In 1989 Steven R Covey wrote a business and self-help book titled, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” It became a chartbuster that influenced millions to believe that those seven habits would make them better leaders. In fact, these would make them highly effective leaders.

However, great leadership isn’t only about what you are doing right. It is also about what you’re not doing wrong. Just as there are habits that make leaders effective, there are habits that cripple them.

From the first day we published our research on strengths-based leadership, we have also stressed the importance of fixing the terrible habits we refer to as “fatal flaws.”

We found that when a manager possessed just one of these fatal flaws they had an extremely slim chance of making it into the top tier of leadership in their organization. Possessing two or more virtually guaranteed that they would not be in the top echelon of leaders.

We analyzed data from more than 52,000 leaders to determine which habits frequently received low scores. We sought to understand those behaviors that best differentiated between the worst leaders (e.g. the bottom 10%) versus all other leaders.

In other words, we identified the habits that were millstones around the leader’s neck and were most likely to cause them to sink to the bottom of the heap. Then we identified the items that had the most significant negative impact on employee engagement and led to failure in their current job. What emerged were 20 items that clustered in seven very bad habits.

Here’s the list in order, from the least to the most fatal:

Failure to Coach and Develop Others

Ineffective leaders get into the habit of focusing only on getting their jobs done. They fail to show concern for the development of a group of people who can get the job done in an ever more competitive world, and who will take over when they are no longer around.

Bad Role Model

Read the rest here:  http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/31/business/habits-ineffective-leaders/?c=&page=1