As a leader, you have many responsibilities. Your role isn’t to whip your employees into shape, but to get the most out of them. That’s for the good of the company’s bottom line as it is for the professional development of the employees themselves. It is a tricky thing to do, however, as there are many landmines to watch out for that can sabotage your efforts to lead your team.
If you are having a hard time making things work, then you are probably making a lot of common mistakes that people in leadership roles make when they’re new. If this sounds like you, then read on. In this article, we will go over several common mistakes new leaders make that trip them up and hold their teams back.
1 – You Command Rather Than Coach
Leaders should empower their teams and help them reach their goals. Sometimes new leaders imagine themselves as generals bringing troops into battle. They take on postures of commanding ― thinking that discipline and organization come from barking orders at people.
The idea is to coach them, instead. Think of leading them to goals by getting the most out of them by allowing their individual talents to come through. This is far more effective than trying to push them into things. You can use a tool like Ezra digital coaching to do this.
Coaching starts with a positive posture to create the right atmosphere. In the short term, it improves productivity and in the long term, you will see a lot of personal and professional development from the team members. You’ll get a much better return from your efforts than by taking a more military-style approach.
2 – Being Close-minded
If you are close-minded, or even just stubborn, then you can let a lot of opportunities get past you because you weren’t open to them. Not only that, but also any mistakes you are making are less likely to be addressed and even remedied.
Either of those scenarios is disastrous to building a productive team. The attitude will also be seen loud and clear by the team members. This will cause them to tune you out and try to do the best they can without your input.
Accepting mistakes and being open to new ideas from others are essential to being able to move forward.
3 – Being Too Friendly
Be open. Be positive, and be accessible. However, avoid being too friendly and not being a leader. Your friendliness could be misinterpreted and end up creating an atmosphere that is too casual. This results in a lack of boundaries.
When there are no boundaries, then you are setting yourself up to be taken advantage of. It is also much harder to maintain control of the group.
4 – Not Managing People
Your job is not to juggle all of the tasks that need to get done. Your job is to manage people and lead them to a destination. By forgetting that, your team will not be focused and will lack the organization that it needs to hit its goals. It’s essentially a boat that is rudderless while you try to handle too many other aspects of sailing.
