Why leaders fail (and how it Impacts the org)
Being COO of a tech company was one of the hardest and best things I’ve ever done. It was an incredible learning experience. As I reflected on that journey, I had a feeling there was more we can do to help technology executives transition into leadership more easily, making them effective from day one. This feeling drove me to talk with others about their experiences. I asked broad questions about their biggest challenges, what they think about, and their transition to being an executive. You can read more background about this project and who I interviewed here.
After interviewing a number of leaders, a few trends began to emerge. What I noticed largely echoed my work over the years as an organizational strategist and executive coach. The anecdotal stories I'd seen started to take more form. In this article, I'll talk about the first big trend: a lack of support for new executives.
Photo by Matt Ridley on Unsplash
In my interviews, when I got to the question "Did you have any kind of on-boarding for your role?" executives often chuckled. Then they grew more reflective. Not one had on-boarding for their role. Being a leader was more challenging than they thought. They longed to have more support, especially in their early days as an executive. As I spoke with more people, a familiar story began to emerge.
"I feel like I've been thrown into the deep end of the pool."
Their introduction to being an executive at the company was an invite for the executive team meeting showing up on their calendar. They often stumbled through the first few months having 1:1s across the company, listening and observing. They wondered whether they should put out a plan to demonstrate their strategic thinking — and their leadership skills. After a year in the role, many still felt like a beginner without much support: learning how to work with other executives, figuring out how to influence rather than be hands on, balance multiple priorities. and make good decisions when the answers aren’t clear cut.
"As a new executive, I longed for more on-boarding when I came into the role, not just doing a listening tour and then make decisions that made everyone upset."
Lack of Support
The mostly commonly cited challenge for folks in their first or second leadership role was a lack of support. Though it's rarely talked about, it shouldn't be surprising. We expect our leaders to swim or sink. Leaders are expected to be plug and play. The belief that leaders come into the position preformed means they're just about the last group to get focused development while at the same time they're under tremendous pressure.
"Reporting to the CEO can be an exercise in ambiguity. You're supposed to bring leadership to the table in some way other another. The CEO doesn't have time to give you that."
It’s true that CEO’s are overwhelmed, and need their leaders to be effective from the get. Still, the lack of support for new executives can't be underestimated. Becoming an executive is a completely new role, unlike any other they've ever held. New executives often underestimate how challenging it will be to navigate a rapidly changing organization, build trust and work well on all levels, especially with other executives, and how to have confidence in your decisions when there aren’t always clear choices . Executives who come into a new company are also challenged with learning a new culture and building up that trust bank.
Common problems new leaders face:
Don't know what's expected of them
Don't understand how to work with other peers at the executive level
Fail to make the leap from managing the work to leading
Lack of influence and trust with the executive team and with staff
Underestimating the perceptions of the power of being an executive
Making decisions with incomplete or imperfect information
Unfamiliar territory with lots of “firsts”
Making the shift from manager to executive is huge. Instead of knowing all pieces of the work and staying on top of "technical" trends, leaders need to go big picture to focus on strategy, influence and selecting the right priorities. In the beginning, many stay in their comfort zone going too far into the work, falling on dictating rather than leading. They don’t yet know the difference between getting things done by control and micromanagement vs accountability and influence. They have to change their focus from intra-team collaboration needed at the management level to inter-department collaboration. These changes require big mental shifts in the way you think about your role and work, and are hard to do without some guidance.
Transitions can be super tricky. We don't talk about transitions enough. Often the messages we hear about transitions — especially “good” ones like those of executives moving into a role with more autonomy and influence is that it's all positive. For many, getting a leadership role was a dream. Once in the role, expectations of the role aren't always clear. Many struggled to make that transition successfully. This was deeply upsetting. Lacking a clear transition plan and support, leaders often fall back onto their old role and patterns. This can make them ineffective and frustrating to work with. Failure can loom for many of these shiny new leaders.
"People fail because they're doing their old job rather than seeing how the new role is different."
The cost of failing leaders
"It's easy to demonize people in this role. Things are more complicated than they seem. Problem solving as an executive is wholly different. It's harder than coding where the problems are much more solvable."
Without support, many new executives flounder, causing stress not just for them but for everyone in the company. When leaders fail, the impact is felt organization-wide: the CEO is taken away from high impact activities, employees are distracted by gossip, loss of trust, increased turnover and lower productivity. As for the last one? It isn't just about increasing profits, being effective can build the confidence of the team. Most of us don't really want the easy job that doesn't require much of us — what we really want is to have mastery and impact in our work. It's what gives work meaning, which is critical for the knowledge workers who inhabit scaling technology companies. Losing a leader can also mean loss of trust in the leadership team, uncertainty, and extra workload for already overwhelmed leaders.
Following the departure of an exec team member, a company can also suffer from PR problems, lose customers, get bad Glassdoor reviews damaging the employer brand, encounter potential legal action, and lose trust in the CEO. This impacts how customers view the company as well as competitors who view this as a weakness to exploit. The hiring process to find a replacement takes time away from building product, shipping new features and sales impacting the growth of the company. While it's often hard to account for all the costs incurred by a failing leader, we know that replacing an ineffective leader can equal 100% of their annual salary or more. A failing executive is bad for everyone in the company. The impact of this cannot be overstated.
It's easy to be hard on executives, especially these days. Some with good reason. Still, they face real challenges and most really are trying to do the right thing. Many told me they became an executive to create a better environment for their folks. That's why I became one too. It's okay to expect things from our leaders. This is what they signed up for. We just need to make sure to offer them support too. Transitions, especially those you've never made before, are much easier with support.
In the next article, I’ll offer suggestions for how to support leaders so less fail out and more are effective right from the beginning.