Strategy execution can be thwarted for many reasons, but the leader's personality may also be getting in the way. Here are ways to identify and mitigate these flaws.
Leadership pathologies may adversely affect how strategies are designed and implemented, depending on what traits leaders have. To combat poor strategic choices, Harvard Business Review reported ways in which to recognize and minimize personality flaws.
Overconfident leaders
These types of leaders can overpromise on strategies, neglect long-term thinking and can be over-deterministic. To alleviate these outcomes, these leaders can encourage people from within their team to speak up and challenge normative views as well as invite outside voices in. By creating debate within the team, employees can feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and can soften the leader's chronic certainty.
Impulsive leaders
These leaders are always hooked into the latest trends and crave creating new ventures. They tend to overcommit resources and can exhaust team members. To prevent these situations from occurring, leaders can take the time to develop strategic plans and utilize others from the team to help champion these plans. They can also be especially vigilant of risk factors that accompany new ideas.
Over-controlling leaders
Rigid leaders tend to want to manage themselves and their team to the highest degree, often prescribing every detail. This can push creativity out of the equation, leaving the team feeling silenced and working in a fearful manner. To combat this, leaders can be more transparent with their team to gain more of their trust. They can also take more calculated risks and test out new ideas with colleagues they trust and know.
Insecure leaders
These leaders are consumed with self-doubt, letting it affect their interactions with employees and decision-making. They are preoccupied with a fear of failure, which can prevent them from making fast, strategic decisions. To mitigate this, these leaders can focus on past successes, reframe challenges to opportunities and practice best-case worst-case scenarios to avoid catastrophizing.