5 Deadly Leadership Sins – Part 1

08 Jun 5 Deadly Leadership Sins – Part 1

There’s five deadly sins that I’ve identified.

Hello and welcome to the Lead Strong leadership video series.  Welcome! I am Christopher Hart, I am your organizational and leadership development coach with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting.  And so for those that are joining us for the first, time we conduct a leadership video series titled Lead Strong where our intentions is to grow the impact and influence… excuse me, impact and influence that leaders have amongst themselves and others in their professional environments as well as their personal environment.  

So we’re actually doing something different today in that we’re doing a series this week, so we’ve got five posts that are going to work in conjunction with each other titled The Five Deadliest Sins of a Leader.  There’s five deadly sins that I’ve identified, there may be more but I’ve identified five and we’re going to cover one each week, and today we’re going to cover the most deadliest one to a leader.

Now when we say deadly, what does that mean?  

It does not mean that you’re going to physically die, like this is not war which some of you guys do lead in combat operation environments and that’s pretty cool, you’ve got your own issues to deal with there; but what this means is this could be deadly in essence to your leadership.  Why?  Because there’s… if you’ve been following our videos or if you want to go back and look at some of our videos we’ve defined what leadership is and there’s many different definitions and explanations of what people believe leadership to be, it tends to be subjective, it tends to has some basic elements of inspiration, empowerment, helping others get what they want when they want it, be the first to lead the charge of your people; all sorts of different explanations and definitions.  But one of the things we understand leadership to be is the ability to attract people, the ability to team with people so that they buy into your vision of where you’re going, what you’re trying to accomplish and your mission of how you’re going to accomplish it.  And so when we look at the attracting piece what that is it’s about building rapport, it’s about building rapport with people whether through your actions or conversations that you have with them such that they’re attracted to where you’re going and what you’re doing.  And so when we understand the elements of the deadly elements this could kill…these things could easily kill your ability to build rapport, attract, keep people that want to join your mission going towards your vision, your goals, et cetera.

So what I want everybody to understand is that when we talk about the five deadly sins of a leader, when we say that word ‘deadly,’ these are things that could easily prevent you from building rapport; these are things that could easily cause people to go in a different direction than the direction you’re trying to go with them.  And so we’re going to talk about today the most deadliest one, are you ready for this?  Here we go, cue the music… wait there is no music.  

The most deadliest sin of a leader, you’re ready? Here we go…perfectionism.  That’s right, perfectionism.  Those of you that are running around with this high need for perfection that is going to be a cause for failure in leadership; and I don’t mean one of these fail forward type opportunities, I hope they become a fail forward if they’ve shown up in your leadership, but it could literally kill the ability to attract people to your mission and your vision.  It could literally cause you to lose people in your organization;  it could literally cause people to not want to surround themselves with you in life.  It could literally cause people to not even want to be around you.  

So when we say this is the deadliest one, here’s why:  

When you talk about perfectionism you need to understand what you’re dealing with.  Being a Christian, being a follower of Christ and believing in the Word of the Bible, I’m not here to cause anybody to have very specific beliefs but I will share with you mine.  My belief is based off of my own spiritual journey, the Bible says that God sent His one and only begotten Son by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to come to this earth to save His people and He walked in a sinless life.  What that means is He is the only one who has experienced perfection.  The Bible says He walked in a sinless life, without sin.  He was perfection.  We are born as human beings based off of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden defined in Genesis One.  We were born into sin, you can’t be perfect, it’s inevitable; there’s no way you can meet perfection.  So the reason why we say perfection is the deadliest sin is because you’re setting yourself and other people up for an expectation that is not possible to meet.  

Now we can quote Scripture that says “All things are possible with Christ who strengthens me.”  Yes, all things quite frankly except perfection.  You can live a Christ-like life where you try and model Him as close as possible but because you’re born into sin you were not born unless God is deciding to rewrite the Bible where Chris or Brian or whoever else is watching this that all of a sudden you become perfection and we’re going to completely rewrite spiritual history.  So to understand perfection as the most deadliest sin is you’re holding yourself and other people to an expectation that they cannot meet, it’s destined for failure.  

