Which of these 17 managerial mistakes are you making?

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Managers mess up. How? Let us count the ways.

At the top of the organization, chief executive officers put their company at risk through five blind spots, according to Susan Lucia Annunzio, who heads the Center for High Performance. If you’re not a CEO, still worry because the same mistakes occur throughout managerial ranks, with potentially destructive consequences for your career if not the company:

1. Creating false narratives: The Prevaricator, as she names this type of leader, creates a convenient narrative to serve his or her own purposes. Prevaricators are often braggarts, undervaluing or ignoring evidence that is clear to others.
2. Avoiding tough calls: The Cowardly Lion delays making hard decisions and then under pressure often chooses financial considerations over principles and focuses on the short term rather than the long term.
3. Condescension: The Smartest Person in the Room dismisses ideas quickly and refuses to listen to those who express opposing points of view.
4. Letting friendship cloud judgment: “The Loyalist does not see the negative behaviours of another top executive, often a ‘buddy.’ The individual may have been a valued contributor in the past, but is now having a destructive impact on the team. Everybody knows this except The Loyalist,” she writes on ChiefExecutive.net.
5. Bullying: She notes The Corporate Bully, like the ones we met in childhood, pick on the less powerful, don’t tolerate disagreement, blame others when things go awry and rarely admit mistakes.

Consultant David Burkus offers these four common mistakes managers make in the Human-Centred Change and Innovation blog:

1. Talking first: Managers often are promoted because they solved problems and generated ideas faster and better than their peers. At times, that’s still handy but more often they should facilitate discussion and allow everyone to share opinions first. This encourages collaboration, creating an environment where everyone feels heard and valued, and offers the best chance of finding the optimal solution.
2. Avoiding conflict: No one likes to be the bad guy. But he notes that sometimes in the service of avoiding conflict managers fail to confront people and situations as required. “Managers need to address underperformance and insubordination. And their team needs them to do it even more,” he says.
3. Reacting urgently: Managers are besieged with problems. The instinct can be to solve them immediately. But perhaps if given some time and a little discussion, the team would have found a better solution. Managers also have to avoid the tyranny of the urgent, immersing themselves in the little stuff that crops up rather than paying greater attention to more important matters.
4. Assuming availability: Many managers just assume their team feels free to come to them. But over time, having found that when they did the boss was busy or distracted, much of the team may assume unavailability is the reality. “Managers would gain from being deliberate and intentional about their availability. They shouldn’t promise to be available all of the time. Instead, they should be available at specific times and block them off in their calendar. That way they can give the team members their sole focus,” he writes.

Managers deal with people. Their day consists of constant, even dizzying, interaction. Kate Nasser, who bills herself as The People Skills Coach, lists these eight common blunders she sees:

1. Thinking you must choose between civility and honesty: They actually go together – civility is how you deliver your honesty.
2. Confusing sound judgment and judgmentalism: Good judgment is valuable, flowing from various experiences. But she argues that judging people – judgmentalism – degrades others and blocks opportunities for success. Instead, view each person as a possibility for a team win.
3. Forgetting or denying that every conversation creates emotion: “People skills blunders abound in those who focus purely on their own message and never on honouring other people. People skills brilliance lies in the awareness of how your actions impact others and in the generosity to adapt,” she writes on her blog.
4. Fear of losing: The behaviours that arise when someone is routinely afraid of losing tend to appear as selfish and inconsiderate to others. Guard against this by being more self-aware. Spot and stop fears from driving your behaviour.
5. Mistaking listening and adapting for surrender: She was told by a boorish man once that “the world belongs to those who don’t surrender.” She counters: The world belongs to those who listen, interact, influence and create a win for all. None of that constitutes surrender.
6. Focusing on the stressful moment rather than a desirable outcome: Differences can cause stress. But they don’t have to derail your people skills nor stop you from gaining a favourable outcome. When stressful feelings surface, remember you have options that can help you move forward. Choose wisely.
7. Believing that confidence and humility cannot co-exist: In fact, a person can be both confident in their message and humble in delivering it.
8. Clinging to a comfort zone: The greater the craving for self-comfort, the greater the risk of making a people skills mistake. “The comfort zone is full of sitting ducks and it is not as safe as it feels.” she concludes.

That’s 17. There are more, of course, but that’s enough for now. Which apply to you? Which ones are most dangerous or most common or most embarrassing? Which one will you work on first?

Cannonballs

• New research shows that generative artificial intelligence enhances individual creativity but overall, collective novelty is lost, with many of the offerings from AI in the same range.
• A new format for conferences, known as the long conversation, might be of value for organizational events as well. At conferences, Wired journalist Kevin Kelly explains that two speakers begin with a conversation on stage. After 15 minutes one of them is replaced by a new speaker and the conversation continues, with every 15 minutes for the next eight hours a speaker swapped out.
• Wednesday, July 31 is Productivity Parity Day, marking the point of the year when proponent Janet Winkler, of the Difference Lab, says the average worker theoretically shifts from labouring with busy work to performing actual knowledge work. A good day to think of cutting out busy work in your organization.

Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.