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In my work, I have encountered several mistakes that leaders make, and I want to share them with you. Tell me whether you have noticed these mistakes—or perhaps you do not consider them mistakes at all.

Is It Better, or Is It Just Different?

This “mistake” is prevalent among type (E) leaders. They love to make changes. You can experience it even in an ordinary conversation: no matter what we are discussing or deciding, they interrupt to tell us what they think—and what they propose is always different from what has been presented.

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They push for change on the assumption that different means better. We know from experience that this is not necessarily true. Often, the change makes the situation worse.

Decisions Made While Skipping Reality

Many consulting companies and coaches begin their advisory process by asking: What do you want?

The problem is that they have not first conducted an in-depth diagnosis of what is actually happening. Moving forward based only on what we want may be like planning to climb Mount Everest without first consulting a doctor to determine whether we are physically capable of making the climb. We are planning based on what we want, and what we believe we should want, while ignoring what is.

The decision-making sequence should begin by analyzing the current state of the organization’s health. Then, in light of the reality confronting us, we should clearly define what we want and examine it through the question: Should we want what we want?

The sequence should be:
Is → Want → Should

Is It Your Problem?

We tend to call anything we do not like a problem.

But a problem you cannot solve is not a problem. It is a fact.

When I was young, I wanted to be tall. I was very short, and I suffered greatly because of it. Then I realized that I could not make myself taller. Being short was therefore not a problem; it was a fact. I had to redefine what I was going to do about it.

Problems need to be solved. Facts require us to learn how to live with them.

A bank once told me that its problem was “unpredictable interest rates.” I asked whether it could change or control interest rates. The answer was no. Therefore, unpredictable interest rates were not its problem; they were a fact.

We needed to redefine the problematic issue. We concluded that the bank’s real problem was: “We do not have a strategy for dealing with unpredictable interest rates.” That was something the bank could control, and it was therefore the real problem.

This insight is important because defining a problem incorrectly can lead to immense frustration when we repeatedly fail to solve it.

Freedom vs. Equality

The last mistake, for now,  concerns freedom and equality.

This insight comes from Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Great Britain, who said that one of the principal challenges she faced in governing was failing to recognize that freedom and equality are not the same.

What is the difference?

To me, freedom means having both the ability and the right to act and speak freely. Equality should be the result of equal opportunity.

But even when people have equal opportunities, they will not necessarily achieve equal outcomes because some people take better advantage of opportunities than others. Equality and equal opportunity are not the same.

Moreover, having an equal opportunity does not necessarily mean that you are free to pursue every opportunity. We should be free as long as we do not encroach on the freedom of others. This is called Mutual Respect.

For equal opportunity to exist, there must also be trust—trust that the promised freedom is real.

Mutual Trust and Mutual Respect are not the same.

There are more mistakes, but this should be enough for one blog.