Four Traps Leaders Fall Into (And How To Avoid Them)

Leadership is hard. It’s a lonely role, you face crushing uncertainty with elevated stakes, and you’re expected to deliver not only on your own work, but also to corral the creative minds of others and parade them into the promised land. (Oh, and did I mention that it’s often thankless?)

However, leadership is also a tremendous opportunity. You get the privilege of helping others unleash their best work, and you get to have a level of influence on decisions that will often determine the success or failure of the organization.

When the pressure is on, and uncertainty is rearing its ugly head, there are traps that even the most experienced leaders fall into. When you fall into one (or more) of these traps, you put an impediment in your team’s path, and introduce dissonance into the organization.

On this episode, we share four common traps that leaders fall into when the pressure is on: deferring, blaming, bending, and hovering.

This episode is brought to you by the Herding Tigers Workshop, a live event for you and leaders just like you that’s designed to help you be the leader that creative people need.

Todd Henry

Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution”, Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of five books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, Herding Tigers, The Motivation Code) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

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