Here’s the thing: you want to be a better leader.
But you’re probably focusing on what to do as a leader while neglecting what not to do.
That’s where leadership derailers come in—the things that take you off track and inhibit your leadership effectiveness. If you want to be a good leader, you must be aware of your derailers and begin working on them.
“Most books about leadership tell us what a person ought to do to become effective and powerful. Few tell us what to avoid. But the latter may be even more valuable because many people on the road to success are tripped up by their mistakes and weaknesses.” -David Gergen, senior advisor to four U.S. presidents, from his book, Eyewitness to Power
The Most Common Leadership Derailers
Here are the most common derailers, based on my research and work with leaders from many different industries, sectors, countries, and stages of career development:
- Burnout: becoming run-down and feeling exhausted, often due to lack of self-care.
- Procrastination: putting things off until later or the last minute.
- Bottleneck: feeling you must make all decisions or taking on too much work yourself, causing delays.
- Avoidance: avoiding difficult tasks, situations, or conflicts.
- Reactive: often too busy putting out fires and responding to situations instead of driving them
- Clarity: not having or providing sufficient clarity on goals, priorities, or tasks
- Workaholism: being addicted to work and struggling to switch it off or stop thinking about it.
- Insecurity: lacking confidence about leading or feeling unqualified to lead; being unassertive.
- Goals: setting targets that are too high or too low—or none at all
- Delegation: not entrusting tasks to others sufficiently, leading to reduced motivation.
- Feedback: not providing feedback well or often enough, or not soliciting it enough or receiving it well.
- Complacency: allowing yourself, your team, or the organization to lose urgency and motivation
- Communication: not sharing information well or enough; withholding information
- Judgmental: excessive fault-finding with self, others, or circumstances
- Blame: finding fault with others (e.g., colleagues, board) or circumstances instead of looking within
- Listening: speaking too much or thinking about what you’ll say next instead of giving full attention
- Indecision: inability to make timely choices, waffling on what to do
- Fear: holding back or not trying due to concerns about failure or threats to image
- Development: not adequately investing in, educating, or training people, your team, or yourself
- Change: not anticipating or driving change in the organization; failure to adapt
- Volatile: prone to overreaction, annoyance, or moodiness, especially under stress
- Motivation: not sufficiently stimulating enthusiasm or inspiring action from your team
- Pleasing: excessive focus on making others happy at the expense of your own needs or desires
- Velvet: too much soft-edge leadership (e.g., seeking harmony over results) when more directive leadership is needed
- Perfectionism: setting unrealistic expectations for yourself or others; needing things to be flawless.
- Culture: insufficient attention to building and maintaining a healthy organizational culture
While these are the most common derailers, there are many more. In fact, I’ve identified 55 derailers that inhibit leadership effectiveness. (See my Leadership Derailers Assessment.)
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. It will help you develop self-awareness and identify ways to improve your leadership.
Ways to Address Leadership Derailers
While each situation is different, given each leader’s personality, preferences, and context, here are ways you can address your leadership derailers:
- identify your derailers
- understand the effects of your derailers on others, at work and beyond (360-degree reviews can help)
- understand how derailers can limit your career success
- identify underlying drivers of the derailers (e.g., fear, anxiety)
- monitor your derailers
- spot triggers that activate your derailers
- develop tools and coping strategies to prevent or dampen your derailers (e.g., replacement behaviors)
- ask for help in spotting activated derailers and supporting replacement behaviors (e.g., from colleague, small group, senior management team, fellow line managers)
- observe the effects of replacement behaviors
- reinforce replacement behaviors
- use a journal
- work with a mentor or coach
- balance your team
- create culture of psychological safety, openness, & development
Conclusion
In a nutshell, you should destroy your top derailers through intentional, focused, and consistent work. And you should dampen your other derailers. You’re wise to seek help in the process and make it a community effort.
For example, why not have all the senior management team members take the Leadership Derailers Assessment and then discuss their results together–helping each other and holding each other accountable for improvement? And the same for line managers.
This always works best when colleagues openly discuss it together. We all have leadership derailers. We all have work to do.
So get real. And get busy with the important work of intentional leadership development. Wishing you well with it. Reach out if you think I may be able to help.
–Gregg Vanourek
Reflection Questions
- What are your leadership derailers?
- What will you do about it, starting today?
- Who will you ask for help?
Tools for You
- Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness
- Personal Values Exercise to help you determine and clarify what’s most important to you
- Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s inhibiting your happiness and quality of life
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. It will help you develop self-awareness and identify ways to improve your leadership.
Related Articles & Books
- “Is Your Organization Headed for a Breakdown?“
- “How Leaders Should Address the Unique Challenges of Our Times“
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Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo, Off the Track: Why and How Successful Executives Get Derailed (Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 1983)
- Sydney Finkelstein, Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes (Penguin Publishing Group, 2004)
Postscript: Inspirations on Leadership Derailers
- “If you want to be the best leader you can be, you will have to attend to your weaknesses.” -James Kouzes and Barry Posner, Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader (Wiley, 2016)
- “Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons, whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” -Jack Ma, Chinese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist
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Note: This article was updated extensively October 22, 2025.
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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (co-authored with his father, Bob Vanourek) and LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion). Check out their Leadership Derailers Assessment or get their monthly newsletter. If you found value in this, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!