Leadership Failure

Tim Irwin has studied both what makes leaders succeed and what leads to their failure. In his recent book Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership  Irwin tells the story of six high profile leaders who suffered significant failures. From studying these and other failures, Irwin learned five key lessons about leadership failure.

1. Character trumps competence
2. Arrogance is the mother of all derailers
3. Lack of self/other awareness is a common denominator of all derailments
4. We are always who we are...especially under stress
5. Derailment is not inevitable, but without attention to development it is probable