7 Mistakes I Made as a Manager and What I Learned From Each One

October 26, 2018 Employee Performance and Coaching, Management & Leadership, The Manager's Resource Handbook

Learning from the Mistakes We Make as a Managers of People

Giving feedback to our employees is just one of the many responsibilities of being a manager. It is part of the job, as is receiving constructive criticism from our own boss. Whether you are an entry-level employee, or the CEO of a Fortune 200 company, feedback is a gift. No matter how experienced you are, every manager makes mistakes and every leader can find ways to improve.

But how often do we really take a moment to think back and grade our own performance? How often do we shut our office door to self-reflect, or turn off the radio during our commute to think about the missteps we may have made when managing our team? What can we learn from those management mistakes?

While it’s always easy to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, it can be really difficult to admit (or simply recognize) our shortcomings. After going through the exercise himself, a friend and former colleague recently challenged me to self-reflect on my own performance for a week and to identify those genuine mistakes that I made as a manager of people. I’m not talking about misreading an email, or having a typo in a report. I’m talking about those things you almost wish you could do-over. His intent was not to make me feel bad or to dwell on the past. Rather, it was simply to encourage me to embark on a learning exercise that most managers do not undertake.

“We expect our employees to improve and learn from their mistakes; isn’t it fair for them to expect the same of us?” Up for the challenge, I decided to give it a try. It was indeed quite an uncomfortable exercise but also one that was extremely enlightening. After a week and a lot of thought, here is my list, and what it taught me. Do any of these sound familiar?

1. Not Addressing Performance Issues Fast Enough

As I started to think back, I immediately gravitated towards how I managed performance problems. Specifically, I wished I had recognized performance problems sooner and had been better at curbing them altogether. Though I was fortunate to not have many, there were a few individuals whose performance I should have addressed immediately. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

When I think about those problem employees, I recall wanting to let things play out at the time, and to give a them a chance to figure it out on their own. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. And, I wanted my instincts to be wrong. Unfortunately, they were correct.

What I Learned: Performance problems with just a single individual can negatively affect the team as a whole, in some way. When you have an underperforming employee, he or she will inevitably consume more of your time as their manager. This, in turn, dilutes the remaining energy you have for the rest of your staff. Whether outright tasking other staff members to compensate for an underperformer, or simply dragging down morale, failing to swiftly address performance issues weighs down the team in one way or another.

2. Micro Managing as a Means to Express Urgency

I cannot think of anyone who enjoys being micro managed. I, for one, certainly do not. And while I have always tried to be good about giving my employees space, I also know there have been times I have hovered over them as a way of expressing a need for urgency and that I needed them to get something done.

Though my behavior was limited to critical tasks and urgent needs, there are better ways of expressing a need for urgency that do not involve checking in on the employee every 15 minutes over the course of an afternoon. Further, I likely felt the need to hover because I did not assign the task to the right individuals in the first place and was not confident in his or her success.

What I Learned: Urgent activities require clear communication of expectations, priorities and timelines. From there, trust your employees to get the job done and ensure they know to speak to you at any point should the outcome be in jeopardy. Assign critical issues to your high performers who can be trusted to get things across the finish line. Be sure to reward them generously for their willingness and continued efforts to go above and beyond the call of duty.

3. Being Indirect When I Needed to Be Direct

As I continued to think about my friend’s challenge, I recalled instances when I held one-on-one meetings with some of the more difficult employees I’ve had to manage in my career. Not that they were bad workers; they were simply non-conformists who liked to do things in their own way and at their own pace.

During those manager-employee meetings, while I wanted to be compassionate and motivational in giving them feedback, I recall that over the course of several discussions things simply did not get through. I found it personally frustrating, but equally did not understand what I was doing wrong. Looking back, I realized that you sometimes need to put compassion aside and be blunt.

What I Learned: We need to say what needs to be said. We need to be direct when the situation requires it – and it is possible to be very direct even in a professional way. Be open and honest in your communication and do not sugar coat key messages when the stakes are especially high.

