I’ve been a student of leadership for many years. I’ve sought to understand what makes good leaders good and what makes bad leaders bad. This approach was borne of necessity: I found myself in positions of leadership despite having no previous training, and wanted to become better at it.
My earliest opportunity for leadership was as a volunteer at a church. I was 20, and I tried to provide leadership to teenagers who were in the youth group band. I quickly realized I knew very little about leading others.
I began to look for mentors, and eventually I would seek to learn more about leadership as part of my education. Along the way, I found myself in positions of increasing influence and authority, so my growth as a leader came from both practical experience as well as academic studies.
A great deal of my learning has come from experiencing bad leadership in both the corporate world and the church world, as well as observations about political leaders in America. Leadership is a huge topic with many people making a living off writing books or consulting. I even completed my doctorate with a paper about the abject failure of leadership in a particular faith community. Obviously, the topic is too large to fully explore in a single blog post. However, I have come to the conclusion that there is one specific issue which guarantees bad leadership. I present this in hopes it may be useful to someone who finds him or herself taking on a leadership role with the desire of not being a bad leader.
One important caveat: the absence of this trait doesn’t guarantee one to be a good leader. I’ve known leaders without this trait who were awful leaders for other reasons. If you want to be a good leader, become a student of other leaders, both good and bad. There are different ways to be a good leader and many ways to be a bad leader. Find people with styles you connect with who show healthy results and look for positive aspects you can grow with. Find bad leaders and don’t just demonize them. Figure out what makes him or her a bad leader.
You can start with this one, because all the worst leaders I’ve known had this trait in common: arrogance.
Arrogance is often used to cover up for feelings of insecurity. And an insecure leader cannot allow anyone else to flourish. Frequent criticism, assigning blame, repeated reorganizing, outbursts at meetings, promoting unqualified people, out of control brown-nosing of his or her own boss…these are just a few of the traits that an insecure and arrogant leaders will often embody.
The insecure leader figures that if someone else shows great quality, that person will take their job, so they create an environment meant to poison the potential of others. It guarantees that an organization will decline and fail.
Imagine a farmer who mows down crops before they could bear their food because the farmer was worried people would celebrate the produce instead of him or herself. The farmer screams at the fields, “I’m the farmer, and we’re going to do things MY way!” That farm would obviously be destined to fail. The same is true of any organization. The lifeblood of an organization is to cultivate its people by empowering them. An arrogant, insecure leader will constantly sabotage this.
How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins and Derailed by Tim Irwin both look at real world examples of how arrogant leadership can kill even organizations which seem to be invulnerable.
Here are some ways that anyone who is leading, at any level, can examine themselves and work to avoid becoming arrogant:
Evaluate your insecurity. You may need a therapist to help you. If you are a leader and you’ve never been to a therapist, why? Is it because you’re worried what they would say? Because that would be a flashing red warning light that you’re too insecure to be a leader. How do you gather honest feedback from those you lead? 360 reviews? Annual anonymous surveys? Some of the worst leaders I’ve known did NOTHING to get honest feedback because they didn’t want it or didn’t care.
How often do you apologize? Arrogant, insecure leaders criticize and blame but rarely apologize. Showing weakness or imperfection is anathema to bad leaders. They couldn’t very well hold mistakes over the head of others if they admitted to making their own mistakes. Someone who is easily able to apologize is showing that they are willing to be proved wrong, and therefore inviting honest feedback.
Empower/giving credit. Arrogant leaders will not be generous about giving others credit. They need others to believe that they are irreplaceable. The catch is, if a leader will celebrate the wins of others, the organization will do better overall, and the leader will be benefit from the wins. I once worked at a church where the lead pastor was upset that people liked me more than him, so he got rid of me. The irony was that I was completely loyal, and if he was truly happy for me, the church would likely have grown. Instead, his arrogance killed the culture. The church shrank and he eventually abandoned it.
Team of Rivals. This is a reference the book by Doris Goodwin, who studied how Abraham Lincoln built his cabinet from political rivals. Consider how different this approach is from modern politicians. A glaring example is how Donald Trump attacked anyone who questioned or criticized him as be disloyal. (Trump being FAR from the only politician to behave in such a way, of course; he simply doesn't try to hide it like most others.) I’ve seen this approach become much more common in churches. At another church where I worked, the community started to experience some issues. The “solution” was that the three main leaders held meetings for over a week trying to solve the problems THEY HAD CREATED. They did not invite other voices, and instead started to implement a variety of initiatives which essentially reflected past thinking, and during this time they fired numerous people — myself included — who weren’t willing to be yes men and women. Legitimate questions and properly expressed criticism is a gift. In the movie Air about Nike and Michael Jordan, Phil Knight (he founder of Nike) at one point says, “When you find a wise critic who will point out your faults, follow him as you would a map to a hidden treasure.” Phil Knight had no idea how to gain a share of a basketball shoe game, so he took the risky step of listening to and empowering someone HE DIDN’T AGREE WITH and it revolutionized his company. Arrogant, insecure leaders get rid of anyone with the brains and balls to question them. Good leaders covet wise people who will keep them uncomfortable. (The fact that wisdom has become vanishingly rare in our world today is certainly a challenging aspect of this, but that's a post for a different day.)
As Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.” If you don’t engage with any of the behaviors prescribed above, it would be fair to question whether you should be in leadership. At the very least, you MUST find ways to change your approach. If you are dealing with leaders who are arrogant and insecure, I’d love to tell you to get away from them. But the sad fact is, unhealthy leaders are rampant everywhere. Politics, corporations, churches…you may not be able to avoid them. The best you can do is be faithful with any opportunities to find yourself in.
Work to be humble, look for opportunities to apologize, rejoice in the opportunity to give credit to others, and cherish those who give you hard, but wise and true feedback.
America has become very Nietzschean in that we view humility and corresponding attributes as demonstrating weakness.But he’s wrong. It’s the very opposite. It takes a strong leader to function with healthy relationships and open communication. The weak, cowardly leader uses domination and control.
Being humble and putting others first in a world which celebrates neither quality is challenging, but is is what those of us who follow Jesus are called to do. The good news is we have a promise, that this approach wins in the long run. It’s one of the promises Jesus himself gives us in the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)
So don’t give in and do things the crappy way. Stay strong and do things the better way.