Top 20 Habits That Hold You Back

“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.” Peter Drucker

There are 20 common flaws in interpersonal transactions which are frequently found in the behaviour of leaders and senior managers:

1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations – when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.

2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

3. Passing Judgement: The need to rate others and pass our judgements on them.

4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with “No”, “But” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone “I’m right and you’re wrong”.

6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people that we’re smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity or, “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.

9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making Excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behaviour as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to that past: The need to deflect blame from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming someone else.

14. Playing favourites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognise how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

Tel: 01327 844174
Email: jacquielmore@ologycoaching.com

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