Seven recurring failures, why each compounds, and the correction for it.
None of these are exotic. They are the ordinary failure modes of the job, and each one gets more expensive in a downturn — which is exactly when leaders have least appetite for looking at them.
Each mistake below is paired with the correction and, where there is one, a specific exercise.
Some chief executives quietly stop taking ownership of their own development. The path is more comfortable without criticism or self-examination, feedback goes unused, and the blind spots stay invisible.
The correction: treat leadership development as a standing priority, not something you get to when the quarter calms down. Feedback is raw material.
From Greg Giesen, speaker and author
Leaders who never stop working lose perspective before they lose productivity, and eventually burn out people around them as well as themselves. Reading, reflection and rest get squeezed out first.
The correction: give yourself explicit permission to step back. Working on the business requires being out of it.
From Gair Maxwell, Vistage speaker
Two versions of this: operating in isolation, or assuming your experience is sufficient to decide alone. Both run straight into confirmation bias, and both forfeit the value of genuinely different thinking.
The correction: get curious about people with different backgrounds, geographies and expertise — and look specifically for views that challenge yours rather than ones that confirm them. Institutional knowledge is valuable and it also clouds the picture.
High-ego leaders get defensive under criticism, interrupt when addressed, and avoid asking questions or owning failures. It makes them hard to work for and, separately, less effective.
The correction: confidence without ego. Curious, direct about what you know and don’t, and willing to be wrong in public.
From John Dame, Vistage Chair
Time pressure and stress push leaders to optimize for the speed of the decision rather than the decision. Fast returns get chased, rigor gets skipped, and the bill arrives later.
The correction: a conscious, repeatable process. There is no one right method; what matters is approaching every decision the same way, with a framework for weighing urgency against importance.
From Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford and Boeing, to the Vistage community
Leaders need mentors to advise, coaches to challenge, experts to inform, and peers to think alongside. Plenty of busy executives skip all four and go it alone, which makes staying accountable and deciding well harder than it needs to be.
The correction: whatever you’re facing, someone has faced it. Find someone with the relevant experience — before a crisis, not during one.
Developing yourself and not your people costs you retention first, then capability, then the senior bench you need — and leaves you lonelier at the top than you have to be.
The correction: invest in development at every level, aimed at people thinking critically through problems and growing into trusted decision-makers. It is also what frees you for strategy.