Nigel Nicholson examines 5 common reasons why leaders fail: 1) being pathological narcissists, bullies, or psychopaths; 2) being inflexible and failing to adapt to changing times; 3) overreaching and trying to bend the world to their will; 4) being lopsided in their skills without support from co-leaders or teams; and 5) being unlucky and failing to hedge against extreme circumstances outside of their control. The document analyzes each of these reasons for leadership failure and provides examples.

1. Is the lesson from history that leaders succeed
until they fail? Would businesses be better off
leaderless? Or are bad leaders preferable to
no leaders? Nigel Nicholson examines.
5 reasons why leaders fail

2. STOP
First, STOP
Equating leaders with leadership.
Leadership is an evolved way of serving
the needs of the group. Among wolves,
the alpha helps the pack to work
coherently and function. It’s the same
for humans.
Thinking leadership’s fixed.
It is adaptive. Effectiveness involves
being the right person, at the right time
and place, doing the right thing.
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3. Are you this?
1. The pathological leader
There’s a tendency to elevate
narcissists, bullies and
psychopaths to lead. But
people like Robert Maxwell,
Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap and
political despots leave a
tattered legacy.
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4. Are you this?
2. The inflexible leader
The world does not stand still and neither
can leaders. Business history is littered with
the wreckage of firms whose leaders failed
to adapt their style and strategy to changing
times, such as Kodak.
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5. Are you this?
3. The overreaching leader
There have been leaders who have tried
to bend the world to their will – stretching
their vision to breaking point. There have
been plenty of these in political history,
from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher.
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6. Are you this?
4. The lopsided leader
It’s OK if leaders have an unbalanced
portfolio of skills, but only if they
have re-balancing co-leaders and
teams. Those without such support
fail to meet critical challenges of the
role, such as Fred Goodwin of RBS
(all operations and no strategy).
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7. Are you this?
5. The unlucky leader
Leaders have to ride their
luck. The financial crisis
destroyed many firms, but
good leaders hedge against
extreme circumstances.
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8. Are you this?
What type of leader are you?
We tend to hear much more
about failure than success.
But we should not forget
that so much goes right
in business and society
because of good leaders.
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9. Are you this?
Nigel Nicholson is a Professor of Organisational
Behaviour at London Business School and the
author of The ‘I’ of Leadership: Strategies for
seeing, being and doing (Jossey-Bass, 2013).
For more insights, read the full London Business
School Review blog post.
5 reasons why leaders fail
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