Strong leadership can unleash a team's full potential, propelling an enterprise or group forward. However, certain leadership mistakes may erode your subordinates' trust and even cost you your position. Reflect on the four behaviors listed below—which ones have you committed?
Due to my profession, I interact with diverse individuals and engage in frequent communication.There's often this sense that someone who appears down-to-earth, dependable, and skilled might not be a strong leader. Perhaps the idiom "all show and no substance" captures this type of person. Their behavior can also cause significant harm to the company.
1. You know everything. In conversations with founders and executives, Les McKeown observed an intriguing pattern: the more someone knows, the worse a leader they tend to be.
When speaking with ineffective leaders, they could discourse on their business for hours without interruption or needing input from others.Nothing eluded their knowledge; no one needed consulting; no information was beyond their grasp. Such conversations felt like sitting in a fishbowl, with the real world shut out.
The opposite held true when McKeown spoke with truly effective leaders. When discussing their businesses, they actively involved others—whether it was a sales director on a headset or a warehouse manager pacing the hallway.Powerful leaders know they cannot, and should not, know everything about the enterprise. They build strong teams and take pride in relying on them. 2. You're never not busy. Indeed, running a business, or a team, project, or department, is intensely time-consuming—sometimes exhausting. But an perpetually overloaded schedule and an overloaded workload are absolutely not signs of powerful leadership.If you have no time to think, if you can't recall the last time you took a walk around the neighborhood to gather your thoughts, then you aren't truly leading. If you don't take time to set your strategic direction, what are you thinking about?
3. Your default view of others is negative. When truly powerful leaders speak, one thing is noticeable: when discussing others—whether their employees, customers, or suppliers—the general tone tends to be positive.
Strong leaders seek out others' successes, notice what's been done well, and strive to replicate such achievements. In contrast, weak leaders consistently view others negatively. They focus primarily on what's gone wrong, spending excessive time on grievances ranging from minor dissatisfaction to outright fury.
Of course, strong leaders aren't blind optimists.They recognize and correct mistakes and incompetence, but generally, they expect competence and success. They enjoy discovering these qualities in others and frequently celebrate them together. 4. You have only two interaction modes. Weaker leaders interact with their direct reports in one of two ways: either they are in charge, or they are not. If they are present, they are in charge.
Truly powerful leaders have another way to engage—a third approach to interacting with their teams: becoming their resource. Truly powerful leaders possess sufficient confidence in their role that they don't always need to be the center of attention at the table. When needed, they can sit down as peers, become another voice at the table, and even do so alongside those who report to them.
When was the last time you sat in an operations or planning meeting purely as a resource, not as the boss? How did your team react? Did they feel comfortable and relaxed with you present, or did it feel forced, like an act?
As we reflect on these four behavioral patterns, we must ask: How many do we embody? If more than one, we need to recalibrate our approach.