"As a leader, you don’t want to be defined by the things you didn’t do." - George Sawiris
It’s hard enough to get right what you are acting on, let alone worry about what you’ve missed. But there’s no shortage of Monday morning leadership coaches who will take pot shots at you for the plays you didn’t run.
So, here’s the rest of the playbook.
Act immediately on these painful omissions:
1. Failure to decide—Indecision can paralyse an organisation. It can create doubt, uncertainty, lack of focus, and even resentment. Multiple options linger, sapping an organization’s energy and killing a sense of completion. Timelines stretch while costs skyrocket. And as we vacillate competition can eat our lunch.
Choosing not to decide is a choice, with consequences.
2. Failure to resolve conflict in a timely fashion—Debate is a healthy and necessary component of everyday business. Sometimes debate can grow uncomfortable, which is OK if respect is maintained, and transparency is prevalent. It’s when the leader allows the debate to devolve to lingering conflict that trouble arises. Ill will can quickly build, reality can be distorted as both sides spiral into an “us vs. them” mentality, and inefficiency and stress surges. So, cut off disrespectful behaviour. Deflate, not elevate, overly emotional behaviour and channel unproductive passion into high-energy, team-oriented solutions.
Asking the troops to “work it out” is a cop out; sometimes you’ve got to dig in and mediate.
3. Failure to reward and recognise—A missed opportunity to recognise is a missed opportunity to energise. The bottom line is that failure to reward and recognise creates doubts in employee’s minds. They wonder, “Am I working on the right things?”, “Does my leader notice my efforts and accomplishments, or even care?”, “Are my efforts not up to his/her standards?” It can manifest itself as a plain ol’ fashion lack of feeling appreciated.
And all of this leads to a lack of feeling motivated.
4. Failure to inform—It’s difficult enough to gain competitive intelligence, why would we withhold our own? And it happens far too often. How many times have you been on a team, found out something too late, and thought, “It would have been nice to know that a month ago”? As leaders, when we withhold information or don’t make the time investment to openly share critical information,
Failure to inform, suffocates teams and organisations.
5. Failure to proactively manage change—If left to their own devices, employees often make the worst of change. Organisational psychologists have discovered that if employees can’t make a link between change and their own personal goals and values, intrinsic motivation to embrace that change will be absent. So, have a plan to manage change, including enrolling the affected in the change, equipping them for it, and making a clear case for change in the first place.
Leadership is about being comfortable about being uncomfortable, this is not for delegation.
6. Failure to take accountability—Nothing is more un-leader-like then when a leader misses the opportunity to stand up and take accountability, or worse yet, openly deflects it. There’s no recovery from this. The troops expect it from you. And even when you’re not accountable by personal involvement, you are by position power.
Crucial accountability is for leaders to drive, own it.
7. Failure to address under-performers—Rotten apples can spoil the orchard. Nothing may be more frustrating for employees, especially high performers, then when the dead-weight is allowed to continually burden the organization without retribution. Such individuals grow like a cancer and take with them the morale and sense of fairness in the group.
Get after it.
8. Failure to see around corners—The best leaders spend substantive time seeing around corners, proactively anticipating, and addressing problems. They do this by understanding their industry, understanding competitors, asking “What if?” Having such a mindset forces them out of day-to-day operations that others can do much better (and want to be left alone to do much better).
Learn and develop your network and agile EQ.
9. Failure to react quickly enough in crisis—Complacency has no place in great leadership. Be productively paranoid. At the first sign of a crisis, gather your core team of thinkers/problems solvers and ninja team of executors. Communicate quickly and frequently.
Mostly, act, don’t ignore.
10. Failure to try to connect—I once had a boss who said, “The door is always open.” The problem was the lower half was shut, like a bank teller counter, preventing me from ever really getting close enough to connect. People can read a lack of compassion and warmth a mile away, and they’ll stay a mile away when they sense it.
So, make the effort – it will make a difference.
Now What?
What will I do differently next time?
It takes time (lots of it), more than motivation, it requires discipline and focus to be become specialised at something. Dedicated time (30+ years in fact) to be truly great at developing leaders and teams at all levels, it's what we do.
Think of this post as a call to action to avoid damaging inaction.
George K Sawiris AFAMI
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