Leadership Development Series Part 1: 10 Challenges Leaders Face

To begin with, in my own experience on leadership development, I have hardly ever come across any book that talks about the challenges leaders face. In my opinion, the first step to developing leadership ability is to know the challenges that leaders ahead of us face almost daily. These challenges that leaders face vary from one leader to another. Some leaders have even faced all these challenges before but have been able to learn from them while some did not deal with these challenges well and it has been their downfall. Thus, it is left to you reading this to decide whether or not you will learn from these challenges and become a better leader than you currently are.

The challenges listed below are not exhaustive and they are based on my own study and experience therefore there may be others out here but these ones can serve as a skeletal frame for the ones not mentioned. 

1.  Pride. This is obviously one of the biggest challenges leaders face. Pride can cause so many problems. Pride is different from confidence. Pride is thinking about yourself higher than you actually are. Pride in leaders usually stems from the root of insecurity. It will also affect your relationship with your followers. 
2.  Ineffective communication. Sometimes, a leader can be too driven and too soaked up in his own vision that he is under the impression or illusion that all his followers understand where he’s going and coming from. He may even be so disconnected from his members that he is blind to some of the challenges they face as individuals. Furthermore, there is a tendency for him to drift apart from his followers so much so that whatever he tells them is not completely understood by them because he may not know how best to communicate with them. Leaders must understand the dynamism of humanity. Not everyone understands things in the same way and not everyone can think the way you (the leader) do. 
3. A faulty inner circle. Every leader has to have an inner circle. Your inner circle consists of the people who are closest to you. Even amongst your followers, not everyone will be as close to you as you want and most followers may not want to approach you directly when they have issues with you or on other things so you need an inner circle. These are the people who will be your eyes and ears everywhere you’re not. Jesus understood this and selected 12 disciples and among the 12 He had 3 that were closest to Him. They constituted His inner circle.
4. Immaturity. As often said, maturity is not a function of age, it’s not even a function of position. Just because you are a leader now doesn’t even mean you are very mature. They are so many immature leaders out there. As a leader, you have to build your social and emotional intelligence. This will aid your maturity in thinking and in response or reaction to certain circumstances and also it helps you while you are working under pressure. 
5. Frustrations. There will be times, when as a leader, you feel like your followers don’t see the things you see and so don’t act in line with the vision and the picture you’ve painted in your mind. You will be tempted to become frustrated when your followers and even other people begin to step on your toes and they do things that will hurt you deeply. 
6. Forgetfulness. It is important for leaders to remember certain details of their followers and their duties. It is never good for a leader to be forgetful. Having so many things on your hand and in your head is not excuse enough to your followers and it shouldn’t give room for you to forget vital details and information. Forgetfulness sometimes makes followers feel like you really don’t care even when in actual sense, you do. 
7. Lack of direction and planning. A leader who lacks direction will enjoy stagnation and will be on a steady decline.  Also, leaders must learn to plan ahead of time because people always look up to the leader for direction. 
8. Inadequate knowledge base. The leader has to strive to be up to date in knowledge and he has to know a lot. Truth is, knowing a lot is irrelevant without proper application. He may not know the most but his knowledge base must be relevant enough for his duties and responsibilities. 
9. Listening too much. It is disaster that awaits a leader who listens to every suggestion that people present to him. Any suggestion that will take your eyes away from your vision and goals is no good suggestion at all. You don’t always have to consider everything that people suggest to you. Take the helpful stuff and do away with the rest. 
10. Lack of motivation. This is a big challenge for so many leaders. Sometimes there may be no “ginger” for you to go on. At times, it may feel like a lonely road and that no one even cares but these things are bound to happen. You must learn how to deal with them.

These challenges are there to make us better leaders. Overcoming them is only a plus for any leader. Subsequently, we will treat the solutions and steps to overcome and learn from these challenges.