Would you leave these (5) Bad Leadership Habits Behind In 2016?

I abhor the term "best practices." There is a really big grain of truth, but the much better term is "good practice."

There ARE ways of doing business or acting that are generally better than others, which are known to experts in any given field. These are "good practice." Professionals (or those who want to be) tend to follow them, because they are proven to me more effective than not.

The problem with "best practices" is exactly what the article, rather poorly, highlights - the tendency to believe that the you are "done" once you have identified and implemented them.

The other problem with "best practices" is that it assumes that there is ONE "best" that can be identified. This is going to change from industry to industry, company to company, local culture to local culture, and leader to leader. I, for instance, religiously used 30 minute every other week one on ones with a given format with all my directs as well as a LONG staff meeting every week. Despite the bitching, which could be epic at times, within a few months of initiating this, I had a highly productive and self-directing team, which deconflicted issues on its own. I gained 25% + of my total work time back, didn't have any other scheduled meetings with my people, conflicts down well over 75%. Others in my organization tried to mimic my approach and met with failure - different people, different sub-organization, different goals.... Not a "best practice", but a good one. I would recommend leaders in a highly projectized environment consider it strongly, I would not recommend it nearly so much in a highly operational/throughput focused environment.

An honorable mention for #5. An unwillingness to chance *IS* bad. An unwillingness to change "just because" is good. Any organization is a complex system of systems. Changes have both cascading and ripple effects. Changes will, for sure in the short term and maybe in the long term, have a destabilizing effect on the systems and lower productivity and throughput. The benefit of those changes may well be worth it. It may not. Changing before having given serious though to these impacts is irresponsible.

The article hints at, but never explicitly mentions it. The differences between, and the need for Leadership & Management. Leadership is a Philosophy, a Science, and an Art which deals with the DEVELOPMENT of People. Management however is about the UTILIZATION of Resources. People can be Resources, just like Equipment, or Money, or Time.

Unfortunately I think what happened was the balance between Lead & Manage got out of whack. Leadership was "intuitive" but management was something that could be "codified" which is why we ended up with Best Practices, Cost Cutting, etc. Now that we have all these great examples of Leaders to work from, and can SEE what they do, and why they work, the balance is shifting back. It's no longer a case of duplicating the organizations they built, but mimicking the philosophies they espoused.

I keyed into 3 & 4 specifically.

Cost Cutting seemed like common sense, and then I remembered something Adam Carolla said on his Podcast. "Chase the Dollar, not the nickel." What he meant was, the 5% of cost savings you were focused on wasn't worth the effort & resources you are expending, when you could be looking for additional sales that would net you additional sales or new opportunities. It's so easy to get into that "save a nickle" mindset, and it just creates a toxic environment if it is taken too far.

#4 is trickier. I think people are overly concerned with being politically correct just as much as the next person, but they can't use this as an excuse to be an (pardon my French) Asshole, Mean-spirited, or just plain Abusive. We want Candor though. The problem is that there is a lens of Experience and Ignorance which that Candor shines through and "Political Correctness" is a filter to that.

As for #2... I agreed with his assessment. There are no best practices. All practices need to be ready evolve at any moment, because any environment evolves at any moment.

COL Mikel J. Burroughs Thank you. I think the worse one is
"many in positions of leadership tend to protect the status quo"

I take an issue with what he says about best practices. I have never been a great idea person. What my strength is though is taking an idea from someone and then improving on that. So I always like to see what works for people to get an idea that I may be able to use and build upon myself. This is one reason why we do AARs and also have the Center for Army Lessons Learned.

I agree with them all as well. The one that applies to me is number 5. This is an ever changing and evolving Army and there are a lot of leaders that are stuck in the past and stuck in their ways. For me, that comes to leadership and disciplinary style. I lead, compliment and discipline the same way I was when I was new. I won't go into detail but I will say that I was taught and mentored but a Staff Sergeant that is the most hardcore Ranger that I've ever known. So my teaching style mirrors his and isn't the most appreciated anymore. This is progress though, there are better ways to lead, discipline, and instruct and there is science to back it up. It's ip to us as leaders to recognize this, stop being stubborn and adapt to new ways of doing things. Nothing is perfect but that's what an AAR is for, to keep improving.

My view on #4 is to leave the politics to politicians.
Secondly, a leader who is unwilling to change is not a leader they are position holders.....simply My position. The unwillingness to change chocks, the ability to "progressively grow" or naturally evolve into "better".,

I tend to believe in evidence based practice.

COL Mikel J. Burroughs I certainly hope that those leading this nation and our military leaders are not committed to any of these particular leadershiop habits.
1. Lionizing The Few - lioning the few may be appropriate when only a few are working above everybody else. Demonizing the under performers is much worse over tie because it sends a worse message. Good leaders accept responsibility for systemic failure and are free with praise for those who do well - recognizing the workers especially as opposed to the mid-level leaders over them.
2. Best Practices - best practices can be beneficial if looked at from a holistic perspective. Good practices may work well in specific circumstances and in some cases they can be extrapolated elsewhere. The worst examples I have seen are best practices which are required to be employed virtually everywhere even if the correlation to the original best practice environment is minimal.
3. Cost Cutting - cost cutting can be very good except in places like teh Federal government where cost efficiencies can be rewarded with reduced budgets. Hopefully this tendency will be corrected.
4. Political Correctness - continually moving target which is difficult to predict and not universally agreed to/
5. Unwillingness to Change…no explanation needed :-)

COL Mikel J. Burroughs - Mikel;

[1] Make sure that you remember the difference between recognizing above average performance (especially from those who didn't appear to be likely to produce it) from "lionizing the few".

[2] "Best Practices" are only "best" in the circumstances which gave rise to their being recognized as "best". Recognize the difference (if any) between your circumstances and those circumstances.

[3] "Cost Cutting" is only effective when the net result is the same after the "cost cut" as before the "cost cut". Sometimes(?) it's better to NOT "cut costs" but to "spend" the resources more effectively.

[4] "Political Correctness" - The article says it all (almost). If you can only think inside of a restricted circle then you are never going to come up with a solution when the circumstances fall outside that circle. In the military (and particularly in combat) this can be an incredibly bad situation (and sometimes it can be fatal).

[5] Unwillingness to change is the bugbear of all lines of endeavour. The military is always being accused of preparing to fight the last war more effectively. The problem is that you cannot ensure that the NEXT war is going to be the same as the last war - primarily because the people you are going to be dealing with have most likely learned what not to do to lose from the last war.

Since the '70s, leadership experts have made a lot of money with fads or flavor of the month leadership trends.