A study uncovered that 57% of the participants have left a company in the past due to bad leadership. Another 32% is thinking about leaving the company also because of their leaders.
Almost 9 out of 10 people are not happy with their boss, according to this study.

I’d say it’s obvious that people are leaving companies way faster than twenty or thirty years ago. Even though nowadays more opportunities on the market are a factor, I believe poor leadership also plays a huge role.

Impact of bad leadership can lead to:
-Quiet quitting
-Employee burnout
-Employees quitting
-Bad work environment
-Low productivity
-Bad results

What’s the common mistake?

Many people who are good at their job get promoted to a management position without any training.

We assume that just because someone is great at sales they’ll also be a great sales director. This is a huge mistake.
Just because you’re great at your job doesn’t mean that you’ll be great at leading the people that are doing the job.

Being a great leader is about having interpersonal skills and having an understanding of human psychology.

The big problem I’ve seen many times is that once employees get promoted into leadership roles they think that their job is to tell everyone what to do and how to behave. That is definitely not leadership.

In my opinion leadership can be taught if you have the character for it.
We can’t expect people to know how to lead if we don’t teach them how to do it.

There are four things that almost all bad leaders have in common.
I bet if you had a terrible boss once, one of those four things occurred.

Leadership mistakes

1. Micromanaging

2. Poor communication

3. No accountability

4. Poor interpersonal skills

Micromanaging:
Micromanaging means that you’re trying to control every step and every little detail. If you’re a micromanager you are a control freak who tries to not lose control of anything.

It will lead to discouraged employees who won’t feel appreciated and lose creativity.
This behavior is not only a sign that you don’t trust your team, it’s also very time consuming. Time that you could spend with more important and productive projects.

Poor communication:
Your job as a leader should always be to build a great team spirit where everyone trusts each other.
When it comes to communication there are two major things:

Poor communication to your team
If you keep your team in the dark all the time they will feel like puppets. It’s never a bad idea to give insights on why you do what you do.

Different communication between team members
The worst feeling for an employee is having less information than the rest of the team. It automatically makes them feel like you don’t trust them and that is a possible source for fights and distrust in between the team itself.

No accountability:
Managers who are not accountable for mistakes that happened will lose the trust of their team very quickly. Employees may lose trust in their leaders and most likely question their motives. A lack of accountability can also lead to resentment within the team and undermine the basis for effective collaboration.

You’ll not only lose the trust of your team, people will also be afraid of being creative in the future. When leaders don’t take responsibility for their actions or the mistakes of their team employees will wonder why they have a leader in the first place.

Poor interpersonal skills:
When it comes to leading a team it’s all about understanding human psychology. Being a leader means that you have to deal with many different personalities.
Each of your employees has different qualities, weakness, insecurities and different motivations.
It’s crucial to know how to read them and to have an understanding on how to deal with everyone on a personal level. Not everybody is the same and it is not possible to use the same approach for everyone.

Bad leaders see only their own perspective.

In conclusion

Just because you’re good at your job doesn’t mean that you will make a good leader.
Leadership requires interpersonal skills and the right character traits.
In my opinion we should focus more on choosing the ones with the right character traits than promoting people who are simply great at their job.
Leadership can be learned and investing in training future leaders is by far the most important thing a company can do. Not only will it improve the work environment, it will also secure good talent to stay at your company for a long time. I can guarantee that everybody wants to work under a great leader and be part of a team where the work environment is great.

Even though training is crucial and gets neglected by most companies, I still believe that not everybody can be a leader or should be a leader.
It’s about great personal sacrifice and not everyone is ready for that.

Thank you for reading.