Top 5 leadership Pitfalls to avoid in 2018

Over the year of 2017, we have worked with tens of leaders across various industries on strategic coaching, business and strategy development. Here are the top 5 common pitfalls that we have seen, arranged in order of challenge, and some tips to avoid them in 2018:

1. Lack of a communication strategy.

Despite the huge development in information technology tools, communication remains to be the largest leadership challenge in 2017, and is still taken for granted by several organizations as an Ad-hoc job for marketing and sometimes it is split into internal and external communications where marketing takes the role for external communications and HR takes the role of internal communication. So why is this not ideal?

We have seen a great conflict between internal and external market messages for several organizations, where employees hear the news about organizational / product changes from external sources way before they get to hear it internally. In some instances, the CEOs of organizations held press conferences announcing organizational changes and future plans that employees never knew about internally.

If leaders want their employees engaged in their mission, establishing solid communication strategies is vital. Get a good brain behind it and link both; internal and external in one. We do not believe that they should be split on top by any means.

2. Consumer distance.

Most of the organizations have “customer focus”, “Customer-centricity” and other customer terms as key values / competencies in their models, but very few play this as pros. With several organizations that we studied, we tested their customer call center process through registering some dummy complaints, and it took a lot of them an approximate time of 3-4 weeks before the complaint was responded to. In several instances, call center team members gave contradicting responses to where the error was and how to solve it.

With all the available alternatives now in the market across all industry sectors, we advise leaders to direct the largest portion of their development budgets into front-line customer service. Establish a solid customer relationship strategy, with very clear flow charts describing the process with timelines diligently followed. Remember that all your profit comes from your customers, so listen to them very closely, review action plans, and if I was in your shoes, I will sit by myself (even if I was the CEO) in the call center at least once a month and take some calls myself, that should help you feel exactly how consumers (your money source) value you and your services. Don’t keep distance with your customers at all. The game is getting harder every day.

3. Hiring look-alike(s) … “Cloning the clan!”

Diversity is key to success as it simply gives leaders the advantage of seeing decisions / product / services from different angles. For an organization to build agility and risk management plans, this is absolutely important as it helps leadership anticipate the future. As much as this is known, organizations still focus on diversifying based on gender and nationality. This is Absolutely Wrong!!

Hiring males and females from 100 different countries but with the same mentality will grow the clan stronger, and it will actually give you better justification to your decisions, since you will convince yourself that the decision is backed up by people from all over the world, and from different genders, but did you ever reflect on the fact that people don’t think with their passports? or their gender nature? It’s all about hearts and brains leaders, right? If you wish to diversify, please forget all about those diversity matrices (gender / race / ethnicity ..etc), those were established for legal reasons to allow minorities to have a chance in the labor market, instead, run behavioral interviews and hire different personalities / thinking patterns, and THAT is real diversity.

4. Avoid rusting!

When was the last time you have Assessed your leadership team? Have you ever re-evaluated your leadership 3-5 years after their recruitment / promotion? Real assessment, for decision evaluation and not for developmental reasons?

One of the largest leadership pitfalls is falling into the comfort zone. You, as a CEO / Managing director or team leader allow for this comfort zone when you put your leadership under little competency / behavioral stress. You care about the results and figures, right? How about asking your senior leadership team about your work values? What about the organizational mission and vision? or simply look into how they are consistent in performance evaluation for their teams?

With almost 97% of employees we have interviewed in one of our trials, none knew about their work values, mission and vision (including senior directors and vice presidents). How do you expect them to lead your strategy? Are values, mission and vision components of your strategy? Then measure how people follow them.

An old management concept says “What gets measured gets managed”, so if you wish to have a super leadership team, keep them on their tip toes, test them, polish them and anti-rust them.

5. Leadership visibility.

Management by wandering around (MBWA) is a practice that has been traced to HP back in the 1970s and similarly by the Japanese “Gemba Walk” practiced in Toyota. Both of the management practices depend on leaders roaming around everywhere at work and performing observations, then running an observational analysis of what they have seen, and finally making some development plans.

With workload challenges today, several leaders don’t spend enough time on the floor and several people don’t see their top leaders all through their recruitment journey. Why is this important? For leaders, this is a sense of how work is performed, how values are followed and how the current work culture reflects the culture they had for their organizations in mind. For followers, it’s an opportunity to groom, to show their work, to shine, to ask questions about direction and to engage with the ship captain. Don’t miss it and plan it monthly in your diaries.

Wishing everyone reading this post a marvelous 2018 ahead .. a great opportunity to re -position your leadership capacity is just round the corner .. Get ready for it ..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher