I'm sure you've read Stephen Covey's excellent book 'The seven habits of highly effective people'. But if you haven't, you should. It is easy reading, packed with wisdom and inspires us to behave at our best. You should also read Covey's new book 'The eighth habit - from effectiveness to greatness', about becoming a truly great leader.

But I wonder how many of us are suffering from what I've come to call the 'mere mortals' effect - the feeling that as ordinary individuals we can't hope to emulate an inspirational leader like Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa? Of course we can't. These were unique people, dealing with unique circumstances. Yet so many books and articles - and yes, business school professors - continue to exhort us to behave like paragons of inspiration.

Hence it occurred to me one day, while designing a new leadership workshop, that instead of trying to find new examples of inspirational leadership, about people who motivated the troops above and beyond the call of duty, I should look for evidence of something else. I should not look for evidence of people who motivated their people, but of people who set a particularly bad example - who were deeply demotivational.

Sure, in my day job as a business school professor teaching in London, Berlin and Portugal I work with the best of the best. But I also see many things that don't work so well, and that really hurt the organisation's bottom line. And isn't it common knowledge that we learn more from mistakes than from things done well? And that most of us work harder at avoiding failure than at achieving success?

Hence researching failure seemed a perfect plan. Nevertheless, it didn't quite work out as intended. While people willingly tell me about the terrible things they and other people do, very few will go on the record. And then there are the laws of libel. Which makes it difficult to be too explicit in re-telling these stories. As a result, my recent research focuses on leaders' failings, rather than on the leaders that are failures. A useful by-product of this is that it's easier to apply the lessons to our own circumstances.

To some people, the seven failings of really useless leaders may be blindingly obvious. But, believe me, the research shows that there are hundreds if not thousands of managers every day who continue to demotivate their colleagues and subordinates every day, destroying bottom-line value.

The first four failings - which are personal failings - are easily recognised and easily remedied. Really useless leaders do the following:

• kill enthusiasm;
• kill emotion;
• kill explanation; and
• kill engagement.

Let us look at those in more detail.

Really useless leaders, my research indicates, tend to shut down the natural enthusiasm of their staff. 'Don't do it like that - do it like this,' they say. Really useless leaders hire good people and then tell them exactly how to do their job. Guess how a subordinate feels when told exactly how to do their job?

You have to stop micro-management in its tracks if you want to boost the performance of your people. You buy 51% of your people's effort through their pay packet. But if you want that other 49% of effort you're going to have to earn it.

Motivation, delegation and trust are the answers. We know that enthusiasm at work is a critical driver of performance. If your people are motivated at work, and motivated by their boss, then they automatically make more effort.

How do you do that? Well, first of all we can re-learn how to delegate clearly and effectively. We all think we know how to delegate effectively, but actually the research stories tell us that we don't.

If people don't do the job as well as you expect, then by all means coach them to do it better next time. Just don't give them a blow-by-blow account of what to do. Your job is to encourage and develop people's natural enthusiasm for their role and tasks.

Really useless leaders banish emotions from the workplace. They say things such as 'emotions play no part in decision making' and 'leave your personal life at home'. But decisions are driven in large part by how comfortable we are with them - in other words, by our emotions.

In addition, really useless leaders can't seem to detect the real moods and concerns of their people. In many cases they act tough simply because that's how they think good leaders behave - although the evidence contradicts that theory.

Further, killing workplace emotion goes against what we know to be true - that people work harder in a happy, enthusiastic and productive workplace. So your ability to create a happy, enthusiastic and productive workplace is another important lever that helps people to tap into that discretionary 49% of effort that only they control.

Let's be clear, creating an environment where people want to work and enjoy working is not an excuse to create 24-hour party people. But there is a hard business case for creating an atmosphere where people want to be.

Nowadays, thanks to Daniel Goleman, the concept of emotional intelligence - understanding how different people react to different situations - has reached a wider public. So find out more about emotional intelligence and how people respond to you.

Why is it that really useless leaders and managers never bother to explain themselves or to understand why other people see things differently?

In the same way that children are always asking 'why' and won't accept 'just because' as an explanation, so do adult employees need to understand why they should do what they do.

