Why 40% to 50% Of New Leaders Fail: 3 Models that Prevent It

Forbes

24-06-2025

Research from McKinsey & Company reports that 40% to 50% of new leaders fail within the first 18 months. Why is this?
The primary issue is not a lack of intelligence or effort, but a gap in foundational leadership competencies leaders must develop to navigate the complexities of different people and contexts. Based on 20 years of coaching and developing leaders, I've identified three models that help close this gap and drive sustainable leadership success.
These frameworks are not theoretical, as they are based on real-world leadership challenges and offer actionable tools leaders can apply immediately. Here's how each of the three models works and why it matters more now than ever.
Model 1: The Leadership Trifecta: 3 Skill Sets Leaders for Leadership Success
There is no silver bullet or one right way to be an effective leader, but all leaders should understand and actively develop the three skill sets necessary for long-term leadership success: Technical Leadership, Organizational Leadership and Self-Leadership.
Unfortunately, most leadership development literature and experiences focus on only one or two of these foundational leadership skill sets, leaving leaders with a partial understanding of what is required of them to succeed in different environments. The weight and importance of these three skill sets are dictated by the context in which the leader operates. Let's explore.
The Leadership Trifecta
Technical Leadership focuses on a leader's subject-matter expertise, reputation, and ability to drive innovation. Technical competence is often what earns leaders their roles, but they are only part of the equation for sustained success. Leaders must also be able to translate expertise into team outcomes and navigate interpersonal dynamics. Key skill sets for Technical Leadership include:
These leadership skills help leaders create and maintain an environment where people are delivering excellent outcomes and building healthy relationships. Key skill sets for Organizational Leadership include:
We must first learn to lead ourselves before we can effectively lead others. The most successful leaders share a pattern of foundational Self-Leadership behaviors that allow them to demonstrate self-awareness, emotional intelligence, inclusion, mindfulness, empathy, social intelligence and learning agility during their most challenging and complex situations.
The SOAR Self-Leadership framework stands for Self, Outlook, Action and Reflection (SOAR). This model takes the fewest, most important knowledge and skills from each concept and places them into a person-centric, replicable, research-backed roadmap for developing your Self-Leadership abilities.
SOAR Self-Leadership Model
The Leadership Trifecta Model matters because it offers a comprehensive roadmap for integrating three foundational skill sets: Technical Leadership, Organizational Leadership, and Self-Leadership. This model helps leaders assess, balance, and grow across all three areas so they can effectively leverage their strengths, manage weaknesses, and adjust appropriately to meet the needs of each unique situation.
Model 2: ACT Leadership Model: Creating a Healthy High-Performance Culture
The best leaders understand that their highest calling is to build a culture that enables employees to feel connected, valued and capable of doing their best work in pursuit of the organization's vision and mission. The three most important leadership responsibilities for creating a culture of healthy high performance are to provide an environment where employees have alignment, clarity and trust (ACT).
All teams face a universal tension that will either drive their success or become the primary reason for their failure. This ongoing tension is the need for the team to focus on accomplishing its most important goals while creating a culture of trust, safety, and inclusion. In other words, teams must consistently deliver results and foster healthy relationships. I developed the ACT Leadership Model to guide leaders in establishing a healthy, high-performance team environment.
ACT Leadership Model
A leader is responsible for ensuring everyone has a clear picture of how the team must work together to accomplish common goals that serve the organization's vision, mission and strategic goals. Additionally, a leader is responsible for ensuring that the organization has the necessary team structure, processes, and talent to deliver on its most important priorities.
If done correctly, this will align employees and teams clearly with the organization's vision, mission, values and strategic goals so that everyone executes the vision daily. There are five key levels of alignment:
A common purpose, values, goals and priorities give the team its identity and direction. These commonalities unite team members' daily efforts to advance their shared goals. Leaders have a responsibility to provide clarity about who we are, what we do and how we do it. This foundational clarity enables an environment where employees can collectively focus on pursuing the team's most important goals. These are the five key levels of clarity:
In hybrid environments, strong relationships are harder to build. Yet they remain essential. Leaders must be intentional in creating space for trust and connection. Countless studies have found that social relationships are the best predictor of heightened well-being and lowered stress, both an antidote for depression and a prescription for high performance.
In a Harvard Business Review article, 'The Neuroscience of Trust,' Paul Zak shared the following research on the importance of trust within organizations. 'Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 40% less burnout.' There are 5 key aspects of building trust.
The ACT Leadership Model matters because even the most talented employees struggle without a healthy team environment. ACT gives leaders a framework to intentionally shape culture. When alignment is missing, people lack direction. Without clarity, confusion slows progress. Without trust, collaboration breaks down. ACT addresses all three.
Model 3: The Applied Learning Cycle for Accelerating Agility
Leadership will expose your flaws. The Darwinian rule applies to modern leaders: adapt, migrate or die. As the uncertainties and complexities of our world continue to increase, leadership agility has become a foundational attribute for organizational success.
One of the hardest lessons a leader must learn is how to challenge, update, and change long-standing beliefs and behaviors that have served them well in the past but are no longer sufficient for future success. The Applied Learning Cycle below provides a roadmap for leaders to accelerate their ability to learn, adapt, and evolve.
The Applied Learning Cycle
This framework outlines four steps leaders can follow to build new behaviors and grow through real-time feedback:
The Applied Learning Cycle matters because it reinforces that adaptation and reflection are not optional but essential for staying effective as your environment evolves. Leaders who embrace this cycle become more resilient, self-aware and adaptable.
Accelerating Leadership Agility, Culture and Growth
No single model solves every leadership challenge. But these three frameworks - the Leadership Trifecta, ACT Model, and Applied Learning Cycle give leaders a practical foundation to grow. They provide clarity, culture-building tools, and the agility to lead through change. The best leaders don't have all the answers, but they are committed to learning, adapting, and improving. Which model will you apply next?