Making it to a leadership position in your career requires a lot of commitment and hard work, not to mention plenty of smart decision-making. Once you’re there, though, it can be even harder to maintain your role than it was to earn it! Whether you’re a business owner, executive, or manager, you must know your strengths, remain adaptable, and constantly seek to expand your abilities. Here are five common leadership traps to avoid, presented below by Branding Creatively.
Neglecting Administrative Details
Being a leader means that you must have a clear vision for your organization. But there is much more involved than simply keeping sight of your mission and inspiring others to act. Leadership also requires you to deal with administrative tasks and details. Though they are not the most fun parts of being a leader, you must be able to complete administrative tasks or know how to effectively delegate them.
Often, being a leader also means working smarter, not harder. For instance, why create invoices from scratch if you can use a free invoice template to get the job done faster? Always be looking for ways to streamline even the smallest aspect of your job.
Acting Without Advice
Confidence is a necessity when you are responsible for leading an organization or group. But you also must understand that there is always room for improvement and that you do not and cannot know everything!
Remaining humble and coachable will prove paramount to your journey as a business leader. Always look to mentors and advisors for wisdom on matters and decisions for which you don’t know the best steps to take. And never count out the possibility that you could receive wisdom from your subordinates.
Inconsistent Behavior
Being a quirky and eccentric leader is one thing; being unpredictable is a completely different beast. As a business leader, you must display a consistent temperament day in and day out. This doesn’t mean you have to be perfect, but it does mean that your team members need to be able to count on you.
If your subordinates are afraid to come to you with problems, questions, or concerns, then it will significantly hinder your organization from reaching its goals. Make sure that your attitudes and behavior are not in conflict with the value of your organization or team, and try to keep your emotions at bay when times get stressful.
Failure to Collaborate
These days, collaboration is an essential part of running any type of team. Working with others doesn’t have to be your favorite thing, but you will need to do it nonetheless. Your personal ambitions can never come in front of team success.
Work hard to problem-solve with your team members and develop those under your leadership into the very best leaders they can be. Make sure you know how to use all of the tech tools that can streamline collaboration. For example, if you’re working with multiple employees or teams, documents that incorporate images can be time-consuming to email. Fortunately, you can utilize an easy PDF compressor to compress PDFs into smaller files.
Not Delivering Results
Finally, being likable and having a clear vision for your team will take you a long way as a leader. But at the end of the day, you must be able to deliver results. This means that you will need to prioritize your tasks and effectively manage your time. It also means that you will need to remain accountable to your subordinates and bosses. Fortunately, there are many tools and resources to help you improve in any of these areas, and all leaders have the potential to develop such skills.
There is a lot to being a good business leader. And while it’s easy to focus on what you should do in order to surpass your goals, sometimes it’s best to remember what mistakes to avoid making. Consider the ideas above, and keep researching other pitfalls to steer clear of as a business leader. In no time, you not only will be a beloved leader but a force to be reckoned with in your industry!
Angela Miles is an entrepreneur, skilled creative professional, tech whiz, branding guru and social media expert on both a local and global scale. Angela serves as the Project Manager and Creative Director at Branding Creatively. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out today!
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