A good explanation is worth gold to you. You must give a coherent business case. It motivates people. And explaining something once isn't enough. You need to use a 'broken record' technique to make the reasons for your business activity compelling and obvious.

Sadly most managers that set team goals never involve the team in setting them. Many managers assume that people should just get on with the task they set.

But even if a team can't influence the choice of task, it has every interest in improving and refining the way it tackles projects. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, really useless leaders often specify how teams should tackle tasks and this has the added disadvantage of removing a team's sense of responsibility and accountability for projects.

The research shows us what common sense already suggests - that if we need to get work done through others, then we need to involve them in goal-setting and certainly in designing project implementation. Managers who don't create effective teams fail to give their people another good reason to perform at their best.

The remaining three failings could be described as business or 'system' failings. At the business level, really useless leaders:

• kill culture;
• kill reward; and
• kill fairness.

The failings are perhaps too big to deal with at the root, except for very senior executives. However, every manager can influence these issues within the bounds of their authority.

The first of the business failings is associated with company culture. Really useless leaders simply don't recognise the power of company culture and how it can either accelerate performance or hold it back. 'The way we do things round here' is critical to encouraging people to achieve success. It needs to be positive and 'can do'.

Really useless leaders, however, do not know how to influence culture - how to shift from a risk-averse culture to one capable of embracing managed risk, for example. This is just one of many cultural issues that can critically affect your business performance. If everyone is afraid to take risks then your 49% underperforming individual turns into an entire business functioning at 49% below par.

You need to foster an atmosphere in which both trial and error are allowed. You need to move from a 'plan, plan, plan, then implement' mentality to one of 'test and adapt'. Execution is half about experimentation. One of the tangible aspects of a high performing culture is the positive, upbeat buzz that you can see and feel when you walk through the corridors.

Sadly, really useless leaders reward the wrong things - like secure investments, when what they really want is innovation and risk-taking in investment strategy. And they don't reward the right things, like initiative and experimentation. Not only this, but they also use the wrong rewards - ie money. Money motivates some people some of the time, but not everybody all the time.

The research tells us that not all of your people - especially those at the managerial level - are motivated by money. Many are rewarded by the job itself, if it is challenging and rewarding.

Other people are rewarded by understanding the direction and challenges facing the business. Then they can see where they can best contribute. Knowing exactly how they can make a positive impact is a major motivator.

If you don't understand what it is that motivates the people in your team, you must ask them. Or you could find out in a more subtle way by watching how they work and what it is that appears to energise their actions. You need to become more of a leadership detective. Above all, it's crucial you understand that no one else is motivated by exactly the same things that you are.

And finally, the seventh habit of demotivational leaders: they simply aren't fair. Fairness has to be the lifeblood of your leadership style.

The reason that fairness is so critical is that when people feel they haven't been dealt with fairly, you lose their trust - instantly. And winning that trust back is difficult, if not impossible.

You can personally ensure that you are balanced and fair in how you treat people. If people feel they are dealt with fairly then they are much more likely to perform at a higher level.

After you have clarity on your own personal fairness, you have to take the battle to the reward systems that operate in your business. Unfair and inappropriate reward systems create a 'double whammy' that severely destroys performance across your business.

Forgive me for focusing on leadership failure, but as a smart reader you will, of course, get the message that inspiring leadership is about:

• building on natural enthusiasm;
• focusing on the team and helping its members see how they can add value; and
• creating a productive workplace where the team can try out new tactics and strategies to build performance.

And you will realise that it's also about:

• being sensitive to emotions and culture;
• rewarding the right things; and
• being scrupulously fair.

Of course, there is an eighth failing, too... not doing anything about the other seven. Procrastination is, in my book, the ultimate failing.

In conclusion, then, you must constantly grow and develop your leadership style and persuade more good managers to work with you. They will be attracted to work with you because you are one of the few leaders who focus on boosting the bottom line through - rather than instead of - inspiring their people.

But first... kill the seven failings.

• The seven failings of really useless leaders
  Finance and Management, Issue 135, July/August 2006

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