7 Mistakes Leaders Make

I was recently thinking about my own career, and I’ve had many leaders who were amazing. I have also had a few leaders who were not. At the time that they were leading me, they may have been going through some personal difficulties or maybe they just lacked certain leadership skills.

As I reflected on each of these leaders, I started to consider what they could have done to help improve the situation for their employees, and for themselves.

#1 Leaders should avoid being unethical

You do not want to be a leader that is doing things that are sneaky, like cutting corners. We don’t want to carry out shady business practices or do anything that will reflect negatively on our own personal character.

As leaders, we want to make sure that we are people of integrity. We want our words to have weight and credibility. We want what we have to say to be valued, and we want to be able to bring our best to the table every day.

When we operate in integrity, we can trust ourselves and our teams can trust us as well. This also means that our customers and our leaders can trust us. A hallmark of good leadership is a person that has integrity. A person who does what they say, and who’s not going to ask people to bend rules that should not be bent or violated.

I remember talking to an executive once, and they shared with me how their company would perform a background check on leaders once they got to a certain level. They would investigate going all the way back to talking to the candidate’s kindergarten teacher.

That had to do largely with wanting to ensure that when that person got into that power position, nobody could try to do anything to blackmail them. And I thought that was a really wise practice. This is because once you get to a certain level, you have access to lots of assets and resources and knowledge. So why not protect the company by doing that background check?

#2 Leaders should genuinely care about their employees

Not caring about your employees is a really big deal. I was talking to someone the other day about a leader I had who constantly mispronounced my name. As soon as she mispronounced it, I would correct her and pronounce it properly. Literally every time I talked to her, she mispronounced my name, and then she wondered why I left the company. As leaders we show that we care about our employees by showing that we value them.

If they have personal problems, we need to sympathize and empathize with them. Be there for them to the extent that you can, and to the extent that is appropriate. Because there is a place where you need to set boundaries, and there is a time for you to say, “yes, I can be here for you”, or “no, this is something you have to work things out on your own, but I am rooting for you.” Even if you can’t do anything for them, let them know that you want to see them succeed.

#3 Not having a stress management plan in place

Stress is inevitable and when it comes our way, we should have healthy strategies prepared ahead of time to help us manage it. Whether that’s taking time off, going on vacation, taking a lunch break, working out, getting some rest or even taking a nap.

I remember once hearing somebody say, “don’t make decisions when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.” Those are some of the worst times to make decisions. As leaders, we don’t want to make major decisions when we’re not in the right frame of mind. If we do, it can really have a negative impact on our team and on our organization.

We want to come to work with as fresh of a mind as possible. We also want to have as positive of an attitude as possible, so that we can bring our best self to the table.

#4 Not having proper leadership training.

This is part of why I founded Simply Unique Coaching. I am here to help leaders, especially if you were thrown into the leadership position and your company just said, “Hey, you’re great at doing X. Why don’t you take this leadership position?”

And yes, you are great at doing X, but leadership is a totally different set of skills. Having to help motivate people and get them to follow you is a different skillset. Can leadership skills be learned and developed? Absolutely!!!

One of the worst things that can happen is for you to be in a leadership position for an extended period of time, and really not know what you need to do and what you need to focus on. So that’s why we’re here. That’s why we offer the 90 Day Leadership Boot Camp. That’s why we have the New Leader Mini Course.

We offer these and other services because we want to help support you in your leadership journey. You do not have to lead on your own. You don’t have to do this by yourself. It’s better to have someone on your side who wants to see you succeed, than to constantly struggle on your own.

I have 15 years of leadership experience and I have led over 10 teams. I literally was just offered another leadership opportunity just recently. What I want to say is, just make sure that you are doing your best, that you are bringing your best to the table, and that you are investing in yourself as a leader.

Do it the easy way. Don’t do it the hard way. Don’t just learn leadership by trial and error. Some things are going to come by trial and error, but you can get some lessons by just learning from other people who have already been where you are going.

#5 Having favorite employees

Do not have favorites on your team. That can come back and seriously bite you. Even if there’s somebody on your team that you think is amazing. You can compliment them of course, but make sure that you are being equitable. Don’t only compliment that one person, compliment everybody on your team that is doing great work. Genuine compliments are going to lend to more positive results from your team.

The more that we focus on the positive, the more positive we’re going to get. If we focus on the negative, the more negative we’re going to get. So we don’t want to have favorites, we don’t want to have cliques on our team. We don’t want to have groups of people, who are in the “in” crowd, and then others who are excluded.

We just don’t want to do that. We want everyone to feel comfortable coming to work. We want everyone to feel like they can come in and do their best, and that they’re welcome to be on the team.

#6 They don’t consider the ramifications of being a successful leader

We need to be prepared for our success as leaders. There are difficulties you can encounter before you become a leader, but there are others that you will encounter after you become a successful leader.

Remember earlier I talked about being prepared for the pressure and stress that comes with leadership. We need to have healthy ways to manage stress in order to avoid having problems later on. When leaders don’t properly handle stress, it can cause some really bad situations. Especially when they experience success or when they experience extreme stress on the job or in their personal lives. I’ve seen it happen before where a leader’s bad habits come to light and then it taints their legacy and their reputation.

And I don’t want that to be you or me. So ensure that as you’re operating in integrity and properly managing stress, that you’re also preparing yourself for success. Always keep this in the back of your mind, “When I get this leadership position, people are going to be looking at me and their eyes are going to be on me”. You don’t have to be perfect at everything, just make sure that if you have bad habits in your personal life, that you try to get those under control.

Because there is a saying that says everything that’s done in the dark comes out in the light. And, you just don’t want to have any leadership scandals. You don’t want to have something where someone can come back and blackmail you and say, “Oh, 20 years ago you posted this picture, or you sent me this picture.” Just make good choices so that you don’t have to worry about things coming back later on in life.

#7 Lead from their emotions

Our emotions will lie to us. I am not saying that we cannot use our emotions or that we should completely ignore them. What I am saying is that our emotions can high jack our brains, or make it easy for us to be manipulated.

We want to make sure that we are able to manage our emotions as leaders. Because you will have some people that can pick up on your emotional state, and everyone doesn’t do the right thing when they pick up on it.

Some people will pick up on it and say, “Okay, I need to give them some space, or let me come back around another time”. Then you have some people who say, “Ooh, they’re on the edge. Let me see if I can bump it up.”   They might see that you’re on edge and then they are just wanting to stir the pot.

I remember literally sitting in a meeting once and watching a person intentionally poke the leader. And she just had this smirk on her face because she thought it was the funniest thing. And I remember sitting in that meeting thinking, “Does anybody else see what’s happening here? She is intentionally getting the leader all wound up”. It’s like she said to herself, “I know I can say this one thing to her and it just sets her off”, and the leader had no clue.

So we want to be careful. Our emotions are like thermometers. They tell us when things are good and when we need to address something, but we should not lead out of our emotions all the time because that’s just not wise. It’s not safe for you as a leader.

Now as a caveat, if you’re in a positive mind frame, that’s okay. But then when you get into that negative frame of mind, if you find that when you are in a bad mood that you start to treat employees differently, I want you to work on that.

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