4 Myths About Leadership That You Should Know
Are You Hiring?
Find candidates in 72 Hours with 5+ million talents in Maukerja Malaysia & Ricebowl using Instant Job Ads.
Hire Now
Too often, people find themselves in leadership positions without the necessary experience or training, assuming they can and will figure it out on their own. While they're 'figuring things out,' it can do a lot of harm to the people and the company's bottom line.
These five leadership fallacies are still alive and well in today's business world. Let's look at some of the most frequent leadership myths.
1. A top performer in their field will always become a stellar leader in the eyes of others.
Since our birth, all appreciation has been for "what I have done well" rather than "what we have done well." The skills, qualities, and even incentives required to be a great leader contrast to those needed to be an effective individual contributor.
If the roles and skills weren't so fundamentally opposed, someone could easily transition from violinist to conductor. Leading people requires an intellectual and emotional paradigm shift in thinking and conduct that will rapidly distinguish good leaders from bad ones. The transition from individual contributor to leader can seem as daunting as swimming from Johor to Hong Kong alone, without a life jacket.
2. One should keep emotions away from the workplace.
Since each person is unique, leading people is complicated and chaotic. Life is full of triumphs and tragedies that can happen to anyone at any time. Leaders must be prepared for anything and anything.
Everyone, whether they like it or not, brings their emotions to work. People are thinking-feeling beings. They can and frequently behave in ways that contradict our previous notions about them.
Our values drive our decisions, which cause emotions that often reflect our conduct. Emotions are also contagious, and humans can't keep them out of the workplace.
Furthermore, we want individuals to feel when it suits us. We want them to be loyal, thankful, ethical, engaged, and kind to the individuals with whom and for whom they work. We just want folks to leave their inconvenient feelings at the door. That is not how it works. Whether we like it or not, we all bring our 24-hour, lifelong selves to work.
3. Making changes from the top is the greatest way to get everyone on board.
The truth is that most change efforts in organisations fail. We know this from personal experience, and science backs up our observations. The status quo suffocates people and organisations. We think and claim we are open to new ideas and changes, but this isn't always the case because human brains aren't constructed that way.
People's resistance to change is the number one reason why change efforts fail. Our life experiences have taught us that too many people in positions of responsibility over our work and lives make bad judgments, frequently based on bad information, and end up with bad outcomes.
Few leaders genuinely do have a change process in place, and this is because few have taken the time to learn how to lead change properly.
4. Being extremely intelligent or well-educated is all that matters.
It is not enough to be intelligent. For healthy and productive relationships, emotional intelligence is at least four times as important as IQ. Even well-meaning bright people who are ineffective leaders can cause significant harm.
A good and competent leader may achieve remarkable things with their followers. We aren't leading if no one is truly following us! We can manage a wide range of duties, including deadlines, money, projects, budgets, and so on, but everything we do with our employees and other stakeholders involves relationships.
How well those relationships function has a lot to do with how much trust is at the heart of those relationships, and it has everything to do with EQ, not IQ.
5. Leaders do not have control over the culture of their teams or organisation.
Leaders are the ones who set the tone and embody the values and principles, acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and attitudes. Every leader establishes the ideal culture in their team and business.
While everyone contributes to culture, the leader either holds individuals accountable or does not hold them responsible for their role in preserving the desired culture, regardless of the 'flavour' of culture that exists.
There is no scenario in which the culture does not begin at the top of any organisation, team, or family.
When it is the leader's conscious desire to lead well, there are many wonderful approaches to learning how to do so. Understanding leadership mythology is an excellent place to start, as it is both an art and a science.
Source: SHRM