Leadership is messy and complex, making it easy for well-intentioned leaders to act in ways that have an unintended negative impact on those they lead. Most leaders want to do the right thing for their team members and the organization, but as the old saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." One of the significant leadership challenges is that well-intentioned actions can negatively impact your team's performance and well-being.
A leader's good intentions can promote behaviors that seem good "in the moment" but end up having negative long-term consequences. Understanding how good intentions can cause unintended but costly mistakes help leaders avoid these four common pitfalls.
4 Leadership Mistakes Caused By Good Intentions
1) Too Much Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Research confirms that the most effective way to increase trust is to demonstrate a desire to understand others' perspectives and needs. The ability to demonstrate healthy empathy is critical for effective leadership. Like all strengths and habits, there are negative consequences for expressing too much or the wrong type of empathy.
Leaders must constantly make tough decisions for their organizations to keep up with the rapid pace of change and meet stakeholders' demands. Overly empathic leaders can lose the ability to know what they want or need to do to serve the greater organizational good. Paul Bloom shares in his book, Against Empathy, that empathy does have the power to hurt judgment and can lead to poor decision-making in business. Bloom says, "business leaders need to be able to balance what is best for the whole organization with being kind and considerate to individual employees". Too much focus on empathy can leave leaders emotionally drained and hurt their ability to perform their roles effectively.
Healthy empathy from a leader enables them to take the time to learn about others' perspectives, challenges, and goals so they can make better decisions for the greater good. The art of empathy requires leaders to pay attention to others' needs without sacrificing their own needs. From a leadership perspective, it is essential to understand how to balance being empathic and making the tough decisions that serve the overall good of your team and organization.
2) Inability To Say No
In our busy and complex world, leaders will often bring the mindset that everything is of critical importance and merits the highest priority. The unfortunate truth with this mindset is that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. A leader must feel empowered and learn to say NO or push back against the inevitable onslaught of urgent activities that steal energy and focus away from accomplishing their most important priorities.
Leaders must feel empowered to say "No" to good projects, tasks, and requests that steal their energy and focus away from accomplishing their most important priorities. This does not mean that the leader is not responsive to urgent requests; it just means they do not do it at the expense of their most important and meaningful activities. Leaders must be responsive to urgent requests, just not at the cost of moving forward their most important goals. The most effective leaders learn to "Use their Noes to protect their Yeses."
3) Owning Employee Challenges
Too often, when employees come to leaders with common challenges or problems, the leader will immediately jump into owning and solving the employee's challenge for them. We have all seen passionate leaders who convince themselves that the end justifies the means. With the following statements, leaders will often rationalize why they need to be the "chief problem solver" for their teams.
- I already know the "right" answer
- It is easier to give them the solution
- They won't do it as well as I can
- Often others don't follow through as I expect
The classic Harvard Business Review article, Management Time, Whose Got the Monkey, illustrates this ongoing leadership challenge by defining the problem that an employee takes to their leader as "the monkey". When a leader takes the lead in solving their employee's challenges or issues, they have taken the responsibility away from the employee, and now they own the responsibility (the monkey moved off the employee's back and is now on the leader's back).
Effective leaders have learned to let their employees take responsibility for resolving their ongoing issues through effective delegation and coaching. This allows the leader to focus on the strategic areas of building culture, setting priorities, building key relationships, developing employees, innovating, and creating efficiencies.
4) Not Establishing Clear Accountability
Accountability often gets a bad reputation because employees are concerned that leaders will judge them unfairly if they fall short of expectations. Leaders also often assume that the way they view their team’s goals, roles, timelines, and outcomes is obvious because it is obvious to them. The desire not to be seen as controlling and the assumption of clarity often create a team environment where employees have an unclear understanding of accountability for how work should be done.
For employees to truly trust a leader, they must believe the leader can help them and their team get the job done. For employees to truly trust a leader, they must believe the leader can help them and their team get the job done. The truth is that establishing a culture of accountability is one of the most empathic things a leader can do for their employees' performance and well-being.
Have you ever worked on a team that lacked accountability? If the answer is yes, you probably experienced some of the following repercussions:
- Low-performance levels
- Missed deadlines
- Lack of team trust
- Ongoing team conflict
High-performing leaders understand that accountability is about empowerment – not control. A leader's primary role is to create an environment where employees can deliver on expectations while feeling valued and heard. When employees or teams are off-track or miss deliverables, it should not be a reason for punitive actions from the leader. Successful teams understand that failure is part of success as long as they use the setback as an opportunity to learn, adjust, and take shared actions to get back on track. When team members deliver on commitments, trust is built. Accountability allows people to count on each other, whether meeting deadlines or fulfilling duties.
Woman leader thoughtful about work at home office desk laptop
Leaders must understand that their good intentions are not enough. Leaders must learn to assess and reflect on the impact of their actions and make necessary adjustments when needed—understanding that their good intentions do not forgive unintended negative impacts. Leadership is not about being perfect, and success is dependent on accurate self-assessment that enables a leader to adjust, adapt, and evolve. Understanding the 4 mistakes that well-intentioned leaders often make will help you better navigate the ongoing leadership challenge of achieving results while building strong relationships.
