Does your team suffer from poor leadership? Not everyone is cut out to lead a team, but that doesn't stop them for putting in for the promotion and being awarded the position. Although the majority of leadership inadequacies can be remedied through coaching, mentoring or training, there are four traits of poor that cannot be fixed expediently, and perhaps cannot be fixed at all.
The stupidly incompetent leader is a person who appears to be incapable of learning. They repeat the same mistakes again and again despite feedback, misremember facts, draw the wrong conclusions more often than not, and generally appear incapable of using good judgment. These people attain leadership positions because of who they know, not what they know. They need to be moved out of the organization, or at least in to a position where the damage they do can be controlled.
The selfish leader puts themselves and their own needs ahead of those of the team. This leader has no real affiliation with the team and no loyalty to it. They will not take personal risks for the team, and seek to aggrandize themselves, often by taking personal credit for the team's accomplishments. This ego maniac is the antithesis of a leader and needs to leave the organization go into private practice.
Leaders who fail to value diversity probably will not be effective in leading today's work teams. Those who do not see the benefit of a myriad of differing perspectives, ideas, norms and traditions in inspiring team creativity will not be effective in harnessing and utilizing team talent. Leaders who cling to their own cultural biases and fail to see the merit in other approaches do not belong in leadership positions.
Toxic leaders who enjoy demeaning and demoralizing others are mean spirited people who should not be put in charge of others. They go beyond devaluing others to actually bullying them. These sociopath control freaks need to take jobs as lion tamers as so they can crack the whip in a match-up between equally vicious carnivores.
If one of the aforementioned types of people is leading your team, work hard to shed light on the problems they create and hopefully their reign as a leader will be cut short.
