As a leader in your business, what is one leadership practice you're leaving behind in 2021?

2021 has been a year of mixed emotions but there were some crucial realizations for the taking as a business leader. As a business leader of a small company with big ambitions, I have always liked to be involved in everything, keep giving uncalled suggestions and closely monitor everything. However, I did not realize that from the perspective of my employees, that would rather seem like an annoying micromanagement behavior. This realization came to me when of our former employees stated in her exit interview that she was uncomfortable working for an organization that subscribes to a micromanagement style of leadership. I had some introspection to do when I learned this and I put myself in the shoes of my employees. Obviously, for them, micromanagement would have come across as an act of distrust and lack of creative freedom. I do not want that to be a feature of my business because, on a personal level, even I would dislike micromanagement. So, I am going to leave this behind in 2021

As a leader you must show up as your complete self - the good, the bad, the admirable, the ugly. While never an inauthentic leader before, I will certainly lean more into vulnerability, empathy, and deep understanding as a best practice to motivate and elevate our entire team.

I'm a Virgo, okay? It's been my astrological excuse for decades. I've striven for perfection in myself and those who've worked for me and now realize that it comes out of fear and wanting to control too much. Reading Brené Brown has helped me to realize that being a "daring leader" means showing my vulnerable side and not feeling like a failure when a mistake occurs. Wanting to be "perfect" is also a way that women leaders cope so that nobody can find fault in them being in a leadership role. But, the best leaders show they're human and fallible. For 2022, I'll be doing my best, but not pushing for perfection!

In 2021, our company was still getting used to a hybrid model, and we really wanted to make sure that communication didn't suffer. When you're still finding your footing with a model as complex as hybrid work, the tendency can emerge to communicate with your team far more frequently than before to ensure everyone is on the same page and that team cohesion doesn't suffer. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it can lead to over-communication that is inefficient and eats time and energy. Now that we're more comfortable with our workplace model, I know that as a leader I can focus more on engaged, efficient communication as we head into 2022.

I hope I am leaving behind the idea that employees need to be "managed" constantly. With any organization, it's important for leadership to understand their company culture and treat employees like the adults they are. If you create an environment where people can communicate openly about what they're working on, then everyone wins!

I’ve learned that giving feedback to employees needs to happen much more frequently, and once a year simply isn’t going to cut it. This is why my company is ditching the outdated system of annual performance reviews in favor of a more mentorship-style approach to employee development. Our goal is to give feedback as frequently as possible to keep workers agile and engaged. Not only will this lead to quicker and more tangible improvements in their performance; it will help solidify relationships between managers and their direct reports.

An outdated leadership practice that I will be leaving behind in 2021 is the use of destructive criticism. There are many examples of high-functioning companies with leaders who use constructive criticism to shape their organization, but there are also plenty of research studies that show how destructive criticism can set someone up for failure. As a leader, it's important to make sure my team knows what they are doing right as well as what they are doing wrong.

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Leading an analytics consultancy, I used to plan all the internal project calls far in advance. Over time, I noticed that the planning responsibility is better left to the colleagues that work on the projects. They are high performing individuals, and rigid call times forced them to break down their work into milestones which not always correspond best with their development stages. We have piloted a system of establishing a suggested call frequency and letting developers book progress calls when they see fit. As it not only allowed them to assume greater responsibility but also saved us a lot of time, we are now abandoning inflexible call schedules.

I am leaving behind the practice of giving direction without explanation. In 2022, I will ensure that all my directives are accompanied by an explanation of why the change is necessary and how it will benefit those who must carry out the implementation. Leadership is about empowering people to achieve common goals, and that cannot be done if people do not understand the reason for a change or what is expected of them. By providing clear explanations for my directives, I am setting the stage for open communication and collaboration.

In a team, there is no 'I.' A one-size-fits-all approach to leadership usually serves no one. Your team members will perform at their best if you invest in learning about each person's unique abilities and areas for improvement, and then assign duties accordingly. You will also have a higher chance of retaining outstanding talent: People who believe their work allows them to use their personal skills are 6.6 times less likely to leave their company. Set aside time in 1:1s to explore what job they enjoy and what they'd like to learn in the following month to help your people utilize and build their distinct skill sets.

Multi-tasking can be counterproductive if you're trying to be more mindful of your thoughts and actions. Furthermore, it's not the best strategy if you're aiming to better the quality of your work since there's too much going on all at once. Instead, it's important to emphasize the need of concentrating all your efforts on only one task at a time. By doing this, you cancel out any room for error and ensure that you don't miss out on important details, improving your work in the long run.

There is no such thing as failure: Because hybrid is a brand new style of working for most teams, no one has all the answers. Adopting an iterative approach and being open to feedback, especially when individuals return to the office for the first time, will be critical in increasing performance, wellbeing, and trust. Instead than condemning mistakes or shutting down discussions about what may be better, encourage your team to consider mini-failures as opportunities for growth. After all, by revealing what doesn't work, failure allows us to focus on what works, resulting in more innovative, successful procedures and products.

As a CEO, I’m now leaving the waterfall people management approach. I must admit, I’ve been very strict and goal-oriented since the pandemic struck because of the peak demand of orders left and right. But I need to adopt the AGILE approach. I should prioritize my employees as much as my clients in 2022.

As leaders, we always want to be involved in every decision and solve everything. While it's important to be involved, you can't solve all problems yourself. For your team members to grow, they need the freedom to make mistakes and resolve them independently. In the coming year, I will be leaving this practice behind in favor of setting clear expectations with my employees and allowing them to take care of issues as they come up without second-guessing myself or getting involved unless absolutely necessary.

One of the goals of leadership is to inspire others to achieve greatness. Yet, it can be hard to do that when leaders focus on "best practices." In 2022, I'm going to leave that term behind. Best practices can stifle innovation. When everyone is following the same methodologies, your company is eventually going to become stale. It's better to foster a sense of “next practices”. What is your company going to achieve next and how are they going to achieve it? If you want your team to be creative and push boundaries, then get rid of best practices.

A leader's disease would always be getting caught up in the troubleshooting process every time you are presented with a problem. The blame game will only lower the team's morale and impede productivity. This is why I resolved to make this mistake less to none and instead focus my efforts on creating solutions to prevent the same problem from occurring.

Thinking everything has to be perfect. Done is better than perfect. This has become a major part of our company ethos. We've updated products, messaging, branding and many other things by being open to and processing feedback. When we first started, we were trying to perfect everything we did, but once we embraced a done is better than perfect philosophy, we moved faster and became more nimble and adaptive to making changes. Done is better than perfect doesn't mean putting out a crappy product. It simply means not trying to overthink everything which can stymie progress and create stagnation.

As the saying goes "make hay when the sun shines." And as a leader in business, I had gotten used to spending as though the profits would continue to roll in. The past two years living through extraordinary times have taught me to tighten my belt financially. Surprisingly I have discovered we can reduce our expenses without compromising on the vital aspects of our business.

To this point in running my company, like a lot of other leaders, I have often indirectly (and occasionally directly) fostered competitiveness among my employees. I always believed healthy competition fueled results and brought the best out of people. However, having survived the Covid pandemic as a company, and evolving to meet the new realities of our work world, I don’t think this practice carries much value any more. In the end, all it really does is create hostility, subvert productive and collaborative behavior, and generally speaking, takes away from fostering a positive culture. That is why I’m ditching my old leadership practice of generating competition among employees and will instead start focusing on promoting healthy collaboration. I see now that teamwork and positive cooperation among employees is much more beneficial.