The Most Common Leadership Weaknesses I’ve Seen Over 25 Years of Business Coaching

If you were to ask most business owners what the one limiting factor is that keeps them from growing and scaling, they will most likely say something about lack of opportunity or lack of qualified sales leads. But for most, that’s actually not true. The one limiting factor to their business growth is often due to the lack of leadership, or the lack of leadership attention.

If your company lacks a good leadership team, it makes it difficult to seize opportunities that come your way and act on them accordingly. In order to grow at the rate you want, you must have a leadership and management team that is a magnitude more skilled and capable than you currently have.

Taking all of this into consideration, what does the lack of leadership — both quantity and quality — currently cost your organization? In other words, if things stayed exactly as they are, what would it cost your company, both in lost opportunities and underperformance from your staff, over the next 36 months?

Once you determine how much you stand to lose, it’s time to focus on where the weak points are in your leadership strategy and work towards improving those areas. Here are some of the most common leadership weaknesses that I have found over the past 25 years of business coaching:

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• You lack a clear vision, goals, and big picture strategy for your company, department, or team.
• Your team doesn’t understand your vision, goals, or strategy. You may have them, but they haven’t been clearly and effectively communicated to your entire team. This causes a lack of coherence and inefficiencies in your business as people and departments work out of phase.
• You have one or more habitual behaviors that undercut your performance as a leader.
• You have a hard time letting go of control. You’ve been burned so many times in the past that you tend to just do things yourself.
• Your company lacks leadership attention. If only you had more leaders, you could seize so many more of the abundant opportunities to grow your business.
• You avoid tough conversations and confrontation. Or you dive into these situations, but you don’t do it tactfully or well.
• Your team has an attitude problem. They know what to do, but for whatever reason (e.g., a bad apple, lack of motivation, etc.) they just don’t perform as they should.
• Your team misperceives you. They interpret your behaviors and communications in negative ways.
• Your team isn’t accountable. They miss deadlines or drop balls. Avoidable mistakes have cost you greatly. You’ve lost customers. You’ve been put in embarrassing situations having to fix things.
• Everyone you manage keeps coming back to you to get your input. At times, it feels like you’re doing your job plus a lot of other people’s jobs.
• Your current managers just haven’t matured yet as leaders. They want to do a good job but lack the skills and experience to be great managers right now.

Do any of these areas resonate with you? Perhaps there is more than one. Take note and start working towards improving in the areas that need work.