Effective leadership is more than just supervising staff, managing volunteers, and accomplishing tasks. Effective Leadership is helping others succeed by encouraging and empowering their team to achieve results toward the vision. Groups of people don’t just succeed, they are developed and led.
Competence is more than talent and charisma as a leader, it’s developing, training, and mentoring. Individuals and teams require tools, information, clarity, and space to move forward. Leadership development is a process for both the leader and the one being led.
[shareable cite=”@terrylamasters”]Competence is more than talent and charisma as a leader, it’s developing, training, and mentoring.[/shareable]Here are 8 characteristics of incompetent leadership:
1/ POOR COMMUNICATION SKILLS.
Communication is one of the primary tools used by a leader and necessary for effective leadership. Poor communicators forget or don’t understand that communication bi-directional. Listening is not a skill for a poor communicator. They have closed feedback loop where others ideas or objections are dismissed. Instead of communicating clearly in person, in writing and when using body language, poor communicators often work in a vacuum. They neglect opportunities to listen to peers, those they would perceive as under them, even when the issue has a significant impact on these very same people. Poor communicators demonstrate negative body language that discourages others from elaborating on their ideas, and rarely if ever, give others their undivided attention. They often write inaccurately and don’t adequately prepare for public speaking, which means that they come across as disorganized and insincere or unconfident.
2/ WEAK LEADERSHIP CAPABILITIES.
Weakness in leadership is not a lack of strength, but a lack of confidence or resolve to have necessary but often difficult conversations. People need vision, empowerment, and often times need to hear the truth in a way that is constructive. People need to be communicated to and leaders must communicate clearly to be effective. Everyone on the team needs to understand their role and what your expectations of them are. All this does is breed insecurity, confusion, and ineffective team members.
Other weak leadership capabilities include not effectively delegating responsibility. This is often due to being insecure themselves and the fail to translate vision into daily activities. This leads to micro-management of activities which hinders growth, effectiveness, and team development.
3/ NOT WILLING TO CHANGE.
Change is both difficult and painful, but effective leaders know how to handle it. Competent leaders embrace change and adjust to new circumstances fluidly keeping calm in changing times, seeking solutions rather than giving up, and stay consistently moving forward. Effective leadership demands to navigate change. Incompetent leaders are either unable or unwilling to adapt to change. This type of unyielding creates panic when unexpected circumstances arise. Even the most minor of adjustments are often avoided or painstakingly done. When a leader is unwilling to change, the culture created is reactive. Reactive cultures can hinder creativity, problems are not learned from, and others are not included in the problem-solving process.
4/ POOR RELATIONSHIP BUILDING SKILLS.
All relationships require work. This is true of personal and professional relationships. Building relationships is a process and take time. Trust and respect don’t come automatically but are strengthened through interpersonal interactions. Good relationship builders understand patience and are willing to invest into others with encouragement over criticism. Leaders who are poor at building relationships will not set culture, don’t understand diversity is a benefit and crucial to success, fail to respect team members involvement, and are usually emotional when times are difficult.
5/ INEFFECTIVE TASK MANAGEMENT.
Effective task managers establish priorities and create margin. Activities that detract or divert attention away from their priorities are stopped. Team members must be given task they can accomplish, and time is wasted when more than one team member works on the same task. This is why it’s important to see the big picture and then be able to delegate breaking down tasks and assigning proper resources. Ineffective leaders don’t ask for help when they need it, procrastinate, and work is rarely satisfying. Blame is passed to others rather than accepted.
6/ LACK RESULTS.
Insufficient results can be a result of many different causes such as funding, lack of resources, or unreal expectations. Some leaders lack the technical knowledge to ensure results. This leader will find plenty of reasons not to make a decision. Fear paralyzes their decision-making process stopping forward movement regardless of the urgency or sensitivity to the team members. Consequences are seen on an individual level. Leaders who lack results or are unable to achieve team successes are not always clear about what they want or need and unable to overcome adversity.
7/ POOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF OTHERS.
Developing others and cultivating leadership is not easy. Just like relationship building, it can be hard work although very rewarding. Not everyone is capable of constructive instruction or feedback. Observation skills are required but not always developed in the leader enough to make note of another person’s habits, including habits that need to change. Commitment is required in being a coach, trainer, or mentor. Developing leadership in others takes much more than just showing up.
Leaders who face a challenge in the development of others don’t generally make learning opportunities available. They may feel threatened by the team members with greater ability than their own. Additionally, they disregard the goals and aspirations of team members, can’t motivate others successfully, and fail to recognize or show appreciation for the efforts of their team.
8/POOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF THEMSELVES.
Leadership requires growth and change. For growth and change to happen, a leader must constantly be learning. Poor leadership is often a result of failure to develop the required skills such as communication, management, planning, developing vision, and discipline. The commitment of a leader to an organization or team must be coupled with a desire to improve themselves, their gifts and talents. Leaders who neglect personal development are not enjoyable to work with, stuck in motion, give up easily, and are negative. Leadership requires knowledge, skill, and a desire to be better. Poor leadership will result in mediocre results, untrained people who are unhappy, insecure leaders, and an organization with a questionable future.
