3 Common Traits of Incompetent Leaders & How to Work with Them

Unfortunately, most of us spend at least 50-75% of our life working for incompetent leaders! Why? Four reasons:

1. The working world in general continues to promote the wrong kind of people to leadership positions.
2. It sometimes take us awhile to realize we’re working for incompetent leaders.
3. Finding a new job is hard work. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay working for a crappy leader vs. find time to find a better job.
4. There’s no guarantee the next job we find doesn’t have an incompetent leader. It’s not easy to tell if your future manager is any good.

3 Common Traits of Incompetent Leaders

There are three common traits of incompetent leaders. Your leader could have one of these traits or worst of all he or she could have all three.

Trait 1: Absentee leader – This leader “lets” the team do all the work and doesn’t really set strategy, lead, or coach others. Their style is often to outsource any or all efforts that a leader usually needs to do to one of his or her team members.

Trait 2: Pretend leader – This leader wants to be known as a leader and does many things that a great leader does with one key difference: his/her words are not consistent with his/her actions.

Trait 3: Aggressive insecure leader – Common examples are someone who takes credit for your work, someone who blames you for any fallout, someone who puts you down in front of a group, or someone who micromanages your every move.

Many incompetent leaders are insecure, self-interested, and usually lack the necessary self-awareness of their incompetence to make any changes. Their goal is their own comfort/advancement vs. that of the team’s development and collective result. We further discuss this topic in this month’s recorded coaching call.

How to Work with Incompetent Leaders

Below are three tips on dealing with an incompetent leader.

Tip 1: Lower your expectations – Expect this type of leader NOT to have your back.

Tip 2: Take ownership – Lead aspects that your leader should be leading and is not. At least you can gain experience this way.

Tip 3: Feed his/her ego – All incompetent leaders have huge egos but likely also have some strengths. Compliment them on something they are actually good at. This will keep up the illusion that you’re on their side.

While it’s no one’s dream to work for an uninspiring leader, it’s the reality many of us face at work today. You may not be able to change them, but you can still do your best to manage the situation and plot your long term move at the same time.