Seven Biggest Leadership Challenges—and How to Solve Them Quickly
Are managers or supervisors on your team guilty of these “seven deadly sins” of leadership? The good news: each challenge has a constructive fix.
1. Inconsistency that Undermines Trust
When leaders say one thing but do another—or offer silent consent to poor behavior—they erode trust, engagement, and performance.
Solution: Provide clear leadership standards, train your people leaders, and hold leaders accountable for modeling the standards consistently.
2. Weak or Misaligned Goal Setting
Too many leaders skip the SMART framework or set goals based only on current capabilities instead of what’s needed to move the business forward.
Solution: Train leaders to set ambitious, outcome-focused goals and connect them to larger organizational priorities. Goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Goals must represent strong value to the business else they are potentially a misallocation of effort.
3. Lack of Follow-Through
Announcing goals or initiatives without ensuring progress—or failing to update employees on outcomes—kills momentum, undermines trust, and destroys engagement.
Solution: Encourage disciplined follow-up through check-ins, dashboards, and structured communication updates.
4. Indecision and Inaction
Avoiding conflict, overanalyzing, or kicking the can down the road stalls progress and weakens collaboration. Leaders must confront issues directly, from interpersonal conflicts to strategic choices.
Solution: Coach leaders to make timely, informed decisions based on a risk / reward approach, and practice constructive conflict resolution.
5. Ignoring Recognition Opportunities
Failing to celebrate milestones or acknowledge contributions discourages high performance and fuels disengagement.
Solution: Teach leaders to build recognition and positive reinforcement into routines—whether through simple thank-you’s, quick shout-outs, team spotlights, or formal rewards. Recognition must be sincere, specific, and timely in order to be effective.
6. Negative Mindset
Focusing on obstacles instead of possibilities signals a failure mentality. Teams will never rise above their leader’s perspective.
Solution: Train leaders to first acknowledge difficulties honestly, and then to pivot discussions to solutions. Simple systems (like weekly reminders) can help reinforce constructive and solution-oriented thinking.
7. Poor or Incomplete Communication
Rushed, unclear, or error-filled messages create confusion. Failing to repeat critical messages across multiple channels—or leaving out the “why” behind decisions—leads to disengagement.
Solution: Strengthen leaders’ communication habits: slow down, clarify, repeat, and always connect messages to purpose. Have leaders re-read their own messages from the receiver’s perspective.
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Quick Fix Framework
These 7-deadly sins of leadership represent challenges that can be overcome.
Training helps inexperienced leaders build the right skills.
Coaching helps experienced leaders refine their judgment, sharpen execution, and overcome blind spots.
If members of your leadership team are failing in any of the manners above, take action now!
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