Do You Make This Leadership Mistake?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that I tend to live my life focused on things that I need to do. And before I sold our moving and storage business, the things I usually focused on were content (the results we want to accomplish), items such as phone calls, parts to buy for our trucks, reports to complete, financial statements to review, etc. I was making a ver common leadership mistake.

The more these things stacked up, the quicker I wanted to handle them so I could get on with other things. These are the what items that I habitually focused on while often not slowing down long enough to adequately think about the how, or process (the relationships we want to enhance to build a TEAM).

We have discussed the need for both Process AND Content in a previous blog post. We need both the How AND the What.  It is not one OR the other. This is the most common leadership mistake.

And the difference between Process AND Content is:

                               Process vs. Content

We enhance relationships     vs.    We drive for results

The focus is on people              vs.     The focus is on things

We lead people                           vs.     We manage things

It is how we say and do             vs.     What we say and do

Why people don’t pursue process as well as content?

Here is the problem: in our busy environment we tend to expediently pursue individual and departmental goals that are self-focused. It is very easy to slip into expediently fulfilling our own narrow needs without giving sufficient attention to the needs of others and how we might better fulfill the overall needs of the organization and its customers.

We know that this is our human tendency, to put self before others. It is the same in our personal and professional lives. However, we know as Christian leaders we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. This directive we see is Mark 12:31 and the rest of the gospels. The significance of this commandment is that it doesn’t say we love ourselves or our neighbor, it is not exclusive. We love both, just as we focus on our own needs and the needs of other in our personal and professional lives.

In business for example it is natural for salespeople to want to increase their sales. Similarly, manufacturing people want to reduce their costs, minimize the production of imperfect products, and eliminate lost-time accidents. Administrative people such as accountants and human resource staff members want to produce accurate records and minimize employee turnover, respectively. This is true whether you serve in a non-profit, educational institution, or even different ministries.

The Leadership Mistake of Focusing on only Results

In each of these pursuits the focus tends to be on quickly and successfully handling the content targets of our own specialties with insufficient attention being given to how our challenges and opportunities fit into the organization’s. Self-serving efforts to save a dollar might have two dollars’ worth of negative consequences on another department.

In other words, practicing “Ready, aim, fire!” should take precedence over “Fire, ready, aim!”  Expedient, departmental-focused achievements can give quick results and produce a feeling of personal satisfaction at the expense of big-picture team effectiveness.

Incorrect Assumptions

The following are some other reasons why people don’t pursue process as well as content:

1. A person who is bright, knowledgeable, dedicated, decisive, and dependable may also be understandably impatient and intolerant when dealing with others of differing ability.
2. A leader thinks they must give up content to have more process. (By the way, this way of thinking is not correct. It is not either/or. To be the most effective leader it is both Process AND Content.)
3. Some would question that participative leadership means running your organization as a democracy. (The answer is NO. As the leader you always have ultimate authority and responsibility for decisions and results.)
4. Some would even think that it means creating consensus decisions among all members of your team. (This assumption is incorrect. Consensus decisions usually take forever to reach and yield diluted results.)
5. Some would think that participative leadership is not always the right approach. (Maybe sometimes a Process-oriented strategy isn’t best, but it’s generally the most powerful approach a leader can take when driving for Results.)

There are many reasons that get in the way of leaders fully applying this principle of Process and Content. Anyone can, however, make conscious decisions to learn and leverage this powerful principle and avoid the most common leadership mistake. 

• Are you daily caught up in the things of your life and business? 
• What can you do to change how you say and do things to become the most effective leader?

If you would like to like to learn more about focusing on relationship in your work listen to this episode on True North Leader with Holly Tate, Pour into the Few to Lead Like Jesus.