What Makes a Leader Bad?
My third wave of thinking about a person's capacity to lead
True Colors
Question: What do the following leaders have in common?
Sam Bankman-Fried
Elizabeth Holmes
Jeffrey Skilling
Bernie Madoff
Answer: at one time, all four were effective leaders.
They were accomplishing things. Growing their business. Experiencing success. Celebrated. Admired.
Sam Bankman-Fried. An effective trader.
Elisabeth Holmes. An effective marketer.
Jeffrey Skilling. An effective financial executive.
Bernie Madoff. An effective salesman.
Then something happened. Like a tree in the fall, they showed their true colors.
Did you know that tree leaves don’t change colors? They reveal their true colors. Trees produce less chlorophyll as the days get shorter in the fall season. As a result, the green in the leaves begins to fade. As the green fades, a tree’s true colors are revealed.
That’s what happened to these leaders. Eventually, it was revealed that each of them was missing something. Something more important than effectiveness.
What is that something? I want to answer that question. However, to answer it, we must first answer another question.
What makes a leader good or bad? This question is broad but one we need to consider. Is it results? Is it personality? Is it skills? What is the difference between a good leader and a bad leader?
My answer to what makes a leader good or bad is shifting. I’m experiencing a “third wave,” if you will.
The First Wave - I believe good leaders are gifted.
The Second Wave - I believe good leaders are skilled.
The Third Wave - I’ll get to it in a moment.
The first wave lasted for about seven years. From 1998 (shortly after graduation from college) until 2005, I thought a good leader was gifted. Good leaders had it. Bad leaders didn’t. I studied leadership during the first wave but ultimately felt like my capacity to be a good leader was limited by something outside my control: my giftedness.
The second wave lasted for about eighteen years. That’s a long time. Around 2005, the second wave started. I believed good leadership was about skill. Good leaders were skilled. Bad leaders were not. The second wave was refreshing because skills, unlike gifts, can be improved with hard work, focus, and determination. This wave helped me improve as a leader and ignited a passion for helping others improve (hence, my current full-time career).
But now, there’s a third wave. It started in the middle of 2023, yet it feels like this is what I’ve been trying to say all along.
An Unfortunate Story
I credit The Arbinger Institute for this third wave. Their book, Leadership and Self-Deception, tells the story of a bad leader. This leader, like the leaders listed above, was effective. He was hitting his numbers, but something was off.
The team didn’t trust this leader. People complained. Turnover increased. This leader wasn’t breaking the law (unlike those listed above), but he was breaking his team.
Senior leadership stepped in. They confronted this leader and sent him to a class to improve his skills. The result? Nothing. After the training, this guy was smarter but not better.
Bad leaders are brutal. Smart, bad leaders are unbearable.
This story messed with me. I train leaders for a living. What if I’m increasing the population of unbearable, smart, bad leaders?
My Third Wave
Skills, alone, will not make someone a good leader. That’s the point of the story above. Skills with effectiveness in the short term, but effective and good are different.
The right skills in the wrong hand can be disastrous. That’s the lesson learned from the story above and from Bankman-Fried, Holmes, Skilling, and Madoff (and probably a few other leaders we’ve all met over the years, right?).
Good is determined by something else. Something deeper. This is where my third wave comes in.
The First Wave - I believe good leaders are gifted.
The Second Wave - I believe good leaders are skilled.
The Third Wave - I believe good leaders have heart.
Heartset, Not Skillset
What makes a leader good isn’t their skillset; it’s their heartset. And by heartset, I mean how they view themselves, others, their circumstances, and their challenges.
Leaders with heart are “inwardly sound and others focused.” Thank you, Tim Spiker, for that idea. There is much more to say here, but I’ll leave it at this for today.
A leader’s heart is eventually revealed. Again, that’s what happened with Bankman-Fried, Holmes, Skilling, and Madoff. Over time, as the sun set earlier in the day and their lives produced less chlorophyll, their true colors were revealed. Only this time, it wasn’t pretty.
Heartset, not skillset, is what makes a good leader. I believe the implications of this are enormous.
This Doesn’t Sound Very Professional
I see one considerable pushback to this idea. “Heartset” doesn’t sound very professional.
Words like heart or character carry moralist undertones. That can make some feel a little uneasy. It sounds like we’re “judging” people. I get that and have two thoughts.
One, I believe we need to call a spade a spade. What often holds a leader back is their heart, not their skills. That’s not subjective; that’s a fact.
Remember the story above. You can send an underperforming leader to “skills” training seminars or buy them time with the best executive coaches, but if their heart does not change, their progress will be limited. Period.
Two, I believe hearts can change. Many are uncomfortable discussing heart and character issues at work because they don’t believe hearts can change. That’s nonsense. Again, this is another topic I’ll have to return to later.
How About a Visual?
Let’s put this all into a tidy four-quadrant framework. Shall we?
Implications
So, what? I have a few half-baked thoughts:
This is the future of leadership. Followers, especially Gen Z, will not follow someone who doesn’t have heart. Gallup’s research has made it clear: bosses are out, coaches are in. What is the difference between a boss and a coach? Heart.
Effective leadership development cannot focus solely on skills. It has to involve heartset. Skills alone are not enough.
This clarifies what we all know to be true: good leaders are also good people.
I want to hear from you. Do you see this to be true in your experience? What are some additional implications of this idea? Hit reply or post a comment. I’ll respond to everything. I promise.
P.S. The number of subscribers to this substack has grown 7% since my last post. To all the new readers, welcome!