It is a troubling fact of organizational life that executives with a track record of success, and who are expected to continue to succeed, are sometimes fired, demoted, or plateaued. The derailment research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s investigated the reasons why. This publication reports on a study that extended CCL research by comparing contemporary derailed and successful executives in the U.S. and in Europe, and by comparing these results to the earlier findings.

Jean Brittain Leslie is a senior fellow and director of strategic initiatives in the Global Leadership & Analytics Group at CCL. In this role, she develops, oversees, and helps implement programs, projects, and processes that support leadership research and analytics' vision and short- and long-term plans. Jean has published more than 100 pieces on leadership, assessment, and feedback-in the form ofpeer-reviewed articles, popular-press articles, book chapters, and books. She has an MA in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.