others by initiating or returning a greeting and being non-responsive to questions or comments. Adding arrogance or disrespect is a more blatant clue.
A leader’s liability is even more pronounced when they are critical of their employees, criticizing, condemning, or insulting them. An argumentative character adds fuel to the fire, clearly displaying a dislike for people. This cuts people’s spirits and destroys their self-esteem. Morale and unity get crushed, sabotaging productivity and team effectiveness.
Anderson and Adams describe another way leaders display their dislike for people: being a poor team player. Unwilling to engage others, they rather work independently, keeping information to themselves. Withholding support may also be a way of avoiding contact, but it is a liability that handicaps the organization.
Pride plays a role in leaders who always believe they are right. The team’s position is not as important as that of the ego-driven leader who is never wrong. This throws up walls that block teamwork and, thus, success. Employees have no tolerance for this kind of mindset and will express it with their feet.
A lack of follow-up is yet another way leaders reveal their dislike for people. This is often exhibited as a resistance to addressing difficult issues with employees: not wanting to hear their opinions or concerns. Not holding them accountable can be a way to avoid encounters. No one gets corrected, taught, instructed, or challenged. This liability leads to disorganization and disruption. Rules and policies become meaningless, and the company crumbles because of its mismanagement.
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When People are Devalued
A surprising number of workers claim that their supervisors don’t value them and that they are treated like subservient slaves. This is a significant reason why people quit their jobs. As a popular saying goes, people don’t leave companies; they leave their bosses.
Leaders who don’t treat their people well bring serious liability to their organizations. Employees may be driven hard, given unrealistic expectations, buried in work they cannot accomplish, or unforgiven for past mistakes. This signals that their needs are not considered important and that they have little value in the eyes of the leader.
Leaders who treat their people this way give the impression that obedience is the most important factor: they are to do or die, not to question why. Messengers of bad news get shot. There is little understanding or caring about the staff. Only the leader’s needs matter. It sounds harsh, but unfortunately, it is common.
This is a clear demonstration of devaluing people, and it has serious consequences. Above all else, people need to sense value to maintain self-worth, confidence, and positivity to do their work. Devaluing people strips them of these critical aspects while debilitating the productivity and longevity of the staff.
Micromanaging is yet another way leaders devalue their people. It stems from the leader’s belief that no one can match their high standards, so they must be over-guided to get things right. People are not considered competent or trustworthy enough, which devalues and demoralizes them and creates a stinging liability.
Leaders who listen poorly devalue their people by indicating they have nothing important to say and can’t contribute. A leader who is lost in their own thoughts signals that only their thoughts are significant. They live in their own little world, and none of their people are worthy of entering it. As communicator and author Andy Stanley puts it, “Leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing significant to say.” That’s a serious liability.
When Leadership Emotions Take Over
Employees look to their leader to establish safety and trust. Leaders accomplish this in part by being rational, calm, logical, and wise. They don’t get rattled by letting situations get the best of them.
Leaders who portray a solid, steadfast source of guidance and direction earn the trust of their people. The opposite is true for leaders who can’t control their emotions when the pressure hits. Employees question their security when their leader shows they’re not putting the team first.
Research conducted by Anderson and Adams reveals that leadership impatience is a common response to difficulty. Leaders who lack patience in tough situations release frustrations and resentments, showing an intolerance for something not going their way. It can be accompanied by anger and disrespect.
Leaders’ impatience indicates that they believe something is wrong with their people. Even if it’s momentary, this is a damaging mindset. People sense this and respond negatively. Leader impatience can also lead to taking shortcuts to make up for lost time, which has its own potential consequences.
Anger and tirades are more serious behavioral problems, indicating a lack of emotional control. Employees are put on high alert when the leader overreacts to bad news. People sense defeat, and that can lead to depression, high stress, and lower productivity. A leader with little emotional control is a liability to the organization.
Leaders can handicap their company by prioritizing their personal agenda over the company’s. The organization suffers When decisions favor their personal gain rather than team accomplishment. Protecting one’s image or turf can lead to lying, cheating, blame-shifting, or credit-grabbing. It is damaging and is a liability to everyone.
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Minimizing Liabilities
Since the most damaging leadership liabilities involve the inability to work well with their people, leaders benefit best by prioritizing effective relationships. As Anderson and Adams point out, the greatest challenge in minimizing these liabilities is finding an optimal balance between a focus on tasks and relationships.
In essence, the best leaders minimize personality-related liabilities by valuing others before themselves. This is easier said than done. First, it requires an understanding of your liabilities and character. A trusted confidant can offer a different perspective and help you take a deeper look. This may be a close colleague or, better yet, a qualified executive coach who has an impartial mindset.
Listen to those who can honestly counsel you and frankly describe what they see in you. They are helping you; be thankful for it. With this new knowledge, work to undo some of the behavior that threatens the unity within the ranks. Your people are not assets to be used merely to get work done. They are your partners joining together to support your cause and wanting to succeed together. They want you to succeed as well.
Being mindful of this is the best way to develop an appreciation for your people and show them that they are valued. You need to be valued, and so do they. Give yourself a daily mission to add value to them and watch the unity grow. This is the major difference between leaders who overcome liabilities and those who don’t.
If your behavior reflects honesty, authenticity, and transparency, your people will see that you care about them, and much of the damage caused by your liabilities can be reversed. Respect for your people will be returned multi-fold. Engage your people with enthusiasm and encouragement; you’ll be amazed by how they respond. Let go of control and see how well they grow and develop.
Your leadership liabilities depend on your outlook—your attitude. Are you willing to put in the effort to turn things around? Relying on the expertise of a seasoned leadership coach can help you get off to a great start.
Creator of the KASHBOX: Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Habits
Helping You Realize Your Potential
I help people discover their potential, expand and develop the skills and attitudes necessary to achieve a higher degree of personal and professional success and create a plan that enables them to balance the profit motives of their business with the personal motives of their lives.
