Counterproductive Leadership Habits? What You Can Do

When it comes to your path to leadership success, do you ever stand in your own way? Are you aware of your counterproductive habits that affect your progress?

Did you know that your counterproductive habits, the ones you don’t recognize -- because they are grounded in your intent to do the right thing -- could be major culprits in your lack of satisfactory success?

What do I mean? Here are some examples of counterproductive leadership habits:

• seeking to be in charge and involved in everything
• “winging it” without sufficient supporting data
• holding grudges -- can’t “let it go” of other people’s mistakes
• Isolating from others and burning bridges
• encouraging others to be overly dependent on you
• poorly managing friendships with subordinates
• rigid thinking -- easily disorganized and overwhelmed by new information
• playing “power games” in your attempts to seem clever

Periodically, you may want to ask people you trust about “the times your actions seemed counterproductive”. However, it takes courage to hear what others tell us about the effect of our bad habits. It takes humility to mindfully confront those habits and commit to change.

Being mindful of our effect on the people around us demands that we construct responsive leadership styles that demonstrate agility as people and environments change. We learn to manage according to the need, not our needs.

When we take a mindful approach to monitoring our impacts on people and processes, we leave little to chance. In support of our growth, we develop and nurture our networks of people who tell us of our counterproductive habits – no matter how painful it is to hear.

Your counterproductive habits reflect your current levels of development, your personal style, and your core values and intentions. It’s every leader’s responsibility to deal with aspects of themselves that keep them from being an effective leader.

Here are some recommendations to add to your process of becoming an even more effective leader.

• On a daily basis, be open to recognizing when you are, and are not, at your best and commit to making meaningful improvements.
• Keep a mental weekly score card of your performance – this week, when were you a “heavy-hitter” and when did you “strike-out”?
• Ask others you trust for input regarding your effectiveness and the ease of following your leadership style
• Work with a coach to systematically alleviate your counterproductive habits

I say systematically, because there are at least 25 leadership competencies that can be the foundation of your leadership growth. They can be found in my book. Portions of this article are excerpts from my book “Lead or Someone Else Will: A Coach’s Guide to Leadership”. It can be found on Amazon.com.

Would you like more information about this topic? Or how about a brief, confidential, no-judgement discussion of your current situation? Contact my offices at (336) 999-4533 or email me at DonnaColes.Coach@gmail.com and we’ll schedule a time to discuss your leadership dilemma and identify some options that will help.
 
Or, Click the following link to schedule your discussion with me.
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=18102228 

Until then…

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