Subtle Behaviors That Disqualify You From Leadership
Leadership readiness is often lost through small behaviors that reveal poor judgment, low trust, or weak organizational awareness.
I’m constantly looking for potential leaders in an organization to uplift and empower. It helps the company, and selfishly it make my job 100x easier to have effective leaders running the show.
I find, however, that while many people want to be leaders, they often disqualify themselves or raise flags at their suitability. These issues are subtle - people often do not realize they are sending the signal, but once the signal is seen clearly, it can be hard to unsee. Leadership requires trust, and many of these behaviors quietly erode that trust before a person ever gets the title.
It’s correctable, but often need someone else to point out.
Mistakes that impact perception
Some people demonstrate a lack of self-awareness that damages perception, even if they are technically competent.
Not knowing how to follow before positioning to lead
Some people focus so much on obtaining leadership authority while they simultaneously failing to effectively follow instructions or align with the organization.
They resist instructions, constantly derail efforts by following their own ideas, causing disruptions. In the same moment as I’m cleaning up their messes, they ask for authority, title, decision-making rights.
Good leaders know how to follow orders.
Being overly compensation-focused
Everyone needs to eat, but some people exude a view of leadership that boils down to “you get paid more”. They forget the other half of that - if a company is paying more, what are you doing more to help the company succeed?
Folks who focus exclusively or primarily on the benefits to themselves unknowingly disqualify themselves.
Compensation is important, and you should be paid fairly for your contributions, but if all you can talk about is your compensation without any idea of what you’re doing to earn it, why would a company ever give you the responsibility of leadership?
Good leaders find leverage.
Demanding authority when you can’t wield influence
People often state “need the title” to get things done. Reality check - if you don’t have the influence, your authority doesn’t matter: people will just leave eventually.
Instead, you need to demonstrate you can be effective without authority. It’s only then when authority is best leveraged - when you don’t need it at all.
Good leaders can be effective without authority.
Expecting a transition to leadership to pull you out of the weeds
Some people gleefully look forward to the day that going to leadership means they don’t have to deal with what they consider the “grunt work”. They expect they can just focus entirely on “big picture” stuff, not realizing that the big picture is comprised of many details that have impacts in sometimes very nuanced ways.
These folks tend to become the most disconnected leaders who can’t do anything without an army of support staff around them.
Good leaders should be able to roll up their sleeves to get the job done.
Not thinking company-first
If I’m looking for leadership, I look for people who make decisions in the best interest of the company. Yet, many people seem to err on the side of making their own lives easier, making locally optimal decisions instead of systemically effective ones.
A leader that makes their lives easier is a leader that will:
tolerate underperformance because they want to preserve the relationship
take shortcuts to make their job easier instead of doing the most effective thing
optimize for looking good instead of owning and fixing problems
In short - effectively someone you wouldn’t want to have in a leadership position.
Good leaders think about the broader outcome.
Mistakes that indicate lack of awareness of organizational dynamics
Not keeping your own boss in the loop
Fun fact - your boss hates surprises.
If something happens if your organization that they find out from someone else, it makes them look like out-of-touch at best and at worst makes the company think the organization they are responsible for is dysfunctional.
If you’re constantly forgetting to loop in your boss, you’re demonstrating unsuitability for leadership by not respecting the extreme coordination required at the leadership level for the organization to be effective, where the stakes are even higher.
If you can’t keep people updated on the small-scale stuff you’re responsible for now, imagine if you forgot to tell the CEO of something important worth tens of millions!
Good leaders keep others in the loop.
Signaling you can’t work with others
If you’re in an organization, chances are you’re working with other people. Other people may irritate you, annoy you, make you want to tear your hair out, but you still have to work with them successfully.
The more and more people you signal that you can’t work with, the less portability there is in personnel decisions and the less opportunity you can get.
I’ve had to make decisions in the past of not pairing two people together because they couldn’t work with each other. It was fine for the company, but removed an opportunity from them both.
At the leadership level - the effect is even more pronounced - I’m not going to promote anyone to the head of a function if they can’t put their ego aside to work effectively with half the org.
