It is quite easy to spot bad leadership habits and traits in others. In fact, you might already have bore repercussions of poor leadership habits at some point during your career. That being said, understanding whether you yourself acquire similar bad habits can be rather challenging.
While it may be personally distressing to be shackled by the chains of poor leadership, the good news is, it’s not a permanent life sentence. Once you recognise the habits that are stopping you from becoming a great leader, it would be much easier to kill them and turn yourself around.
Here are a few destructive habits that you should break before it’s too late:
1. Following a One-Way Communication Approach
Good leaders are very well aware of the fact that one-sided communication flow restricts the creative and leadership skills of the workers and prevents their development. This is also detrimental to the organisation as a whole, for the employees remain incapable of taking on bigger responsibilities, or to perform anything outside the routine.
A SHRM survey revealed that only 37 percent of employees were very satisfied with the respect and consideration their managers gave to their ideas. Given the fact that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, your employees might come with the best solution.
It’s best to sit down with your team and have a conversation about the organisation’s goals. Rather than giving them a number they need to hit, ask them how they can help make a contribution to the bigger picture. Allow them to bounce a few ideas around. Doing this will make the team more independent and give them ownership over the value of their accomplishments.
2. Taking Credit for Someone Else’s Work
Speaking of abusing power as a leader, many bosses take credit for the good work their people do. But here’s a fact: people tend to have a fairly high tolerance for misdemeanour from their bosses, but taking credit for someone else’s work isn’t only wrong, it’s stealing.
People may be left deeply aggrieved when then they find their labour, thought, passion, effort and creativity get stolen. According to studies, 79 percent of employees who quit their jobs claim that a lack of appreciation was a major reason for leaving. This shows that people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses. If your best employees don’t receive the credit for continuously providing outstanding work, they will surely pack up their bags and take their talents elsewhere.
In short, giving people the recognition they’ve earned, expressing genuine appreciation and acknowledging the unique things your employees have to offer will produce spectacular results. At the same time, this will raise the spirits of everyone involved and create a positive ripple effect across the organisation.
3. Lacking Initiative
You might have come across leaders who don’t bother examining the facts before making important decisions. Being impetuous, hasty and carless, lazy managers avoid taking initiative and overwork like the plague. Instead of being inventive and proactive in everything they do, they err towards doing the minimum needed to get by.
The outcome is shoddy work — on the leader’s part because they don’t invest enough time to perform the job properly, and on the part of their employees, because if the boss is lukewarm about work, then why should they be enthusiastic? If you want others to make considerable effort and do good work, you must be willing to model the same behaviour.
So if you’re counting down the hours until it is home time, it’s time for a major wake-up call. As a leader, you have a responsibility to your team. And perhaps there’s nothing more damaging to company morale than leaders who practice the “Do as I say, not as I do” philosophy. When this happens, a loss of enthusiasm and goodwill ensues among the team members. It’s like watching the air go out of a balloon – and wittingly engendering cynicism and disappointment.
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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.