The scene: your living room. A few days after Christmas. It's bitterly cold outside. You're sitting comfortably on the sofa. Deeply relaxed and unsuspecting. You've eaten countless cookies. Your fireplace provides warmth. An oasis of well-being. A queasy feeling spreads through you. Something isn't right. Suddenly, it's right in front of you. You look directly at it. It keeps getting bigger. The bowl with the remaining Advent sweets. Your emotions say, "Take it!" Your intellect says, "Leave it!" You are undecided. You remain strong. You become weak. Your left hand moves. Completely uncontrollably. It reaches for the last chocolate Santa Claus. You unwrap it. Then the chocolate slowly melts in your mouth...
Does this scenario sound familiar? You have just experienced the power of temptation. Temptation is a desire or need to do something that you really shouldn't do. Sounds unspectacular at first, doesn't it? Admittedly, the negative effects of eating a chocolate Santa Claus are minimal. This is in stark contrast to the effects of the five temptations leader. Very few people are aware of them, even though they are constantly confronted with them in their everyday working lives. If you succumb to even one of these temptations, it will have a significant negative impact on your results and your effectiveness. This applies not only to your professional life, but also to your private life. For example, in your daily life with your children or in your relationship. In today's blog article, you will learn about three of the five temptations. You will find out why they can be pure poison for you, your department, and your entire organization.
The temptations of a leader
In business practice, it often happens that leader seemingly unsolvable challenges. There are a number of supposedly complex reasons why results cannot be achieved as desired. Examples of this include:
- leader that their employees do not engage critically in the debate.
- There is no trust within the department.
- leader not leader employees accountable—even when the required results are not achieved.
Every leader . Some more than others. However, they always make the same basic mistakes. leader often succumb leader one (or more) of the five temptations.
First temptation: Results versus status
My question to you: What was the best day of your professional career? Which day or event immediately comes to mind? Common answers include "the day I was promoted to department head"or "the day I received my last raise." These answers are understandable and, from an employee's personal perspective, represent important achievements. From a company perspective, however, personal career leaps are secondary. As soon as employees succumb to the first temptation, i.e., placing more priority on their own status than on results, they often have a greater interest in advancing their own careers than in achieving results for the company. Because one thing is certain: results are the calling cards of a good leader.
To explore this idea further, imagine Joachim Löw, coach of the German national soccer team. What do you think he would say if you asked him about his greatest professional achievement? What would you think of the following statement? "The greatest achievement of my career was the day I was appointed and signed my million-dollar contract."Pretty selfish and status-oriented, right? What Löw would actually say: "I still get goosebumps when I think about it. My greatest success was the moment I lifted the World Cup trophy for Germany into the sky at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in 2014!"
How do these two statements strike you?
Of course, leader can be proud leader achieving personal career goals. However, the motivation should always be to use one's own status to produce results. To make a difference for the company. Because once the ego is satisfied, that person will focus more on maintaining their own status. They will automatically be less concerned about the performance of the organization.
Second temptation: responsibility popularity
If you can resist the first temptation, there are four more pitfalls. The second temptation is to want to be popular with your employees instead responsibility them responsibility . Here is an example: You are leader have a friendly relationship with one of your new employees. You appreciate each other. Unfortunately, your friend and employee has not been delivering the required results for months. Management has already leader to you as his leader . You have tried several times to talk to your employee and make it clear to him that the results need to improve. Your friend repeatedly pointed out that he is still new and that his predecessor left the department in a terrible state. However, he said he would soon be able to show the required results.
Since he is new and you have become friends with him, you do nothing except avoid being too direct and harsh with him. After all, he has just moved 400 kilometers to your location with his family. You think you simply cannot fire him now. Besides, the results will come with time. But when the results continue to fail to materialize and the pressure from management increases, you see no way out. You fire your friend and employee. He is completely surprised by the decision and says with tears in his eyes that he never expected this. No one had seriously told him how dramatic the situation already was ...
The leader this story fell victim to the second temptation. Instead responsibility the employee responsibility , explaining to him that the lack of results would no longer be tolerated and that he needed to be aware of the consequences of possible dismissal, the leader play it safe and remain popular. The employee would have been grateful if he had been told in no uncertain terms how serious his situation really was.
How would you feel if your boss unexpectedly fired you? It is therefore important to give people the opportunity to change their behavior by speaking clearly and honestly. This can only happen if leader put aside leader need to be popular at all costs.
Third temptation: clarity versus security
The third of the five temptations aims to prioritize certainty over clarity. leader often afraid of making the wrong decisions. They want to be absolutely sure that their decisions are correct. They wait for the moment when they can be certain. In doing so, they ignore the fact that the right moment often does not exist. It would be more effective to make quick, well-considered decisions based on imperfect information.
Imagine a company where the management cannot agree on the organizational goals. The reason: the market has changed rapidly in recent months. The company wants to wait and see so as not to take the wrong direction. After all, the aim is to navigate safely through the waters. Months pass. Nothing happens. If the company's goals, the resulting employee roles, and the tasks to be assigned to each employee are not clear, how can leader responsibility leader employees' responsibility ? Without clarity, this is impossible!
Therefore, always ask yourself: Do your employees clearly understand what their tasks are? Do they know exactly what results they are responsible for? Clarity plays a key role in enabling you to measure your team's performance, both in terms of their successes and their failures. Only when tasks are clear will your employees take responsibility their area of responsibility and have the opportunity to achieve results.
In the second part on the topic of "Why Every leader ," I present the fourth and fifth temptations of leadership. Here we deal with the counterpoints of conflict versus harmony and trust versus invulnerability.
That's why you're not really happy.
Why success and fulfillment have nothing to do with each other.
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