Good leaders can swallow their pride and work with anyone.
Putting your foot in your mouth
Some people repeatedly say and make public statements that make my mind boggle at the lack of good judgement.
I’ve had people insult entire functions, question the competency of others, and even highlight their unwillingness to work with the entire company. Worse yet, these remarks are rarely explicit - they’re just poorly phrased or even unintended.
Things like:
“Yeah I guess I can do your job” when provided an opportunity to do something above their scope. Guess who never got another stretch assignment after that?
“We could probably replace CEOs with AIs“ in a channel the CEO participates in regularly.
“This is 101 level stuff” after a public presentation from a function on the work they did.
“What if we got rid of all of the product people” during a brainstorm filled with product people.
Even if it’s all with good intentions, these moments diminish leadership suitability.
What you say matters a lot when you represent the company with every statement and everyone hangs off of every word you write.
Good leaders have tact.
Not having opinions.
Leadership requires setting a direction and then figuring out how to get there. If you have no opinions on direction, and no opinions on how to get there, then why are you a in a leadership role? That’s not leadership, that’s just coordination. It’s much less of a hassle for the organization to get a project manager at that point.
Good leaders do more than just glue.
Always having weak opinions.
Being a leader requires having an opinion and conviction behind it, and defending it.
A lot of people vying for leadership start by sharing their opinions (which is good), but then they do themselves a disservice by being unable or unwilling to defend their opinion.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard an opinion from a report, only to have them back-track and change their mind as soon a I ask a simple questions about it to learn more - almost as if they were waiting for the chance to second-guess themselves.
If your conviction always crumbles like a biscuit at the first sign of opposition or interrogation, other leaders see that and have less faith in your opinions.
When you share an opinion, make a recommendation - you need to stand by it. Have evidence and conviction. You can and should change your mind as you learn context and information, but leadership requires you to be able to talk an idea through its paces without immediately changing your mind.
Good leaders have conviction.
Always having strong opinions.
The other extreme of this is always having strong opinions that aren’t open to challenge, discussion, or change.
The hardest leaders to work with are the leaders that just always have to have their way. Nobody wants to work with them. When you’re part of an executive team (emphasis on the team), you need to be able to work with people who are diametrically opposed to your ideas.
This requires to pick and choose what battles you fight and what areas to push for, all in service of making the company better. If everyone on the executive team does that, then you’re golden as a company. If not, the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Good leaders can compromise.
Creating issues for your boss
We’ve all worked with people who lack tact. These folks throw fuel into fires, act like a “bull in a china shop” in communications and conversations, creating more problems as they try to address other ones.
If your boss has to bat cleanup and damage control for your actions all the time, it’s unlikely you’re going to end up on the leadership track. Some bosses have only a little patience, others have more, but everyone has a point where they will decide you’re not worth the trouble.
Good leaders solve more problems than they create.
Not understand what a promotion is
A promotion is either you performing at the level of your boss and supporting the organization in another vertical, or you replacing a slice of decision-making your boss previously owned that is now being entrusted to you.
The organization is demonstrating it trusts you to make decisions and own it. The organization - including your boss.
You have to realize it’s really difficult for your boss to give up their authority to you to give you an opportunity.
One - they are still accountable for the results, no matter what you do. If you mess up, it’s on them, not you.
Two - they know you’re going to mess up at times and are willing to work to mitigate damage and fallout from your mess-ups. They’re taking on risk and investing in you to hopefully ensure the longer-term success of the company.
It’s much easier for the boss to just remain the authority. When you get promoted, it’s your boss saying “you have demonstrated you can handle the basics of the job and can grow into the areas you need to grow in”.
You don’t get to stop growing - you start the role with training wheels, but there’s an expectation the wheels come off
The work gets harder, not easier - don’t mistake becoming a leader as “I made it”: it’s a heavy responsibility that marks the start, not the end, of the journey.
You don’t get to demand the job without proving you can do it first - you have to have a track record.
Good leaders prove themselves every day.
These aren’t all of the things that make a good leader, but these are common, easily addressable issues that causes people to filter out people for leadership. Awareness is the first step to solving them!