10 Management Mistakes That Sabotage Your Success

What first-time managers make always wrong.

Credit: Ivona Hirschi via Midjourney

Yay! Management.

Nay! Managers make mistakes. No (first-time) manager can avoid them. It is silly to think, your management journey will be smooth. Even if you have the best MBA or Ph.D. in organizational development.

You will make them.

Here are my top 10 you will inevitably go through. I did, too.

The good news is you will learn from them. So, just expect them. Take a lesson and move on. Remember the first year is the worst.

Contents:

• Management expectations or better fallacy
• Mindset rules it all
• Management mistakes

1. Superhero effort
2. Micromanaging
3. No critics, no enemies
4. Unclear expectations
5. The urge to be liked
6. Underestimated feedback
7. Treating their teams as adults
8. “I know” attitude
9. Failing to manage upwards
10. Loading shoulders with everyone’s work

• Too much investment leads to burnout
• Wrap Up

1. Management Expectations or Better Fallacy

Finally, I can write about a fallacy. That’s what I’ve been wanting for a long time!

Haha.

Okay. A fallacy is a flaw or error in reasoning that weakens an argument or makes it invalid. Fallacies often occur in arguments or debates when the logic presented does not hold up under scrutiny.

Many people have a wrong idea about what a management job is:

• “They approve timesheets.”
• “They do performance talks.”
• “They do the same job, but take more money.”

So, they think they can do the management job, too. No problem with them. Until you get promoted and your expectations fall like a paper card castle.