I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting on my own leadership journey and the mistakes that I’ve made along the way.
In the process, I’ve also visited with several leaders and realized that many rising leaders were victim to the same kind of miscues, likely because of inexperience, fear, or imposter syndrome.
I’ve previously written about a few mistakes I’ve made as a new leader, but I hope this post offers a candid perspective on some of the traps that new leaders should be careful and work to avoid in their own leadership journey.
Changing Your Mind
As a rising leader, I wanted to please everyone, and sometimes I would change my mind in the middle of a plan. For example, I visited with Person A and left the conversation with one plan. Then, Person B might meet and offer valid perspective, and I’d change course. Over time, I learned instead of leaving any conversation with proposed resolution, I would better serve my team by saying I was listening and considering. This gave me time to weigh multiple perspectives but also avoided causing frustration because I flip-flopped after considering all the aspects.
Candidly Discussing Challenges of the Role
Moving from a team member to a leader, is one of the hardest things I have ever done. And, it’s terribly isolating. One of the areas I’ve struggled with is how to candidly discuss this with the team. It’s important to be honest about the struggle of learning to lead, so the team understands the challenge you’re facing. However, it’s also important to show confidence to the team, in an effort to inspire them and encourage them to handle their own challenges. There’s no right answer here, but I have really wrestled (and sometimes continue wrestling) with this one.
Not Pleasing Everyone
When I first became an official leader, I really thought I could get to a point that everyone would like me. I equated hard work with success, so my mindset was that if I worked hard enough, I could win anyone over. Over time, I have gotten more comfortable that just simply isn’t the case. It has less to do with me and more to do with others. They may not like my approach, personality, style, etc. However, I’ve learned to be comfortable with it, Specifically, I’ve had to let go of pleasing everyone and focus my energies on doing the best job that I can. If I do that, I can be satisfied with the outcome, even if someone doesn’t like it or me.
Moving on After Mistakes
Making mistakes is never fun, but it happens to all of us. As a new leader, I would beat myself up over mistakes and spent too much energy worrying after a mistake happened. I wasn’t letting the mistake go. By dwelling on it, I was putting myself on edge, injecting stress into the office, and hurting the office culture. I think this was based on the fear that if I made too many mistakes, I might not get to keep the leadership role. In hindsight, it sounds funny, as it takes people time to learn to lead. My boss knew I was learning and was coaching me (never with fear) and helping me learn. As I got more comfortable with the notion that mistakes would happen, I was able to worry less about them and just focus on learning from them. No surprise, when I shifted my mindset, there were fewer mistakes.
Model the Behavior
One of the most important lessons I learned as a new leader is that everyone is watching you, so it’s important to model the right behavior for your team. Whether it’s leaving early, answering emails outside of working hours, or jumping in to help solve a crisis, teams are looking at your work and your leadership style. They make decisions about how they work based on what they see from you as the leader. I didn’t do a great job at the work life balance part of this as a new leader. Because there was so much on me, I worked every evening and never had down time. It took my team calling me out on it before I could get comfortable that sometimes not everything would get done in the day. I had to learn to be okay with it.
What Am I Missing?
These are just a few of the examples I’ve thought of, but I am sure there are may more mistakes that I’ve made as a rising leader.
Are there any you’re willing to share? If so, drop them in the comments! Can’t wait to keep the conversation going.
And Carrie On 