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Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make
October 21, 2007 - The Top 10 Mistakes Leaders Make
by Hans Finzel
1. The Top-down Attitude
The Number-one Leadership Hang-up
The top-down attitude comes naturally to most people.
Servant leadership is much more rare.
Effective leaders see themselves at the bottom of an inverted pyramid.
2. Putting Paperwork before Peoplework
Confessions of an Obsessive-compulsive
The greater the leadership role, the less time there seems to be for people.
The greater the leadership role, the more important peoplework is.
People are opportunities, interruptions.
Only through association is there transformation-for people and organizations.
3. The Absence of Affirmation
What Could Be Better than a Pay Raise?
Everyone thrives on affirmation and praise.
Leadership has as much to do with the “soft sciences” as with getting things done.
We wildly underestimate the power of the tiniest personal touch of kindness.
Learn to read the varying levels of affirmation your members need.
4. No Room for Mavericks?
They Bring Us the Future?
Mavericks can save us from the slide toward institutionalism.
Large organizations usually kill off mavericks before they can take root.
Mavericks make messes by their very nature—the good messes institutions need.
5. Dictatorship in Decision-making
Getting beyond, “I Know All the Answers”
Dictators deny the value of individuals.
The major players in an organization are like its stockholders. They should have a say in its directions.
The one who does the job should decide how it is done.
“Flat” organizations are the model of the future.
6. Dirty Delegation
Refusing to Relax and Let Go
Overmanaging is one of the great cardinal sins of poor leadership.
Nothing frustrates those who work with you more than sloppy delegation with too many strings attached.
Delegation should match each member’s follow-through ability.
7. Communication Chaos
Singing off the Same Page in the Hymnbook
Never assume that anyone knows anything.
The bigger the group, the more attention must be given to communication.
When left in the dark, people tend to dream up wild rumors.
Communication must be the passionate obsession of effective leadership.
8. Missing the Clues of Organizational Culture
The Unseen Killer of Many a Leader
Organizational culture is “the way we do things around here.”
Never underestimate the might power of your organization’s culture.
Cultivating and changing the culture should be one of leadership’s top priorities.
Learn to respect values different from your own.
9. Success without Successors
Planning Your Departure the Day You Begin
Pride tightens the grip on leadership; humility relaxes and lets go.
Finishing well is an important measure of success in leadership.
Letting go of leadership is like sending your children away to school; it hurts, but has to be done.
Mentoring is a nonnegotiable function of successful leadership.
10. Failure to Focus on the Future
Prepare Yourself, It’s Later than You Think
The future is rushing at us at breakneck speed.
A leader’s concentration must not be on the past nor on the present, but on the future.
Vision is an effective leader’s chief preoccupation.
Organizations are reinvented with new generations of dreamers
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