Regina Soh talked about being a leader, and mistakes leaders commit. Here, she discusses more mistakes leaders make, and their effects on leadership.

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3. Relying On One-Way Communication

When it comes to decision making on matters that directly and indirectly affect your people, you hardly seek opinions because it’s not the most comfortable nor easiest thing to do. Imagine the amount of time spent talking to each individual and managing their opinions: it’s a chore! Now, it could be that you did make an effort to get input from them, yet at the end of the day made your decision based on your own assumptions and judgements. You asked for opinions yet acted on your own accord, thinking that it’s what’s best for them.

Let me give you an example of one-way communication. This is a true event from one of my friends’ experiences. Her direct manager has plans to rotate them around different roles and responsibilities so that the team will become more well-rounded. The intention is good, as people development is one big driver of employee engagement. But the truth is, none of the team members welcome this change! They are happy doing what they are doing now. Enforcing this is bound to attract unhappiness.  See what’s happening here? The “leader” is only acting based on her own beliefs, thinking that her decision will be good for the team.

Remember the entrepreneur Chen Lanshu from my previous article? She’s a great example of  one-way communication too. To her, achieving the expectations that she has set up for her restaurant is of utmost importance. She wants her people to do it her way. As a result, one after the other, her best people left her.

So if you think you have the best intentions for your team, for your employees – think again.

4. Thinking That You Are A Great Leader

First, I’d like to highlight the fact that natural leaders are few and far between. The chances of you being a natural leader are  low, really low. I’m sorry to throw cold water at you, but I feel a strong urge to shatter that misconception, which you may hold, and bring you back to reality.

One reason why I like gatherings with my friends is because I get to collect all the juicy information and present them to you. So here I have one great example where the “leader” thinks that she is exemplifying true leadership. Let’s call her Jane. In a team meeting, each team member is supposed to present a short written introduction about themselves, with the freedom to say anything under the sun. It was Jane’s turn. She flashed that her greatest achievement is people development. I was told that when my friend and her colleagues saw that piece of information, their jaws literally dropped! Why?

Because in the eyes of Jane’s team, Jane is someone who only gives orders (one-way communication), puts people down in meetings, and is highly insensitive to the morale of the team. The people development skill she is so proud of refers to getting them to do things out of their domain expertise. If this is an initiative that has been checked with and welcomed by the team, that’s called people development. Otherwise, it’s just one-way communication.

At this point of time, you could still be thinking “That definitely doesn’t sound like my style. I lead differently.” In fact, leaders are often most oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of their people. Due to their sensitive position, their employees or team members are inclined to hide the truth from them.

You could feel like you’ve done everything to be a good leader. But are you?

5. Lacking A System For Leadership Development

The worse mistake that leaders make, in my opinion, is not having a system in place for leadership growth. If you have a system in place, mistakes 1 – 4 (listed above) can be minimized and at best, avoided. What kind of system am I talking about? I’m referring to a feedback mechanism.

Most leaders understand the importance of leadership development. So they read books on leadership, attend seminars and workshops, and subscribe to related topics online – all in an attempt to be better leaders. But despite all they have done, they may not be seeing positive results from their efforts. People still leave the team. When they  say A, their people do B. Their words are not taken seriously. They are not given the respect they deserve. And so on.

This may also be the case for you. And you ask yourself, why is this so even when you did your best to apply all of what you’ve learnt on leadership and becoming a better leader? Well, this is because you have no feedback mechanism in place. You work on areas of improvement that you’ve identified as important in making you a better leader, and then automatically expect your people to observe those changes/improvements? No way!

There should be a feedback system that allows you to convey your improvements to your people  so that you can solicit feedback from them on how well you’ve done in a particular area and what suggestions they may have about being better.

Are all of these really necessary? My answer to you is an astounding YES! Think about yourself as an athlete. In order to improve and reach your maximum potential, wouldn’t feedback from your peers and coach be crucial and useful information to you? In this world, everything has a system. Nature has a system. Even your body is a system on its own! Hence, to be the leader that you want to be, you cannot do without a feedback system.

I know I’ve talked a lot about mistakes here, and you may wonder  where the Hows of being a well-respected leader are. You probably can’t wait to get your hands dirty. I’m working to put all of these information together, and I strongly encourage you to sign up for my newsletter so that you don’t miss any of them!

Disclaimer: All the examples presented in this article are stories I’ve heard and are one-sided information. They are purely used for illustration purposes only and mean no offence to anyone.

Building a sharing culture..

Visit the Invipulse page to find out more about Regina’s work.

_{This article was first published on Invipulse blog and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author.}
^{Edited by Michelle Sarthou}
_{Image Credit: Shutterstock}

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