In a short article in the June 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman (from leadership consulting company Zenger/Folkman and authors (with Scott Edinger) of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate) take a very different look at leadership.

Instead of talking about how good leaders lead, or focusing on what makes great leaders, or anything like that, they looked at the opposite. Based on two research studies on executives and leaders, they examined those who failed and developed a list of the ten things most commonly missing in bad leaders. As they write, “every bad leader had at least one, and most had several.”

According to their work, the worst leaders:

• Lack energy and enthusiasm
• Accept their own mediocre performance
• Lack clear vision and direction
• Have poor judgment
• Don’t collaborate
• Don’t walk the talk
• Resist new ideas
• Don’t learn from mistakes
• Lack interpersonal skills
• Fail to develop others

The authors further note that the bad leaders they studies often were unaware of these behaviors.

This is interesting because the vast majority of the literature on leadership has been focused on the positive traits and behaviors of good leaders. This look at the flip side of the coin provides fresh perspective (even though some of the factors outlined above might seem somewhat obvious).

Being a good leader might be as much about exhibiting the good traits and behaviors as it is about not displaying the bad ones. Read the full article for the details.