10 common mistakes made by managers
1. Not providing feedback
Xiao Wang is an excellent sales representative, but she has a bad habit of always answering phone calls in an unprofessional way. Her boss had long been aware of this, but only told her during the 1:1 interview with Xiao Wang. Unfortunately, until the boss told her about this issue, Xiao Wang kept repeating her mistakes, causing a lot of unnecessary losses.
According to Ken Blanchard's survey of 1400 executives, not providing real-time feedback is the most common mistake leaders make. When you don't provide timely feedback to your employees, you are actually depriving them of opportunities to improve their abilities and performance.
To avoid this mistake, it is crucial to learn how to provide regular feedback to your team. (Refer to the article "How to Give Feedback")
2. Leave no time for your own team
When you are a manager or leader, it is easy to get caught up in your own heavy workload, leaving little time for your team to engage in necessary communication.
Yes, leaders have many daily affairs. But it's important to remember that your team members should come first. When they need you, especially when subordinates don't know what to do, and you don't even have time to chat with them, then your subordinates won't be able to get the support and guidance they need to achieve their performance targets and tasks.
An effective way to avoid this mistake is to lock in your meeting time with subordinates on your schedule (refer to training - "Learn to Listen"&"Emotional Intelligence"&"Talking Around"), build a platform for smooth communication between you and subordinates, so that your subordinates know clearly that "your door is always open for them", and let them understand that you are ready to help them anytime, anywhere.
Once you are in a leadership or management role, your team members always need to be at the forefront of your communication time!
3. Too laissez faire
Your team has just completed an important project, but unfortunately, they made a mistake in the project's specifications and procedures because you did not maintain communication with them. Now they have mistakenly completed the project, and you have to face angry clients to explain the issue.
Many leaders hope to avoid micro management (refer to the article "laissez faire leadership and micro management"), but going to the extreme of leadership (an overly laissez faire leadership style) is not a good way, because what you need is balance.
4. Too friendly
Most of us hope to be seen as a friendly and approachable leader. After all, whether employees can work happily largely depends on the style of their leaders. But sometimes you have to make difficult choices because someone in the team may take advantage of your overly friendly nature.
To avoid this problem, it is necessary to understand the core concept of being the boss, and in addition, you must set a very clear boundary to ensure that your subordinates do not cross this line of fire and exploit you.
5. Not clearly defining goals for the team
When your subordinates don't have clear goals, they will choose to spend the day aimlessly. If they don't know why they work or what their job means, they won't be productive. They also cannot effectively prioritize their workload, which means that projects and tasks are often carried out with the wrong priority.
Learn "How to Set Goals" and "Principles of Managing Goals" to help your team understand where they are, and to provide a clear understanding of the team's goals and the mission of the enterprise.
6. Misunderstanding motivation
Do you know the real reason that motivates your team? What you need to understand is that money cannot be the only reason. Many leaders are prone to making a fatal mistake, which is always thinking that team members work for money.
Learn about the principle of work life balance and understand that people's work motivation is not only about money, but also about additional responsibilities, us, and friendship. Studying McClelland's Human Motivation Theory can help us gain a deeper understanding of what work motivation is.
7. Urgent to recruit
When your team has a heavy workload, the most important thing for us is to have enough boatmen to ensure the smooth sailing of this big ship, but remember that if we rush to fill the vacancy through recruitment for this reason, it may lead to catastrophic mistakes.
If the wrong person is found through recruitment, such as difficulty in integrating into the team or deviating from the team's working atmosphere, it will lead to an ineffective or inefficient team working atmosphere. Recruiters may require additional training to quickly adapt to the job. Finding the wrong person may mean wasting valuable time for a leader. If a newcomer's problem cannot be solved or they leave the team quickly, it may make other team members feel frustrated and negative.
8. Don't just walk around the wood“
If you make personal phone calls during work hours or say negative things to your CEO, can you expect your subordinates not to do so? I'm afraid not.
As a leader, you need to set an example for your team. This means that if they have to work late, you also need to accompany them to ensure that you are always there when they need your help. Or if the company has a rule that prohibits eating at the desk, then you also need to comply with this rule, and of course, you can also provide employees with a place to eat by opening up rest areas. Remember, don't expect your team to perform positively when you are negative.
So please always remember that your team is always watching over you. If you want to set an example for them, start with yourself and they will follow in your footsteps.
9. Not authorized
Some leaders do not know what effective delegation is because they always feel that no one else can handle critical affairs except themselves. This may lead to huge problems, causing significant bottlenecks for subordinates in their work, and even causing them to feel immense pressure and collapse.
Proper authorization indeed requires a leader to make tremendous efforts, as it requires the leader to have full confidence that their team will do the right thing. But on the other hand, unless you learn how to properly delegate, you will never have time to focus on thinking about your aspirations and development direction. More importantly, you cannot cultivate a team of elite soldiers and share your own pressure appropriately.
10. Misunderstanding your role
Once you become a leader or manager, your responsibilities are different from those of an individual employee. Your job has changed, and you must now use a different set of skills, otherwise it is very likely that you have not done the job you were hired to do: leadership and management. Study article 'You are the Boss' and From Technical Expert to Manager, learning these skills can help you develop into an effective manager.