10 Ways Leaders Make Work Harder Than Necessary

In the book, The Leadership Contract, author Vince Molianro shares that not only is leadership hard work, but also a lot of us inadvertently make the hard work harder.

Therefore, Molianro recommends you:

Don't get in over your head -- where you are in situations where you are unable to take your performance to a higher level. Where you are creating risk to yourself and your organization.
Confuse rough with tough -- Mistreating, disrespecting and insulting others is rough, not tough.
Mistake effort for results -- Keeping yourself busy by toiling away at drudgery is very different from tackling real hard work of leadership.
Feel like the victim -- Everybody gets frustrated at work. That's normal. But leaders need to be able to move through the frustration.
Be insecure -- The key to overcoming insecurities begins by admitting that you have them.
Need good news -- Your job as a leader is not to avoid, ignore, or deny bad news. It's to find out the bad news as early as you can so you can act before the problem becomes more complicated.
Win at all costs -- Excessive competition creates poor working relationships with team members and keeps you from engaging stakeholders genuinely.
Wait for permission -- You haven't been given a leadership role to be a bystander.
Be drive to distraction -- A lack of discipline on your part creates an environment where crisis reigns supreme.
Lose perspective -- Learn from the past, but if you're repeatedly discussing the same old events, you have lost perspective.

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