Summary: A good leader is someone who inspires, motivates, and guides others through effective communication, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence. However, even successful leaders can falter if they fail to adapt or fall into common leadership traps. Leadership plays a crucial role in the success of any organization, and even small missteps can significantly impact outcomes. Ten common reasons for leadership derailment include procrastination (stalling), where delays in decision-making can hinder progress. Leaders who centralize control and avoid team input (command and control style) risk stifling innovation and motivation. An authoritarian “bull in a gate” approach, where leaders force decisions without feedback, can cause team disengagement. Leaders focused too heavily on doing (doer style) may neglect strategic growth. Avoiding conflict can also weaken leadership, as unresolved issues compound over time and reduce effectiveness. Fence-sitting leaders who avoid taking a clear stance often create confusion, while micromanagers undermine team trust and autonomy, slowing progress. Poor presentation and communication skills can also erode a leader’s credibility and prevent alignment around goals. Leaders who cling to past methods instead of adapting to change risk becoming obsolete. Finally, those who shift blame (passing the buck) damage team morale and accountability, as true leadership requires owning both success and failure. Ultimately, leadership requires ongoing self-awareness, adaptability, and a willingness to empower others. By avoiding these ten pitfalls, leaders can maintain influence and drive sustainable growth.
What Is good leader
The word leader is synonymous with Ability of person to inspiring , guiding, and motivating people who also having ability to influence other and influence other to follow him by his virtue of having good communication, seasoned, behavior , empowering individual
Success of any organization depend how effective leader and even minor decision, action may be reason for failure of organization ,country or any project or mission
A Leader should have capacity to change ordinary to extra ordinary , cash strap company in cash enrich company , demotivated in to motivated team, loss making organization in profit making organization ,this can be possible only when leader can think in advance with vision by working with determination, innovation .empathy .
A Successful leader should have courage to bold, firm determination , should have daring to have say agree for disagree ,committed ,decisiveness ,resilience ,owing responsibility ,honesty .
Leader should not involve in all activity , micro management , providing step by step to subordinate for performing there Job , he should not involve to over management of operation related matter ,he has to simply things and procedure, focus on strategic issue
Reason for derailment of leader
Leader should not dwell always on past success, he has to adopt new ideas , though , process according to new role .
If leader lack interpersonal skill, intimidating in there leadership style ,doing arrogant behavior, not relying on team and motivating team even good leader may became fail
Following are the main reason for derailment of leader
1 Staller :
This is negative and effective leader quality ,if leader delay in making decision, delay in doing work or procrastination , not taking prompt action people will observed him as avoiding taking responsibility , hindering progress and performance of the organization and lack of decisiveness leaderhip quality . This will result team dissatisfaction, loss of faith and influence on people and consequently damaging reputation .
2 Command and control :
When leader is not having trust on people and want keep position and power centralized with him instead of inspiring and development of people this create dissatisfaction among team.
If leader is following style of command and control ,this style will devalued individual creativity and motivation .
This style will negative impact on leader as people as involvement of employee will be less, delay in decision making , too much monitoring may demotivate team as there is lack if innovation action
3 Bull in gate approach :
When leader make decision without seeking input from team, put there agenda forcefully without considering viewpoint of other this approach will result team member will feel disrespected, undervalued and demotivated.
This is authoritarian approach which may result in high turnover of employees, reducing creativity of employees and lack of collaboration .
4 Doer style of leaders:
A doer style of lead spend more time on execution , doer style leader focus more on work in hand instead of looking forward future and team a whole
A leader is at top position in the organization his prime roll is to be think and make strategically keep team and organization growing and develop and improving and visualization and planning for adaptive for changes, thinking for where team require improvement and better system and process.
Leader should have one to one meeting with people ,provide feedback to team member and tackle poor performance of people .
5 Conflict averse :
Leader who have characteristic to avoid disagreement and disharmony ,this type of leader fears making other unhappy and upset , they withdraw them self with confrontation situation.
This is also one of failure for leader as this approach missed the opportunity for personal and organization growth and problem solving .
This style of leadership make delay in decision ,penalizes higher achievers.
Conflict aversion may more create more conflict than would happen if issue would address at first place.
6 Fence-sitting style :
Leader has to quick in decision making but fence-sitting style of leader is unable to chose between two opposite view point resulting lack of decisive leadership.
This style leader avoid clear expression and opinion, this lead ambiguity and confusion among team members, they make procrastination in decision making hoping issue will automatically ,they keep a neutral stance , they are no having clear direction and vision for team.
7 Micro manager :
This style of leader are paradox of managing others and driving result .
Micromanager leaders are views negative , if a leader is involve in micromanagement this means he is doing work of team memebers,
When leader micromanage there team ,team member feel demotivated as people think that leader is not having trust on there capability .
Nowdays people want freedom , involvement in decision making, sens of responsibility and part of management .
This approach of leadership hinder growth of business and harmful for both
Employees and manager .Micromanagement also kill trust of employees
8 Executive presentation:
As a leader the way you communicate with other and present yourself is most important . Your behavior and communication connect with team member and create foundation for trust .
This is crucial skill for leader to inspire confidence and derive productivity in the corporate word.
Leader those who are not able to present effectively there vision and direction to team members ,present there ideas in stricture way and provide with clarity direction to there staff and team members for achieving common goal will not known as effective leader
Effective presentation also require for building credibility and trust ,convincing and driving change management .
If leader can present there thought and ideas with clarity and open doors for new opportunity and growth of organization and vice versa.
9 clinging to past:
A leader has to mindful of there past experience but should focus on present and future, He should learn from his success and failure of past experience and refine his approach.
If a leader rely more on past method , this can prevent him from adaptability to evolve new idea and method for evolving changes.
If a leader cling on past may miss opportunity to improve performance require to compete in this throat cut competition era.
A successful leader should continue embrace change, cultivate mindset of adaptability , delegate and empower .
A leader should also continue take feedback from him team and open for constructive feedback
10 passing of Buck:
There is well known idiom : if you blame your predecessor ,be ready for well coming your successor When a leader play blame game and disown responsibility ,blame subordinate, system, external factor , in cimoontrast successful leader own there mistake , analysize root cause, discussed with team to improvement and not to happen and avoiding reason for failure by taking best effort by providing necessary guidance and training .
Great leader always give credit to other team member when things go well and take blame when thing do not go well.
Great leader knows that great power comes with great responsibility .
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