5 Mistakes New Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them

Congratulations. You’ve made it into the management position that will open doors and opportunities for you. However, unless you’re an experienced leader who has worked across a variety of roles and organizations, your learning curve is likely to be steep and especially challenging if you don’t take an intentional approach to your leadership development.

Here are five common challenges facing managers on their path to becoming leaders, or when starting a new leadership role.

1. Overconfidence

Managers sometimes erroneously equate authority with leadership. Though a title and its privileges may be conferred to a particular leadership role, competence must still be demonstrated to earn the trust and respect that is required to be an effective leader.

Even if a manager has demonstrated competence in other settings, the culture, processes, and history can differ greatly, even between departments within a given organization. Assumptions, conclusions, and actions based on what worked in a different setting or what you believe should work in the current one are likely to cause frustration and mistrust when you’re trying to get off to a good start.

Humble leadership styles have been shown to improve outcomes through psychological safety and empowerment (Qu, 2022). Therefore, have a beginner’s mind and learn the history, existing processes and initiatives, successes, and challenges of the new department before attempting to make changes. Avoid rushing in with decisions, imperatives, or major changes until you’ve done your homework and learned what has or has not worked. Make sure to get buy-in from the existing team. Learn from those who are responsible for those tasks and processes, work collaboratively to support their success, and implementation of any needed changes.

A leader’s role is to lead the decision-making process while also staying involved in the tasks needed for implementation. Being actively involved helps you to understand what’s happening at a granular level and shows your team that you’re not above doing the work yourself. This should be balanced with delegation, which allows your teammates to develop their own management skills and abilities, and for you to focus on the tasks that are uniquely yours.

2. Ignoring your people

According to Peter Drucker, “Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” Managers are generally concerned with completing tasks efficiently; leaders are more concerned with effectiveness, which requires taking into account the larger dimensions of managing relationships, opportunities, and pitfalls.

“Moving at the speed of trust” aptly describes a leader’s main challenge for effectiveness and impact. Take the time to meet individually with as many members of your new team as possible and collaboratively plan who is responsible for each task, building on the strengths of each member.

In contrast, managers who treat others as irrelevant, a means to accomplishing their goals, or an obstacle, are likely to be met with resistance (Arbinger Institute, 2000). Taking the time to get to know others and behaving as if their needs and perspectives matter (i.e., respect), is an effective way to build trust.

It may seem more efficient to skip over people’s feelings, needs, and the collaborative process, but making decisions in a vacuum and without input or consensus from those who are most affected will backfire in the long run.

3. Being either too passive or assertive

Once you have done your homework and learned how the organization is working, what has been tried previously or is currently being developed, and the aspirations of the team, it’s time to discern how your vision might play out within this unit.

Consider using empathy for transformational influence (Laker & Patel, 2000). Start by using humility as you offer small ideas and suggestions, measuring responses to your ideas. If, after testing the waters, you find that key players are in agreement with your tidbits of vision, begin small discussions where you explore the ideas in more detail. Measure their energy for the concepts, and use it to propel the discussion forward.

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Be willing to reformulate the expression of your vision within the context of the group if your ideas are not taking hold. Experiment, feeding the energy and momentum as you go, and guide the process. The more engaged and energized the team is by what becomes the co-created vision, the more likely the vision will also motivate the team to make the dream a reality.

4. Picking winners and losers

It’s true that a change in leadership usually results in a change in culture, which may feel like the wrong change to some. Similarly, avoid entering an organization with the idea that those who may initially seem like a bad fit should be pushed out or marginalized. Often those who are perceived as being difficult have a unique and valuable perspective and/or role and can help the organization avoid groupthink, which perils creativity and innovation.

Instead, embrace differences and discover their unique talents, gifts, and aspirations for the organization, developing them as much as possible. This has been shown to benefit the bottom line and well-being (Aspuland & Blacksmith, 2022). View their suggestions as valuable and important as your “best” team member, because all team members are important. Seeing your primary leadership responsibility as cultivating the success and growth of all team members will set up both your team and organization for the best possible outcome and impact.

5. Not having a growth mindset

Having humility also leaves room to continue to learn and grow. As a leader, your growth is not only in expanding your expertise, but also in building your understanding of managing yourself, others, your organization, and the world around you. As such, our learning opportunities are endless. And while it’s not realistic to try to know or learn everything, committing to lifelong learning and growth on both personal and professional matters will set you up for success throughout your life and to be a role model who inspires others to do likewise.

It can be hard to find resources that support your holistic growth in a way that works for you. Flexible, affordable, self-paced resources, such as those available from the Foundation for Family and Community Healing can help you and your team learn and prosper together.