“But why does a person become a bad or unpleasant leader?”
This question came back to me from a comment on a previous post of mine, where Riin Kadarik raised the idea.
No one becomes a leader “by accident”. Everyone is a leader for a reason. Whether it’s a need, a desire to prove themselves, a desire to help others, or even a longing to feel valuable, to create change, to improve something, etc. When leadership goes wrong, the reason often goes much deeper than a lack of skills, experience or will. Often, however, it is precisely books and training that try to solve the problem. But this is not enough.
Here, in my experience as a leader of leaders, a trainer of leaders and a mentor of leaders, are the five deep (and mostly subconscious) reasons why leadership fails or leadership behaviour is not quite ‘likeable’:
1. Subconscious need to prove themselves to their parents
Many leaders (especially men) carry a subconscious need to be “worthy of their father”. Or to finally get the recognition and attention from their mother that they didn’t get as a child. Work becomes a personal battleground – not for goals, but for identity.
2. Identification with the role of the leader, or “leader = me”
When identity is completely tied to the job title, criticism, change and loss cannot be tolerated. Then one becomes a leader not for the team but for oneself. Fear from within the leader becomes the leader. And that means control, distrust, micromanagement, becoming a tyrant, and emotional distancing and more.
3. Unresolved internal wounds and shadows
A leader who has not dealt with his emotional traumas, hidden fears and childhood patterns will inevitably project (or transfer) them onto his team. Demands, feelings, unreasonable expectations – these come from a layer that cannot be changed by just talking and training in the right leadership techniques.
4. Attachment to power and position
Many leaders are afraid of losing their “necessity”. When there are no more meetings in their calendar and their team is working independently, there is a fear that “I am not needed”. Instead of rejoicing in freedom, they start creating new dependencies, producing problems, producing “nonsense”.
5. Inadequate contact with myself – not knowing and not caring about who I am as a person
When a leader is not in touch with his/her feelings, needs and values and human virtues, he/she is on autopilot. Unknowingly, he starts to trigger in people patterns that he is not ready to work through.
And this is where “bad leadership” starts. Not from malice. But from pain that is not acknowledged and dared to be seen.
If we want better leadership, we need to start by understanding leaders as people. And that means going deep. Not with a new toolbox or training, but with the courage to ask how I am doing with these 5 things.
Because if a leader can get to grips with his or her different parts and history, we can all live in a better environment.
