The Decline of Market Share or A Weak 

Leader!!!

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
                                                                                                          Dwight D. Eisenhower


  The nightmare of every salesperson is falling sales and declining market share. Books and tomes have been written about it. For me it’s simple! Show me the leader of the business and there you have the problem and solution. A weak leader not only destroys the team but he also carries it to the customer’s place. The customer is the barometer of a team and it is the customer that recognizes the weak leader long before the team does.

In Global teams the dynamics become interesting. The market is complex and geographically vast and reliant on local sales team. Often, weak leaders, land up like deer in the flashlight and try to deduce and conclude about a market they have no idea of. Dangerous!
Some thoughts on the devastating effects weak leaders have on business:

1. They create demotivated teams

Teams have to be on high energy levels to dance with the vagaries of the market. The specimen of weak leaders use various techniques like building canards, lack of respect, and kill team spirit.  Like Don Quixote and Sanchez, they jump from ridiculous to ludicrous.

2.They cannot handle high performers.
Mathew Blunders, had a few high performers in his team. He had no clue how to deal with them. Nor could he understand them. And he could not leave them alone either. So he violated processes, behaved like a petty criminal and covered up his act to have a team of averages.
Weak leaders use their absolute power to reduce high performers to average players,

  3. Intellectual laziness
Weak leaders don’t encourage creativity. They use processes or systems to kill it. Since, they cannot grasp the enormity of an idea, it is easier for them to kill it. Intellectual laziness leads to stagnancy, dearth of ideas, no growth and moral vapidity in acknowledging ideas.

4,    No connect with customers.
Weak leaders live in a no-customer land. They are more inward looking and seldom take interest in customer’s business. This is dangerous, as trends and moves at the business or market place is completely missed.

5. Cannot grasp human potential
Drew Emu, encouraged clerical style of working or merited the person who filled out most forms or wrote meticulous minutes of meetings. Disastrous. Leaders have to measure human potential to grow the business. A weak leader relies on the perfunctory and not the sub text.

6..  Weak leaders spend time managing their bosses.
When you have no skill or customer contact, the only way this breed can survive is by managing all upward to them.  And this consumes their energy and time.

7 .Weak leaders have no conviction and rarely stand up for any issue.
This breed seldom takes a stance and adopts a non-confrontational position.

8  Weak leaders leave no products or people that are extraordinary.
This is the most damage that this specimen does to corporates. And for this very reason they have to be called out.

9. Weak leaders behave like supremacist
It’s an ultimate human failure if a leader cannot behave as an equal. Supremacy is a tool that weak leaders use to their advantage,

Never fear in calling out weak leaders. One of them undoes the work done by many before. Take the matter right up to the CEO/ Chairman/ Head. They wish to know what ails the business.  And it is these chappies that cannot be caught in the organization’s Whatman filter paper.

Weed the breed out!!!!

- Mini Nair

Disclaimer: All names are fictional and bear no resemblance to the living, dead or ghosts.No portion of this article may be taken without my permission.