Why do managers derail

But with management derailment, executives might not even be aware they are doing a bad job. When management derailment occurs, a company inevitably loses money and is left with employees who have low morale and who have endured stress from being subjected to having a bad boss, according to research conducted by Hogan Assessment Systems, a business consulting service.

Managers can fail at their position from emotional or business reasons. Some common emotional reasons are insensitivity, arrogance and inflexibility. An inability to handle stress is common to many derailed managers. Most problems are caused by a mixture of these factors. There are three issues that lead to potentially derailing people being appointed. They are simple but important errors selectors regularly make.

We are fairly used to the idea of screening people who volunteer or are required to work with children, highly sensitive information or under conditions where safety is paramount. Traditionally the areas of concern include alcohol and drug abuse, a criminal record, conflicts with authority, misconduct, chronic financial problems and poor and inconsistent performance. A particular interest for psychologists has been how people handle anger and frustration. However, it is rare for chief executives, military or political leaders to experience any select-out process.

The simple box below illustrates the issue. The aim of selection is to accept and select good candidates A while rejecting the bad, less able or less suitable D. But selectors make mistakes. Nearly everyone has made a bad selection decision and lived to regret their error B. Few know about the other common mistake, which is when they reject a candidate who later turns out to be the ideal candidate C.

The traditional selection procedure nearly always starts out with a necessary and sufficient set of abilities, competencies or skills deemed appropriate for the job.

You specify what you are looking for, and then seek evidence of those behaviours. Thus a competency may be team work or creativity and the process is aimed at determining as accurately as possible how much of this trait the person has. If they have enough this is deemed to be a part factor in favour of their successful application. But what of select-out? Most people are selected out because they do not have enough of some skill or competency. It is comparatively rare for selectors to have a set of select-out factors.

These may be things like impulsivity or obsessionality. Some people may argue that not having enough of a quality like integrity or honesty implies the presence of a select-out factor. It is centrally important to look for evidence of things you do not want. Few organisations think like this and fewer actually have select-out processes. The consequences are often that leaders with potential derailing qualities sail through.

Indeed, paradoxically, some of their derailers may actually assist them in the selection process. This is where the Hogan Development Survey comes to the fore because it focuses on dark side, potentially select-out factors. With very few exceptions all human characteristics are normally distributed. It means that extreme normality is non-normality. By definition people at extremes are rare. Nearly all human characteristics are normally distributed; from creativity to conscientiousness.

Even factors thought to be beneficial and healthy can occur at extremes. As a result, they fail to adapt to meet the evolving demands of complex new situations. The derailment dynamics described imply an interplay of situational and individual factors: managers typically possess some individual qualities that put them at risk for derailment, and these are most likely to surface in stressful situations. Situational factors that contribute to possible derailment occur at three levels — organisation, job and person.

Organisational cultures set the context for success and define what qualities are considered strengths or weaknesses. Hence, derailment qualities vary from organisation to organisation, context to context.

In addition, organisations with dysfunctional cultures, those that are intolerant of failure, or which have unbalanced reward structures that focus on outcomes regardless of processes, are more likely to encourage the display of dysfunctional behaviours that are linked to the likelihood of derailment. Furthermore, success at different levels of the organisational hierarchy requires different behaviours, skills and perspectives as job responsibilities shift.

When there is a lack of proper succession management, managers are more likely to find themselves being promoted to jobs for which they are not prepared in terms of experience and competence. In particular, young talents who are fast-tracked may be at higher risk of derailment. Despite assuming positions of formal authority, they may have yet to develop the necessary knowledge, interpersonal and communication skills, emotional maturity, informal relationships and resource networks that would allow them to manage others effectively.

Furthermore, organisations often require managers to deal with transitions, such as a change of role or assignment or a new supervisor. While these challenging transitions contribute to skill-development by building a broader base of experiences, difficulty in managing the demands of a transition has been a strong predictor of derailment.

Derailment implies a misfit between a manager and his job. Hence, those who derail at this level tend to lack these job-critical qualities. Managers who have poor interpersonal skills that prevent them from establishing good working relationships with their supervisors or subordinates are also likely to derail.

Higher up the organisational hierarchy, a successful manager has to develop a greater repertoire of skills in order to respond to the evolving demands of the job, such as developing and promoting a vision, recruiting and retaining talented people and motivating a team.

Managers have to effectively garner support and resources for their initiatives. Those who do not possess the necessary intellectual skills such as strategic thinking and ability to make high quality decisions, and the skills or willingness to adapt will face difficulty coping with the demands of working within a larger sphere of diverse functions, and a fast-paced and dynamic environment.

Managing strong teams and working well with others are key aspects of successful managers. Thus, managers at risk of derailment are those who are unable to build, direct and motivate their team, or are unable to teach and develop their team. Managers lacking the necessary interpersonal skills to build and maintain relationships, resolve conflicts or establish consensus across boundaries may be at risk of derailment as their job responsibilities become ever more complex and dependent on teamwork across boundaries.

Leadership derailment can have a negative ripple effect within a company, so organizations should take steps to confront this issue. Leadership derailment happens when a leader plateaus in their career or is demoted or terminated due to poor performance in a leadership role. Some professionals seem to show great promise as they progress in their careers only to fail unexpectedly when they get promoted.

Unfortunately, leadership derailment examples abound in workplaces across the country. That employee that was a great team player may become an unlikeable and ineffective manager. Or, the executive who has been in the same role for many years may be burnt out and no longer lead with the same enthusiasm they once did.

Research suggests that up to a quarter of executives are at risk of derailment, according to London-based HR magazine. There are ways to prevent and quickly address these issues to help leaders stay on track. Check out our guide : Finding and Managing the Bad Boss.

To understand how to combat this issue, we first need to understand what causes it in the first place. Circumstances, personal attributes and behaviors, and organizational deficiencies can all contribute to instances of leadership derailment. In some cases, circumstances such as times of transition, a heavy workload, or high-stress situations contribute to derailment.