The big mistake leaders make and how to fix it

Inept employees are a supervisors worst nightmare!
Doesn’t it drive you crazy when your employees don’t do what is expected of them? You suspect they do not do the job correctly because they don’t care. You accuse your staff (perhaps in your mind only) of being lazy. You wonder what is the world is coming to?

What if you are part of the problem? 

Here is one of our biggest leadership mistakes and how to fix it.

I could have blamed her for being bad
My granddaughter was over last night for a little visit. She’d had a busy weekend with dance recital, spring camping and visiting many people. For any of us, that is a lot. For a two year old, it’s even more challenging. I could tell she was on overload the minute she walked in. She was performing, going from one person to the next looking to get a rise out of whomever she could. We could perhaps say she was not cooperating or that she was acting up. We could even say that she was purposefully “being bad”. 

What was my role in her mood?
Another way to look at it would be that as an adult in her life, as a leaders in my family, perhaps there was something I could have done differently in this situation. Maybe asking to see her, knowing full well she had a big weekend was not actually being the responsible adult. Perhaps foregoing the much-desired visit and allowing her Dad to bring the weekend to a quiet close would have been more appropriate.

We are most worried about how things impact us
Much of life is about us and how everything around us impacts us. I wanted a visit with my granddaughter! In that moment, that was all that was important to me. Yet, I needed to see the bigger impact. I needed to look at how my demands would impact her. By pushing for a visit, I actually played a role in her poor conduct. 

My invitation to you it to look at where you have played a role in your employees poor conduct.

Here is the big leadership mistake
The biggest mistake we often make in leadership roles is to blame the poor results on others. When things aren’t going well, we look to someone else to lay fault to.

• They didn’t do their job.
  
• They don’t care.
  
• They are lazy.
  
• They don’t listen.
  
• They didn’t follow instructions.
  
• They didn’t do what they were told. 

What have you taught?
It has been said however, that if the student hasn’t learned, the teacher has not taught. If the employee isn’t doing their job right, we’d do better to look in the mirror rather than blame and accuse. What have we done or not done that may have changed this situation around?

I missed valuable teaching moments many times
When I go back to frustrating times as a leader, I can usually follow the trail back to me not doing something important, saying something clearly or missing a key component of the instructions.

• If someone neglected to complete the correct form, it was likely because their were 4 versions of that particular form on the data base and no one knew which was the right one. I was responsible for either cleaning it up, or ensuring it did get cleaned up. 
  
• If people handed their paperwork in late, it was usually after I’d been lax with the deadline a few times demonstrating it was really ok to be late.
  
• When a staff member turned out to be a “bad hire” is was often when I hadn’t listened to my intuition. 

My frustration with staff was actually because I had missed the boat somewhere along the way.

We want workplace cultures to be supportive of growth and development
Workplace cultures full of accusations and fear of errors are not fun to work in. The staff don’t feel safe to grow and learn by mistakes, which is the best way to learn. Leaders must instead create cultures where staff members thrive because they are able to learn from experiences. 

When you find yourself reverting to blaming, accusing and condemning your staff, try these 3 tricks to turn the situation around.

1)    Ask yourself “What part of this is my responsibility?”
We habitually abdicate responsibility. We look to others to find fault rather than acknowledging that maybe perhaps some of the accountability lay within our parameters. It is a habit. What did they do wrong? Instead when we flip the situation back around and see the parts that we play, we may see a missing link that we can fix on our end.

2)    Ask the employee “What information, tools or skills were you missing that I can add to prevent this from happening again?
The key to doing this is to not come at the employee in a judging critical manner. Be humble. Honestly ask in a way of trying to simply correct and move on.

In many cases it might not work so well to have this actual conversation with the staff. You may worry about defensiveness or your ability to ask without judging. Instead, in this case, you may do this as an exercise in your own mind. “I wonder was Jackie would say if I asked her…

3)   Ask yourself in a general way, "What needs to change here?
No blame, no responsibility, no accusations. Simply this question is about forward movement. What needs to happen differently going forward?
The subsequent question is what do I need to do to make sure that happens. In the above example, it didn't mean I had to take the extra copies of the form off the data base. I may have delegated it. But the accountability part would be in following up with whomever I delegated it to ensuring it was completed. 

Creating a climate of accountability
Taking responsibility for your role as a leader demonstrates accountability. Correcting the # 1 leadership mistake of "always trying to figure out where someone messed up" is simply to look at what needs to happen moving forward. What do you need to change? What needs to change in the system? 

No blame. No shame. No excuses. Just progression. 

Question: What is one thing that you teach your employees? How do you do that ensuring you  have captured each necessary step?

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Find more on accountability in this weeks  
"Leading the way" YouTube clip

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