13 Fatal Management Mistakes Leaders Make (and How to Fix Them)

Most management mistakes do not feel like mistakes when you make them. They feel like being busy, being nice, being careful, or protecting the team. Then a year later your best people are gone, your standards are soft, and you are not sure when it happened.

Steven Brown wrote a book called 13 Fatal Errors Managers Make, and I walk through it with owners and department heads regularly. I have made more than one of these myself. I will tell you about the one that cost me a vice president job. Here are the thirteen, grouped by what they do to your team.

Mistakes about ownership and control

1. Refusing to accept personal accountability. You hear it as: it was someone else's fault, they should have known, if they had done what I told them we would not be here, my people do not do this. Blame always goes somewhere else. A leader who cannot say that was on me cannot build a team that says it either.

3. Trying to control results instead of influencing thinking. Ask yourself why you need to be in control. In my experience, it is usually fear: someone you trusted let you down once, so now you dictate everything. But if you are the filter for every decision, you limit what the company can do. John Maxwell's Law of the Lid says it plainly: one person is too small. Communicate the result, challenge people to get there, then be their resource and cheerleader. And keep accountability in the chair that is being paid for it. Great leaders ask about 50% more questions than they give orders.

6. Forgetting the importance of profit and results. I see this across the country in companies from fifteen million dollars to a hundred million: leaders who do not know their numbers. Sentences like we did pretty good, customers seem happy and profits look fine are not data. If it is not written, it is not real. Review results weekly or monthly, and make sure each person knows the result expected of them.

Mistakes about people and fit

2. Failing to develop people. I had an owner tell me he did not want employees to take classes and get licensed, because then they would leave and start their own companies. My answer was that when you do not train them, they also stay. That is scary in a different way. Minimal training, no budget for growth, and assuming people already know the result you want are all forms of the same failure.

4. Joining the wrong crowd. I have worked in companies that felt like a fraternity, with a group at the top that everyone wanted to impress. I was promoted to vice president once, and our area was crushing it. Then one day I was let go. Years later I heard why. They did not like some of what I wore, and I did not stay around for the parties and do what the other leaders did. Trying to be one of them can be fatal to your job, your reputation and your relationships. It is also risky to borrow advice from the cool group that does not fit your situation just to look good. Look for people who lift you up, encourage you and challenge you.

5. Managing everyone the same way. You cannot manage a sales-minded quick decider the same way you manage a detail person who needs full information. Put them in the opposite seat and you get a train wreck. Know yourself, know your team, and use tools like DISC, the Six Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni, or the Five Love Languages to see how each person is built. Then find their sweet spot, whether it is money, being noticed, more challenge or relationships, and manage to it.

12. Recognizing only your top performers. I know a company whose best employee was never told how she was doing, and her confidence suffered even though she was crushing it. Build a process that recognizes everybody, including the up-and-coming people who need encouragement and the ones who are struggling and need coaching. It also means not letting stars break the rules because their numbers are great. That is talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Mistakes about standards and training

9. Failing to set standards. There is no excuse today for not having standard operating procedures, with so many tools that can draft them for you. But writing them is half the job. Are they enforced consistently? The outlier, the strong personality we keep talking about but never confront, damages culture and results. Coach, document the coaching, follow up in writing, and use proper write-ups when needed. From a legal and HR perspective, that discipline protects you.

10. Failing to train your people. Most companies I have worked with or coached, from six employees to fifty-five, have no real training process. Is training in your budget? Books, audio books, classes, conferences, a night course at the local college? Without it, people get stuck and good people leave.

11. Condoning incompetence. I once asked a manager what his salespeople were supposed to be doing. They are supposed to do this, he said. Are they doing it? No. So what are we doing? Well, they know they should. That is enabling. If someone is outside the process, deal with it right then, not next week. Walk down the hall or pick up the phone. Incompetence that goes unaddressed is infectious, and everyone else watches and loses some of their drive.

Mistakes about attitude and relationships

7. Concentrating on problems rather than objectives and solutions. This one changed my behavior more than any other on the list. I used to check jobs randomly and spot the four or five things wrong in about thirty seconds. One of the employees stopped me and said the job was going great, the customer was happy, and still when I showed up I only looked for what was wrong. I left, opened my phone calendar, and set a reminder to pop up every sixty days: focus on the 90% good, not the 10% bad. If your team feels it is never good enough, they will walk out the door at 4:49. Also check your meetings. If you have great discussions but nothing changes, you need a weekly or monthly process to identify, discuss and solve issues.

8. Being a buddy instead of a boss. You can have strong relationships at work and still hold people accountable. I once had a trade partner who failed our cleanup policy on three houses in a row. I told him this was his third warning and I would have to find someone else. He said he understood and that it would not happen again. When we were done, he offered to buy lunch. I wore the boss hat for the hard conversation and took it off after. Maxwell says people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. The danger is avoiding hard conversations because you want to stay friends.

13. Trying to manipulate people. Passive-aggressive comments are the most common form: so I guess you do not care about your results anymore. Or buttering up one person to do the work a difficult person is not doing. My wife calls those remarks heat seekers. They are aimed near someone rather than at them. Here is what does not work long term: threats, fear, disappointment, tears, guilt trips, favors, gifts and perks, and promises. Be honest and upfront, with integrity.

What to do with this list

Put the thirteen where you can see them. Then:

1. Read the list and mark the two you are most likely guilty of. Be honest.
2. For each, write one system or habit that would prevent it (a training budget, a written standard, a weekly issue meeting).
3. Ask two people you trust which of the thirteen they see most from you.
4. Revisit in thirty days and in six months.