Learning from errors – 5 common leadership mistakes CEOs make

Do you look back on your career decisions as lessons learned? Lessons Learned because you weren’t really listening? If you had to live it all over again, would you? What would you do differently?

TIP OF WEEK comes from Sam Reese, CEO of Vistage, who writes on the topic of common leadership mistakes that CEOs make and how to learn from them. Too often, he claims leadership mistakes fall into a few common categories. He also explains that it is how leaders respond to those mistakes that will either allow them to grow or remain stagnant.

Reese gives a description of the strategies he suggests for leaders to keep from becoming stagnant, and rally instead in growth. Those descriptive categories include:

1. Being insular

2. Not being clear in direction

3. Focusing only on short-term growth

4. Micromanaging

5. Focusing on setbacks that are outside your control

Reese’s ideas are imaginative and highly useful. They provide us with ideas for setting a better direction and vision of where we want our company to be. It gives us a process to help make better decisions. He does warn, however, “that new leaders come into companies and want to copy and paste winning strategies from past experience, without first listening to the insights and feedback of customers and existing employees”.

Taking ownership is what Reese means when he advises us to “Not make the same leadership mistake twice”.  Copy and paste – that’s not a good way to begin any process. While time does change everything, leaders should intentionally direct opportunities that are well thought out and purposeful.

It’s a good read with a number of positive takeaways.