The Bad Cost of Leadership | Bosses, Not Leaders: Executive Leadership Coaching in Edmonton
Good Management Is the Exception, Not the Rule
My name is Adam Melnyk, leadership coach and owner of The Momentum Coach. And today I’m going to teach you why there are so many incompetent people in leadership.
The other day I was talking with a friend and they were having a tough time at work. They were talking about how they had an incompetent manager and they were extremely frustrated by it to the point that they were thinking about changing jobs. And in the conversation, I remember thinking to myself, there are incompetent managers everywhere.
For example, I take a look at my career. In my career, I’ve gone through five or six different jobs. Out of those jobs, I’ve had many managers, but only one or two of them have actually been good. That’s shocking, guys.
When I started doing research into the subject, the answer was kind of shocking because I’ve read anything from 80% of all managers shouldn’t be in management. About 50% of employees talk about how they have toxic CEOs or executives. One third of all managers can exhibit toxic traits within the work environment.
Good management is the exception, not the rule. The bar for good management is shockingly low. And today I’m going to teach you a little bit about why incompetent leadership is just all over the place.
I can almost guarantee you have an incompetent manager.
Personal Biases in Leadership Decisions
Why Leaders Promote the Wrong People
To understand that, you need to understand that there are really two things that are happening to create this leadership crisis. The first one is personal biases.
When we look at managers that are already leaders in their field and they’re looking to promote somebody, their personal biases kick into overdrive. For example, I remember working with one woman who was running a pharmacy. She felt that she was unbiased. However, when you looked at her team, all of her team, Asian women, you cannot tell me that her biases were not in play when she was hiring.
Essentially, what was going on was she was hiring people that looked like her. Specifically, she was hiring people from China. Again, if one thing happens, that’s just a write-off. If two things happen, that’s kind of weird. If three things happen, that’s more than just a coincidence. That just doesn’t happen without a bias in the background.
And that was causing a lot of friction within her organization because when she was hiring people, she wasn’t hiring the best of the best. She was hiring based on bias.
But it was more than just that. So, I worked with another manager who had the subconscious belief that the loudest person in the room was obviously the best person to promote into leadership.
That’s not true.
In fact, what I typically see is I see individuals that are incompetent. They start fires within the organization and then they go around and they extinguish said fire and then they shout from the rooftops how amazing that they are. And then leadership looks at them and they say, “Wow, that guy’s leadership potential.”
And that’s not true.
In fact, good leadership is often quiet. There are no fires because the leader stamps it out before it ever becomes a problem.
And the third biggest bias that I see is we love people that we have a personal relationship with. It doesn’t matter if you’re good as a leader. It doesn’t matter if you’re good at the job. It’s just that you like this person.
In fact, I remember this young girl. She was friends with the CEO of a hospital. This young woman was in school to become a nurse. She got her degree and she came out of the hospital and was looking for a job. Well, because she was friends with the CEO of this hospital, the CEO of this hospital hired her as a manager for a unit.
This woman had no experience in nursing, no experience in management. She was friends with the CEO. They had an 80 to 90% staff turnover within one year.
How did this all happen?
Leadership promoted her and hired her based on how they felt, not her actual level.
This is so frustrating. This is why when I work with leaders, I have to have to be quite critical of them. I’ve seen leaders that just because they happen to interact with an employee more often than the other ones, they sit there and they go, I should promote them into management.
That’s not how we do these things, which lead us really into the second thing.
The Wrong Criteria for Leadership
Politics, Technical Skill, and the Leadership Ceiling
We often look for the wrong criteria when we are promoting people.
For example, are they good with politics? Politics is when everything is one way, but everyone’s saying it’s a completely different way. You often hear the economy is great, but then we’re in a recession. That’s politics. Everyone’s saying it’s one way when the reality is another way.
You should never promote somebody into leadership based on how good they are with politics. They’re going to gut the team.
I’ve also seen it when they start looking at technical skills. Your technical skills are really good. So, we’re going to promote you into leadership. And the higher you go into leadership, for example, at an executive level, at a big CEO or corporation, the less important these technical skills become.
The reason why your manager is incompetent is because the people above them are pretty much incompetent and they’re hiring people based on their own personal biases and they’re looking at the wrong criteria, which is a problem for teams promoting to incompetency.
They say sink or swim. Just figure it out. It’s trial by fire and already they’re incompetent.
Training, Coaching, and the Next Level
Why Leadership Development Matters
If by some miracle at this job they happen to do well, they promote them to the next level. But here’s the problem. There’s a ceiling. You can only get so high without any knowledge. You’ll get to a point in your career that you are just incompetent.
So, one of two things is going to happen. You will either move on or you will be demoted.
The reason why there’s so many incompetent leaders is because we are looking at the wrong people because of personal biases or criteria. then we are not providing these people with adequate training.
Which is why I offer a free 4-week coaching session to anybody who wants to try coaching so I can help you progress to the next level of your career.
If you found this video helpful, please give it a like, subscribe, share it with somebody. And if you’re looking again to get to that next level in your career or you’re looking to get into management, please come sit down for a free 4-week coaching session and let’s help get you started on those career goals.
Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video. Cheers.