During challenging times, you may find yourself saying five common leadership excuses. These may be valid but they can also become an excuse for poor management on your part.
Sometimes the best tool for a leader is a mirror. While this article may be heavy on tough love, it may represent what you need to hear and what no one else is willing to say to you. Let’s take a deep dive into five common leadership excuses:
Your Employees Stink
Okay, they may not be that bad but does it seem like they under perform at key times? You’re tired of goals not being met on a consistent basis or people not intuitively knowing what you need them to do.
The hard truth is that your team is your team, whether you hired or inherited them. If you need to make changes, make changes. You can’t use the status quo as an ongoing excuse.
Changes may involve changing roles. You may have the right people in the wrong places.
You should also consider whether you are properly communicating priorities and goals. If people don’t know what you want, then they’ll likely guess. Is it a surprise they’re not rising to your level of expectations?
Bad Luck
There will be times when external factors, that are out of your control, will hurt your business. From bad weather to inflation, things can change and not in your favor.
You can only prepare so much for the unexpected. You can change how your react to these events.
When something goes wrong, don’t go into hiding and hold a pity party. Get your team together and figure out next steps or how the situation can be better handled in the future.
A setback feels better when you remove the emotion and replace it with strategy.
Poor Customers
One of the five common leadership excuses sees you complain about your customers. Let’s face it, some are better than others. The poor ones can take up a lot of your time and energy, for little return on investment. They’re often the ones who are slow to pay.
Obviously, you want to work less with these people. But are you actively looking for better customers or have you gotten comfortable complaining about the ones you have?
And if you’re stuck with the ones you have and need them to help pay the bills, learn to tolerate their shortcomings. Complaining about an ongoing situation, you can’t change, will drain your organization.
No Innovation
Do you feel like your business is stuck in the past? You want new ideas that can help the bottom line. But do you sabotage this creative process?
Do you give employees time to innovate or learn new best practices? Often the demands of the present delay these investments.
Also, is money set aside for training and is there a plan for how it will be spent? For example, you could send a few people to a conference or bring in online or in-person training to your office.
It’s unrealistic to expect breakthroughs if you’re not planting the seeds of success.
I Now Hate My Job
Leadership can require you to showcase an evolving number of skills. Some of them may not be your strengths. Or when you were hired, the job played well to your strengths but market conditions now require you to perform in less comfortable areas.
You’re in a situation where you start to resent your job and feel trapped. Self-reflection can help you get back on track.
You can’t know everything but you need to acknowledge when you’re under performing. Either find people who can take on those tasks, learn how to do them better, or seek out a mentor who can help you navigate the rough waters.
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