Everyone is fallible, and leaders are no exception. Sometimes, even the best leaders are not aware of how they act and can fall victim to patterns of behaviour that undermine their employees' ability to contribute to results.
Andrew Armitage is the founder and owner of A Digital, a digital agency based in the north west of England. He's a podcast host and the author of Amazon best seller Holistic Website Planning: Positioning your Website at the centre of your Digital Transformation. Working with clients including the NHS, Hawkshead Relish, Windermere Lake Cruises, and most recently James Cropper plc, he has grown A Digital from a spare bedroom into a thriving team.
So whether you are heading up a large team or are looking to be seen as an emerging leader among your peers, here are 5 common leadership traps and how to avoid them:
Continuing as an employee
Relationships change as you progress in your career, and management can be quite different from being ‘on the floor’ with the rest of the team. It’s always important to be friendly and not to abandon relationships in the business, but when you become responsible for their actions and performance, inevitably, the dynamic changes. In my retail experience, it was always made clear that the colleagues in the team I led weren’t my friends; I was expected to hold those awkward conversations when required to maintain standards and support growth. A team night out, for example, was frowned upon unless it was a formally agreed event such as Christmas. This was particularly strict and it's not policy in my own business, but it did help to define boundaries and set expectations within the team.
Don’t micro-manage people
Think about what it was like as a junior - no one likes to have their manager breathing down their neck. Micromanaging dents your team’s morale by establishing a tone of mistrust - and it limits your team’s capacity to grow. People need time and space to make things happen. Granted, there may be a few failures as your team learns from their mistakes, but ultimately, they will perform much better with greater accountability and less interference. It also hampers your ability and time to focus on what’s really important.
Delegation
It can be easy to want to take on everything in a new management role, but good delegation is key to getting work done, especially to a high standard. At the same time, you need to look out for your team and make sure they’re not being overloaded with tasks. The upper limit of what’s possible will increase only with each collaborator you empower to contribute their best work to your shared priorities. Likewise, your power decreases with every initiative you unnecessarily hold on to.
Be a good listener - as well as communicator
Asking questions and helping people to identify conclusions or problems themselves allows them to be more bought into solutions or fixes to problems. “Why?” “How might we?” and “What would you recommend?” are some key phrases. It’s much easier to get people to trust you as a leader when they understand and buy into why you’re taking the course you’ve chosen, even more so when they’ve contributed to it and see the value.
Don’t assume you need to have all the answers
Leaders often assume that people look to them for answers, but in reality, you don’t have to pretend that you know it all because, let's be honest, no one does. Instead, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions to involve the whole team and get their input. At first, it may feel like this will look like you’re not sure what you’re doing, but a key leadership trait is empowering others and taking confident and decisive action given the facts in front of you.
It’s inevitable you’ll make a mistake (or many) as you transition into your new role. The key is to look at these setbacks as learning opportunities.
As you prepare to move into a managerial position for the first time, consider asking others in a similar position for advice. How did they prepare for the job? What mistakes did they make that, in hindsight, could have been avoided? What advice would they give to their past selves?
Being a great manager doesn’t mean being perfect at your job. It’s about continuously learning and adapting to your environment so that you can lead your team to the best of your ability.
