Why New Leaders Fail and How to Avoid It

Based on a study conducted by CEB Global in 2020, 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months of being promoted. That is almost an unfathomable number. More than half of new leaders fail while they are still in the honeymoon phase. The next part is pretty simple, we all make a rush assessment of the cause and ascertain what should be done about it. One camp would say new leaders fail because they didn’t focus enough on people. Another would guess that they tried to be everyone’s friend and needed to focus more on holding people accountable. The truth of the matter is, the reason new leaders fail is much more nuanced. Therefore, avoiding it is much more complicated.

The top 3 reasons new leaders fail

Don’t be fooled, within these reasons there are a multitude of factors. Each are impacted by the guidance they have from the organization, their leader and mentors, the resources available to them, what is expected of them, and the connection they have with their team. Please watch the YouTube video that highlights the importance of these factors. These layers of complexity over time create the level of success for each new supervisor. Here, let’s dive into how these manifest into failures for the new supervisors.

Misuse of relationships

When you’re promoted, you connect with your new peers. Your network widens and develops into something that is mutually supportive to both sides. However, inexperienced managers typically don’t know how to leverage those relationships appropriately. Often, new supervisors use their peers as a sounding board to vent frustrations, consistently. Peers also take advantage of new managers. They often expect the newbie to take on work acting more like an employee than coworker. Finally, some new supervisors struggle to build strong relationships with their employees.

When you take on extra responsibilities from your peers, spend too much time complaining about challenges, and struggling to relate to your employees, work is extremely difficult. To succeed you must learn to communicate clearly, respectfully, and concisely. Learning to communicate following a proven framework, like what we teach in the Ripple Effect workshop, allows you to make the most of the relationships you’re building. Great communication empowers you to ask for what you want, say no when too much is coming your way, and stay solution focused in the face of frustration. What that really means is you can directly and professionally communicate in even the most anxiety riddled situations.

Working in silos

Right when you’re promoted, you’re excited to show off your skills. You want to prove you were the right hire for the job. The downside is new leaders refusing to ask for help, making decisions off limited information, and failing to see and account for the big picture. New leaders fail because working in a silo, they don’t understand the impact of their choices and changes. You end up creating problems for the very people you need in your network. Will they want to lend a hand down the road if you make their life tough now? Leaders often come to me after a project came to a major head and say, We all sat in the meeting and I said, ‘Does this sound good?’ They ALL said yes. How was I supposed to know?

Pleading ignorance won’t fix a bad first impression.

The problem is, you truly don’t know what you don’t know. Start asking good questions, that go below surface level. Ask how the process will impact their team. Ask what problems they see coming out of a change. Then ask who else should be at the table. Then listen with your ears and your eyes. Studies now show that as much as 93% of communication is not the words. That means that even if they said yes, their body language, tone, speed, and expression will tell you so much more.

One of the favorite parts of The Ripple Effect Workshop is on psych tricks. The hidden gems that influence people even when you’re not speaking. Listening to the nonverbals of others informs how you use yours to influence. I challenge you to start listening that way now. When you join Ripple Effect, share what you’re seeing and how you’ve used it.

Inability to empower

New leaders are often told what to do and how to organize their team and the work of the team. This is typical because the fastest way to teach someone is just to show them and say, ok now you do that too. The problem is that it is fast and not effective. So, the new leader sees what is supposed to happen but not why or the impact. They are then not prepared to share anything other than exactly what to do with their team. This means that the new supervisor is failing because they are being micromanaged and, in turn, micromanaging their teams because they have been taught nothing else.

The more effective way to teach someone is to show them why a solution is needed, what the result needs to be in the end, and how it will impact others. The new leader is then empowered to determine how to get the work from the why to the end result, and ensure the impact is accounted for along the way. When leaders learn to lead people in this way they empower their people in the same style.

Let’s look at a common example.

Think of the last time senior leadership shared a difficult message and expected supervisors to share it with the teams. If they’ve only been taught to deliver the how, they’ll get bogged down in the detail. Micromanaging supervisors get stuck focusing on how hard a change will be because they are too far in the weeds. When the supervisor knows how to focus on why and end result, they cast a vision for the group while cascading the message.

Consider this. Would you rather hear, ‘We are increasing calls out and expect a touch point with each client weekly.’? Or, ‘We are upping our obsession with our customers. We get to proactively gather their needs to make them feel like the most important client in our book. It will take effort and with your commitment to service, I know we’ll knock it out of the park!’ A little bit of leadership transforms everyone’s perspective. It’s about creating the link from what your employee cares about to what the company cares about. You can’t do that only sharing the how.

New leaders fail, and it’s probably not their fault

New leaders fail because they aren’t equipped to fulfill the expectations that are put on them. Most new leaders don’t even clearly know what those expectations are. The fact that 60% of new leaders fail isn’t really their fault, blame doesn’t necessarily need to be placed at all, we all fall short. It’s how we get back up that’s important. As the new leader, what will your next step be? Will you ask more questions and get curious about other areas? As the hiring manager encourage autonomy for your new hires and the empowerment of their teams? What about human resources and learning consultants? Will you set up training and support for communicating and respecting boundaries?

In the end, we can blame everyone who touches the hiring and onboarding process. The only thing that will help us move forward however is taking action on the one piece we can impact.