Your leadership techniques don’t work if you fail to empower or engage employees. If you realize your employees find no enjoyment in their work or see no value in hard work, you have to change the way you lead. A leadership coaching professional can help you identify gaps in your skills and leadership attitude so you can tweak and improve your techniques.  

Have you ever considered the possibility that the leadership techniques you use to motivate employees may not work? Do you have a reliable way to assess how well you motivate and empower workers? Instead of facilitating productivity or a coaching-focused mindset, you may be alienating your workforce, prompting your employees to disengage and leave your organization.

How do you know if your leadership techniques work? How can a leadership coaching professional help you discover your blind spots and close your leadership gaps?

You may be doing harm without realizing it. 

The first step towards righting a wrong is recognizing there is a problem. An experienced leadership coaching professional can recognize counterproductive leadership behaviors. A coach can reveal the errors of your ways from a position of unique insight.

Being Too Serious and Demanding

Productive work requires an atmosphere of psychological safety. Some leaders believe being stern and demanding in their dealings with employees does not come at the expense of psychological safety, but this isn’t true.

Being overly serious creates an environment of fear and apprehension, seemingly prompting employees to focus more on doing their best.

However, when working in a tense atmosphere, people tend to become more forgetful and end up doing less. Sternness hurts employee empowerment. People are less willing to step forth and assume responsibility when confronted with the possibility of stern reprisals.

Being Too Relaxed and Informal

From the perspective of leadership, being lackadaisical is as bad as being too strict. In my executive coaching books, I have always extolled the virtues of leadership maturity. Mature leaders know they are supposed to lead by example. If they act like goof-offs, they can’t expect their employees to act differently.

The psychologically safe environment that best facilitates productivity does not exclude gentle prodding. Employees need a framework of rules and values to guide their activities.

Acting too relaxed leads to employees not respecting leaders and finding little value in hard work.

Not Leading by Example

Talking the talk is easy. Walking the walk is where leaders excel. Telling people what to do is not leadership; anyone can do that. True leaders incorporate behaviors they want to see from their employees into their lives and demonstrate them to peers. They don’t just walk the walk; they live it.

Leaders who only talk the talk reek of hypocrisy from the perspective of those they are supposed to lead. Hypocrisy is not part of the foundation of a solid leader-follower relationship.

Micromanaging the Workforce

Micromanagement plagues behaviors of control-focused leaders. Some tend to equate leadership with duties and need to control every aspect of a team’s activity. Such leaders eagerly watch every move their reports make. They’re ready to jump in at a moment’s notice and take over as someone who knows how to do a better job.

Micromanagement is the opposite of empowerment. 

Business coaching regards micromanaging behaviors as some of the most detrimental from the perspective of employee empowerment and engagement. Micromanaged employees are the opposite of empowered employees. Micromanaging leaders teach employees never to take the initiative and look for a solution. Thus, employees lose interest in their work and disengage.

The “Need to Know” Attitude

Healthy communication is one of the key components of intelligent leadership. It builds trust and rapport while establishing clear goals and a framework of rules to guide work-based behaviors.

Sporadic communication nixes all those benefits, leading to inefficiencies and employee disengagement.

Playing the Blame Game

Good leaders know they are responsible for everything that goes wrong while the credit for success goes to their teams.

Blaming the team for critical mistakes is the quickest road to losing employees’ trust, respect, and participation.

If you don’t engage employees and make it possible for them to derive enjoyment from their work through empowerment, you fail as a leader. Executive coaching can help you realize what you are doing wrong and point you in the right direction.

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