Leadership mistakes can seriously stifle your team from reaching their potential. If you manage a team, you should already how much your team relies on you to guide and support them. Every day you manage competing priorities (planning, hiring, training, optimizing, tracking goals to target etc.) there is pressure to meet and exceed their needs and expectations. The list of things that need your attention on a daily basis is long, highly demanding and often unpredictable.
These competing priorities lead to taking your eye off the ball. Performance metrics start to slip and issues aren’t addressed. You also start skipping coaching sessions, one-to-one, and other opportunities to engage with your team. Even though it is obvious that taking your eye off the ball causes the team to lose focus and stray from their goals.
Overcome these challenges with this list of 5 leadership mistakes that are holding your team back from meeting their goals and expectations and what you can do to improve each mistake.
1. Not Realizing You Are in a Leadership Role
This is the biggest of the 5 leadership mistakes. If you are responsible for a team you are more than their manager, you are their leader. Managing and leading are closely related and yet they have very different characteristics. Managers have people work for them, leaders have people who follow them. Leadership is getting the team on board to follow towards the vision of success you know they can achieve.
Exceptional execution requires strategic leadership. This couldn’t be more important than it is today. That is because the rate at which our world is evolving is increasing. To keep pace or stay ahead of those changes requires leadership first and then management. Leadership first because you have to set the tone and strategy in a proactive way. Strategic leadership is constantly monitoring the changes in the environment and organizes the resources accordingly. Management second to monitor and improve the strategies and vision put in place.
Suggested Way to Overcome:
Make time to watch what is happening and how people are interacting and executing their jobs. Schedule time to develop the ideal state you want the team to move towards. Create a story that will paint a picture of how things will look if everyone marches towards that vision. The ideal state includes the expected norms for behavior as well as performance standards. This will give your team the direction and vision they need to reach their full potential.
2. Ignoring Performance Issues
Ignoring performance and behavior is the next most important leadership mistake. Success requires everyone doing their job. Your team needs to understand what they are accountable to and how their action contributes to the larger team. Because if any one person is not doing their job to the best of their ability the team itself is failing. If you ignore performance issues, you lose a great opportunity to help your team achieve better outcomes.
Suggested Way to Overcome:
Firstly performance is more than KPIs and targets it is also behavior. Review the reporting tools daily and identify the spread between the team. Use your observation skills to ensure behavior is within the expected norms that were laid out when you outlined the vision of the future state. Talk to the individual team players about your findings and coach and train to help them overcome shortcomings and build confidence. Reward the performance and most of all reward the right behaviors.
3. Undocumented or Not Following Processes
Processes are the rules and method by which people execute their job. Not having a process or not enforcing them is a leadership mistake. Following a set of solid processes are crucial to highly effective teams because they provide structure and guidance to execute daily tasks. If everyone is doing their job in their own way will cause confusion and you lose collaboration. With the loss of collaboration, you miss out on knowledge sharing between the team. This ultimately leads to different workgroups performing at different levels.
Suggested Way to Overcome:
Each team member should be following the correct workflows and follow the same process stages. Having defined steps on how to execute on the different components of their role comes from well documented, tested and proven processes. Regularly evaluate that your team has embraced and are using the processes. If the desired outcomes aren’t being realized check to see if the process broke or if it wasn’t followed. If the process isn’t followed, review the process with them and reevaluate. But if the processes are being followed and the desired outcomes aren’t being realized it is time to redesign the process.
4. Missing Training Opportunities
Missing opportunities to train is another common leadership mistake. Anyone who is great has a coach and is constantly learning through formal and informal training. This is seen in nearly every profession from sports to actors, sales to service industry because to be the best requires coaching, training, and practice. Coaching and training offer ways to improve skills, develop new approaches and maximize the raw talents of the team. Coaching helps find the hidden top performers on your team. It allows you to nurture and replicate successful behaviors that lead to successful performance. Invest time to train new and middle performers and focus that training on the core competencies of the job.
Suggested Way to Overcome:
If something isn’t in place that clearly outlines the competencies, how to evaluate them and the training that will address any gaps you have to start there. However, if this type of evaluation tool exists, start using it to measure the team against those competencies. Design a training and coaching plan that includes milestones and success measures. Now you cycle coaching, training and evaluating until the desired outcomes are realized.
5. One Size Fits All Approach to Managing the Team
Your team needs your individual and uninterrupted attention. Not providing that is another leadership mistake that stifles your team’s potential. They need your feedback. Focusing on each individual within the team has to happen because they all have different needs and are at different stages of their professional growth. This happens through one-to-ones where you can learn the details of their struggles and what is happening within the team. Regular coaching sessions provide the opportunity to review how the individuals are progressing and how they are or aren’t contributing. After identifying the areas for improvement you can offer personalized improvement plans and hold the team accountable.
Suggested Way to Overcome:
Coaching should be a scheduled activity, that isn’t rescheduled to the point that it doesn’t happen. Regular time with individual team members helps them feel valued and respected. This helps improve motivation and engagement. Focus on recent events and create a safe and comfortable atmosphere where they can freely share challenges and pain points. It is important that they feel safe opening up, otherwise, you lose the opportunity to get to the root causes of the issues. Once the issues are identified, work together to build development plans and guiding them to be solution focused. Helping them switch from problem-focused to solution-focused creates greater buy-in and increases their chances of executing the development plan successfully.
Avoid these 5 leadership mistakes. The best teams are the best because they have strong leadership. Leaders who design, inform and hold the team accountable through a clear set of standards and processes. They use their experiences to set the vision, coach, train and develop the team individually. Most importantly their leadership presence inspires the team to be their best.
Last updated on November 28th, 2018 at 08:43 am
