Like many new leaders, I was given an opportunity to lead because I was good at my job. The only problem was, my job at the time wasn’t leading. Leadership is a different job that requires a completely different set of skills than what I had learned up to that point in my career. And like many new leaders, I was placed into my new role without any formal training or preparation to teach me those skills. I wasn’t exactly prepared to be a leader. So, like many new leaders, I made mistakes… lots of them. Here are the ways I fell short as a new leader and how you can avoid making the same mistakes.

Lack of Delegation or Pretend Delegation (Micromanagement)

When you are an exceptional team member, you’re used to getting things done. You get your assignments, projects, tasks, etc. and you get them taken care of. As a leader, you’re now responsible for a team’s worth of work. Everything is multiplied: the quantity of work, the complexity, the challenges. Taking this all on alone is a recipe for disaster. And as a new leader, that’s exactly what I tried to do. From all the day-to-day operational needs to the long-term strategic planning and decision making. I was quickly buried underneath it all. It took a few team members recognizing this and pointing it out to me before I realized that I was acting like a lone wolf instead of a team player. There was only one way I was going to get out from the mess I had made myself: learn to ask for help.

I began to identify tasks and projects that I could hand off to team members. I started to think strategically about what work benefited most from my attention, and what work could be distributed. Once I decided which tasks I felt comfortable giving away, I quickly fell into another common trap for new leaders: micromanagement (aka pretend delegation). Instead of outlining my desired outcome and a clear timeline I would prescribe exactly how I wanted tasks to be completed. This offered my team no autonomy, no opportunity for improvement or innovation, and it stifled morale. Thankfully I had a few team members courageous enough to challenge me and ask to do things differently. After a few projects came back with results that exceeded my expectations because someone had taken an approach I hadn’t even considered I began to piece it together: I didn’t have all the ideas, let alone all the best ideas so I needed to trust my team. I hired them because of what they were capable of achieving. I needed to demonstrate the restraint in my leadership to provide them with enough freedom to achieve their potential. Did some tasks get completed in a less than desirable way? Of course. I had to give my team the grace to explore and learn themselves, just as I was learning. Despite the occasional setbacks, more often than not I was pleasantly surprised by the work my team would take on and complete as it would regularly exceed my expectations.

Lesson #1: Ask for help and delegate tasks. Then give enough autonomy to your team to complete them.

Not Setting Clear Expectations

Delegating work was only half the battle. As I would run into situations where my expectations weren’t being met I began to notice a problem: me. I’m the problem, it’s me. Specifically, I wasn’t clearly communicating my expectations: I wasn’t being clear about the outcomes or the timeline I wanted. As a result, my expectations weren’t being met. Once I finally caught on to the fact that my team members were not mind readers, I began to focus on clearly communicating what I wanted done, and when I needed it by (still being careful not to specify how). In meetings when action items would arise, we would decide who would be responsible, what the outcomes should be, and when we would follow up. Then this was documented for the team to see. This helped hold me and my team accountable to the work we were committing to. I knew who to reach out to for status updates, and other team members knew when a task should be completed. This provided the needed structure for our team to create and meet goals while still having the autonomy to choose how to get there.

Lesson #2: Set, communicate, and document clear expectations. Include specifics such as who owns tasks and their deadlines. 

Giving Answers vs Giving Direction

As an expert on a team, team members often come to you for answers to their questions. Your role is to provide that expertise and help the team solve problems. However, as a leader, if you spend all your time playing expert, then you’re creating a team who is dependent on you and incapable of solving problems on their own. Your role as a leader is no longer to be the expert, but now to surround yourself with experts and coordinate their efforts.

I was trusted by those around me and successful in my previous role on the team because I could answer questions and solve problems. So, when I became a leader and someone walked into my office with a question I did what came naturally to me: I gave them an answer. The more I did this, more people came to me. The more they came to me, the less they did on their own. I was creating a culture of dependence, and once again taking away autonomy from my team. For efficiency’s sake, we couldn’t afford for me to be the bottleneck in our processes. And worse than that, I was stunting my team members’ growth and development by not letting them struggle with hard problems. When the frequent visits for my help became exceedingly disruptive I decided I needed to try something new. So, instead of giving answers I started asking questions. “I don’t know what to do” was previously met with “go try this.” But instead, I would now respond “it sounds like it might be this type of problem, what have you tried already, and what else could you try?” Even if they aren’t able to come up with the correct solution, simply struggling with a problem before learning the answer has been shown to improve retention of learning. Eventually, team members would approach me saying “I’m stuck on this problem, and I’ve already tried a, b, c, and d” where a through c are the things I would’ve suggested and d was something I hadn’t even thought to try. This was when I knew we were really starting to make headway on growing the team’s critical thinking and problem solving skills. Once we got to a point where we were both stuck together we could share ideas, and come up with something else to try. Instead of giving answers I was giving direction. Helping to provide problem solving frameworks and mental models that could be applied to future problems. I had finally taken off my expert hat and was behaving more like a leader.

Lesson #3: Don’t give your team all the answers. Ask questions and help them learn to think and solve problems for themselves.

