17 Misconceptions of Young Leaders: Part 1

CleverControl talked to experts and rounded up the most common misconceptions of leaders. Here is the list of 17 fallacies of managers both inexperienced and quite "experienced" ones.

Comments Janice Peterson, development Director and co-owner of Smart House Group:

"When I was a young Manager in a big company, I naively believed that people are telepathic, and if I can do something quickly so can they. Pretty quickly I figured out that it’s not true at all. After I became the owner of my own business, I also initially often was wrong about people’s motivation – I believed that they perceive the same business goals as well as I do."

Says Robert Bell, CEO of the consulting center Step Seek:

"Aspiring managers have the following fallacy: assuming that if people are given a task they will definitely perform it. They do not think that the task should match the performers. People should be competent to solve the problem, have the authority to address it and be motivated to produce a result. Otherwise, the situation will be exactly as in Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "The Little Prince": "If I ordered,” said the king. “Ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, for example, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault."

It is the opposite of the previous misconception. Comments from Donna Myers, CEO of Present Green:

"Most people don't understand what it means to manage: it means to work systematically and as a team:

• it is to find people smarter than yourself;
• it is to give them the opportunity and the tools;
• it is to create and implement the work evaluation criteria for your subordinates;
• it is to not overload a person more than necessary;
• it is to talk to people and convey to them the essence of the work and the values.

Most managers I meet are bad at delegating, they disrupt the subordinates’ with work regular reports-issues-meetings, change the rules id they don’t want to follow them themselves, overload people with tasks, and do not care about feedback".

Says Christina Levin, senior trainer-consultant at Inter Thunder:

"Most of the leaders’ misconceptions are the limiting beliefs: "If I raise employees’ salary, they will work better". Experiments show that the introduction of two ten-minute breaks has a greater effect than a small salary increase."

Christina Levin continues:

"Some leaders mistakenly believe: "If I do not intervene in the conflict, it will be resolved by itself". But most often the opposite happens: the conflict draws more and more employees and causes a significant loss of working time."

Says the head of the event agency "DirCut" Adam Walters:

"Instead of thinking about the development, planning the future, and investing in the promotion, a "young" manager seeks to be in command of everything and clings to the work of the subordinates. Of course, it is important to stay in the team and know what's going on both psychologically and tactically. But participating in all processes that are a part of subordinates’ tasks is not at all necessarily. It is important to be in the right place at the right time, so come and save the day, because it's your job as a leader, and the rest of the time you have to deal with the implementation of the development strategy of the company or department: to develop new and potentially profitable markets, tasks, and clients."

Dorothy Richardson, the senior consultant at OneWiser, also talks about underestimating of thinking of the future:

"If we talk about novice leaders, often they are confident that they will succeed without fully thinking through their decisions, their level of the "strategic thinking" competency is quite low. Therefore, they often make mistakes of not thinking through their ideas, are inexperienced in making certain decisions at first, and have some difficulties with the delegation of authority and the optimal allocation of working time of their subordinates."