Visionless Frustrates Plans and Destroys Business
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion,” former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co. Jack Welch says. Without a clear vision for your company, the managerial skills and leadership abilities you acquire will only propagate the status quo.
Always set your mind on improvement and ask yourself if you have passion for the work you do. If not, why are you managing your team in the first place? Lack of passion leads to lack of vision; this will be apparent in your quality of leadership and will negatively impact the business.
Antipathy Breaks Your Leadership Style
Without empathy, strategic leaders will truly sever any meaningful connection with employees. Make an effort to understand each worker’s point of view; imagine walking in their shoes. With insight into each person’s unique working habits, strengths and weaknesses, bosses and managers can assign appropriate tasks to the workers best able to accomplish them. “Delegation without investigation is merely relegation,” Ed Young, senior pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Houston states.
Micromanagement De-motivates and Annoys Employees
Most employees relish the opportunity to work autonomously or independently. Corporate leaders or managers must lose the tendency to dip their hands into every facet of the business. This power trip may stem from distrust or the arrogant attitude that your omnipresent influence will excel the company to new heights.
In reality, micromanagement is annoying and distracting to workers because it interrupts the workflow and slows down productivity. This ‘bad’ leadership practice de-motivates hard working people, and sometimes it even forces employees to leave their current workplaces for better employment. So, in order to be a great boss and foster a charismatic leadership style, you should grant your subordinates with a reasonable amount of freedom and the ability to make their own decisions.
Inept Leaders are Never Followed by Their Subordinates
When your employees figure out whether they regard and respect you as a good democratic leader, they do not actually think about your merits and status, but they observe your real-life decisions and actions. They try to decide who you really are and what you are about. In such a way the subordinates wish to find out if you’re a trustworthy and decisive manager who neither abuses authority and nor tries to gain promotion.
If you are a self-serving corporate leader, you are likely to be ineffective in leading your group because your people only obey you, not follow. Although you may succeed in many areas and be valued by your superiors, you will never be followed by the team.
In order to avert the pitfalls of leadership, you must use your ingenuity and charisma to move in new, unprecedented directions and win the respect of your subordinates. Try to bypass personnel conflicts and dilemmas with serious thought and novel ideas. Creativity isn’t your strong suit? You’re part of a team — surely there is an employee with creative aptitude, so encourage workers to give advice and suggest solutions. Post a board where employees can write down problematic issues — which can be a great way to avoid leadership pitfalls and mistakes!
Indecisive and Unclear Attitude Kills Team Leading
A team is well formed and led when the leader shows a proactive and unambiguous attitude which has implications for motivation and action. A proactive manager shows everyone that things can and will be changed for better and that no problem will remain unsolved. This person always makes judicious decisions briskly and with confidence.
Entrepreneur.com suggests enacting the Q-CAT system into strategic team leading practices to help horrible bosses and managers:
- Be quick but not hasty
- Committed but not rigid
- Analytical and Thoughtful without obsessing over the details
So, try your best to express your attitude with clarity by making quick, confident decisions. Then an assertive delivery will certainly garner respect and rally workers to your side.
Also do not let your confidence devolve into unfounded hubris. You’re only as effective as your weakest link. And how far up the company ladder would you be if not for the dedication and perseverance of your employees? To avert the pitfalls of leadership, show humility and humbleness, but don’t cloak your achievements and hard work in modesty, either.
Pessimistic Bosses Always Lose the Race
Pessimism makes managers and bosses horrible leaders because a pessimistic attitude breaks rational planning and managing of people. A pessimism-based leadership style makes workers that things are much complicated and absolutely unsolvable. If you employ this style, your business rivals will beat you and you will be likely to lose the race. You will never commit your work group to greater performance.
On the contrary, an optimistic style helps you solve almost any issue. A positive approach and enthusiastic attitude to team building and management will be the key to avert the pitfalls of leadership. When you are optimistic and enthusiastic, you’re more committed to what you’re doing and your group believes that you’re a charismatic leader who knows how to change things for better. Remember that a combination of enthusiasm and optimism will lead yourself and your people into an invigorating journey in which everyone feels alive and positive!
The Roadmap to Averting Leadership Pitfalls
To summarize all the said above, I suggest you look at the following roadmap that can help you avoid leadership pitfalls and achieve better results in team building and management. The roadmap shows an endless cycle, and each step of this cycle has no priority and focus because all the steps are equally important to the success in leading. Also note that you must carefully consider and carry out each of the steps, and return to them again and again. Team leading is a dynamic process which requires managers to be adaptable. So in order to be a great boss, you have to change and adjust your thoughts, decisions and attitudes according to any new circumstances in your team environment.
