7 Surprising Things Successful Leaders Stop Doing that Make Leadership Easier
It doesn’t take a genius to make hard work painful.
Sometimes success is about stopping something.
7 surprising things successful leaders stop doing:
Don’t…
#1. Stick to your guns no matter what.
Some of the most important priorities in leadership concern choosing things to fight for. You live a small lonely life when you always stick to your guns.
Work as hard to build, strengthen, and restore relationships as you work while sticking to your guns.
#2. Resist authority.
You’re little more than an upset toddler if everything has to go your way. Learn how to disagree and row-with at the same time.
Get out of the boat if you can’t row with the team.
Contrarians lose their seat on the boat when they stop rowing with the team.
Loyalty to mission, vision, and goals sets the foundation to express contrarian ideas.
#3. Live to get more.
Choose contributing more over getting more.
Life based on ‘having’ shrinks and stinks.
If you expect a lot, give a lot more.
#4. Do what you feel.
Bring passion to work, but don’t let emotion control you.
Emotion driven leaders are inconsistent and unpredictable. Display pleasure frequently and displeasure skillfully, for example.
If you don’t feel like doing the right thing, do it anyway.
#5. Let ingratitude pollute your thinking.
Failure to express gratitude is ingratitude.
Constantly looking for things to improve about others is another name for complainer.
#6. Confuse healthy self-love with conceit.
The purpose of self-love is to teach you how to love others.
The universe is indifferent and the world doesn’t revolve around you.
#7. Make feedback feel like accusation.
The only way feedback helps is if recipients believe you have their best interest at heart. Anything less makes feedback an accusation.
What might leaders do to make leadership easier?
What do leaders do to make leadership harder?
What might leaders do to make leadership easier? Encourage others to step up and lead, give them the opportunity to grow themselves. Remember someone gave you an opportunity once and you took it, let others feel the challenge. Granted there are may feeders off the tree at times they run wild and need shaped. That is were management needs to be prepared to trim and tame the wild side, a little grooming goes a long way. Take the military for ex. they take young people and groom them into a well oiled machine that runs smoothly at times. The teachers that take the young students that prepares them for growth while they are under their wings. etc.
What do leaders do to make leadership harder? Micro manage often times more than what is needed. Lack of communication is a big concern, we need to learn to give the entire picture, often times key components are missing so learn to be thorough. Trust is also important if you can’t trust those who work for you, then why did you hire them?
What might leaders do to make leadership easier?
Start by making small changes. Focus on one thing you will do differently.
What do leaders do to make leadership harder?
Trying to change too much, too fast.
Your posts are a daily dose of what leaders can do to make leadership easier.
What do leaders do to make leadership harder? Many things, of course, but one of the most impactful is people in leadership positions who continue to model bad leadership behavior. The list above is a good example. Looking back, I worked for people who exhibited every one of those behaviors, sometimes to an extreme. Early in my career, most of the supervisors I worked for didn’t seem to be very effective and were, in retrospect, horrible leaders. In fact, I refer to them as “misleaders” because they negatively impacted the performance of their people and the organization. Consciously or not, they often influenced people who worked for them to emulate their style of leadership.
As I experienced the contrast between effective and ineffective leaders I figured out that not every supervisor was hopeless; there were actually some who understood and practiced sound leadership principles and practices. Those were the people I gravitated toward and who became my leadership role models (and in some cases, my mentors) over the years. I saw some of my peers who followed the path of the “misleaders,” and who began to develop into clones of those people. Some eventually “saw the light” and changed direction, others did not. The negative influence of bad leadership is hard to overestimate.
What might leaders do to make leadership easier?
Make sure everyone is working on the same clearly articulated, measurable goals.
Delegate.
Set staff up to succeed, then get out of the way!
R. Excellent advice
A good leader listens to his crew
Always Keeping his crew working towards their goal
Successful leaders do not put emphasis on being “liked;” they care more about being respected.” They are also respectful of others. Leaders who have a need to be “liked” are uncomfortable communicating information they feel may not be pleasing to the organization. This behavior makes the leader appear to be untruthful and wishy washy; thereby leaving employees with a feeling of distrust. By role modeling respect they are able to gain others’ trust which is so important to build trusted relationships. It is far better to be respected and trusted than to be liked. Not everyone may like you; however, if the leader’s reputation is one of respect and trust he/she will have a more productive and collaborative work environment.