Leadership Failure - and How To Avoid It [Guest Articles]

(1) 4 Key Contributors to Leadership Failure

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"4 Key Contributors to Leadership Failure" - By Duncan Brodie

No one sets out to do a bad job as a leader. After all it has probably taken you years of hard work and personal sacrifice to achieve a leadership role. Sadly for many the excitement of achieving a leadership role is often short lived. So what are 4 key contributors to leadership failure that you need to be looking out for?

Contributor 1: Unable to Adapt

Organizations are forever going through change. Think about the organizations that you have worked for over your career to date. How many of them are exactly the same as when you worked there? Being able to adapt to never ending changing circumstances is a key element in a successful leadership career. How do you stack up on this aspect?

Contributor 2: Unwilling to act on feedback

Feedback is often an area that people struggle with. Sure we all love to hear about all the great things we are doing. At the same time fewer of us are as comfortable hearing about what we are not doing so well. If you are serious about leadership you need to be willing to receive and act on feedback positive and not so positive.

Contributor 3: Unable to listen

Listening is a form of communication but unlike writing and speaking it is often an area where people have received no training. Being an effective listener requires you to really focus and pay attention to the points that are being made rather than always preparing the next thing you are going to say.

Contributor 4: Being critical of others

Being critical of others is easy. Yet in truth it rarely achieves anything other than to distance people even further away from you. If you want to succeed as a leader you need to be able to give constructive feedback without alienating others.

Bottom Line - There are no guarantees when it comes to leadership success, yet at the same time there may be some things that you are doing that are setting you up only for leadership failure.

And I invite you to do something positive and take advantage of my free audio e-course at http://www.goalsandachievements.co.uk/

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements (G&A) works with professionals, teams and organizations to develop their management and leadership capability. With 25 years business experience in a range of sectors, he understands first hand the real challenges of managing and leading in the demanding business world.

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(2) Offer New Leaders Swimming Lessons

"Offer New Leaders Swimming Lessons" - By Ray B Williams

Whether a new leader sinks or swims will depend on the support network a company has in place. Replacing senior talent is typically done by a plug-and-play strategy. Recruit a top-executive from another organization, wow employees and stakeholders with media hype and sit back and enjoy the results.

But what happens once the honeymoon is over? Too often the executive doesn't live up the hype and the organization sees little benefit. A transplanted executive often faces a steep learning curve and finds what worked in the old organization or job doesn't necessarily cut it in the new one. The actions of the new executive and the organization take in the first 90 days will largely determine long term success.

The evidence for leadership failure for newly appointed and promoted executives in both the corporate and non-profit sectors is alarming:

• McKinsey found that 40% of corporate offices in 77 companies said they can't pursue business opportunities because they alack the right leadership;

• Harvard Business School reported a 40-60% leadership failure rate of U.S. executives in 2003.

• A U.S. Conference Board report said that only 35^% of employees rated their companies' leadership as good or excellent, down from 50% from 5 years ago.

• A 2005 Corporate Executive Board Recruiting Roundtable survey found 89% of new U.S. executive hires indicated they did not have the optimum level of knowledge and skills to do their job.

The bottom line is that while the cost of leadership recruitment is likely to increase drastically in the new few years due to a bulge in leadership retirements, the cost of leadership failure exceeds the cost of recruitment. The effect of losing a leadership vacuum is severe, but also because it triggers other turnovers and disrupts and weakens client, stakeholder and partner relationships.

Dr. Michael Watkins, from Harvard, writes in his book "The First 90 Days: Critical Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels", that when leaders derail, the problems can be traced to vicious cycles n the first few months. And for every leader that fails outright, there are many others who survive but never realize their potential. Fault dos not lie entirely with the executive. Companies must take responsibility for not providing the right "on boarding" or assimilation initiatives.

Most organizations view on boarding and orientation as the same. They are not.

Orientation programs focus on providing basic information to a newly hired or promoted leader to introduce the person to the business, its history, structure and who's who. These are short-term programs and are mainly geared to middle-level and junior managers, not senior executives. The reality is that senior executives need assimilation even more than lower level employees.

On boarding is a process meant to ensure leaders adapt and become full contributors in the organization faster, better and with fewer problems. It can take up to three years for a new leader to acquire and translate an in-depth understanding of the company. Best practice organizations such as Johnson and Johnson provide a along-term program with multiple sources for support. An evaluation of that company's program showed it had a 1,400 % ROI.

A good on boarding plan would run anywhere from 18 months to 3 years and begin during recruitment. A mentor or coach should be assigned to assist and support the new hire and have structured extensive networking opportunities both internally and externally. As well, an individual plan for growth and performance must be put in place and deliverables are jointly defined for the first 120 days. The new executives should be immediately immersed in a cross-functional project and be given frequent milestone feedback.

Given today's record of leadership failure and the number of failed executives, the most successful organizations are those that use on boarding strategies to build a competitive advantage by increasing leadership retention. They do not approach the entry of a new leader with a "sink or swim" mentality, but with an understanding that champion swimmers need supportive coaches and team members.

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