Marissa Mayer: A Case Study In Poor Leadership There's much that can be learned about leadership in any real world case study, and the Mayer/Yahoo saga is no exception. Just about any company can be reinvented and reinvigorated with sound leadership - the obvious missing ingredient for Mayer and for the Yahoo board. If there's a silver lining here, it is this: it's never too late to lead better. From day one, Mayer could have talked less and listened more. She could have taken the time to learn before acting. She could have mended fences rather than building walls. She chose to pontificate, posture and spin rather than listen, learn and understand. One of the first things a newly seated chief executive needs to tackle is building trust across all constituencies, but particularly with the workforce. Mayer's leadership seems to be more about Mayer than those she is responsible for leading. If you dismiss the opinions of your team, don't be shocked when they stop sharing their insights. If the people you lead are afraid to make mistakes you’ll never see their best work. Another leadership miss for Mayer - but for the people there is no platform. Culture is often talked about but rarely understood. It's the glue that holds all businesses together. I've always said that a toxic culture is code for failed leadership. What Mayer has failed to grasp is that you cannot transform a culture you do not understand. A corporate culture is a fragile ecosystem with many interdependent mechanisms that must be nurtured in order to thrive. Mayer has completely missed the biggest lever a CEO has to pull - culture. Yet another completely unavoidable mistake was not having a cohesive, crisply articulated strategy. Mayer has attempted to ideate her way to the future by implementing any number of disparate initiatives that felt like a series of one-off imposed mandates. Perhaps her biggest failure is the ability to unlearn. Mayer consistently rebuffs dissenting and/differing opinions and exhibits a close-mindedness that rarely serves a leader well. Being a CEO is tough, and no doubt, being a CEO leading a major business transformation is even tougher. I actually don't fault Mayer for the Yahoo debacle as much as I do the Yahoo board for not recognizing what type of leader they needed for this assignment. QUESTIONS • What type of Leadership style did Mayer demonstrate, judging from the Case study? • Where did she go wrong as a Leader? • What in your opinion do you think she could she have done better?