One of the most common pieces of advice in any guide to leadership is to lead by example. While this is the prevailing logic, author and organizational psychologist Tim Irwin believes up-and-coming leaders can learn just as much from executives whose behavior left much to be desired. His latest book, “Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership,” profiles six notable executives whose failures with their respective companies made headlines. One of the most compelling aspects of the book is that these leaders were not incompetent; they actually possessed many of the skills it takes to succeed in business. In this interview, Irwin discusses why character is at the heart of great leadership and why his book is as much about the reader as it is about the executives in the tale.
When you set out to write ‘Derailed,’ was it obvious which leaders you wanted to profile?
I wanted to select a group of people that were fired ultimately for reasons of character. I don’t mean character in the narrow sense of the word, like they defrauded the company and went to jail. Rather, I mean character in the broader sense of how we treat people and so on. The six CEOs that I profiled met those criteria. None of the people that I profiled went to jail or were dishonest in the legal sense.
These are great individuals, highly competent, strategic [and] tough-minded. But they made some really fundamental errors. Interestingly enough, these are also the character issues that can derail us. What I state in the book is that the book is not about these six CEOs. It’s about ourselves.
One of the CEOs profiled in the book is former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina. Where did she go wrong at HP?
When a leader is brought in to demonstrate change, he or she has to show respect for the organization’s existing culture. [HP] was an engineering culture and she didn’t make allies from that side of the business. She was very focused on marketing and creating a high-profile sense of what HP could become. The board was sending a lot of signals to her about not appreciating HP’s culture and the need for her to get some strong operational help. [It was] advice that she chose to ignore. I think that was the final straw for the HP board.
Robert Nardelli’s story is particularly glaring. What can leaders learn from his tenure at Home Depot?
Look at the contrast between Home Depot’s founders [Arthur] Blank and [Bernie] Marcus versus Bob Nardelli. Bernie Marcus displayed this fondness for the culture of Home Depot and was firmly involved in creating it. When Nardelli came in, he had a nine-car personal parking garage down in the basement of Home Depot’s corporate headquarters. He commandeered an elevator that went straight from his private parking space up to his private office on the top floor of the building without stopping on any other floor. Over time, that elevator became this glaring symbol. It was a picture of his alienation and his dismissive attitude toward people at Home Depot. Nardelli lost the confidence of the very people he needed to fulfill his vision for the company.
You recommend that leaders work on developing a warning system. What’s a good method for recognizing the signs of derailment?
A common denominator in many CEOs is that they lack self-awareness. I see this over and over again. They either don’t care or they’re not aware. When people are losing control, they need to pay attention to their own inner state, but they also need to pay attention to feedback from others. A lot of these derailed individuals become what I call ‘truth starved.’ They cut themselves off from feedback from others. They don’t welcome feedback. One of the things I think a leader has to do is be open to feedback from others. It doesn’t mean that he or she has to always heed that feedback but he or she should be open to it.
