Most leadership mistakes managers make don’t look dramatic at first. A manager jumps in too quickly, asks for one more update, sits in too many meetings, or makes too many decisions run through them. The work still gets done, but the team starts needing the manager more than it should. Before you know it, small management habits become big leadership problems.
I recently asked a broad range of leaders to share the leadership mistakes they are seeing managers making right now, and what managers should do instead.
Common Leadership Mistakes Managers Make
Chris McCuiston, co-Founder and CEO of Goldfish Swim School Franchising: The biggest leadership mistake I see managers making right now is managing only the parts of the business they are most comfortable with, instead of truly leading the entire operation. Too many managers spend their time reacting to problems, working in one area of the business, or focusing only on what is immediately in front of them. Great managers, however, know every part of their business. They understand their numbers, their people, their customer experience, and the daily details that drive results. Leadership today requires presence. It requires walking the facility, observing the operation, coaching team members, listening to customers, and ensuring that standards are being executed consistently across every area of the business, not just the front desk, the schedule, or the financials. The managers who are winning right now are obsessed with the details. They put the right people in the right seats. They hold clear expectations. They coach consistently. And they never lose sight of the customer experience. At the end of the day, leadership is not about managing tasks. It’s about creating an environment where great people can deliver great experiences and achieve extraordinary results. The managers who do that consistently will separate themselves from everyone else.
Nellie Akalp, co-founder and CEO of CorpNet.com: A common mistake I see leaders make, and one I’ve been guilty of myself, is micromanaging. It’s a real buzzkill for a team. No one wants someone breathing down their neck all day. It creates friction and can make people feel like their skills and expertise aren’t trusted. Great leaders provide direction and support, but they also trust their people to do what they were hired to do. By giving team members the space to work independently while remaining available when needed, leaders help build the confidence that allows people to meet and often surpass their goals.
Eugene Alletto, founder and CEO of BEDGEAR: The biggest leadership mistake I see managers making right now is leading as if information is still the most valuable asset in the organization. For decades, managers were rewarded for having the answers. Today, information is available to everyone. AI can generate insights, analyze data, and automate many routine tasks. What organizations need now are leaders who can create alignment, judgment, and trust. Too many managers are still focused on directing people instead of developing people. They spend their time solving every problem rather than building teams that can solve problems on their own. The leaders who will win in the future will be the ones who create environments where people can think, contribute, challenge ideas, and grow. Their job is no longer to be the smartest person in the room. Their job is to bring out the best thinking from everyone in the room. Technology will continue to change how we work, but leadership will always be about people. The organizations that outperform will be the ones that combine innovation with human connection and create cultures where individuals are engaged, empowered, and accountable to a shared mission.
Nick Friedman, co-founder of College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving: The biggest leadership mistake I see right now is managers trying to be the hero instead of building other heroes. Organizations don’t scale because one person has all the answers. They scale when leaders create systems, develop people, and empower teams to make decisions. At the same time, we’re entering an era where it’s tempting to outsource too much thinking to AI. Tools like ChatGPT are incredibly valuable, but leaders have to be careful not to create teams that rely on technology for every answer. Resourcefulness, critical thinking, judgment, and creativity still matter. AI should enhance those skills, not replace them. The best leaders spend less time jumping in to solve every problem and more time coaching their people to solve problems themselves. When you build independent thinkers instead of dependent followers, you create an organization that can truly scale
Jay Bregman, founder and CEO of Andel: The biggest mistake I see managers making is getting too far away from the work itself. As organizations grow, information becomes more filtered as it reaches the top. Leaders receive reports, dashboards, and summaries instead of understanding what’s actually happening with customers, partners, and employees day to day. I make it a point to take ten to fifteen meetings a day with customers, manufacturers, and partners because I don’t trust a summary to tell me what’s really happening. When I first started my career, I could kill more than fifty ideas before landing on what really stuck. The only reason I was able to do that was because I stayed close enough to the market, relationships, and customers to see firsthand when something wasn’t working. The best leaders I know spend an unusual amount of time gathering firsthand information and testing their assumptions against reality. My advice: talk to customers, talk to partners, and talk to the people doing the work every day. That’s where you find problems first, and can build opportunities.
Adi Bathla, founder and CEO of Revv: The biggest mistake I see is leaders trying to be the most necessary person in the building. It feels like control. What it really does is cap the whole team. As a founder or a CEO, it’s a disservice to the company if you’re not hiring somebody who’s 10 times better than you in their domain. And when you do, it compounds, because if you hire an A player, they will, in turn, attract A players. This lesson was learned more from watching collision shops than building a company. When a shop opens its second location, the first thing that breaks is consistency. The institutional knowledge lived in the head of the one tech who figured it out at location one was never systematized, so it can’t transfer. The owner assumes it’s a training problem and hires a more experienced tech, all while the real problem (trapped institutional knowledge) lies unsolved. Two things to do differently. First, hire and build for people better than you, then get out of their way, because what helped you go from zero to five will not help you go from five to twenty-five. Second, write it down. Systematize what’s in your head so the team can run without you in the room. Building a team that runs and grows when you’re not there is the whole job.
Andy Kaps, co-founder and President of Clearlight: The most common leadership mistake I see is confusing visibility with accountability: mistaking presence for performance. The fix is straightforward: set clear expectations, understand where each employee has gaps, check in consistently, and take the time to learn how they actually work best. That last part matters more than most managers realize. Some people do their best work with space and minimal interruption; others need regular feedback and touchpoints to stay on track. Neither is wrong; they just require different approaches. At Clearlight, our goal has always been to remove the obstacles standing between our people and their best work, not to monitor whether they’re at their desk.
