1. Dysfunctional and Failed Leadership

2. Fatal Flaws of Leaders Who Derail
Insensitive to others
Aloof and arrogant
Betrayal of trust
Overly ambitious
Over-managing
Unable to think strategically
Unable to adapt to situations
Overly dependent on an advocate or mentor

3. Dysfunctional Leadership
Too much vision
Personal needs made paramount
Building a monument to themselves
Blind drive prevents seeing external environment
Pyrrhic victory
Victory -- but at what cost?
Blind ambition, empire building
Chasing a vision before its time
Failure to reality-test ideas
Blind to the market and what it wants
Manipulative management, impression management
Lack of administrative skills

4. Neurotic Leaders Paranoid Compulsive Dramatic Depressive Schizoid
Suspicious, untrusting
Downfall – reacting to threats that aren’t there
Compulsive
Perfectionist, detail-obsessed
Downfall – unwillingness to make decisions, focus on details at expense of overall situation
Dramatic
Excessive expression of emotions and feelings, narcissistic, attention-seeker
Downfall – overreaction, surface thinking
Depressive
Low self-esteem, preoccupied with guilt, inadequacy, hopelessness
Downfall – Trouble concentrating, indecisive
Schizoid
Detached, uninvolved
Downfall – unable to empathize with others

5. When Great Goes Bad For entrepreneurs, success and failure comes from:
Need for total control
Refusing to hear no
Ignoring the “experts”
Single-minded and stubborn
Charismatic leaders…..
Arrogance and narcissism
Believing their own myth

6. The Case of William Agee and Mary Cunningham
Leadership Downfall:
The Case of William Agee and Mary Cunningham

7. The Events
1979
Bill Agee (CEO of Bendix) hires recent HBS grad Mary Cunningham as his Executive Assistant
1980
Mary Cunningham promoted to VP – Corporate Communications
Three months later, promoted to VP – Strategic Planning
Agee denies rumors of an affair
Cunningham leaves Bendix
1982
Cunningham and Agee marry
1989
Agee asked to lead Morrison Knudsen (large, but fading Idaho construction company)
He attempts to salvage company with grand strategic changes
Neither Agee nor Cunningham attempt to fit in with MK culture or in Boise
1995
Agee fired

8. So What Happened?