Episode 21: Five Qualities of Difficult Leaders | 12MinuteLeadership

In this episode, I identify five qualities that make leaders hard to follow, then show practical alternatives that raise trust, engagement, and results. Based on my 17+ years coaching and training leaders and analyzing hundreds of 360 results, there are some clear themes that make leaders "difficult" to follow and some clear actions that can put them back on course. Topics covered in this episode are: 

• micromanagement and delegating for development
• emotional regulation and modeling calm under pressure
• listening with empathy to build loyalty
• consistency, clarity, and stable priorities
• leaning into hard conversations with respect
• recap and a reflection prompt to apply the ideas

Like what you heard on today's episode and want to go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode
You can also pick up my book, Lead Anyone, on Amazon. Then, go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals
From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results
Go to www.eliseboggs.com for more info. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Purpose
• 0:55 Why Leaders Become Difficult
• 2:09 1: Micromanagement and the Reframe
• 3:06 2: Emotional Regulation vs Reactivity
• 3:23 3: Listening, Empathy, and Loyalty
• 4:14 4: Inconsistency vs Clarity
• 4:48 5: Avoiding vs Facing Hard Talks
• 5:35 Recap, Reflection, and Next Steps
• 6:54 Share, Subscribe, and Resources

Transcript

Speaker: 0:02

Welcome to the 12-Minute Leadership Podcast, where in 12 minutes or less, I'll share small things that you can put into immediate practice that will make a big difference in your leadership effectiveness. I'm your host, Elise Boggs Morales, leadership professor, consultant, and coach. For the last 17 years, I have helped thousands of leaders level up their influence and achieve remarkable results. If you want to trade compliance for true commitment and create your dream team, you are in the right place. Get ready for a quick hit of practical wisdom to increase your team's engagement, inspire top performance, and retain your best talent. Ready to level up your influence and get better results? 12 minutes starts now. Hi everyone, Elise here. Welcome to episode 21. In our last episode, we focused on the skills that leaders can use to influence difficult people on their team. Today, we're flipping the script and focusing on the five qualities of difficult leaders. It's only fair that we share both sides of the story. So, what makes a leader difficult? It's not just about personality, it's about behaviors and patterns that create friction, confusion, and disengagement in teams. One of the intentions of today's episode is to help you evaluate your own leadership effectiveness in light of these qualities so that you can pay attention to the things that could be undermining your influence as a leader. It's also a chance to evaluate your leadership team to ensure you are helping people develop and grow in the right areas. So, where did this list come from? I came up with this list based on my 17 plus years experience coaching and training leaders and more specifically analyzing hundreds of leadership 360 results for my clients. I also did some additional research, and the research confirmed my own lived experience. So here we go. Five qualities of leaders that are difficult to follow and what you can do instead. Quality number one, micromanagement. Micromanagement is one of the fastest ways to frustrate a team. Difficult leaders hover, second guess, and insist on controlling every detail. The impact, it kills initiative. People stop thinking creatively because they know their leader will override them. It slows progress and creates bottlenecks. Here's the reframe: great leaders delegate for development, not just for efficiency. Delegation says, I trust you to grow. It multiplies capacity for both the leader and the team. Quality number two, poor emotional regulation. A difficult leader often struggles to manage their emotions. Maybe they're quick to anger, defensive in feedback, or unpredictable in mood. The impact? Teams walk on eggshells. Innovation shrinks because people are in survival mode, just trying not to trigger their leader. The alternative is emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and self-management. Leaders who can pause before reacting, regulate stress, and model calm under pressure actually create a culture of resilience. Quality number three: lack of listening and empathy. Another quality of difficult leaders is that they don't listen, or if they do, they don't listen with empathy or to understand and connect with the other person. They talk over people, dismiss input, or focus only on results. The impact, team members disengage, turnover rises, innovation gets stifled because people don't feel valued. The skill to build here is listening for the heart message, which can sound very touchy-feely, but what it really means is listening for the message or the feeling that the person is trying to convey, regardless of what their words may be saying. As we saw in Alan's story in the coaching series, when leaders practice empathy, they don't just hear concerns, they build loyalty. Quality number four, inconsistency. Difficult leaders are inconsistent. They change priorities on a whim, communicate poorly, or play favorites. One day something is celebrated, the next it's criticized. The impact. Teams waste energy trying to guess what matters. Morale drops because people feel like the rules are always shifting. The alternative is clarity and consistency. Teams thrive when they know the direction, expectations, and standards won't change based on mood or preference. Leaders who provide stability free their people to focus on execution. And quality number five, avoidance of hard conversations. Finally, many difficult leaders avoid conversations, the hard ones. They don't address conflict, they ignore underperformance, or they let toxic behavior slide because they don't want to deal with it. The impact, problems fester, the culture becomes toxic, high performers leave because they see mediocrity being tolerated. The better path is courageous conversations. Feedback delivered with clarity and respect builds trust. Addressing conflict early prevents bigger explosions later. Leaders who lean in rather than look away create healthy, high-performing teams. So let's recap. Five qualities of difficult leaders are micromanagement, poor emotional regulation, lack of listening and empathy, inconsistency, and avoidance of hard conversation. But here's the good news: none of these has to define you. They're signals, indicators of where leadership skills need to grow. And as we've explored in past episodes, the antidotes are already in your toolkit. Delegation, emotional intelligence, customized communication, clarity and consistency, and courageous conversations. When practiced intentionally, these skills can transform leadership from draining to inspiring. So here's my challenge for you. Think about one leader you've worked with who had one of these qualities. What was the impact? And now ask yourself, where do you need to watch for these tendencies in your own leadership? Difficult doesn't have to be permanent. Once we're aware, we can grow. We're all growing. So, I hope you enjoyed today's short but sweet episode. If you found this episode helpful, share it with another leader. I'll see you next time. Like what you heard on today's episode and want to go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also pick up my book, Lead Anyone, on Amazon. Then, go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals. From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results. Go to www.eliseboggs.com for more info.