How to Know You Are Following the Wrong Leader

Uncertainty at work has created a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. With restructuring, AI reshaping roles and hybrid teams spread across locations, people are looking after themselves while hoping to find a leader they can trust: someone who shares wisdom, opens doors and has their best interests at heart.

Those leaders exist. But many others are still running on cruise control, relying on top-down habits that stopped working long ago. Today's workforce is made up of individuals with distinct strengths, backgrounds, motivations and ways of working. Leading them well requires collaboration, transparency and a willingness to test other people's ideas. It requires leaders who trust themselves enough to rely on their teams. As I have written before, command and control has run its course.

How do you know if you are working for a leader who is holding you back? Here are twenty warning signs, grouped into four patterns I see again and again. No leader is perfect, and you will likely recognize a few of these in the best leaders you have known. The concern is not a single sign. It is when several appear together and never change, no matter how much feedback the leader receives.

They Drain Your Energy

• Always negative. They see the glass half empty and deflate your excitement, sometimes because your abilities make them uneasy.
• Never encouraging. Their world centers on their needs, not your growth, and you begin to feel your only job is to follow.
• Ungrateful. They rarely say thank you. Expecting you to do your job is not the same as taking you for granted.
• High maintenance. They demand too much because they do not understand the work well enough to delegate, and they become your second job.
• Manipulative. They lift you up only to pull you back down, creating turnover and distrust.

They Do Not Trust You, or Themselves

• Too controlling. They do not let you think freely, which stifles your growth and the organization's.
• Micromanaging. Every move is second-guessed, a sign of their own insecurity rather than your performance.
• Lacking self-trust. Without confidence in themselves, they borrow others' ideas and become followers when things get hard.
• Know-it-all. Believing they have every answer, they make it hard for you to share yours.
• Poor listeners. They miss the opportunities in front of them, and you can tell they are not hearing you.

They Cannot Lead Forward

• No vision. They cannot say where the team is going or how your career fits into it.
• Weak decision-making. They stall, lean too heavily on others or fall into ruts, leaving you with no one to turn to.
• Lacking competence. A title does not guarantee depth, and their gaps become your reputation problem.
• Disorganized. Disorganized thinking puts their people at risk and disrupts the business.
• Inattentive to detail. If they miss the details of the work, they likely miss what you need to grow.

They Cannot Be Trusted

• Avoiding accountability. They push problems down and disappear when you need them most.
• Not practicing what they preach. They hold you to rules they ignore.
• Inconsistent. Their approach changes with their mood, so you can never rely on them.
• Dishonest. Hidden agendas and half-truths are the fastest way to lose trust, and it may never return.
• In an identity crisis. This is the root of the other nineteen.

The Root Cause Is Identity

Leaders who show many of these signs are usually not bad people. More often, they have never defined who they are as leaders. They battle the gulf between assimilation and authenticity, unsure where they fit or how they should lead. Lost in the rush of business necessity, they fall back on habits that do not come naturally to them, and it shows.

Working for that leader is exhausting, because a leader who does not know their own identity cannot help you discover yours. Their uncertainty becomes your ceiling. They cannot champion strengths they do not recognize, and they cannot sponsor a future they cannot see. This is why identity sits at the center of my work on Leadership in the Age of Personalization. Leaders who know who they are give their people permission to be who they are.

What to Do If You Recognize Your Leader

• Name the pattern. Is it one sign or many? Occasional lapses are human. A consistent pattern is information.
• Have one honest conversation. Ask for what you need specifically, whether that is clarity, feedback or room to decide.
• Find sponsors elsewhere. Build relationships with leaders who can see and champion your strengths.
• Check yourself too. If you lead others, read the list again as a mirror.
• Decide with conviction. If nothing changes, protect your growth. Your career is too important to be led by someone who cannot lead.

The right leader helps you become more of who you are. The wrong one asks you to become less. Know the difference, and act on it.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.