7 Reasons Leaders Fail: The Road to Repentance

The seven leadership fails discussed in our article series don’t have to sink the ship—all can be remedied.

Business literature, especially in the high-tech era of startups and large-scale entrepreneurship, is rich with stories of people who failed repeatedly before they succeeded.

Often, these are tales of hard luck, adversity, or markets that weren’t quite ready for innovation and change. But in the case of the best managers, they are also stories of recognizing flaws and working to correct them to become a better leader.

One example is Frederick W. Smith, the founder of Federal Express. After leading his company to huge success by pioneering overnight package delivery, he felt he was a visionary who could do no wrong.

Trusting himself and not his closest advisors, he sank huge amounts of money, resources, and time into Zapmail, an electronic delivery service meant to compete with fax machines.

Unfortunately, Zapmail had technical problems and didn’t attract much interest from business customers; it cost the company two years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Eventually, though, Smith changed his ways—he learned his lesson and started to listen to his colleagues and advisors who told him to focus on perfecting his core product. Today, that product is the FedEx Corporation, and it’s a $70 billion company with Smith still at the helm.

On a smaller scale, Dan Tomal, owner of Tomal Consulting based in Wheaton, IL, tells the story of another leader who learned to change his style for the betterment of the company.

This leader had a very action-oriented, dynamic approach to management, but his team members were more emotionally centered, and his brusque tone and attitude often left them with hurt feelings.

“When confronted, he explained that his style was simply a display of his passion for his leadership role and for getting work done,” Tomal recalls.

“However, his people saw it as being condescending, demanding, and offensive. Once he realized this, by working with an outside coach and talking with his team members, he was able to recognize the situation and correct his leadership style—and regain his team’s confidence.”

Increased associate performance and better company results followed. In this, as in many cases, the problem of the initial failure of leadership was minor compared to the long-term costs of refusing to address that failure.

Source: Blue Book Services, Inc.