Leadership Journal

The first big mistake I made as a leader was to fail to ask what mistakes I was making.

I was curious what Ron Potter, my friend and the president of Team Leadership Culture, would say are the top three mistakes most leaders make. After all, he has spent the last twelve years of his professional life consulting with top leaders of national and international organizations helping them recognize and correct their mistakes.

Ron didn't even have to think about the first mistake. "Managing has more to do with directing day-to-day tasks, whereas leading has more to do with casting a vision, goal setting, and motivation," he said.

When a leader spends more time managing than leading, morale suffers among the troops. Most people would prefer a goal to shoot for and some freedom to figure out how to reach that goal. "We all crave at least a partial sense of control," Ron said.

In a study several years ago, two teams of leaders were given a difficult problem to solve. The complex problem involved mental gymnastics, difficult decisions, and intense concentration. Both teams participated in the project in a room where distracting sounds were piped in through speakers. The music, noise, and voices were enough to drive you to distraction. Which, of course, was the point.

Team A couldn't do anything about the distracting sounds. They just had to put up with them. Team B was told that by pushing a button they could silence the distractions for five minutes. The only catch was that they could only use the button once each hour. Each team was then scored on various phases of their group task.

Not too surprisingly, Team B consistently outscored Team A. The kicker is, Team B never pushed the button. Team B at least thought they had control over their environment. Just knowing that they had a little freedom within their boundaries boosted their confidence level.

When leaders micromanage, they take away that sense of control vital to team dynamics and problem-solving. Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower summed this up when he said, "Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all."

Have you seen that little desk toy that has several steel balls hanging from a crossbeam, all in a row? If you pull one of the balls away from the others and let it go, when it strikes the row of spheres the one on the opposite end swings away from the rest in direct response to the force of the first ball. It's called "Newton's Cradle."

The next mistake is a bit more subtle and difficult to detect. Ron calls it, "The Newton's Cradle approach to leadership."

Let's say that you are the person at the top of the leadership chain in your organization. You are the crossbeam. Those steel spheres hanging beneath the crossbeam are the people who work closely with you. The plastic connectors are the individual relationships you make with those people.

You, the leader, pull one of your team members away from the others and get him pumped up about a change that needs to be made. That's like pulling one of the steel balls and holding it there. Then when you let him go, you expect him to return to the rest of the team, where they will all function with superb team dynamics, solving the current problems, achieving team goals, and making changes.

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