Turning Leadership Mistakes into Leadership Lessons

As much as we may hate to admit it, the phrase “nobody is perfect” applies to all of us. No matter how good you are at your job, one thing is guaranteed: leadership mistakes happen. There is always something you can do to improve your workplace performance, relationships, motivation, etc. This week’s quick-hit story, by author Gregg Baron, lists our most frequent leadership mistakes. After all, if we remain acutely aware of these common mistakes, we’re better prepared to transform them into lessons.

Turning Leadership Mistakes into Leadership Lessons

by Gregg Baron

Turn leadership mistakes into lessons learned. What does it say about a leader, their commitment and character if they do not make the effort? Below are a few quick hits to consider:
Leadership mistakes occur when:

• They do not listen enough or at all.
• They create the impression for their people that they have all the answers.
• They do not build enough trust.
• They do not go out of their way to give credit, recognition and praise proportionate to the progress demonstrated.
• They do not invest in growing their people’s competence and confidence enough by training, coaching and assigning stretch projects. They do not do post-mortems with their people to ensure learning.
• They fail to help their people believe they are accepted, supported, valued and appreciated.
• They push too many initiatives / tasks / projects and fail at being credible in their expectations.
• They fail to effectively create “shared understandings” about expectations (performance, values, work rules…). They fail because they do not communicate enough or well and do not check for the shared understanding.
• Their actions, decisions and communication impute their self-interest is more important than the organization, direct reports and customers.
• They get complacent and do not make the effort to get better, smarter, more creative, innovative, accurate and / or effective. They choose to coast.

If given the opportunity, how would your direct reports score you on the above? Would they bring up other / different opportunities to enhance your effectiveness?

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Gregg Baron, CMC is the president of Success Sciences, Inc. headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Success Sciences is a research based performance improvement firm that focuses on developing a team’s ability to earn and retain more successful customer relationships. They do that by significantly enhancing their competence, confidence and consistency in managing the prospect and customer experience.

These insights are fundamental to effective influence. To read more about other high impact influence skills and insights, get a complimentary copy of the Art of Influence Simplified. Please go here: http://www.success-sciences.com/artofinfluence/