Red Alert: How to Avoid Success Derailment

What makes some people able to go from one success to another and continue to achieve higher levels of excellence, while others achieve some fast successes, then loose momentum, and fall off track? In an attempt to answer this question, the American Management Association conducted in-depth interviews with 41 executives, and found the following traits responsible for most of the failures in what once was a promising fast-track success journey.

• Insensitivity to other people and coworkers.
• Arrogance
• Misuse of confidential information
• Inability to control ambition
• Inability to delegate assignments or promote team work
• Inability to choose the right people for the right assignment and to staff effectively
• Being short-term or tactical, rather than strategically oriented.
• Over-dependence on mentors.

It's interesting to note that all of these factors are not related to knowledge competency about the job or the technical skills required to execute it. They all relate to what can be described as the "Emotional Intelligence" of the leader. What is also interesting is that Emotional Intelligence is perhaps the one aspect that receives the least amount of attention in traditional supervisory skills training and management development workshops in organizations across America. Perhaps a new look at these programs to include more emphasis on emotional intelligence and its application at work is needed.