Derailing Leaders are like a train wreck waiting to happen

Derailing Leaders are like a train wreck waiting to happen

1. A Train Wreck On Its Way: How
Leadership Can Go Wrong
And, are we complicit in the ways we
select leaders?
Andrew Graham
School of Policy Studies
Queens University

2. Bad Leadership is Expensive
•Job just doesn’t get done
•Looking for scapegoats
•Team dissolves
•People leave
•Waiting game strategies start
•Lunging from crisis to crisis
•It get’s personal
•Wrong and even illegal behaviours become norm

3. Subordinates described bad leadership as:
•Persistent people
problems
•Poor emotional
control
•Over-controlling
•Poor task
performance
•Poor organisation,
planning and
communication
•Rumour-
mongering and
inappropriate use
of information
•Procrastination
•Failure to consider
human needs
•Failure to develop
talent

4. Ineffective and Unethical Leadership Traits
Incompetent
Rigid
Intemperate
Callous
Corrupt
Insular
•My Gang
•We/They
Bullying in your
face or on
Twitter
Eggshell Culture
– erratic and
unpredictable
Overwork or
Underwork

5. It Starts to Look Like Someone We all Know

6. •Arrogance: They’re right and everybody is wrong.
•Melodrama: They want to be the centre of attention.
•Volatility: Their mood swings create business swings.
•Excessive caution: They can’t make important decisions.
•Habitual distrust: They focus on the negatives all the time.
•Aloofness: They disengage and disconnect with staff.
•Eccentricity: They think it’s fun to be different just
for the sake of it.
•Passive resistance: Their silence is misinterpreted as
agreement.
•Perfectionism: They seem to get the little things right
even if the big
things go wrong.
•Eagerness to please: The stress being popular
matters most.
Typical Personality Problems

7. Key Derailment Behaviours
Not strategic
Doesn’t delegate,
include, empower
Bad relationships
Not self-aware

8. The Toxic Triangle
Bad Leadership
Bad
Followership
Conducive
Environment

9. Organizations Select For the Wrong
Traits
•High fliers syndrome
•Optimism bias
•Tendency to overlook and forgive flaws – almost like
courtship
•Confusing in job performance with future growth and
performance
•No ground testing
•Fast-tracking without strategic support

10. 30
Derailment Patterns
Of High Potentials
Demonstrated
Strength
•Intelligent
•Technically superb
•Impressive results
•Action-oriented
•Strong track record
Both
Move rapidly
within
narrow
channels
Focus on
immediate
objectives
Forgive
flaws if
results
produced
Performance Decline & Unforgiving Culture
DERAILMENT
Organisational
Complicity
Derailing
Flaw
Bogged down in
thought.
Mired in process
at expense of
action
Unable to develop
effective relationships
Ineffective response to
change or feedback
Success led to
arrogance
Overwhelmed by
complexity
Lack of strategic
perspective

11. The Dark Side of Competencies
•Not a risk taker, indecisive, lacks independent judgement
•Can’t control costs, can’t work with limits
•Reckless, dictatorial
•Analysis paralysis, afraid to act, processy
•Holier than thou, rigid, fixated on rules
•Unrealistic, impractical, wastes time
•Misses specific indicators, unaware of how things work
•Soft, avoids confrontation, too easy on performance
Team Player
Client-Focused
Bias for Action
Analytic
Integrity
Innovative
Global Vision
People Oriented