Maccauvlei Learning Academy provides purposeful development journeys through its unique mix of people, solutions and passion so that individuals, teams and organisations are empowered to make a difference.
Why do we still reward charisma over competence?
Why do we equate confidence with capability?
Why do we promote people for their ability to manage numbers, not people?
More uncomfortably: Are organisations complicit in creating the very leaders they later have to manage out?
For many HR leaders, the honest answer is yes.
Leadership failure is rarely accidental. It is often the result of what organisations choose to reward.
“We like to think of leadership as something inherently positive,” says Noreen MacPherson, master HR practitioner and Learning & Development Specialist at Maccauvlei Learning Academy. “But in reality, many of the traits we celebrate early on can become deeply problematic later.”
The pattern is familiar. A high performer is promoted because they deliver results. Their confidence is seen as strength. Their intensity is mistaken for commitment. Their control is framed as diligence.
And then, slowly, things shift.
Confidence hardens into arrogance.
Drive becomes domination.
Decisiveness turns into shutting people down.
“These behaviours don’t appear overnight,” MacPherson explains. “They are often extensions of strengths that were previously rewarded. The problem is that, in a leadership context, those same traits can become destructive.”
The uncomfortable truth is that organisations often reward these traits, but only until they can no longer ignore the cost.
By the time the impact is visible, it is already embedded. Teams have stopped speaking up. Decisions happen in isolation. Performance looks stable on paper, but underneath, trust has eroded.
South Africa has seen what happens when leadership goes unchecked. The collapse of Steinhoff International is often framed as a governance failure, but at its core, it was also a leadership failure. One where power operated without sufficient challenge or accountability.
Most organisations will never face a crisis of that scale. But the underlying dynamics are far more common than we would like to admit.
“I’ve seen environments where leaders reward loyalty over competence, and where dissent is quietly discouraged,” says MacPherson. “People learn very quickly when it is safer to stay silent.”
Not all problematic leadership is loud. Some of it looks like micromanagement disguised as high standards. Some of it looks like avoidance, where leaders care deeply but refuse to have difficult conversations, leaving teams confused and unaccountable. Some of it looks like ego, where collaboration slowly dies because one voice dominates.
None of this is new. What is surprising is how often it is tolerated.
Organisations tend to treat these issues as individual failures. But more often, they are systemic. People are promoted for performance, not readiness. Leadership capability is assumed, not developed. And when problems emerge, the response is reactive. This often takes the form of coaching or other interventions but, it is, ultimately, damage control.
By then, the cost has already been incurred.
“Many leaders are expected to navigate complexity, manage people, and make high-stakes decisions without ever being equipped to do so,” MacPherson notes. “We assume they will figure it out. Often, they don’t.”
If the dark side of leadership is, to some extent, inevitable, then the question is not how to avoid it, but how to manage it before it becomes entrenched.
That requires more than theory. It requires deliberate, applied development. The kind of development that builds self-awareness, challenges behaviour, and connects leadership directly to workplace reality.
In this context, and for the first time in the organisation’s 70-year history, Maccauvlei Learning Academy is coming to Cape Town, offering a limited intake of its NQF Level 5 leadership programmes. These three programmes are focused on developing leadership capability across three areas: Self, others, and business. Delivered in a condensed five-day format, without a reduction in the number of credits, the programmes are grounded in practical application and are designed to intervene before these patterns become permanent.
They are also, notably, the final intake of their kind and have no current QCTO equivalent.
“The dark side of leadership is not an anomaly. It is a reflection of what organisations reward, tolerate, and ignore,” she says. “The real question is not whether it exists. It is whether we are willing to admit the role we play in creating it.”
Noreen MacPherson is a master HR practitioner and Learning & Development Specialist at Maccauvlei Learning Academy
For more information and to book please go to: Cape Town Legacy Initiative 2026 - Maccauvlei Learning. Or contact us on: 011 439 3913 or [email protected]
Seats are limited and bookings close on the 15th of June. The programmes are running in August, September and October.