“But Chris, you don’t understand, maybe it’s not perfection but you get what…”  Yeah, I get it…I get it because I’m going to explain to you what I think your real intentions are of expectations.  But your people don’t get it, when you hold them to perfection, when you walk around saying, “Oh I’m a perfectionist… Oh I’m…yeah I’m a tough person to work for because I’m a perfectionist.”  Well you’re going to be walking this earth by yourself because you’re holding your spouse’s, you’re holding your children, you’re holding people in your organization to something that they can’t meet.  You see people respect your desire for what?  Excellence, quality, achievement.  They respect the desire for them but they dread the unrealistic expectation of perfection because they can’t meet it, they weren’t designed for it.  

We’ve done a video before where we talk about progress over perfection, don’t ever hold people to perfection, hold them to progress; but I’m telling you that this is a different concept that perfection is the deadliest sin as a leader because if you lead yourself to an expectation of perfection you’re going to live a very miserable life, it’s just the way it is.  If you hold other people in your organizations, in your churches, in your environments, social, whatever, to an expectation of perfection you’re holding them to something that they can accomplish.

So what is it that we’re really looking to communicate?  

We’re looking to communicate excellence; we’re looking to communicate quality.  It’s okay to have an expectation of excellence; it’s okay to want to have expectations of quality; it’s not okay to hold people accountable to perfection because it’s an unattainable expectation for yourself and for other people.  

Quite frankly I believe that most of the struggles that we have in life is because we’re holding ourselves to an expectation we can’t meet, and I don’t care what scripture you quote, just understand you can’t meet perfection.  Before any of those scriptures that you quote in the New Testament, the Old Testament in the very first book of the Old Testament was defined by Adam, the story of Adam and Eve whereby Eve fed Adam an apple from the fruit of the forbidden tree that God said you can eat of any tree you can eat of anything and enjoy anything in this garden except that tree, and the serpent came in and convinced Eve that it was okay to feed Adam that apple and he ate it and we were born into sin and cast out of the garden and we were born into sin.  You, me and everybody else that’s born into this world is born into sin so we can’t be held to an expectation of perfection, it becomes the deadliest sin for leaders.

So what is it that we can hold people to?  You can have a ideal, an ideology of excellence in your organization.  If you look at let’s say cars for that matter, whether you’re talking Maserati, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Bentleys, those are all quality engineering.  They’re not perfect, they break down, they have parts and services that you need to purchase because if you buy that car expecting perfection you’re going to lead yourself to disappointment.  Nothing’s perfect there is only one …I can’t say nothing…there’s only one perfect element that we can ever hold accountable and expect to be perfect always and that’s Jesus Christ based off of the Christian religion.  

So we can have elements of excellence but we define what that is, we understand that in excellence still comes failure, and failure can be the greatest learning tool as long as we’re failing forward, that we’re using failure as the opportunity to progress ourselves to a more refined excellence, to a higher level of results that we can hold ourselves accountable for.  Why?  Because we now understand the boundaries of what success is and what success isn’t, and when we define those clearly defined boundaries then we have something to operate within.  And failure allows us to know exactly how to refine, to go from all these possible opportunities to things you can do and refine it down to “Hey we know this works, this is excellence; this is the boundary and this is what we hold people accountable for because we’ve been there, we’ve refined it, we know what happens when you operate outside this boundary.”  And we understand there’s going to come times when you’re going to operate outside that boundary because that’s just the way human nature is, when you operate outside the boundary here’s the plan to get back on the path.  And that’s what leaders do, we lead people to a path of success.  Holding them accountable to perfection is actually disempowering them and leading …hey Carol, good to see you again sweetheart.  Hope everyone’s doing alright on your end up there in Jersey.  Thanks for joining us again…if you hold them accountable to perfection, you’re putting them on a path of failure that’s very difficult for people to succeed forward from because it’s disempowering, it’s disappointing.  It’s disempowering means without empowerment.

If leadership…if one of the definitions of leadership is to empower people which is defined by to give them the ability and authority to accomplish that which they want to accomplish, holding them to perfection disempowers them then you’re taking away their ability and authority to achieve that which they want to accomplish.  It becomes the deadliest sin of leaders, whether you’re leading yourself, you’re leading others in your personal life or your professional life.  

It will be the very reason why people leave your organization.  It will be the very reason why people do not join your organization.  It will be the very reason why your friends stop hanging out with you.  Moms, dad, it will be the very reason why your children will rebel and distance themselves from you when they become adults and have a conscious decision-making process to go live out their own life because you, quite frankly, don’t empower them.  And that’s a harsh truth to hear, and some moms and dads don’t want to hear that but look, we’re not here to add cream and sugar, this is black coffee leadership coaching, to understand truths so that we can empower ourselves to make the necessary changes and transform into a leader that empowers people to put them on the path of success.  We don’t hold them to perfection, we hold them to excellence, we hold them to standards, we hold them to results.  That’s what we hold people accountable to, and I promise you this, if you hold them to perfection you’re leading themselves… you’re leading them and yourself to a dead end that has no end positive result.

