I've tried to learn as much as I can from my mentors, training opportunities and reading about leadership from those more experienced than I. Fortunately, I've been able to avoid some mistakes by learning from the mistakes of others. With the hope that it may be the same for you, let me share what I believe to be the stupidest mistakes I've made in leadership.
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1. Hiring too fast and firing too slow
When a position is open that you know needs to be filled and the right person isn't available, it's had to wait. The tendency is to fill the role with the best available person, but sometimes that's not the right person. Let me confirm that it's a lot easier to tell people they're not a good fit for the job before you hire them than after you've brought them on the team.
On the flip side, I've made the mistake of waiting too long to let someone go. I can remember one particular situation when I let a problem go for months without dealing with it head-on. It was impacting me, my family and the rest of the team. More importantly, I was getting in the way of God doing a work in this particular employee's life. I thought I was doing him a favor by keeping him on the team. The reality was that he needed to move on to experience all that God had for him.
2. Trying to fix the problem rather than the process
Not to be crass, but I've found it's a lot better to potty-train my kids than to continue changing messy diapers. Regrettably, though, there have been too many times in leadership roles when I've found myself reacting to a problem rather than addressing the process that prevents the situation from occurring in the first place. It takes a lot of discipline to rise above the emotion of a difficult situation and try to discern how a broken system needs to be fixed.
3. Putting projects before people
Others may have the opposite challenge of letting their love of people get in the way of actually accomplishing the purpose of the organization. But because I'm not naturally a people person, I tend to be too task-driven. Good leaders find the perfect balance between getting the job done and embracing the relational component of doing life as a team.
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