Out of touch with the real day to day organizational issues that plague the organization
Poor leaders, in my experience, are notorious for becoming alien to the real world, daily issues the line organizations grapple with. To be fair, this is an insidious dilemma that gets worse with each ascending level of management and winds up severely handicapping the leader’s insight into the line level challenges and their ability in diagnosing the underlying causes.
Instead of having the pulse of what everyday life is like running the company, leadership only sees the forward facing side of the coin where mundane, albeit persistent, problems stagnate growth. They view the organization through rose colored glasses, overlooking the issues, resource constraints and the employee turnover that keep their agenda from being achieved.
In turn, this understandably causes the line level workforce to feel disenfranchised and isolated in their struggle.
Incognizant of the gaps between the corporate vision and true organizational capabilities
In addition, the detachment between the circle of senior leadership versus the condition of every day employees results in a severe blind spot between the vision of where the company should be headed to against where it can actually get to, given its core capabilities. The vision that is cast becomes a mere aspiration without the legs and foundation the company needs to travel the gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s vision. It’s this phenomenon that causes leadership to have a false sense of expectations that is then used to discipline line organizations for not being aggressive in achieving goals that were not feasible to begin with.
Employees are already largely aware of what needs to be done and how to do it
In almost every client organization we have consulted, line employees were aware for and equipped to their job, without the need for leadership’s involvement. Unfortunately, as a rule of thumb leadership believes that employees need their daily intercession to ensure the job is done right and on time. All this leads to are the pitfalls of micromanagement, ultimately leading to apathy and the proliferation of disillusionment.
Accountability is Internally accepted, not downward directed
One of the false mantras of contemporary leadership philosophy is that a significant reason leadership exist is to make everyone below them in the organizational hierarchy, accountable for doing what they already know needs to be done. In reality, accountability and the commitment to do one’s job well can only be made internally. Accountability is a choice, not a mandate, despite how badly leadership believes it can be cajoled and pushed down to the employee.
Rarely accomplish anything that needs to be done
Given what leadership does not do, or often does poorly, there really is not much they do to contribute to the job the company needs to accomplish. Instead, they float around the halls of the organization, or the ether of Zoom conference rooms, interjecting themselves between the line worker and the job they know that needs to be done and the manner in which to do it.
Questions to consider
Are you in the practice of regularly studying the pulse of the organization?
Do you see yourself as the medium employees get work done or the catalyst for it?
Do you know what work you are responsible for accomplishing to help propel the company into new levels of growth and value?