So what can we do?  We can define what excellence looks like; we can define what the results look like; we can define what achievement looks like in the role, in our organization and under our leadership.  We can define, you see leaders define things for people, they define what the end result looks like, they define what the boundaries look like, they define what the conversations look like when you fall outside of the boundaries.  In that conversation they define what expectations of action are expected when you go outside the boundaries. We embrace failure only if it puts you back into the boundaries and empowers you on to a straighter more narrow path to the expectation of results, achievement, mission and vision of the organization, your family, your church, whatever.  So leaders I challenge you…actually I’m going to ask you a question first – Who and where are you holding people accountable to perfection?  Are you holding yourself accountable to perfection?  Are you holding yourself back from going to do things for fear of failure because you have a high level of perfection, quote/unquote “perfectionism”?  Are you holding yourself to perfection that you have paralysis of analysis because you need everything to be perfect before you take action?  There’s plenty of you out there.  Is it you?

What do you need to do?  What’s the conversation you need to have with yourself to move yourself from the expectation of perfection to progress?

Where in your organizations, in your family are you holding…are you disempowering people?  Are you making them feel lesser of themselves because you’re holding them to perfection?
Are you holding the singer on stage in your church to a perfect level of singing before you allow them the opportunity to stand out and shine?

In our organization are you holding someone to perfection before they can step up and take charge and show you that they can lead?

Are you disempowering people in your organization because you’re holding them to a level of perfection that they’re not allowed, where they’re not empowered to live out their highest and best self to contribute to the growth of your organization or your family?

Leaders I’d love to hear where you’re struggling with the need for perfection, and here’s what you can do with it:  Look at progress, what’s the progress that we can make?  What can I do as the leader of this individual to lead this person to the next stage of progress to make them better?  To make them more valid?  To give them better credibility?  To give them a better opportunity?  To stand up and shine in your organization for its mission, for its vision, for its greater purpose, whether it’s for you, your organization, for God, whatever.  See great leaders allow for progress; great leaders lead progress in other people that leads to excellence.  We don’t create a standard and hold it accountable, we understand this is a standard that we want to grow people to, cause I promise you right now if you’re doing that in your organization you’re going to fail, and I know your journey of excellence or success did not come from the womb to excellence, it was a process of action plus failure plus learning plus progression and reaction.

Leaders I challenge you to look at areas of how you can progress to your people.  Define the standards of excellence; define the boundaries; define the expectations of action within your people; define the expectations of reaction when they either step outside the boundaries or they fail to meet expectations.   When you do that with people you’re going to progress, and when you progress them you’re empowering them, you’re growing them, you’re helping them become bigger, better, more, to do more, to achieve more, to love more, to give more and to accomplish more, and quite frankly that’s when you become valuable as a leader in other people’s eyes.

Look, all success, all achievement has a suck factor involved in it and if you’re not willing to embrace the pain and the suck factor you’re going to have a different level of suck.  Go back and watch that video, maybe we’ll post it in the comments.  Either you’re going to suck or you’re going to embrace it, one or the two.  And leaders you’re the one…to be a true leader, to be a high level leader you’re willing to take the pain, you’re willing to bring people to the pain and participate in their pain knowing that how they’re going to react and respond is going to empower them to be better and move them within that path of excellence that leads them on path of the mission, the vision, the achievement, the result, whatever we’re working towards.

So leaders what can you do today to transform your leadership from perfection to progress?  From disempowering to empowering?  I want to hear it in your comments.  Feel free to put it in your comments so we can continue the coaching process with those that are following our posts, and if you have anything you want to add to it, how we can add value to our followers, please feel free, join along with us.  This is a community, this is a team effort.  This is not about me, this is about the impact that we can make to increase the influence in the lives of those that want to lead themselves and others to a greater purpose.

Guys thank you for joining me today.  I hope that this information brought value not to just your business but also to your life, that you’re leading yourselves, you’re leading your family, you’re leading those that are following you whether it’s in your personal life or in your professional life.  All these elements apply to every environment of leadership.

Thank you for joining me today, remember one thing, God loves you, so do I.  Lead strong and have a powerful rest of your day.  Take care.

About the author:

Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!

To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com