subject: Leadership: Five Faults To Fix [print this page] Another home run for Seth - my favourite blogger. His posting of 13 June* describes the entrepreneur's desire for a magic lottery ticket - that sudden, solve-all event that will get you over the hump in terms of publicity, funding or customer uptake. Many times in launching my V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership business, I've wished for such a fairy-godmother moment. Think about it, do you by chance lead your people in similar wishful mode: hoping it will suddenly come right? Here are five traps to think about. And, what you can do to avoid them.
Do any of the following sound familiar?
Same old thing: do you lead the way you walk to the shops? On automatic, not thinking about walking? Not noticing Mrs Stokes has painted her fence? Our leadership often goes to automatic - outpointed by a marketing drama or banking problem.
Winging it: do you recognise that getting people to accept the new service standards or production goals may be difficult? Do you think through how best to do it? Do you consider the different individuals and sub-groups within the room of people you'll be addressing - and their particular concerns?
Sudden bright idea: on the run, just before the meeting, do you bang together a spiel only to find part way through it isn't working and you're staring at a sea of tuned-out faces?
Infinite variations: would people say your leadership actions are a continuous string of such spur-of-the-moment efforts, none much better than its predecessor? Perhaps abandoning past mistakes but without careful and objective analysis?
Fred's way: have you ever copied someone else's successful approach and been surprised it didn't work for you? For example, because their people are novices, whereas yours are hardened players, who expect only broad guidelines not detailed instructions?
Sadly, I think we're all guilty of one or more of the above at various times. Looking back, I see many examples where my intense task focus distracted me from thinking how best to lead my team. I was on automatic: directed, driven and energised. But failing nonetheless.
My own mistakes and those I observed colleagues make helped motivate me to develop my Leadership Action Planning tool. It allows you to problem-solve your leadership and come up with a plan that responds to your full range of challenges: both the task ones and the people ones. Over time then, as with other plans, you can check back and learn your lessons - and do things better next time. Real leadership development. Not just ad-hoc adjustments, hoping one day to land Seth's magic lottery ticket.
