Seven deadly leadership sins - JEFFREY GANDZ

So much is written about what constitutes a good leader.

But what about the bad?

Clearly, a good leader will want to avoid the kinds of behaviour that go with the flip side.

See if you recognize any elements of your leadership, or the leadership of your bosses, in these bad-leader archetypes:
Narcissists

Narcissists are those self-centered leaders who are intolerant of criticism and alienate followers - except for "toadies," who latch on to them and serve as a buffer against people who might challenge or criticize this leader.

Perversely, narcissistic leaders often charm and fascinate boards, shareholders, customers and even journalists.

They may achieve great business results, and not just for the short-term, since those results may secure them considerable support over an extended period of time.

Yet, once they finish their runs, they usually leave little behind in the way of enduring leadership bench strength. They perform for the present but don't build for the future.

And, despite their brilliance, narcissistic leaders often preside over toxic or corrosive cultures that neither sustain results over the long run nor lead to the development of their successors.

Ditherers

Ditherers suffer from acute analysis-paralysis and are unable to make decisions. They continue to commission studies, take matters under advisement, suggest to people that they are leaning one way ... then lean the other. They lack the "edge" associated with decisive leaders.

When they do act, it is frequently without committing the necessary resources or determination to stay the course. They announce "plans" to do things but the plans lack substance, detail or commitment.

These leaders frustrate their followers, who are unable to get straight answers, and they usually fail to perform for shareholders as they fail to grasp opportunities.

Because they rarely make decisions, their mistakes tend to be less dramatic than those of more decisive leaders - theirs are errors of omission rather than commission.

But their lack of decision-making creates and reinforces a culture of indecisiveness in their organizations that saps innovation and performance.

Avoiders

In many ways, avoiders are worse than ditherers because they don't make decisions at all.

They may not even recognize when a decision is needed and back away from the tough calls. They too often believe that no action is actually action taken.

Avoiders can be imbued with excessive optimism, which, in healthy doses, is a good trait for leaders, but dangerous when it overtakes reality.

In their desire to maintain existing organizational cultures, they avoid recognizing, let alone acting on, the fact that circumstances change, and they are unlikely to be able to replicate the strategies that brought them or their predecessors past success.

Many avoiders hide behind aphorisms such as: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." When it does break, they find themselves with inadequate time or resources to do the needed repairs.

Such leaders preside over the demise or near-death experiences of organizations that fail to recognize changing environments or are too slow to adjust to new realities.

Panderers

Panderers have no problems making decisions but, with their desire to please everyone, they often make contradictory commitments that cannot be reconciled. and they end up breaking promises and undermining their own credibility.

They may do this in a conscious effort to build the support and alliances they need to consolidate their power base; they may do it because of a genuine desire to please everyone; or they may do it out of blithe ignorance about the difficulties or resources required to be able to satisfy the competing needs of others.

Whatever the motivation, panderers inevitably fail to deliver on their promises. When everyone to whom promises and commitments have been made seek to exercise their claims, they realize that the leader's commitments were shallow. Often, unable to deal with those who are disappointed, such leaders retreat into corporate "bunkers" and start to lead by e-mail or edicts - which may protect them from claimants but does little to give their organizations the real leadership they need.

Faddists

Faddists also have no problems making decisions. But they adopt every leadership or management fad and fashion with an alarming switch rate.

They latch one minute onto the buzzword presented in a prestigious business magazine and the next onto the packaged solutions of the latest best-selling business book.

As a result, faddists confuse everyone in their organizations. Their underlings greet every new initiative as a time-limited program and with a "this, too, shall pass" attitude.

The evidence of previous initiatives is often seen in the organizational paraphernalia - baseball caps and T-shirts adorned with clever and cute slogans that represent yesterday's great strategic thrusts and testify to many years of seemingly random and unconnected changes of course.

Each successive vision is received not with an air of excitement or challenge but with a roll of the eyes and murmurings of "here we go again" as the organization moves on yet another tangent.

