5 Of The Worst Leadership Traits I've Ever Experienced
Article by: Ron Edmondson
Read the original article HERE
A young pastor once asked me a question I still think about. He was already leading well, but he wanted to lead better. “What are the worst leadership traits you’ve seen limit a leader’s potential?” he asked.
It’s a harder question than it sounds. Context changes everything. I’d already written about the most dangerous leadership traits I’d encountered, but his question pointed somewhere different.
He wasn’t asking about traits that take a leader down fast. He was asking about the traits that just make leadership worse: the ones that quietly cap what a leader could become, even while everything still looks fine on the surface.
That distinction matters. A leader can carry these traits and still produce results. Attendance can grow. Budgets can balance. But the traits are still costing something, usually trust, momentum, or the people closest to the leader, even when the numbers don’t show it yet.
I’ve watched plenty of leadership flaws up close, including my own. Laziness can cripple a leader, though a strong team can sometimes cover for it. I’ve also watched leaders who weren’t especially sharp succeed anyway, because they were smart enough to surround themselves with wiser people.
So what actually separates a flawed leader from one who never reaches their potential? After years of watching pastors and church leaders up close, I’ve narrowed it to five traits. Feel free to disagree, or add to the list.
5 of The Worst Leadership Traits I've Observed
1. Poor Character
Nothing overcomes a flawed character. Not vision, not charisma, not results. A leader who cuts corners on honesty will eventually see that dishonesty outweighs even the most compelling vision.
You cannot hide a corrupt heart forever, and immorality will always shine brighter than competence. Scripture sets a high bar here: Paul’s instructions to Titus describe a church leader as someone who isn’t overbearing or quick-tempered, a standard that has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with who a leader actually is when no one is checking.
2. Avoidance
A leader who ignores problems isn’t keeping the peace. He’s inviting a bigger problem later.
Issues that go unaddressed don’t resolve themselves. They sit, they compound, and eventually they surface in a form that’s harder to manage than if they’d been dealt with early.
I’ve talked with leaders who avoided a hard conversation for months, only to watch the underlying issue take down a staff member, a ministry, or a season of trust they couldn’t easily rebuild. Avoidance can look like patience from the outside. It rarely is, and it’s often rooted in the same instinct that drives people-pleasing leadership, the desire to keep everyone comfortable today at the expense of what the organization actually needs.
3. Indecisiveness
Every decision a leader makes will have critics. Usually more than one. That’s not a reason to avoid deciding. It’s the job description. Leaders exist, in part, to make the calls that no one else is positioned or willing to make.
Indecisiveness stalls progress in ways that are easy to underestimate, because nothing dramatic happens when a leader delays. Momentum just quietly drains out of the organization, one postponed decision at a time. I’ve talked with staff members at large churches who describe a senior pastor who simply won’t commit to a direction, and the frustration in their voice is the same every time. Leaders who learn to make decisions and commit to them build a very different kind of trust with their teams.
4. Control
An inflexible leader caps the organization at the level of his own performance. That ceiling holds even when the leader is genuinely gifted. Especially then, actually, since a talented controlling leader can go a long way before the limits show up.
People under a controlling leader feel their potential get squeezed. That produces half-hearted effort and low morale, a strange trade for a leader to make in exchange for keeping every decision in his own hands. Plenty of organizations still grow under controlling leadership. Growing and healthy aren’t the same word. If you’re wondering whether this describes you, these subtle signs of a controlling leader are worth an honest read.
5. Pride
The trait I’ve personally found hardest to watch is arrogance in a leader. People notice it fast, and it costs more than the prideful leader realizes. A leader who brags about accomplishments feels good in the moment and loses credibility in the room. Proverbs puts it plainly: pride comes before a fall.
The leaders I respect most rarely have to tell you what they’ve done. Their work does that for them. Ask around, though, and you’ll still find plenty of arrogant leaders running organizations, even churches, that look “successful” by whatever metric people are using that year. The qualities that actually make a leader worth following tend to look nothing like a highlight reel.
What to do if you see these traits in yourself
Recognizing a trait in yourself isn’t the same as fixing it, but it’s the step that has to come first. Self-diagnosis is unreliable, especially for pride and control, the two traits most likely to convince a leader he’s fine. Ask two or three people who see you regularly (a spouse, a staff member, a close friend) whether any of these five describe you, and be prepared to actually hear the answer rather than defend against it.
Recognizing a trait in yourself isn’t the same as fixing it, but it’s the step that has to come first. Self-diagnosis is unreliable, especially for pride and control, the two traits most likely to convince a leader he’s fine. Ask two or three people who see you regularly (a spouse, a staff member, a close friend) whether any of these five describe you, and be prepared to actually hear the answer rather than defend against it.
None of these traits require a dramatic intervention to address. They require an honest conversation, a willingness to be corrected, and enough humility to keep asking the question after the first uncomfortable answer.
Want more leadership insight like this in your inbox each week? Subscribe to the ChurchLeaders newsletter for practical, pastor-focused leadership content.
That’s my list of the worst leadership traits I’ve personally observed, not the most dangerous, just the ones that quietly hold a leader back. You can carry one or more of these and still see some version of success. Whether it’s the kind of success worth having depends on how you define it. In my experience, these are still the traits most likely to keep a good leader from becoming a great one.
Article submitted by: Jonathan Hill
Evangelism Ministries Director
Cornerstone Conference IPHC
Comments