A good leader is to understand it’s organization differences within as well as compared to other competitors or business models adopted outside. Management is the collecting and organizing of data and with actions plan, leadership is creating the desired action and end results in favour of the company’s mission.
Leaders fail because no matter how outstanding their strategic thinking, which is typically generated at the top of an organization, it is only as good as it is understood and executed at every level in the organization. But such will be hard to follow.
Some frequent causes for derailment of the company's actions by their leaders are :
- The “I’m the boss, so it will get done” fallacy. When the job title gets in the way of reality, failure is sure to result. The label on your business card – CEO, president, VP, director, senior manager, whatever – clouds a lot of perceptions. The best business strategy balances aspiration with perspiration. The humbling part of being a leader is that your fate lies in the hands of least amongst your team. The responsibility of a leader is to enlarge the organizational dialog to include aims and expected targets.
The most important question for a leader isn’t, “What I want to achieve?” but more of “What can we get end of the day working together?”
- It’s not about execution, it’s about focus. Without focus, any organization will definitely fail to achieve its goals. Generally people do what they are rewarded to do. When there is confusion, the essential connection between the strategic plan and the work that gets done is critically compromised.
One way to gain focus is to go into problem area or the crisis. Some organizations operate crisis management as a way to get things done. You must teach your organizations where it is OK to fail: What tasks are imperative to the health of the company and which ones – though important – can be compromised? Failure is not traditionally taught in leadership courses. “Failure is not an option,” is a quip that has become part of our cultural lexicon. Not knowing where you are willing to fail means not being serious about success. Leaders must uncompromisingly communicate the critical path to success and do so at the individual level.
The most important question to ask about execution: “What is your focus?”
- Not knowing how to define success. This seems odd given that the strategic plan is all about the right path to success, but when success has multiple definitions there is neither a cohesive nor a unifying message for the organization. They can provide conflicting evidence of success, be internally focused to a fault, and provide information on past performance rather than an accurate prediction of future outcomes.
- Leaders by nature are motivated and self-driven. These are great qualities but failure occurs when a leader looses site of what is important. If a leader is trying to manage all aspects of the business and lead at the same time, they are sure to get side tracked from the long term goals.
- Poor Self Management. While leadership is great, it can be tiring, draining and exhausting. Most people will not pick up on signs of exhaustion in a leader. As a leader, it is vital that you take care of yourself emotionally, physically, psychologically and spiritually.
- Driven by fear of failure. Being driven is a quality every leader needs, but what drives you is what is important. If the desire to succeed is what is driving you, then you will willingly take risks. But when fear of failure is the driving force, it makes risk taking so much more difficult.
Other factors which could relate to the failure of leaders :
- Huge pay differentials.
Followers often think that their leaders has huge difference in their salaries compared to themselves. Because more pay means more status, leaders can quickly come to believe they really deserve the status their pay suggests, resulting in their thinking they have all the answers and that they have the right to treat their employees less than fairly.
- Impossible standards for leaders.
Perhaps because of the huge pay and incredible demands, followers expect their leaders to be almost “super”. The leadership literature identifies a whole range of personal qualities thought important for a good leader. These include integrity, persistence, humility, competence, decisiveness and being able to inspire the troops. While a leader may be high on one or two of these, it is very unlikely anyone leader will have the full set.
- Psychology of followership?
The psychology of followership is more important than leadership. What is it that makes us follow someone else? And, more subversively: do we need leaders? For example, some research shows that when people know what they're doing, they resent having leadership imposed on them.
- Alienation.
As a result of the strict hierarchies, huge pay differentials, poor decision-making and feeling powerless to change huge bureaucracies, followers naturally develop feelings of alienation, and alienation kills motivation and productivity, along with any hope of job satisfaction.
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