{"id":7351,"date":"2025-07-31T09:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T07:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/uncategorized\/why-does-a-person-become-a-bad-or-unpleasant-leader\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T09:35:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:35:27","slug":"why-does-a-person-become-a-bad-or-unpleasant-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/governance\/why-does-a-person-become-a-bad-or-unpleasant-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"why does a person become a bad or unpleasant leader?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;But why does a person become a bad or unpleasant leader?&#8221;<br\/><br\/>This question came back to me from a comment on a previous post of mine, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/riin-kadarik-96698527\/\">Riin Kadarik<\/a> raised the idea.<br\/><br\/>No one becomes a leader &#8220;by accident&#8221;. Everyone is a leader for a reason. Whether it&#8217;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.     <br\/><br\/>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 &#8216;likeable&#8217;:<br\/><br\/>1. Subconscious need to prove themselves to their parents<br\/>Many leaders (especially men) carry a subconscious need to be &#8220;worthy of their father&#8221;. Or to finally get the recognition and attention from their mother that they didn&#8217;t get as a child. Work becomes a personal battleground &#8211; not for goals, but for identity.  <br\/><br\/>2. Identification with the role of the leader, or &#8220;leader = me&#8221;<br\/>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.   <br\/><br\/>3. Unresolved internal wounds and shadows<br\/>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 &#8211; these come from a layer that cannot be changed by just talking and training in the right leadership techniques. <br\/><br\/>4. Attachment to power and position<br\/>Many leaders are afraid of losing their &#8220;necessity&#8221;. When there are no more meetings in their calendar and their team is working independently, there is a fear that &#8220;I am not needed&#8221;. Instead of rejoicing in freedom, they start creating new dependencies, producing problems, producing &#8220;nonsense&#8221;.  <br\/><br\/>5. Inadequate contact with myself &#8211; not knowing and not caring about who I am as a person<br\/>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.<br\/>And this is where &#8220;bad leadership&#8221; starts. Not from malice. But from pain that is not acknowledged and dared to be seen.   <br\/><br\/>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.  <br\/><br\/>Because if a leader can get to grips with his or her different parts and history, we can all live in a better environment.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht.jpeg\" alt=\"Governance. Ivar Raav. Nobody wants to be a bad manager, but sometimes it just happens.  \" class=\"wp-image-7333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-300x300.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-768x768.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-650x650.jpeg 650w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-600x600.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ivar-Raav-kes-tahab-olla-halb-juht-100x100.jpeg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;But why does a person become a bad or unpleasant leader?&#8221; 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 &#8220;by accident&#8221;. Everyone is a leader for a reason. Whether it&#8217;s a need, a desire to prove themselves, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7352,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7351\/revisions\/7352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}