Underestimating the Importance of Relationships and Trust

My new role required many shifts in perspective to be successful, the most important of which was: instead of being focused on the work, I needed to be focused on the people. I wasn’t just responsible for the work getting done, I was responsible for the people getting the work done. I came into my leadership role with a worker bee mindset: make sure the work gets done. My overemphasis on the work led to the creation of a stressful work environment, lower team morale, and as a result, poorer performance. People were scared to make mistakes, they were overwhelmed by the (unreasonably) high standards, and worst of all, they weren’t happy to be at work. Unfortunately it took a few team members quitting and others complaining before I realized the unsustainable culture we had created. Something had to change. 

After much searching,I found  the answer I needed: trust, built on the foundation of psychological safety. Psychological safety made sense to me, and I had some pretty clear behaviors I could turn to in order to start fostering it. But trust? How on earth was I supposed to know if there was trust between team members? The answer was simply to ask. Based on models of 360 degree feedback in US military organizations, I created an 8 question survey that any team member could complete for any of their peers. The 8 questions were based upon a research-backed breakdown of the components of trust. The most elegant depiction of this is offered by Rachel Botsman. The questions targeted competence, reliability, integrity, and empathy. By reviewing the survey results I could see not only who was trusted by their peers, but also why someone wasn’t trusted by their peers. Did they not know what they were doing? Were they unreliable? Did they lack integrity or empathy? Implementing these surveys helped bring to light issues that go beyond mere performance. We make it a habit to review the feedback results with each team member, creating more opportunities to openly discuss challenges, issues, and areas for growth. The surveys also serve as a regular reminder of the behaviors and values that are important to us. It is important that we trust each other, learn, and help each other, so we now measure these behaviors, allowing us to react as needed. It was the people, not the work that required my care and attention. If I took care of the people, they would take care of the work.

Lesson #4: Foster psychological safety. Build and measure trust.

Avoiding Difficult Conversations

Early in my leadership journey I was partnered with a co-leader with a stricter, more disciplined approach to addressing issues with team members. I often had to play the part of more caring and understanding to bring a balanced resolution. However, after a change in co-leaders I was now sharing responsibility with someone who was instinctively caring and understanding. I had to adapt my leadership style to ensure we were maintaining accountability within the staff. When eventually I was left to lead the team on my own, I struggled to find my own style of dealing with personnel issues. I fell into the trap of “wait and see”, and was often burned by letting a minor situation devolve into a much larger mess to deal with. It’s always OK to be caring and understanding as a leader, but I still needed to hold people accountable in an empathetic way. While I always leaned towards a “coach and correct” mentality, leading through the COVID-19 pandemic really solidified the importance of understanding the human element of leadership. Everyone faced their own version of such incredible hardships that it was impossible to employ a one-size-fits-all approach to problem solving. I had to meet everyone where they were, and find a path with them to where we agreed they should be. I came out of the pandemic with far more clarity about the types of issues I would tolerate and teach through, and which issues are non-negotiable that would lead to a parting of ways. Most importantly, I learned the importance of frequent conversations, making it easier to have a difficult one. Regular development discussions to review feedback were chances to check up and check in, to bring up concerns and find solutions. I no longer had to wait until things boiled over. By reducing the friction of creating a meeting for a difficult conversation, I lowered the bar of entry to have one. Does this make it any easier to have these conversations? No, of course not. But by having them in a more timely fashion, and engaging in problems sooner, I end up catching things before they inevitably blow up to be far worse.

Lesson #5: Don’t delay difficult conversations, they only get harder. Respond quickly to coachable issues and even quicker to your non-negotiables.

Thinking I already Knew How to be a Leader

Being a leader requires skills and practice. Just like being a teacher, an electrician, an athlete, or a doctor. People study, and work continually to be good at their craft, to learn, and to improve. Leadership is no different. But, I didn’t always realize this. Starting out in my role I was confident knowing that I had held smaller leadership positions before (I was section leader in marching band) and that I was good at my job. What I came to learn was that being good at my job didn’t mean being a good leader, and neither did being a leader previously make me a good leader. As is evidenced by the previous laundry list of mistakes I made, I did a pretty good job of showing that I still had a lot to learn. However, I lacked the self-awareness and humility to see my abilities for what they truly were: undeveloped raw material in need of shaping. Through the myriad of mistakes I made I was forced to turn the mirror onto myself and reflect on my choices, my abilities, my behaviors and my beliefs. In recognizing and accepting that I was creating many of the problems our team faced, I began to become more invested in my own leadership development. I sought out books, podcasts, videos, courses, anything that might help me improve my skills, sharpen my ideas, or better position me for future challenges. Additionally, I began seeking feedback from my team. I would engage in conversations during exit interviews, with my most experienced team members, asking them what I could be doing better or what they might have done differently if they were in my role. The results have been a slow molding of myself into a more self-aware student of leadership. I now have the humility to realize and admit that I don’t have all the answers, that I have plenty of areas for improvement, and most importantly: I have the capacity to learn to improve in those areas. As a student of leadership I allow myself to be humbled by the craft and the daily challenges it brings me while simultaneously welcoming the incredible rewards that come with knowing when I do my job right I can have a significant and positive impact on the lives of those I lead.

Lesson #6: Become a student of leadership. Never stop learning.

Conclusion

These are just a handful of the most egregious errors I made as a new leader. I hope that by sharing the lessons I learned along my bumpy path that some of you might be able to dodge the various potholes and pitfalls that litter the roadway to great leadership. But don’t take my word for it, go try some of these changes to your leadership behaviors and see for yourself the tremendous impacts you can have as a leader.