Top Five Crucial Mistakes Leaders Make
Posted on Wed, Jul 14, 2010
by Dan Rockwell,
Author of Leadership Freak and Our Guest Blogger
Let’s begin by acknowledging the positive value of making mistakes. Mistakes indicate you are trying new things. Einstein put it this way, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
Furthermore, realizing our mistakes enlightens us. James Joyce explained, “A man's errors are his portals of discovery.” Most importantly, our mistakes make us. While successes reiterate who we are, mistakes create and recreate us. My own life illustrates the formative power of a single crucial mistake. Before sharing my personal big blunder, here are the top mistakes I think leaders make.
Clinging to the command and control model of leadership is catastrophic when knowledge workers are involved. Knowledge workers frequently know more than the boss. Command and control leaders frustrate and de-motivate. However, setting knowledge workers free leverages their skills, enhances their effectiveness and allows companies to exceed the reach of management.
Losing the big picture in the details slows forward momentum, lowers productivity, creates unnecessary stress, and under-utilizes talented staff. Leaders reach higher and go further when they delegate rather than dive into details.
Neglecting the big Mo creates flat individuals and organizations. Untended organizations naturally cool down and become problem centric structures with negative attitudes. Leaders may forget the power of celebrating small wins to create and nurture momentum.
Being free with correction and stingy with affirmation creates negative work environments. Leaders naturally work toward higher effectiveness and efficiency. They easily become correctors. Ken Blanchard’s experience indicates that it takes four positive comments to balance one negative comment. Think of it. You need four affirmations to get back to a positive work environment after only one negative comment.
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Michelangelo
My biggest mistake of all. The single most crucial mistake I ever made is focusing on mission to the exclusion of vision. Mission expresses your purpose in the present. For example, “To serve and protect,” explains the mission of law enforcement. Their mission does not create a new future -- it preserves the present.
“It’s a terrible thing to see and have no vision.” Helen Keller
Personnel issues, pressing problems, meetings, budgets, and other pressing urgencies capture a leader’s attention and limit focus to the present or, at best, near future. However, vision requires letting go of the present while pressing into a preferred, yet distant future. Vision is about not yet, not here, and not now. It’s about becoming.
I lived much of my life focusing on exceptional performance in the present while neglecting a forward-facing, future-making vision. I did this because I believed a lie. I believed that doing my best in the present would create the future I desired. Like all good lies, the lie I believed is partially true.
It’s true that excellence in the present (mission) is essential for success. However, excellence in the present isn’t the same as reaching toward an unrealized dream. For that you need vision.
It took years for me to see the mistake of living a mission driven rather than a vision-driven life. I’m glad to say that Joyce is right. My mistake became the portal of discovery.
Vision energizes leaders and enables endurance. Vision gives direction and infuses the present with meaning.
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Dan Rockwell is the author of Leadership Freak a personal development blog designed to help leaders reach higher in 300 words or less.
To read our previous post by Jeremy Willinger on importance of leadership, please click on this link: http://www.etiquetteoutreach.com/blog_new-york-etiquette-guide/bid/44961/Leading-Not-Following-The-Importance-of-Effective-Leadership