Why New Leaders Fail — and What It Actually Takes to Succeed

Straight talk on one of the most preventable problems in organizations today

Here is a number that should make every organization pause: 40 to 50% of new leaders fail within their first 18 months. That is not a fringe statistic. That comes from McKinsey and Company, one of the most cited sources on organizational leadership in the world. And research from the Corporate Executive Board puts the range even higher, at 50 to 70% of executives failing within that same window.

Think about what that means at scale. Organizations spend significant resources identifying, promoting, and onboarding leaders, and then roughly half of them are considered to be failing before they ever find their footing. The financial cost is substantial. The human cost, in terms of the teams left in the wake of a derailing leader, is even higher.

The question worth asking is not just how often this happens. It’s why. And more importantly, what can be done about it.

The Real Reason New Leaders Fail

The easy assumption is that leaders fail because they are not smart enough, not experienced enough, not strategic enough, or not a good fit. The data says otherwise.

According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, the majority of executives who fail within their first 18 months do so not because of a deficit in technical skills or functional expertise. They fail because of poor interpersonal skills, an inability to build trust with their teams and peers, and a failure to adapt their leadership style to what the new role actually requires.

The Association for Talent Development, drawing on research by psychologist and author Daniel Goleman, found that organizations that promote star performers into leadership roles frequently discover those leaders fail when found lacking in emotional and social intelligence. The skills that made them exceptional individual contributors:  fast thinking, sharp execution, and strong personal results, are not the only skills that make someone effective at leading others.

McKinsey’s own research on CEO transitions reinforces this. More than 90% of CEOs who are considered to be failing within 18 months confess they wish they had managed their transition differently. They also note that succeeding in the new role required them to lead in fundamentally different ways than what got them to the top. The habits built over decades of individual success became liabilities when the job shifted from doing to leading.

The Center for Creative Leadership, which studies leadership derailment extensively, identifies problems with interpersonal relationships as one of the most common reasons leaders fail across levels and industries. Not incompetence. Not bad strategy. The inability to build and sustain the working relationships that leadership requires.

The Five Patterns That Show Up Most Often

After decades of working with leaders at all levels, these are the patterns I see most consistently in new leaders who struggle:

1. They lead like individual contributors. They keep doing the work instead of enabling others to do it. They solve problems instead of building the capability of their team. They mistake staying close to the work for staying in control, and in doing so, they signal that the team they are leading is not to be trusted.

2. They move too fast to prove themselves. The pressure to demonstrate value quickly is real, especially for external hires or leaders stepping into high-visibility roles. But speed without relationships is a liability. Teams that do not yet trust a new leader will comply on the surface and disengage underneath. The results may look fine for a quarter. Then they don’t.

3. They underestimate how much their style matters. How a leader makes decisions, handles conflict, responds under pressure, and communicates in ambiguous situations sends constant signals to their team. Many new leaders have never had to be deliberate about these things before. When the role gets harder, their default patterns show up, and those patterns derail resultss.

4. They do not build relationships before they need them. Relationships built during a crisis are transactional. New leaders who spend their early months focused entirely on results and strategy often find, when the first real challenge hits, that they do not have the relational capital to navigate it.

5. They wait too long to ask for help. This one is perhaps the most common and the most expensive. There is still a pervasive belief among leaders, especially newly appointed ones, that asking for support signals weakness or uncertainty. The data says the opposite. According to McKinsey, the most successful leadership transitions are characterized by leaders who actively seek counsel early and adjust quickly. The ones who fail tend to stay the course long after the evidence suggests a different approach is needed.

What Success Actually Looks Like

The good news is that none of these failure patterns are fixed. They are learnable, correctable, and preventable with the right support and the right level of honest self-assessment.

The leaders who succeed in new roles share a few consistent traits. They take the relational work of leadership as seriously as the strategic work. They build trust through consistency and transparency, not through charisma or authority. They seek feedback early, before they need it for survival. And they are honest about the gaps between where they are and where they need to be.

McKinsey’s research also found that the most successful CEO transitions are treated not just as a role change but as a personal reinvention; a deliberate effort to examine which habits and approaches still serve them and which need to be left behind.

Leadership development research from High5Test found that organizations see an average return of $7 for every $1 invested in leadership development. For a leader navigating a new role, the return is even more concentrated, because getting the first 18 months wrong is not just an individual failure,  it is an organizational one.

What Organizations Get Wrong

The research is clear that the majority of new leader failures are systemic, driven by inadequate preparation, insufficient support during the transition, and a fundamental mismatch between what got someone promoted and what the new role actually demands.

A 2024 study published in the Behavioral Sciences journal found that in one year alone, an estimated $81 billion was spent on leadership development initiatives across the U.S.  Yet the majority of those initiatives focused on building strengths rather than addressing the interpersonal and behavioral deficits that actually cause leadership derailment. Developing strengths is valuable. But if an organization is not equally serious about identifying and addressing the patterns that lead to failure, it is only investing in half the picture.

The organizations that have the strongest track record of successful leadership transitions do a few things consistently:  They invest in structured onboarding that goes beyond logistics to include real relationship-building and clear expectation-setting. They provide coaching support during the transition.. And they create enough psychological safety that new leaders can surface what they do not know without fear of being seen as unqualified or unprepared.

The Bottom Line

Failure is not inevitable. It is a choice, made by default, when organizations and leaders treat transitions as a finish line rather than a starting point.

If you are stepping into a new leadership role, or if you are responsible for developing leaders in your organization, the single most important question is not whether someone has the skills for the role. It is whether they have the support to succeed in it.

I work with new and transitioning leaders to close the gap between where they are and where they need to be, before the 18-month clock runs out. If that is a conversation worth having, reach out at rwallins@acceleratetm.com or visit www.acceleratetm.com. More insights on my blog at www.acceleratetm.com/blog.

Sources:

• McKinsey and Company — “It Really Is Not About 100 Days”
• McKinsey and Company — “Starting Strong: Making Your CEO Transition a Catalyst for Renewal”
• Corporate Executive Board / Thunderbird School of Global Management — Executive failure rate
• Association for Talent Development — “Why New Leaders Fail”
• Center for Creative Leadership — Interpersonal relationships as a leading cause of leader derailment
• Behavioral Sciences Journal — “Leveraging Leadership Development to Pre-Empt Leader Derailments”
• High5Test — Leadership Training and Development Statistics 2024 to 2025