What You Can Learn from My 5 Biggest Leadership Mistakes
I’ve had the privilege of leading teams of 12, 50, and 160 people in the last ten years. Throughout these leadership roles, I’ve made my share of mistakes that have taught me lessons I won’t forget.
I hope the five lessons below help you avoid stepping in the same holes I did.
Mistake #1 — Bobby Makes a Unilateral Decision
The first lesson comes from my college days. After a fierce campaign and some cringeworthy campaign slogans like “With great Powers (my last name) comes great responsibility,” I became student body president of my alma mater, The College of Idaho.
Shortly after starting in my new role, I found a way to piss off the ski and snowboard team, basketball team, swimming team, and several other student contingencies in one fell swoop.
At the time, the college had two long semesters with a short, six-week “winter term” sandwiched in between. Partway through the year, an academic higher power made an arcane change to the college accreditation guidelines that put my school in jeopardy of losing accreditation if we didn’t make a speedy change to our trimester schedule.
After meeting for several weeks with the college’s board of trustees, faculty, staff, and administration, we…
