20 Bad habits that hold leaders back

A Business Week article lists the following 20 interesting bad habits, complied by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, describing what hinder leaders from progressing into the executive suite of their organizations:

• Winning Too Much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
• Adding Too Much Value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
• Passing Judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
• Making Destructive Comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
• Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these qualifiers, which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”
• Telling the World How Smart We Are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
• Speaking When Angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
• Negativity: The need to share our negative thoughts, even when we weren’t asked.
• Withholding Information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
• Failing to Give Proper Recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
• Claiming Credit We Don’t Deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
• Making Excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
• Clinging to the Past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
• Playing Favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
• Refusing to Express Regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
• Not Listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
• Failing to Express Gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
• Punishing the Messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent, who are usually only trying to protect us.
• Passing the Buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
• An Excessive Need to Be “Me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they exemplify who we are.

You can also read the above list here