Early warning signs that your leadership team may be underperforming
When the CEO of a midsize manufacturing firm called The Metiss Group, the message was clear and urgent: “Something broke. We missed a major client deadline, our head of sales resigned, and I feel like I’m the only one who cares about holding this place together.” His voice carried the frustration of someone who had poured years into building a company only to watch it stall under the weight of poor execution and silent turnover.
At first glance, it looked like an isolated leadership failure. But after a series of conversations with our team, the bigger picture became obvious: this was not a sudden crisis. The leadership breakdown had been developing quietly for over a year. Leaders had stopped holding one another accountable. Team members were working in silos. The core values, meant to guide decisions and behaviors, had become decorative phrases in the office lobby. The CEO’s mistake was not in failing to react. It was failing to notice.
Leadership breakdowns do not start with explosions. They start with erosion. The best time to assess leadership is before things begin to slide. Yet many senior executives are too busy, or too close to the business, to step back and evaluate how well their leadership team is performing. By the time the warning signs become visible, valuable momentum is already lost.
This article outlines how to recognize early indicators of weak leadership before they turn into costly organizational problems.
In this article, you will learn:
- Why your leaders should know and live the company’s core values
- How employee retention problems can signal weak leadership
- What hiring struggles reveal about leadership reputation
- How missed deadlines reflect discipline and accountability issues
Why Your Leaders Should Know And Live The Company’s Core Values
A leadership team that cannot clearly articulate the organization’s core values without referencing a slide deck or glancing at a wall sign is not aligned. Core values are not branding tools. They are decision filters. When they are internalized, they guide hiring, performance evaluations, conflict resolution, and business strategy. When they are not, they become empty slogans.
Leadership teams who take core values seriously use them as a lens through which all behaviors are evaluated. When a high performer is removed because they are misaligned with the values, it sends a clear signal to the organization: values are not optional. Conversely, when leaders themselves disregard those standards, the message is equally loud. Employees follow behavior, not posters.
The Metiss Group has seen this pattern often. When the leadership team cannot recite or explain the organization’s values, it usually signals a deeper cultural disconnect. This creates confusion across departments, weakens accountability, and compromises the credibility of leadership itself.
How Employee Retention Problems Can Signal Weak Leadership
When strong employees begin to leave voluntarily, it is often an early indication of poor leadership. Superstars have options. They do not leave because of minor disagreements or better salaries elsewhere. They leave because their work environment no longer meets their expectations for clarity, growth, and respect.
In most cases, the departure is not from the company—it is from their direct manager. The exit interview may mention “better opportunity” or “more flexibility,” but the root issue is often leadership behavior. Leaders who micromanage, fail to give feedback, ignore wins, or foster toxic team dynamics will quietly lose their best people.
Over time, a pattern forms. If you find yourself repeatedly losing high-performing individuals, particularly from the same department or under the same manager, you likely have a leadership issue. These are not HR problems. They are strategic failures that weaken institutional knowledge, drive up hiring costs, and damage morale.
Leadership training programs and executive leadership coaching can help correct these issues, but only if organizations are willing to trace the symptoms back to their source.
What Hiring Struggles Reveal About Leadership Reputation
Struggling to fill open roles—especially critical ones—can be a symptom of a leadership credibility gap. High-quality candidates evaluate more than job descriptions. They assess the organization’s reputation, leadership team, and cultural alignment. If any of those raise red flags, they will quietly exit the process.
This is particularly true when trying to hire an EOS Integrator or other senior roles. These candidates seek organizations that demonstrate clarity, direction, and integrity at the top. If they encounter mixed messages during the interview process, if feedback is delayed, or if they sense confusion about the role, they lose interest. Strong candidates are not just interviewing for a job, they are evaluating leadership alignment.
Search firms and headhunters can only do so much. If a company consistently struggles to close top-tier talent, leadership should consider how they are perceived externally. Internal dysfunction does not stay hidden for long. Current employees talk. Former employees post reviews. Delays and miscommunication during hiring are often signs that leadership is not operating with shared priorities or accountability.
Hiring assessments can help ensure cultural and behavioral alignment, but they cannot overcome poor leadership branding. Addressing leadership alignment is often the first step toward improving recruiting results.
How Missed Deadlines Reflect Discipline And Accountability Issues
Missed deadlines are not just operational missteps. They are leadership failures. When leadership teams routinely miss deadlines—whether it is product launches, internal reviews, or client deliverables—it reflects a breakdown in discipline and mutual accountability.
Good leaders are predictable. They do what they say they will do. They show up prepared, on time, and ready to lead by example. When they miss meetings, extend timelines, or fail to follow through, it creates a ripple effect throughout the organization. Standards drop. Teams stop taking commitments seriously. Momentum fades.
This is often a self-reinforcing cycle. Leaders excuse their own delays, and in doing so, lower the bar for others. Before long, the organization operates on exceptions rather than expectations.
At The Metiss Group, this signal comes up often in performance reviews and team feedback sessions. When deadlines are missed consistently, it is rarely because of poor systems. It is because leadership has stopped holding each other accountable to shared standards.
Takeaways
Leadership problems rarely arrive with sirens. They build slowly, often behind closed doors, in missed expectations and avoided conversations. By the time senior leaders recognize them, the consequences are already playing out in culture, retention, hiring, and execution.
The warning signs are subtle but visible. When leaders cannot express or embody the organization’s values, when top performers start leaving without clear cause, when key roles remain unfilled, and when deadlines are routinely missed, leadership is underperforming. These patterns require more than operational fixes. They require strategic attention and development.
Leadership is not static. It must be assessed, trained, and reinforced. Through hiring assessments, leadership development classes, and executive leadership coaching, companies can diagnose and correct leadership challenges before they cause permanent damage. The cost of ignoring these signals is far greater than the cost of addressing them.
Topics:
