The Biggest Mistakes Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them
Join best-selling author and consultant Chris Edmonds for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).
Chris will be exploring three actionable steps leaders can take to self-diagnose, assess, and change unwanted behaviors in a special presentation on The Biggest Mistakes Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate.
Immediately after the webinar, Chris will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes. To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
- Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
- Type in your question
- Push SUBMIT COMMENT
It’s as easy as that! Chris will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received. Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Click here for more information on participating.
Join us to learn about leaders’ biggest mistakes – and how to avoid them. We’ve got a global audience of 1200 registered – plenty of room for more! YOU MATTER.
Hi Everyone–Chris and I are here–if you have a question, please type it in.
Hi Chris–here’s a question from the webinar specifically about praising. Can you over-praise? Should you save it for only when people go above and beyond?
You can over-praise – that’s not typically a problem we hear about, though. The LACK of praise is more common.
Over-praising can be a problem is the leader is not specific in what they are praising – a basic “atta-boy” or “atta-girl” can feel insincere.
Chris, during the webinar, you mentioned the entitlement mentality that many organizations are experiencing among employees. Any thoughts on how to address that? What have you seen at other organizations?
Entitlement is a typical dynamic in many organizations. The root of entitlement is inconsistent accountability! Where senior leaders have set clear performance expectations and clear values expectations (citizenship) AND hold all accountable, entitlement disappears.
Do you have a question for Chris? Use the comments button to type it in.
Hi Chris,
Here’s another question from the webinar. How do you get a group of people who have fallen into a “doing just enough” mindset to rally and follow a new leader with a new vision. Any thoughts on how that leader can get started?
Chris, during the webinar, we saw that “Inconsistent communication” was the number one bad habit people saw leaders exhibit in their work environment. If a leader recognizes that poor communication might be holding them back, what’s a good first step on improving things?
David I cannot see the answers to #8 and #9, am I missing them?
Hi Chris! Great webinar this morning, you mentioned delegating to talented staff, how do you do that without others preceiving this as “favoritism”?
Thanks, Jodie – and great question. The favoritism concern will go away with the leader’s consistent focus on performance accountability. Team members will experience that the leader delegates to team members who have earned it & maintain standards (or beat them).
Great Webinar. I’m curious if you get many leaders in middle management with the same sort of non-engaged / going through the motions sort of mentality as some of the front line workers?
Thanks so much, Metin! We do indeed see middle managers who experience the “going through the motions” mindset – because THEIR bosses demonstrate classic mistakes like those we discussed this morning.
The challenge is that those middle managers have to “buck the trend” and do what’s right for their team. They have the opportunity to create a “pocket of excellence” by modeling servant leadership. It takes extra work but the results are gratifying.
If those middle managers remain in the doldrums, their teams will sink right with their boss.
Very good! Thanks again! I look forward to more of these!
A new leader has a great opportunity to inspire employees to greater performance and greater work passion! The leader has to connect to staff – spending time (even a week?) meeting with staff 1:1 to learn their skills & perceptions. The leader then needs to share what she/he has learned – what opportunities exist in the eyes of employees, AND share his/her vision/strategy for the team.
Finally, the leader needs to formalize performance & values expectations, hold all staff accountable, and cheer both progress and accomplishment. With a “new playing field” well defined, that “just enough” target disappears.
Any final questions while we have Chris here? Just type them in as a reply to this message and Chris will see it.
THANK YOU for participating in today’s webinar! I hope you found the information I presented helpful as you look to reduce making leadership mistakes with YOUR teams. I’d love to continue our conversations – find me at http://drivingresultsthroughculture.com and http://twitter.com/scedmonds .
Feel free to submit further questions to webinars@kenblanchard.com -