How to Spot a Poor Leader

Welcome to Headhunter Secrets, where I’ll share perspectives about the search business. We hope you’ll use our services to execute searches. Nonetheless, I wanted to give you some insights I’ve gained from doing search work since I was 23 years old.

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How to Spot a Poor Leader
The sooner the better

Poor leaders bring down company performance and potential. They can be a cultural and workflow Poor leaders bring down company performance and potential. They can be a cultural and workflow albatross, preventing a company from meeting its objectives. They reduce a company’s capacity to make the quick and productive decisions needed during dynamic change periods like rapid growth, business combinations, a general economic or industry downturn. And they can demoralize entire teams, leading to attrition and hiring challenges.

Warren Buffett was fond of saying of the rising tide that lifts all ships, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

A similar point can be made of leadership: A rising tide lifts all ships, but when the tide goes out, you can see which captains have navigated their ship onto a reef.

Companies don’t go bankrupt by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. They go bankrupt when bad timing converges with a poor captain, a poor leader.

Here are the key signs of a poor leader:

Team signals

• High turnover, especially among top performers who have options.
• Low morale, disengagement, or a “quiet quitting” culture.
• People avoid bringing problems forward. Bad news travels up slowly or not at all.
• The leader’s team looks busy but makes little progress.

Communication failures

• Gives vague or contradictory direction, leaving the team confused about priorities.
• Can’t translate organizational goals into actionable work.
• Delivers feedback only at review time, not also in the moment.
• Takes credit for wins, assigns blame for failures.

Execution problems

• Deadlines are routinely missed or expectations are reset rather than met.
• The team is frequently caught off-guard by things they should have anticipated.
• The team lacks clarity to operate independently, causing projects to stall when the leader is out.
• Micromanages low-stakes tasks while neglecting strategic priorities.

People development

• No one on the team is growing, getting promoted, or being prepared for next roles.
• The leader avoids difficult conversations. Performance problems fester unaddressed.
• Hiring decisions are poor or the leader builds a team of “yes people.”
• Favorites get opportunities, others get overlooked.

Relationship with superiors and/or investors

• Consistently over-promises and under-delivers.
• Shields problems upward rather than surfacing them early.
• Can’t advocate effectively for team resources or priorities.

Personal behavior

• Reactive rather than proactive, always in firefighting mode.
• Mood or standards shift unpredictably.
• Prioritizes own visibility over team’s success.
• Resists feedback or becomes defensive when challenged.

The most reliable leading indicator of poor leadership is a lack of accountability in the face of underperformance. A leader who doesn’t take responsibility for failing to meet objectives and instead blames anyone and anything is a classic sign of poor leadership. So too is constant turnover of a leader’s best people. That is, if the team even has great talent, as poor leaders tend to hire those whom they can control.

When it comes to spotting poor leaders, the sooner the better. It’s a staunch-the-bleeding situation—root them out and, as needed, replace poor hires on their team before the problems they’ve created infect the culture at large and become irreversible. A ship without a highly capable captain can easily get stuck on a reef, even in calm weather.

The most reliable leading indicator of poor leadership is a lack of accountability in the face of underperformance. A leader who doesn’t take responsibility for failing to meet objectives and instead blames anyone and anything is a classic sign of poor leadership. So too is constant turnover of a leader’s best people. That is, if the team even has great talent, as poor leaders tend to hire those whom they can control.

When it comes to spotting poor leaders, the sooner the better. It’s a staunch-the-bleeding situation—root them out and, as needed, replace poor hires on their team before the problems they’ve created infect the culture at large and become irreversible. A ship without a highly capable captain can easily get stuck on a reef, even in calm weather.

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Hope these insights are helpful. 

We at Leyendecker have been doing search work for 40 years. We’ve completed over 100 C-level searches, most for CFOs. Most have been PE portfolio companies, but we’ve also helped owner/managed and publicly-held companies. Our placements have helped their employers go through almost 50 successful liquidity events.  

Keep us in mind when you seek talent that will get you over the goal line. We hope you have a great year!

Doug