Whether you’re working with an expert to strengthen your team or calling the shots yourself, mind your blind spots – after all everyone has them!
By Allison Duda
Whether you’re working with an expert to strengthen your team or calling the shots yourself, we (the Drive Team) strongly recommend that you mind your blind spots – after all everyone has them! Here are 8 common leadership blindspots to avoid:
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Not having a formal process for hiring: If you don’t have a formal system in place, then how can you replicate it when it’s working well or adjust it when it’s not? In fact, it’s a blindspot not to have systems in place in general; you need checks and balances.
And, trip wires to help you know when something is no longer working. Implement systems across the organization and remember they can and should evolve.
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Improperly onboarding people: Too many companies do not pay attention to the onboarding process. They give them an employee handbook, send them to an orientation that totally bombards them with policies and procedures and then, what do they do?
Put them right to work with very little training. Onboarding can help new team members integrate into the culture of an organization. It builds engagement among new and existing employees, as well as helps to open the lines of communication and relationship building.
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Failing to tie corporate goals to personal goals: Whether you’re a large corporation or a single site operation, most likely you have company goals (at least we hope you do!), departmental goals, special projects, and so on. Make sure you’re working with your people to tie all goals back together because otherwise, you’re just setting them up for failure!
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Not building a common leadership language: This is so important! Modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, these are some of the common phrases you might hear us utter if you’ve ever worked with us on leadership development. It’s because we use a common language and we help others to build one too.
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Not focusing on retention: Regardless of where we’re specifically talking about retention, employee engagement, or culture, you better be focusing on keeping good employees. Create formal retention strategies – maybe it’s hiring us to engage your team and help to build their leadership skills!
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Not capturing best practices: We love sharing our client’s best practices with our readers. For starters we are proud of our clients and are always amazed at their hard work and determination, but also because we love passing it forward to help others. When you capture your own best practices with your team you are reinforcing positive practices and helping to pass it forward by sparking new ideas.
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Failing to train and coach staff: Check out this article that talks about what happens to your supervisors when you fall to train. Don’t let staff become complacent, burned out, or frustrated.
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Not sharing the vision: Team members need to feel connected to their work – they need to have a purpose. You must always create a shared vision among your team and that vision should be communicated often – during hiring, orientation, onboarding, team building activities, coaching, etc. Create opportunities to inspire your team to feel connected to the cause!
The funny thing about blind spots is that pretty much by definition people don’t know they exist so keep in mind this list is by no means exhaustive.
