Huge Signs that You’re Not Being a Good Leader Leadership

image:mindtools.com
culled from:www.business2community.com/leadership

The targets are done, the desks are clean, and your employees come on time. These are signs that you’re doing well as a leader right? Often times, we think that accomplishing the end goal is the biggest signifier of successful leadership. Reality is, the getting there is just as important. These are the things that can’t be quantified and aren’t reflected in your quarterly reports. But they’re also the biggest indicators of substantial success. All leaders should periodically evaluate themselves to check if they’re still on the right track when it comes to actually leading their members. So how do you really know if you’re not doing a good job of leading? Here are a few indicators: Decisions don’t have any follow through.

Which way to go? One of the most frustrating things for employees are meetings that run for hours on end, disrupting work flows and doing nothing to contribute to the morale of the team. But what’s even more frustrating is when resolutions and decisions in these meetings don’t have any follow through. Meaning, you just had a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Maybe it’s another task checked on your calendar, another responsibility that you can proudly include in your accomplishment report. Imagine, discussing hours on end, finally coming up with a resolution, then forgetting everything that was decided as soon as the meeting’s done. This translates to wasted time, lost productivity, and unhappy employees. All tasks are delegated, and you’re just sitting pretty.

You work. I’ll…stare. Part of transformative leadership is delegating tasks to your members. One of the favorite leadership tweets on the RingCentral blog says this of delegation: “Giving people freedom to make mistakes is very important.” However, there are those leaders who delegate everything until they have nothing else to do but give orders and check up once in a while on their members. If you want to be a good leader, lead by example. Work. Shifting the blame to subordinates or superiors, whichever is necessary as of the moment?

Blaming it’s your fault! Blame-shifting has been the easy way out of difficult decisions since Adam and Eve. When God asked the first man and first woman if they had eaten the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam blamed Eve while Eve blamed the serpent who tempted her. This incident was included in the Bible as a part of a chapter on The Fall of Man, and we have been pointing fingers at each other ever since. Regardless of whether you believe this story to be true or not, the truth is that there’s a tendency for some to look for a “fall guy” when the going gets tough. In organizations, you can see this in quite a few situations. For instance, when our team wasn’t happy with a management decision, our boss told us, “I’m not happy with the decision, too. I fought for you guys. I really did. But the management’s decision is final.” Since the truth always has a way of coming out anyway, we soon found out that our boss himself was actually one of those who were pushing for the decision. He just didn’t want to fall from our good graces and look like a bad guy. Then there are those bosses who, when someone in his team makes a mistake, would willingly offer the member at the sacrificial altar and tell his superiors that “this so-and-so member is at fault”. This is extremely frustrating, especially when you know that every decision and every report should go through the boss himself. Real leaders don’t abandon their members when things go wrong. Rather, they admit their mistakes, look for solutions, and inspire confidence. Leadership is not just a title. It’s a role you have to fulfill. Leaders don’t just submit reports, approve vacation leaves, or delegate tasks. A lot is also expected of their character. If you want people to sincerely look up to you as their leader, you’d better start acting like a leader as well.