8 ways to FAIL as a leader
Leadership is hard.
You’re in charge of the vision, the execution and motivating your team, day in and day out. If you don’t have natural leadership qualities, you won’t succeed.
Instead of telling you all the good qualities of a good leader, I’m going to tell you all the things you should do if you want to fail miserably.
Here goes…
#1 Don’t have a vision or goals
Having a vision is for losers that want to succeed.
It’s better to run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off than it is to have a vision of where you are going. Visions only bring teams together to accomplish big things. If that’s what your trying to avoid, definitely skip the vision creation step.
#2 Leave your passion at home
Passion is for romance movies and sissies and is better left outside of work. No one wants to see you excited about working let alone excited about your job. Better to have an attitude or chip on your shoulder so people stay away. Passion is addictive so be careful. Any sign of passion and you may just get a few followers. Yikes!
#3 Procrastinate and don’t make decisions
Although making decisions seems important on the surface, It’s not if you want to be a bad leader. People like to be kept on their toes by those that lead them and keep them guessing. It’s a good way to waste everyone’s time and make people frustrated and besides, people love to have to ask for something 3,4 or even 5 times. Remember no decision is a decision, just not a popular one.
#4 Build a reputation where people don’t want to work with or for you.
If everyone thinks your a jerk, chances are you won’t get bothered by many people let alone have to lead them. This leaves time for surfing the internet and other non work related activities. This one works really well over time. As the knowledge of you being a jerk travels, less and less people will want to interact with you and more people will resist you and even sabotage you. This is one of the best ways to fail in leadership roles. Piss people off and you will succeed at failure very quickly
#5 Hide in the ivory tower
Closed door policies are the best ones for leaders that want to fail. You don’t want all the underlings in your company just walking in to your office talking to you telling you about ideas to save money or make money. The worst leaders hide in their office and only come out to complain about some injustice of some failure that someone else did. The more people see you as an untouchable god, the better.
#6 Command and Control
Command and control leadership has been successful for years in the military. It’s simple, when people don’t do what they are told, you treat them like crap until they comply. The name says it all, Command and Control your team and watch the resentment grow. You will be on your way to failing as a leader before you know it.
#7 Don’t share your knowledge
You worked hard to get to where you are and sharing your knowledge and experience just may make people like you and want you to lead them. Don’t do it. Young people like leadership and want to be mentored but why would you want to do that.
#8 Resist Change
Although change is the only constant in life and in business. You must resist it at every turn. Changes cost money and generally make things better but if you want to fail as a leader, you must no accept change in any way.
There you have it. My 8 ways to fail in a leadership role. Do these things and you will fail very fast. Do the opposite and you will most likely succeed as a leader.
Do you have any great tips on how to fail as a leader? I would love to hear about them. Post a comment below.