The 5 Pitfalls of Leadership

Written by Beverly Y. Langford Tuesday, July 26 2011

If you aspire to be a leader or already are in a leadership position, you undoubtedly get plenty of advice about how to behave as a leader. Even though focusing on the positive is commendable, sometimes you may also benefit from knowing what behaviors to avoid. Often, as a well-intentioned leader, you may concentrate so much on what you should be doing that you overlook some action or inaction that can derail the effectiveness of your leadership.

One of the challenges that you may face as a leader is to find yourself in a position where others aren’t willing to point out your missteps. Before you know it, those behaviors become habits that, over time, can undermine your leadership.

Even though your direct reports or coworkers may not challenge your actions, you can be relatively sure that they notice – and they probably say plenty to each other. Further, these issues can erode morale – not because of one big mistake, but rather a subtle chipping away at people’s motivation and enthusiasm for doing their jobs.

Leaders rarely intend to commit these offenses, but they can still become detrimental to your reputation and undermine your credibility and influence. In many cases, simply being aware of the offenses can facilitate the ability to avoid them. Here are five leadership blunders, in no particular order of importance. Each of these can negatively impact your ability to lead effectively; combined they can become insurmountable barriers.

Leadership Mistake # 1: Forgetting that people hold leaders to higher standards

As a leader, you are continuously on display regarding your appearance, your behavior, and your demeanor. Think of the television commercial that says, “Don’t ever let them see you sweat.” As a leader you have a particular obligation to maintain your poise, composure, and competence in any situation. If you are under stress and frazzled, find a way to retreat and collect yourself before you deal with your employees. Coming unglued in front of your direct reports can create damage that may take months to repair.

Make sure that you model the values and principles that you espouse. If you tout punctuality, be on time – both for your meetings and meetings you attend. Don’t internally justify your lateness by reminding yourself that you are so much busier than everyone else. If you insist that your direct reports demonstrate a certain level of professionalism in their dress and behavior, go the extra mile in demonstrating what you want to see. When you don’t bring your “A” game, it undermines your ability to raise the level of others’ performance.

Leadership Mistake #2: Feeling the need to put your “fingerprints” on everything

In his excellent and practical book, What Got You Here Won’t Get you There, Marshall Goldsmith discusses the mistake that successful managers make by trying to add their own special value to everything going on in the office or department.

When you, as a leader, make random, off-the-cuff suggestions about the work that employees are doing, you need to understand that your position lends special credence to everything you say. A simple “what if” becomes a mandate, and it can send employees scurrying to fulfill your wishes. As an effective leader, you should delegate and encourage your followers to come to their own conclusions. You should listen carefully and thoughtfully consider the plan as your employees present it, without piling on with your own ideas. Even when others ask for your suggestion, you should offer it in a context that doesn’t take over the conversation – or the project.

In some cases, you may indeed need to suggest or change the direction in which things are going, but only when a clear and defensible reason exists.

Leadership Mistake #3: Blaming rather than solving

When people make mistakes, particularly costly ones, it’s easy to focus on the offense – and the offender. As a leader, you may often feel partly responsible when things go wrong on your watch, and you recognize the possibility that your leadership ability will come into question when your followers fail. As a result, you may become defensive and may lash out at those who caused the embarrassment.

Certainly, leaders need to hold others accountable, but concentrating on placing blame and punishing the wrongdoer does not resolve the issue. As a leader, you can make sure that the person learns from the experience without being malevolent in dealing with the problem. Further, knowing that a leader is going to react to mistakes and failure vehemently and vindictively creates an atmosphere of fear and makes employees wary of taking any action or assuming any responsibility.

As a leader, you have a great opportunity to demonstrate your effectiveness by helping employees recover from errors and continuing to encourage their personal growth and empowerment.

Leadership Mistake #4: Losing the passion for learning

People look to their leaders for answers, and you often have the right answers, based on your knowledge, skills, and abilities. Experience may have taught you to default to the familiar, and relying on what you know has worked before. You can easily fall into the trap of resting on your laurels. You’ve been there and done that. But, when you think that you have arrived and ceased to grow, you begin a steady decline. We all know people who are old at 40, in terms of their continued capacity to learn, adapt, and develop.

In their book on lifetime leadership, Geeks and Geezers, Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas assert that true leaders of any age continue to be effective by maintaining a youthful curiosity and zest for knowledge.

If you are an effective leader, you know that you can learn something from everyone, and you understand the importance of continuing to challenge your own boundaries by expanding your knowledge and recognizing the learning and contributions of others from all walks of life.

Leadership Mistake #5: Believing that you can command commitment

You may hear other leaders talk about how they demand 100-percent commitment from each of their followers, but in reality, you can’t force people to be committed. You can certainly command compliance. You might say to an employee, “If you don’t do A, B, and C, you won’t keep your job. And you will get exactly that – A, B, and C, and probably not much more. Compliance is what you pay for. Compliance is acceptable performance.

Commitment, on the other hand, is always a choice. People choose to go the second mile, when the requirement is only that they travel the first. Pat MacMillan, CEO of Triaxia Partners, an Atlanta-based consulting firm, says that the difference between commitment and compliance is the difference between acceptable and exceptional behavior.

Although you can’t command commitment, you can support an environment where people choose to go beyond requirements and to do their best. Knowing both what to do and what to avoid will bring out the best in everyone – leaders and followers alike.

Beverly Y. Langford is author of The Etiquette Edge and president of LMA Communication. She teaches management communication in the Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta.