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There's no such person as a perfect or ideal leader. Even Moses made enough mistakes over the course of his life that he was ultimately denied entrance to his homeland. Every leader makes mistakes; the challenge is to know what the most common ones are so you can try to avoid them.
Failing to learn from your mistakes
Refusing to acknowledge mistakes is the worse failing in someone aspiring to be a leader. Religious leaders may declare their infallibility, but they're not right all the time. Dictators may trumpet their perfection, but that only makes their downfall more sudden when it comes. But you don't have to be a dictator or the head of a major religion to be guilty of failing to learn from your own mistakes.
Some leaders like to believe that they got to the top by being smarter than the people around them and by being right more often. A wise leader recognizes that more than climbing to the top, he or she has survived to the top by overcoming hardship, missed opportunities, blown judgment calls, and poor human relations. But the leader who won't learn feels that none of that matters. We've known leaders who talk about being "inside the bubble," protected from the realities of the world by the trappings that come with leadership. Guess what? The bubble can burst.
 | Another problem occurs when new leaders feel that they have only one shot and so aren't allowed to fail, lest it reflect poorly on the people who chose them as leaders in the first place. This I-can't-disappoint-the-people-who-trusted-me syndrome puts almost unbearable pressure on leaders and blinds them to the possibility that things may go wrong on their watch. It causes them to retreat inward when things do go wrong, cutting them off from the people they are leading and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. |
Failing to be flexible
A good leader has to be flexible. Situations change; the members of your team change; the marketplace changes; everything changes. If you can't accept change and the fact that much of your leadership energy will be devoted to helping your team adjust to those changes, you can never become an effective leader.
Change is normal. If you aren't flexible, then you will be left scrambling and playing catch-up. And that's when you make mistakes.
Failing to acknowledge your past
Natural leadership is a myth. Leaders are made through training, mentoring, guidance, and circumstance. Nobody wakes up under a cabbage leaf one day and appears at Camelot as the "perfect knight." And when people do come along seemingly from nowhere, their failures as leaders are out in the open and spectacular, such as Joan of Arc, a teenage girl who led an army but was captured and put to death at the height of her success.
 | Great leaders return to their roots repeatedly in order to replenish themselves. They go back to the people from whom they've learned, and they learn some more. They allow for the fact that they don't know everything, and they get help from the people who have helped them in the past. Vain leaders and poor leaders make the assumption that appearing to lean on others is a sign of weakness, and so they refuse to acknowledge their past or even cover it up. |
Commanding instead of leading
The idea that commanding is leading is an archaic idea. Instead of working on your commanding voice and presence, work on your cooperation skills.
Failing to listen
A leader has to listen the voices of the group, outside voices clamoring for a solution to a problem, the voices of the higher-ups who are judging your performance, the voice of the marketplace, and their own inner voice. All these voices have to be listened to.
| Don't underestimate the importance of listening to your followers. Political pundits make unmerciful fun of presidential administrations that adhere to public opinion polls, but the writers are wrong. The most common complaint against leaders of all kinds who are turfed out is, "He or she wasn't listening to me." |
Thinking of your own needs first
Many leaders see their position as a privilege — an entitlement to the perks that go along with being the top dog. The first thing a new leader should learn is modesty. If you've been given a large office, turn it into a reception area and use another room as your office.
Unfortunately, leaders all too often make a fetish of the perks that come with power and look for new trappings to confirm their authority, from the ridiculous uniforms that Nixon outfitted the White House guards in, to the stripes that the Chief Justice put on his robe during the Clinton impeachment trial. All these trappings are for show, and all that show does is make people cynical about their leaders.
| A good leader finds ways to put the needs of other people into the forefront. It is not enough to patronize a cause; as a leader, participate and promote those things in which you believe. |
Thinking leadership is forever
Good leaders know that times and circumstances change and that they have a limited window of opportunity in which to be effective. When the window is open, they have to do everything in their power to achieve their visions. But when the window starts to close, they also have to know how to plan for a graceful exit.
Failing to teach
Just as a leader needs constantly add to his or her knowledge base, a leader also has to be a constant teacher. Too many leaders make the assumption that there is an unbridgeable gulf between themselves and their followers, so they fail to impart what they've learned, allowing their followers to remain in the dark.
Groups succeed because their knowledge and skill bases rise faster than those of competing groups, so it seems obvious that learning and teaching are integral to the success of leaders. Leaders who think that teaching is beneath them are destined to fail.
Failing to have a sense of humor
John F. Kennedy was probably the first modern leader, someone who led by example rather than by command. Whatever Kennedy's faults as a man, or even as a leader, the one thing that no one can assail was Kennedy's remarkable and often self-deprecating sense of humor. Kennedy's press conferences, where he actively jousted with the White House press corps, make memorable viewing to this day, and set a standard for contemporary leaders.
 | Unfortunately, too many leaders become pompous when they assume the mantle of leadership. Leadership is stewardship: you are assuming a set of responsibilities, not getting your title carved in stone. If you can't laugh over the irony of your position and how you have become a target for every person who thinks he or she could do better, you will fail. |
Seeing things only in black and white
The world exists in myriad colors and subtle shades, and the leader who can learn to see the world in all its polychrome wonder and to make the fine distinctions in shadings that are required to solve problems without causing confrontations, is the leader who will ultimately succeed.
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