Final Part: 7 Things Managers & Leaders Should Never Do

I wrote earlier about “11 Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do” and then continued the chain of thoughts with another post titled “7 (More) Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do.

This is the final part of this series which is compiled to form a handy and portable summary “25 Things Managers & Leaders Should NEVER Do” (Download PDF)

If you are a supervisor, manager or a leader at any level, you should NEVER:

• Conduct long and unscheduled meetings. When you don’t respect your team member’s time, you loose respect too. Resist conducting unscheduled meetings when they are not needed. Even if you do, keep them short. Another mistake? Not conduct meetings at all!
• Try doing critical portions of the work by self. Yes, that may minimize the risk of failure, but your team members will not grow. Delegate and then guide them. Let them raise their game too. Act as a catalyst who helps them improve. If you do everything, you are not doing enough. You need to do more by doing less – and delegation is the way to go.
• Fail to say “No”. Not saying no when it is needed (to clients, stakeholders and bosses) can be a real killer for you, your project and your people. Saying no firmly, but politely is an art every leader has to master. Say no, so that you can say yes to more important stuff.
• Not reviewing the progress. When you don’t review the progress periodically, you loose momentum. Projects generally start on a high note – keep the momentum going by periodic reviews. Take a stock, retrospect and take corrective steps to ensure that your team is on track. Review early and often.
• Run away from fears. In fact, leaders embrace their fears. Fear is our most important emotion. We fear criticism, we fear failure and we fear risk. This should not stop us from doing stuff. It should rather help us doing stuff better. A leader has to overcome fear and help team members do the same.
• Not acknowledging what they don’t know. Leaders become integral when they know what they don’t know – and when they acknowledge it. It is not weak, but a courageous act to acknowledge what you don’t know. You will easily find someone who does. This again boils down to having humility to accept things you don’t know.
• Fail to “celebrate”. We live in an action oriented world, where doing is sometimes over emphasized. We complete one phase and quickly jump onto the another. Celebrate small wins. It gives new energy to the team and also extends an opportunity to know each other better. Celebrating is very human – do it often.

Download your own copy of the full compilation. Share it with your friends. Share it with anyone who is an aspiring leader. Revisit it after a month. After all, we all need constant reminders on what we should “NOT” do!

Thanks for all your comments and support to this series.