Why Leaders Fail to Lead

[May 23, 2015] It has been said that America has some of the best business managers in the world but fails at providing the necessary leadership to ensure their future success. Regardless of the truth to this, we do know that many managers and leaders fail to lead when required. Of course, there are obstacles to leadership and some of those are addressed here.

“Eighteenth-century America was noted for its geniuses, nineteenth-century America for its swashbuckling adventurers and entrepreneurs, and early twentieth-century America for its scientists and inventors. Today we celebrate the age of bureaucrats and managers.” – Warren Bennis

One of the biggest mistakes any organization can make is installing leaders who do not have the ability, experience, or courage to succeed. Identifying good leaders and finding those who care about the organizational and employee welfare is difficult. This is important because we depend upon those leaders for support. The bottom line is that leaders must be caring individuals. From that caring attitude comes respect, honesty, and all key leader qualities we have discussed here.

What are the barriers to good leadership? Leaders fail to lead because:

1. They put too much attention on organizational bureaucracy – routine work trumps the long-term view.
2. They become lazy and do not develop or build networks and relationships.
3. They fail to encourage dissention, criticism, and new methods of achieving results.
4. They refuse to adapt to change and create barriers to those who they should enlist to assist them in change.
5. They drift toward being reactive instead of providing a future way ahead.
6. They spend too much time in the office and dealing with internal politics and fail to put energy into understanding their followers.
7. They become selfish, arrogant, and greedy; thinking the organization is really about them.
8. They overemphasize following procedures and processes and doing things right, instead of doing the right thing.
9. They lose the trust of their followers.
10. They fail their followers and neither make them feel important nor take care of them.

The proverbial question is, “where have all the leaders gone?” The answer is that many still here. Senior leaders discuss this issue and will honestly admit that bringing forward real leaders is troublesome because of administrative requirements, certification demands, and over politicalization of the workplace. We may know why leaders fail but the most important question of today however is, “what will happen to America (or any country or organization) without leadership?”

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