6 Habits Great Leaders Kick to be Most Effective

Nobody’s perfect. We’ve all got foibles and flaws, and we all do our best to overcome them – or at least confine them to our personal lives. However, professionally-minded people need to be exceedingly aware of some habits that truly have no place in a work environment, especially if you have leadership responsibilities.

Here are six bad habits that leaders need to kick to the curb in order to be their most effective selves.

Pretending You Know It All

Nobody wants to appear unknowledgable to their friends, family members, or work colleagues. However, habitually pretending to know everything about everything is a terrible habit if you’re in a leadership position.

If you’re so preoccupied with appearing intelligent and informed, your need to demonstrate your knowledge can have a deleterious effect on the regard your team members have for you. This goes double if you insist that your information is true, as this earns you a reputation for always needing to be right and unwilling to hear out others.

Being Inauthentic to Hide Your Flaws

Closely related to pretending you know it all, being inauthentic to hide your perceived flaws can also erode the trust your team needs to have in you if you’re going to lead them effectively.

Instead, go with being authentic so that you can be the type of leader who is approachable and trustworthy.

Not Embracing Conflict and/or Confrontation

Nobody relishes the idea of having hard conversations, whether they’re with friends or colleagues. However, sometimes confrontation or conflict becomes inevitable.

Need to correct a team member for inappropriate conduct, or go to bat for one of them in a conversation with a superior? Approach these necessary confrontations and conflicts with authority and grace so that you can resolve any issues quickly and effectively.

Being a Perfectionist

In a business environment, it’s natural to take pride in providing or producing high-quality products or services. However, if you have a perfectionist streak, this can create negativity when your team’s output “isn’t good enough” to meet your unrealistic quality thresholds.

Not wanting to be held responsible for low-quality work is a positive trait, but pushing too hard and too far for results that are impractical or impossible destroys team morale. Letting go of your perfectionism and instead adopting reasonable goals is a better option.

Not Leading From the Front

Being an effective leader involves knowing the value of delegation. However, simply assigning tasks to team members is often not enough. Accomplishing projects on time often requires deeper participation, leading the charge from the front lines and getting things done alongside team members.

Not Maintaining a Professional Demeanor

There’s nothing wrong with developing good relationships with your team members. In fact, doing so is integral to fostering a well-functioning team that trusts one another. However, developing relationships by engaging in unprofessional demeanor can be a recipe for disaster.

While it may feel good to be seen as “one of the boys” in the eyes of your team members, at the end of the day you’re the one in charge – and the one responsible. Maintaining a level of professional detachment reinforces your leadership role and contributes to your team’s overall success.