The Worst Kind of Leader

Leadership is too important to get wrong. From vision and results to culture and growth, leadership is a critical factor in success. Great leaders can ensure their teams succeed, providing priorities, resources, and support with the challenges and problems that might prevent success. Great leaders also cause their teams to grow by insisting each person pursue their full potential. You are lucky if you have worked for a great leader that helped you improve and progress in your role. When you face future decisions, consider leadership as a factor because it has a tremendous impact on your work and life.

There are many kinds of poor leaders, and all of them hold their teams back from growth. One kind of weak leader is the person that wants their teams to like them. This leader will fail because they protect their team from doing the right work in the right way at the right time. By contrast, effective leaders know that their team will appreciate them for raising standards and supporting people as they grow.

While weak leaders focus too much on being liked, another kind of poor leader takes the opposite approach. This leader actively works to prevent their team from succeeding.

The Worst Leader

The worst kind of leader believes they should succeed while members of their team fail. In sales, you might find a sales manager who closes every deal, making certain they can take credit and depriving the salesperson of closing the deal—and growing through experience.

This leader has a set of fears that drive this behavior. The first is that they are inadequate or unprepared to lead others. Their second is that someone will eventually discover that they are a poor leader. The third fear is that someone on their team will outperform them, causing the leader to lose their status. These fears cause the leader to sabotage their team.

While I am not a psychologist, I believe these fears are formed from negative events in the leader’s childhood. A lot of who we become stems from our early experiences.

It’s Sabotage

I have watched these terrible leaders sabotage their salespeople by refusing to share important information and development with them. One leader had a high skill set that his team lacked. To ensure that he would succeed at their expense, he would do the work his team should have been doing. This prevented them from developing the skills they needed to become effective in their roles. A confident leader would have trained, taught, and coached their salespeople to do the work themselves, increasing the effectiveness of the entire team.

Another awful leader complained to the CEO about his team. Every time he had a chance, he would confess his team’s sins, naturally making no mention of his own. The CEO recognized the leader was the problem, firing and replacing him with someone better. Unfortunately, the company lost three people who did good work before they were aware of the poor leader.

The Only Way to Succeed as a Leader

The only way a leader succeeds is by supporting their team and facilitating their success. They invest time and effort to ensure everyone on their team is skilled-up and competent. The more capable everyone is, the more certain the team will succeed, and the better the leader’s results.

The faster and the more completely you help your team to pursue and reach their potential, the less you must worry about as a leader. While your team will come to you for help, these interactions will be infrequent because you have taught your salespeople well.

In workshops, I ask leaders to identify their dominant leadership style. When I ask them what kind of leader they want to be, a large number state they want to be strategic leaders. When your team can’t execute what’s necessary to succeed on a strategic level, it is nearly impossible to be a strategic leader. Strategic leaders understand that they must be able to rely on their team, so they prioritize developing each person’s skills.

The Worst Kind of Leader

The worst kind of leader lacks confidence and fears they are inadequate. These fears prevent their team from succeeding and accelerate the leader’s demise.

Once I heard a CFO answer questions about a giant miss one quarter. This senior leader blamed their team for the miss. I knew this wasn’t the case because several of their salespeople had sent me emails while the leader was setting them up to take the blame. Leaders are always responsible for results. A mature leader would have taken responsibility for the poor performance and addressed whatever they could to make up for lost ground.

If you want to become better at helping your team grow and succeed, begin by recognizing that no one is going to measure your personal results as a leader. Instead, they are going to judge you by your ability to help your team succeed, reach their sales goals and objectives, and increase their performance. Leaders who keep their teams weak will eventually lose their leadership roles.