In my work with growth and turnaround situations, I’ve seen five leadership impediments repeatedly show up: pride, abusive behavior, gossip, greed and dysfunction around authority. Any one of them can slow growth. Together, they can turn a promising company into a museum of missed opportunities.
1. Pride
Pride may be the most common growth killer, because it often dresses itself up as confidence. The proud leader stops listening to customers, employees, board members and sometimes reality itself. Pride creates the “not invented here” disease: the belief that the best ideas must come from the leader, the leadership team or the industry’s traditional playbook.
The cure is not humiliation; it is facts, trusted counsel and a clear demonstration of what pride is costing the business. Sometimes the quickest path to humility is showing the leader how much money, growth, talent and customer goodwill are being left on the table.
2. Abusive behavior
Abuse in leadership is not limited to scandalous conduct. It also includes demeaning people, mocking departments, belittling skill sets, disrespecting backgrounds or creating a culture where employees feel controlled rather than led. A leader who casually refers to salespeople as loafers or finance people as “numbers geeks” should not be shocked when silos harden like concrete.
The solution requires direct confrontation, human resources where appropriate and sometimes intervention from a higher authority. Respected managers may also have to make it clear that they will not quietly tolerate behavior that damages the organization.
3. Gossip
Gossip is corporate poison with a smile on its face. Even when the negative report is true, passing it to people who have no responsibility for the matter is destructive. It damages trust, reputations, morale and eventually performance.
One of the strongest cultural moves a leader can make is to refuse to participate. Walk away from backbiting. Redirect complaints to the proper person. Build a “good report” culture where problems are addressed directly, not traded like gossip currency in the hallway.
4. Greed
Greed shows up in unfair compensation, undeserved rewards, self-dealing or squeezing others while the top protects itself. In privately held companies, employees often see this faster than owners think they do. Once people think the leader is taking unfairly, discretionary effort disappears. The company may still function, but it stops surging.
The practical answer is to confront greed in business terms: morale, productivity, retention, customer service and profit. Greed is not only a moral problem; it is an operating drag.
5. Dysfunctions around authority structure
Companies need clear authority, but not tyranny. The five common failures are:
- Lack of clear authority, where no one knows who decides.
- Disrespect for the chain of command, where people bypass proper channels or leaders confuse open communication with chaos.
- No safe appeal process, where employees cannot raise legitimate concerns without fear of retaliation.
- Lack of checks and balances, where the leader operates without meaningful board, adviser or customer accountability.
- Refusal to submit to higher authority, where the top leader becomes uncoachable and resists correction.
Healthy authority requires clear roles, open communication, legitimate appeals and real accountability. Even the top leader needs a board, adviser, customer discipline or some structure that says, “No one here is above correction.”
The deeper solution beneath all five dysfunctions is humility. Humility is not weakness; it is the operating system of learning, the sire of all virtue. The humble leader asks for blind spots, listens without excuse-making and acts on what is heard. That practice alone can transform trust, innovation and growth.
As I wrote in my books: “Turning around a company is first about turning around the people, and the first turnaround is you.”
Mark Faust (513-621-8000, mark@em1990.com) works with owners, CEOs and sales managers who want to grow their businesses. You can schedule a free profit improvement session with Mark by visiting calendly.com/markfaust. Read more ideas from him here.
