Do you remember the moment you became a leader?

You had that high. You felt that you and your work were highly valued and you were rewarded for your good performance? You knew you were doing better than your competition for this job. But this was only the first step. You wanted to:

develop your team
develop your individual employees
move things
be approachable and grounded
be balanced and focused

and now? Does it now feel like

you work too much
you have no time for your team
you are always in meetings
you do not communicate clearly
actually the whole thing is no fun anymore.

How could this happen and what can you do about it? Basically, you have fallen into a leadership trap.!

What are leadership traps?
Leadership traps basically are behaviors which sabotage your success as a leader.
Common traps are doing it yourself, not developing a vision, being too busy for your team and so on.

In short: these are the most common leadership traps:

no promotion, o delegation, no attention, no feedback, no empathy, no trust, no sense of we, no presence, no clarity, no commitment, no appreciation, no foresight, no responsibility, no work-life balance, no honesty, no equality, no involvement in the decision-making process, no compromise, no conflict management.

As a leader, you’re in a position of high visibility and you set the tone for the rest of the organisation. Your employees look to you for guidance and support. Therefore, it’s important to arm yourself with the right tools and skills to be the leader your business deserves. And how do you get out of your personal leadership trap?

I recommend 5 steps to get out of a leadership trap

Start with yourself, because self-leadership is the most important point.

 1) Time to think

Take a step back and sort out your thoughts. First of all, you have to get back the time to think. Radically clear out your calendar for the next two weeks, do only what is absolutely necessary, the world will not collapse. Clean your calendar- decline or postpone meetings.

2) Re-focus

In this time you have gained, think about what exactly you want to achieve so that you feel better and are relaxed and successful in your job. What is your dream image? Remember the time when you were highly motivated, a time when you were in the flow. Those who know me know that I am talking about success stories here.

3) Validate

In this step start collecting feedback. Ask your team, your colleagues and your family how they perceive you? What do they see that you don't? Maybe your imposter syndrome has struck or you are in the perfectionist trap. It's definitely worth getting insights from well-meaning and trusted people.

4) Re-Set

Now do the reality check. With the experience you've had and your dream image and feedback - what can you implement concretely? Set yourself priorities and don't try to be a new person overnight. When you have found out that setting boundaries is the challenge, then focus on that.

5) Monitor

Schedule time off regularly to check if you are on track. My suggestion: Take 60 minutes every Friday for yourself, your book of success and your book of growth. One book looks backwards and the other looks forwards.

 Let me give you two practical example of a leadership trap and potential action steps:

The criticism avoidance trap

Criticising is one of your least favourite tasks. Instead of directly addressing employees about poor work or misconduct, you often turn a blind eye or leave it at a flippant remark in passing.
However, while you think your employee takes a gentle hint, misconduct creeps in and becomes entrenched because your employee assumes that everything is fine.

In order to escape the trap, nothing helps - to communicate your opinion clearly, you need to be frank and make it a habit to address unpunctuality or negligence directly, because this is the only way your employee will learn from his or her mistake.

Adjust your behaviour and after an observed misconduct, seek a face-to-face discussion and state the specific reason for it. By the way, this is the only way to do justice to employees who always make an effort. And this is the most important point: you start to reward the behaviour that is the basis for performance. And for yourself: in time, the positive effect of clear words will outweigh the unpleasant feeling when it comes to criticism!

Let me give you another example which I observe a lot:

The delegation trap

Somehow, every document crosses your desk, and no staff member decides independently.
With this behaviour you not only deprive your staff of the motivation to decide independently. You are also failing to meet your obligations because you are making decisions that are not foreseen at management level.
This is how you escape the trap: face it you need to put it out there and re-start with the support of the team. Talk to your staff about giving more responsibility in the future and explain why you trust the individual employee to make decisions on his or her own.
Ensure to redelegate tasks that land on your desk and spend time in the 1:1 to understand how employees grow with their tasks. Coach them and do not do their task – btw: they are better than you!  This means for you: better performance, more motivated team and: you will have more time for your leadership tasks.

Conclusion

Every leader has blind spots and weaknesses. We can overcome our weaknesses, but we must be honest with ourselves and aware of the danger of these traps. While these are three important traps to be aware of, remember that there are many more. If we’re blind to our weaknesses, we’re more likely to fail. The more aware we are of these potential dangers in our own leadership, the easier we can overcome them and reach our full potential as leaders. 

This proven 5-Step plan to get out or the trap is easy to draft, but takes focus and energy to implement so that you have long-lasting success. Being in a group helps to stay on track.

My leadership program MOVE UP! can help you master the daily challenges in leadership so that you do not find yourself in the leadership trap.

Every month we focus on one mindset topic, one leadership tool and a group coaching session. You will get a lot of inspiration around leadership, self-leadership and engineering your mindset. The waitlist is open, we start in December so that you can make 2023 your year!

Here is a link to book a discovery session with me to find out if I am the right coach for you.

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