3 Most Costly Mistakes Executives Routinely Make

Being the top executive of an organization is stressful! There’s so much that you have to oversee and manage that it’s normal to feel as though you’re being pulled in many different directions. In addition to that, the higher your position, the less time that you have to accomplish everything. With regular social engagements, business meetings, business development activities, and subordinates clamoring for your attention, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Regardless of the time challenges and many time consuming obligations, executives are tasked with leading their organizations towards a better future. Their effectiveness is gauged by results, not efforts or intentions and excuses are rarely accepted for them missing the mark of expectations. This thrive or die reality creates an intense pressure cooker that executives must become accustomed to working and living daily in.

I believe that most people have aspirations to seek promotions within their respective agencies. In fact, there’s a common misconception that the higher rank you carry, the more freedom you have, the less actual work you have to do, and your compensation is pretty good. The reality is much different as the higher you rise, the less rights you have although your responsibilities tremendously increase. 

With working towards meeting their organizational expectations and ensuring that they personally perform well as agency leaders, executives frequently make unintentional mistakes that uncut their ability to succeed.

Overlooking Their People

Success for many organizations means maintaining a path to work towards their vision and achieve their goals while keeping a watchful eye on the bottom line profits of the company. Granted, both vision and profits are critical to organizational success. Without a vision, the business will crumble because it has no destination that it’s working towards. Additionally, without profits, the organization won’t be able to keep its doors open for long. 

The problem with this is between the vision and profits, lie the people of the organization. Executives sometimes unintentionally overlook the people and their importance for the sake of keeping tabs on the vision and profits. In time, neglecting your people will cause the vision and profits to disintegrate. 

Rewarding Incorrectly

How do you reward your people and what are you rewarding them for? In my years of working for the state government, it was a common practice of every employee to receive the same percentage of a raise in the years where we actually got raises. Regardless of the quality and quantity of work performed, every employee received the same percentage raise.

One particular year when I was working for the state probation office, one specific person bragged regularly about reading two Harry Potter books during a week’s time while at work. Even before this, everyone knew that this person had a terrible work ethic. Yet, they received the same percentage raise as everyone else when it came time for our performance review. Needless to say, this person’s work ethic never improved as there was no motivation or incentive for them to change.

Lack Of Personnel Development

One challenge that many businesses have faced over the past few years has been employee retention and being able to appropriately staff their workforce. In some industries, this has been a chronic problem that has spanned the course of a few decades. I’ve heard many leaders talk about this problem and how costly it is to hire someone, get them trained, then finally the new hire being able to work independently so that the company can get a return on investment in the employee, and all of a sudden, the employee leaves for another company. I agree, it’s costly.

As a result of this, many executives have significantly cut back on providing training and leadership development programs for their employees. They do this because of fear of investing in an employee and then the employee leaving. Since many leaders are religiously focused on organizational profits, as mentioned earlier, cutting these type programs appears to make sense to them. Yet, they don’t recognize how costly this decision truly is for the organization.

Conclusion

We tend to measure leadership by various metrics. Stockholders, board of directors, politicians and others frequently measure organizational leadership based on budgets and how financially sound and prudent the agency is. Other times, leadership is measured by how effectively the agency is at working through various processes and procedures. All of these types of measurement highlight how we often judge leadership effectiveness by standards that have absolutely nothing to do with leadership or leadership ability. 

You can’t lead a budget. You can’t lead a process or procedure. These measurements gauge a person’s ability to manage, not lead. The only thing that organizational leaders can lead is people! John Maxwell defines leadership as being nothing more than the ability to influence others. You can’t influence others unless you first know, understand, and care about them on a personal level. 

When you create a people focused organization that recognizes the importance of their people, understands their people, and helps to develop their people into becoming better individuals and leaders, the company will be tremendously transformed. Budgets or profits will take care of themselves. People may leave for other jobs but you’ll have a continual supply of capable leaders who are ready to replace that person. Not only that, you’ll be able to draw tremendously qualified applicants to your organization because of your ability to develop them into better people and leaders. 

At the end of the day, we all want to make an impact. Twenty years from now, no one will remember how you were able to keep your organization financially sound during a tough economic time period. They won’t remember how well your company was at working through a specific process or procedure. Many times, no one will actually remember you leading the organization twenty years from now. Your legacy isn’t built by all of that. You build a legacy by building relationships with people, providing value to their lives, and helping them to become a better version of themselves. For that, you will be remembered twenty years from now. That’s the essence of leadership.