Bad leadership

How many of us are truly aware of how many issues we create in our companies and our own lives? I know until I was about 35 years old, I was absolutely clueless about how my actions or lack of them at Grunder Landscaping affected my company’s performance and, more importantly, our profitability. I’ll share with you a few examples.

I was an expert at micro-managing. Not only could I not resist the temptation to jump in on anything my team was doing, I would completely take over and undermine what my manager was attempting to do. And I didn’t feel bad about it either. When I became disgusted with the results we were getting, I changed. I learned that most of your people want to do the right thing all the time and that they are much more capable of doing a lot more than we realize. And, we’ll never find out if we don’t delegate tasks to them and/or delegate the responsibility and the authority to act on things completely and then stay the heck out of the way! This is hard to do and mistakes will be made. Mistakes are the ways we find out how to do things the right way.  

I wasn’t very good at leading by example. I wasn’t the best person at having the details a work order needed for a job to get done right. I would miss things: drain tile, the sod cutter, a good drawing, etc. But, I would continue to remind my other salespeople that they needed to do it. I am a highly detailed guy when it comes to image. I can nitpick something with the best of them. But, often I am running at a very fast pace and forget the obvious. Just the other day, one of our crews went to the address of the home of a client we work for instead of their business, costing us three man-hours and about $175. Urrrgh! No one to blame but me. I used to do that a few times a month. I’m much more aware of how not leading by example not only hurts your profitability, but it also hurts the ability for you to teach. Your team “sees” a lot better than they “hear.” Be very aware of what people see; that’s what you’re saying loud and clear everyone else should be doing.

I was not very good at sharing information. I would not want to admit we had a problem. I would avoid tough conversations with others. I did not fire people who needed to be fired. And I also was not very good at sharing the credit. Today, I realize that I am the person most responsible for our failures and my team members are the people most responsible for our successes. The only way we are going to realize our utmost potential at Grunder Landscaping is for all of us to have an open, honest relationship with each other. And that means we have to share information – information that is good and bad. Just remember, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Today’s modern leader understands that you are far better off catching people doing things right than looking for all the bad going on.