5 Traps of a (sales) leader
(3 minutes read)
Last week, we focused on different behavior patterns of leaders when they fail to deploy their strategy. Although the list is not exhaustive, I think it covers most of the cases. This week we are going through the leadership traps. According to Dost Can Deniz (https://marefidelis.com/), there are five mistakes that a leader should avoid:
1- Unrealistic expectations
2- Frustration, anger, polarization
3- Self-blame, regret, and stress
4- Leadership “laziness”
5- Self-doubt, insecurity
Imagine a sales leader building a new sales strategy to improve the profitability of the company.
Therefore, he/she aligns the compensation of the sales teams accordingly. Instead to of a flat 4% of commission, in the new commission scheme, salespeople get a higher commission for the sales of more profitable products (Let’s call them Category A products). On the other hand, their commission is cut by half when they sell less profitable products (Category B products). And the best-selling products are in category B.
The leader explains this plan at the yearly sales meeting and provides the objectives for each salesperson. The expectation is that each salesperson adapts their activity and behavior accordingly, which means that the sales teams would put their focus and energy on the profitable products to, at least, protect their commission revenues if not to make more.
As the year starts the leader does not observe any improvement and repeats the same message over and over in every meeting…” We should be focusing on selling more category A products”. Yet, no meaningful change happens. Despite the improvements in some countries, most of the teams seem to resist.
As time goes by, the pressure increases, the more the leader puts pressure, the higher the resistance he/she feels. And at some point, the leader gets upset. He/she starts to spend more time with the country leaders who follow the instructions. At the same time, his relationship with other country leaders becomes bitter. In the end, he/she oversimplifies the attitude… you are either with me or against me. This polarization does not necessarily help the team to succeed together.
Once the leader realizes the division, he/she starts to question his/her own decisions and actions. At that stage, the inner dialogue of the leader includes sentences starting with “I should have done…”. He/she may also think that he/she has been too nice to the team. Tries different ways…becomes more directive, authoritarian, and starts thinking of changing his/her attitude often, which creates even bigger confusion for the team. Therefore, the stress level of the leader reaches its peak.
And at some point, the leader drops the towel, thinking that the team is not ready for the change, and goes back to the former model. In our example, it means going back to a 4% flat commission for all product categories, which would be welcomed by the team. As a result of this “leadership laziness”, the pressure goes down, the leader’s stress decreases and everybody starts to feel better, except the shareholders who are still expecting profitability improvement.
Meanwhile, the team starts to feel stronger and victorious vis a vis the leader.
Once the team is stabilized, the leader now faces the pressure coming from the shareholders.
At that point, the leader has no more courage/motivation to push forward another plan with the team. Meanwhile, he/she loses credibility vis a vis the shareholders. The leader starts to doubt his/her capabilities. “This role is not for me…” or “this industry is not for me” are the typical reactions of the leader. Self-doubt can reach such a level that would push the leader to make a career change.
The actions linked to those five steps might change, however, yet the attitude is almost universal.
Think of your current and former leaders, or yourself if you are in a leadership position… Try to identify those leadership mistakes. I am sure you will find some.