4. Being Complacent When Surrounded By Bad Leaders

In everyone’s managerial career, we will at some point find ourselves surrounded by bad leaders. There was a three-year period in mine, when I found myself in such a situation. A new General Manager had been brought in shortly after I was hired. It didn’t take long to see that he, along with several of his picks to fill open department head vacancies, proved to be poor selections. Within just a few months, ethics issues and bad management behaviors began to circle around some of his newly selected department heads. Workplace morale tanked. To make matters worse, the General Manager to whom we all reported, proved himself a bit slimy. For me, it felt like the perfect storm – I was surrounded by bad leaders and I did not know what to do.

While I initially attempted to be a voice of reason and be a team player, it was simply overwhelming. I began to feel the best path was for me to shield my team as best I could; disengage with my peers so that I could focus my energy on my supporting my staff. It was not until one trusted employee told me that he felt our department was no longer part of the broader business that I saw my mistake.

What I Learned: Even if you feel do not have the energy, time or capacity to tackle big sweeping organizational problems, being a good leader means you should always be the ambassador of your department and your team. By withdrawing from my own peer group with whom I felt like an outsider, I was letting my team down. I was not promoting their interests nor advocating their needs to the broader leadership team. The only way to fix it was for me to re-engage and to fight for my employees even when the odds were against me.

5. Outlining Too Many Priorities

Call it a personality problem, but I hate letting people down. I always want to help, I set high standards for my team, and being late to appointments drives me nuts. However, such ambitions can undermine our effectiveness as managers. From time to time, I know I have asked my team for too much. Why? I was unwilling to make some tough decisions about what tasks to drop, and did not push back on inbound requests.

What I Learned: Sometimes, we need to say no. As often as we hear those words, their importance never changes. Be disciplined when it comes to managing workloads. If your team is overwhelmed, do not suffer in silence. Being a good manager means we need to be disciplined about the assignments we accept and equally as disciplined in terms of the priorities we set for our staff.

6. Not Challenging Up Every Time

While managers are put in their roles as a result of their experience, accomplishments and knowledge, no one is perfect. Sometimes, you need to go with your gut. Maybe it was that I was too busy at the time, or maybe it was because I thought it was futile. But as I look back at parts of my managerial career, I can pin point some specific moments when I should have challenged my own supervisor more than I did. I knew better than to follow their instructions, but I did anyway just because they were my boss.

What I Learned: Do not be afraid to challenge your own boss when you know it is the right thing to do. We are all human. No matter how high up in an organization you may be, everyone has off-days, and can miss obvious facts. In these moments, always speak up and share your opinions, just as we would want our employees to do with us if we had blinders on. Don’t be afraid to go with your gut.

7. Taking Too Long to Set Expectations

When taking a new managerial role some years ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about managing people. After all, by this point in my career, I had managed people and led teams for many years and had achieved quite a bit of success in doing so. Though this was a new team for me, I assumed my past success would carry into my new position.

As it turned out, though, the culture of my new department was quite unlike all the other teams I had previously led. While comradery was high, performance was just so-so. In-line with my past experience, I assumed the legacy mindset would naturally shift and that things would quickly fall into place. They did not. It ended up being a lot harder to recalibrate the focus than I expected, and required a lot more deliberate action on my part to get things moving in the right direction. I could have done myself a few favors early on by setting expectations quickly and abruptly.

What I Learned: There is no better time to establish your expectations as the manager and to change the mindset with a new team than the moment you kick off your very first staff meeting. Until you confirm otherwise, assume you need to change the culture to fit your vision for the organization and start putting the pieces together immediately. Be specific with your expectations and outline your goals for the team. Employees are most likely to adopt change when there’s a new (and unknown) sheriff in town.

Learning from Your Mistakes: The Takeaway

I gave my friend’s challenge a shot. After a week of thinking and self-reflection, I came up with these seven examples. As I said at the beginning, the intent was not to make myself feel bad or find things to regret. My intent was to really think about my successes and shortcomings, and how I can become a better manager as I move forward in my career. Through the process, I also learned some things about my management style that I may never have learned otherwise.

Trying to identify your own flaws is not easy and can be a bit of a humbling experience. But it also can provide you with valuable insight about yourself, your personality and your leadership style. I highly encourage you give it try to see what you learn about yourself.

Anything of your mistakes come to mind? Please share below by leaving a comment!