Career Derailers - 3 Behaviors that can harm your career!

Leadership is a touch sport. You must constantly engage with people. You have to inspire people; you have to engage people and you have to confront people.

Does that mean that a leader has to be an extrovert, who is energised by interacting with people?

Or does that mean that a leader must be a conflict seeker – A person who gets energised by a conflict?

What if a person has a perfectionist streak? He or she like to do things with perfection.

When you suffer a career setback, it’s rarely because of something you’re doing?well, it could be a dysfunctional habit that could be interfering with your capacity to build and maintain a high-performing team.

A career derailer is a “dysfunctional interpersonal and self-regulatory patterns,” and everyone has them.

Derailers don’t start off derailing us, but left unchecked, these tendencies can wreak havoc on our ability to lead effectively.

Most of our natural responses start in the limbic system - the emotional center of the brain, which triggers a flight-or-fight response every time we feel threatened. That is why it is difficult for us to check and change a behaviour which has served us well in the past and we tend to do it on autopilot.

What is the skill that can help us in our self-awareness and self-management?

The answer is Emotional Intelligence. Emotionally intelligent leaders know what triggers their limbic(animal) brains and learn how to control their responses.

The following are the most dangerous career derailers:

1. Avoiding conflict
2. Blaming others
3. Controlling mentality

AVOIDING CONFLICT

Many of us are peace loving by nature. We dislike conflict and try to wish it away. At its core, conflict avoidance uses escape or intimidation to mask insecurities and avoid having our fears, uncertainties, or mistakes exposed.

How do you find that you are a conflict avoider? A Thomas kilman assessment can help. Take feedback from others. If the leader is avoiding conflict the tendency within the team is that conflict lingers for long and at times becomes explosive.

Once you label conflict avoidance as a fear and derailer, it becomes easier to face. Seek advice on how to confront the issue.

Keeping peace and managing conflict are two different things.

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BLAMING OTHERS

This is a very common derailer in the corporate world. The leader tends to blame others at the first instance of a failure. ?It results in poor problem-solving and a lack of innovation. Such a leader exaggerates the negative, makes himself or herself a victim, and passes the buck to colleagues, different departments, or managers.

To break this behaviour the leader needs to make a shift from blaming others to see what could have been done to better the situation. The shift from person to perspective. Once you make this shift you move away from blaming people and try to get more and diverse perspectives.

A leader also must become tolerant of mistakes.

Confronting people and blaming people are two different things.

CONTROLLING MENTALITY

If a leader has time management issues, the issue many a times is not time but a controlling mentality of the leader. Such a leader finds it hard to delegate. When they delegate, they do pseudo delegation. Delegation with authority, they check in too often. Micromanaging results in disengagement of even the most motivated person on the team.

When the control derailer kicks in, it starts taking on responsibilities that belong to other team members. The team members start getting suffocated and they stop taking initiatives and they avoid giving valuable feedback.

If you have a tendency to micromanage, consider spaced-out check-ins in which you get updates, share goals and metrics, and offer advice, while still empowering your team.

Being in control and having a controlling mentality are two different things.

A leader must be good at taking feedback. Occasionally, also seek feedback about your own behaviors. Do check out how your team members are feeling.

Are the conflicts lingering for long?

Who is being blamed when things go wrong?

Are you having a time management problem?

?The answer to these questions may tell you far more serious things that could be about to derail your career.

You can reach me at?[email protected]?for any leadership development initiative.

Kindly share your views, opinions, and experiences on the subject.

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