Page 175 - The extraordinary leader

152 • The Extraordinary Leader

This means that roughly one third of all leaders possess a weakness.
Whether that weakness rises to the level of fatal flaw depends on how impor-
tant it is in the leader’s current job. (Only two percent of leaders have both
flaws and strengths.)

Finding the Most Common Fatal Flaws

To understand what might cause people to fail, we analyzed results from two
studies that used totally different approaches. In our first study, we collected
360-degree feedback data on more than 450 executives. Three years after that
data was collected, we found that 31 of the executives had seriously derailed
to the point that they were asked to leave the company. We compared the
results of the 31 failed leaders with the remainder of the data set to under-
stand if there were early identifying signals that predicted their lack of
success. Indeed, a clear set of factors emerged.
In the second study, we analyzed the 360-degree feedback data from more
than 11,000 leaders and identified the bottom 10% and the bottom 1% of
those leaders. We then looked for the largest differences between those who
were perceived to be less effective and average leaders and another compari-
son with those at the 90th percentile or higher. Looking at the results of both
studies, we found highly consistent themes. By combining the conclusions
from these two studies, we were able to identify 10 fatal flaws that consistently
contribute to a leader’s failure.

Multiple Flaws

As we have worked with leaders over the years, we have found that while any
single behavior can be fatal, some are more common than others. The pur-
pose of this research was to identify those that were most common and notice-
able. It appears they travel in groups of three or four. One problem usually
creates other problems, causing many of the behaviors to appear to be linked.

Ten Fatal Flaws That Consistently Lead to
Failure in Leadership

1. Not inspiring due to a lack of energy and enthusiasm
The most noticeable difference in leaders that failed was their lack of energy
and enthusiasm. One leader was described as “having the ability to suck all