When faddists occupy the most senior roles, they fail to inspire in others the disciplined focus essential to achieve sustainable success.

They exhaust their followers and squander resources on too many initiatives that fail to gain traction.

Tunnellers

Tunnellers are the polar opposites of faddists: They are so focused on a single goal or strategy that they either miss the big picture or fail to respond to changing circumstances. They may have a plan to execute, but, unfortunately, it was written 18 months earlier and has turned stale.

Tunnellers cover their lack of peripheral vision with exhortations "to focus," "to be disciplined," "to stick to the knitting."

While these are sometimes useful maxims, when carried to extreme, they can threaten the agility and nimbleness of an organization and its ability to adapt to rapidly changing environments.

In positions of power, tunnellers often discourage others from creative and divergent thinking, reassessing situations or changing objectives or strategies when change is indicated. All too often they end up doing the wrong things, even if they do them brilliantly.

Tunnellers lead organizations, sometimes at breakneck speed, down the wrong track.

Fantasizers

Optimism and confidence are great qualities in leaders, but only when accompanied with a sense of what is realistic.

Fantasizers lack this perspective. Their strategic dreams overreach reality and they fail to see the impossibility of executing a particular strategy.

They also lack the temperament required to drive initiatives through to completion because they are distracted by thoughts of the next great thing to do.

Fantasizers lead their people into strategies that disappoint, wasting resources on unachievable goals.

Over time, they lose their credibility because people start to think that everything they want to do will be unachievable. They become vacuous visionaries - all dreams, no deliverables.

Jeffrey Gandz is a professor at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business and managing director of program design in Ivey's executive development division.

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Putting yourself on the straight and narrow

Most leaders have at times dithered, pandered, tunnelled or fantasized, not to mention avoided or followed fads and even engaged in narcissistic behaviour. Here are some tips on to avoid such bad leadership behaviour:

Look in the mirror

Heed the great poet Robbie Burns' invocation: "Would hae God the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us." In other words: You need to know how you are perceived.

There are tools to help. For instance, 360-degree surveys, which ask those all around you - from subordinates to peers to bosses - to report on how they see your leadership can offer some insights for self-reflection.

Leaders who take those results to heart can go a step further, sitting down with those who have expressed their opinions to ask about the specifics. You can learn a lot if you can gain the trust of participants and assure them there will be no negative consequences from expressing themselves.

Be honest with yourself

Awareness and analysis of the bad can be used to become a better leader. But you must be willing to own up to yourself about your own blind spots, be motivated to change and put in the hard work necessary to do so.

Change when you need to

While constantly changing your mind seldom results in good leadership, consistency is not always a virtue. It is not a sin to change your mind if the alternative is stubborn adherence to the wrong course. But recognize that every change in leadership direction and priorities carries with it the danger of confusion and the mixing of messages. Change when you need to, not just when you just want to -- and certainly don't wait until you absolutely have to.

Walk the talk

The more that good leadership is described explicitly in an organization, the more those principles, behaviours and values will be audited by followers, and the more inconsistencies between words and actions will be noted and judged as "bad" leadership. Failure to walk the talk is probably the worst rap on leaders today. The solution is not to avoid making commitments to good leadership but, rather, to be aware of the say-do gaps and close them.

Pick your priorities

Even the best executives can pursue only three or four priorities at a time - a tiny fraction of the number that need pursuit and which they would like to pursue. This calls for enormous restraint. Saying "no" to things that you want to do is much more difficult than saying "yes." Yet it is essential if leadership is to be seen as focused, committed and disciplined.

Look outside yourself

Organization-wide surveys can help reveal whether and how poor leadership has seeped into your organization's DNA. When it has, you can try some remedies, such as:

Establish a clear leadership profile that describes both the behaviour and values to be expected from leaders.

Design and implement programs to ensure the profile is understood by those in leadership roles.

Make decisions on promotion that take this profile into account.

When leadership behaviour is inconsistent with what your organization needs, remove transgressors from leadership roles.