Seth Rosenzweig, CEO of Classroom Champions: One of the biggest mistakes I see managers making today is focusing too much on activity and not enough on outcomes. In a world of constant meetings, emails, messages, and notifications, it’s easy to mistake motion for progress. Teams can be incredibly busy without actually moving the organization forward. Great leaders resist that trap. They create clarity around what matters most, align people around a handful of critical priorities, and empower their teams to execute. The most effective organizations don’t scale because they do more things. They scale because they’re relentlessly focused on doing the right things well. Leadership isn’t about keeping everyone busy; it’s about ensuring the work being done is connected to the outcomes that matter most.
Jason Leverant, President and COO of AtWork: The biggest leadership mistake that I see managers making right now is confusing “activity management” with leadership. We’re all sitting in a relatively challenging business environment, and when this happens, it’s natural for managers to focus more heavily on metrics, KPIs, tasks, deadlines, and ‘productivity’. Don’t get me wrong, those things do matter, but when leadership becomes only about checking boxes and monitoring outputs, managers can quickly lose sight of the people who are doing the work. That’s when employees feel “managed” instead of ‘led’. There is a clear distinction between a Manager and a Leader. Which one do you want to be? The best of the best create clarity, not confusion. They set clear expectations, give direct feedback, remove obstacles, and help their teams understand how their individual contributions connect to the larger mission of the organization. One key trait of a strong leader is that they don’t avoid the difficult conversations. In many situations, the best thing a true leader can do is provide honest feedback before small issues escalate into larger ones. If you’re a Manager who wants to become a true Leader, you’re going to need to shift your mindset from one of “control” to one of “coaching”. That doesn’t mean you have to lower your standards or stop holding your teams accountable, but it does mean that you have to exert effort to build trust while still being super clear about your expectations. People want to know where they stand; they want to know how to be successful, and they want to know their leader has got their back and is invested in helping them improve. At the end of the day, leadership is not just about getting a task done through your people; it’s about helping your people do their very best, each and every day!
Michael Farb, CEO of Boatsetter: Playing it safe with outdated systems is the biggest mistake that is costing managers and leaders today. Leaders need to constantly challenge assumptions. The world looks completely different than it did six months ago, and it continues to change and evolve at an ever-increasing rate. The tools available to us, how consumers behave, and the competitive landscape are in a constant state of flux. As a leader, create an environment where your team is comfortable asking: “Does this still hold true?” That kind of intellectual honesty lets you adapt before you’re forced to. The second is about innovation and risk. Today, a small, focused team can build incredible things that, just five years ago, would have taken hundreds of people and years of time. The speed at which teams can pivot when an experiment isn’t working is fast, which minimizes the negative impacts of trying new things. The managers winning right now aren’t the ones optimizing the existing model. They’re the ones asking what a generation-defining business actually looks like, and then reverse-engineering the path to get there. The two go hand in hand: you can’t think big if you’re anchored to old assumptions. My advice to managers is simple. Empower your team to challenge the status quo, then set a vision big enough that it scares you.
Michael Keller, CEO of Jeremiah’s Italian Ice: One of the biggest leadership mistakes I see right now is managers struggling to distinguish between an idea and a good idea. There are always plenty of ideas floating around, especially in a challenging economic environment. But an idea is only useful if it can actually be implemented. A great idea needs a clear path to real life. If it cannot be executed in a practical way, it is not going to help a manager move an initiative, decision, or action forward. When managers are making important decisions and getting input from others, they should use the “can this be implemented?” lens to filter ideas. If there is doubt, it can be helpful to run the idea by someone with an operations or financial background. Those leaders tend to think in terms of what it will take to actually get something done, which is often the difference between a good-sounding idea and a good, useful idea.
Reginaldo Torres, founder and CEO of Dabalash: In my opinion, one of the most common mistakes managers make is forgetting two fundamental things. First, they lose sight of the ultimate goal, the reason behind everything they are doing. It is easy to become so focused on the process that the purpose gets overlooked. Second, they get caught up in daily “fires.” Instead of managing, coaching, and directing their teams, they spend all their time executing tasks themselves. Over time, a CEO can unintentionally start acting like a COO without even realizing it. To illustrate the first point, consider a company building its marketing ecosystem. The team carefully selects the design, colors, and slogan, and ensures the budget is on track. Everything looks polished and professionally executed. However, they may forget the primary objective: generating sales. If they overlook a strong call to action, they miss the most critical element. The “form” may be excellent, but the “substance” – the reason the campaign exists – can easily be forgotten. This can happen at both upper and lower levels of management. For the second mistake, imagine a situation where employees are not performing at the pace management expects. Rather than remaining patient, providing training, offering direction, and coaching the team, it is tempting for a manager to say, “I’ll do it myself.” While this may save time in the short term, it prevents employees from learning and developing. Instead of delegating and building capability within the team, the manager becomes the person responsible for everything. In the medium and long term, this creates a bottleneck that limits the organization’s ability to grow and achieve its strategic goals.
George Strobel, co-founder and co-CEO of Monarch Private Capital: The biggest leadership mistake I see managers making today is micro-management and not focusing enough on developing people. In a rapidly changing environment, leaders can’t have all the answers and their responsibilities proliferate. The appropriate response should be to create clarity, empower their teams, and help individuals grow their skills and confidence. The best managers shift from being hands-on people to being coaches: asking questions, encouraging ownership, and creating opportunities for others to succeed.
Jimmie Meece, Brand President, America’s Swimming Pool Co.: One of the biggest leadership mistakes right now is confusing activity with impact by managing for visibility instead of outcomes. When leaders prioritize effort over results, teams start optimizing for what’s seen rather than what truly drives the business. The shift is simple but critical: set clear outcomes, reward impact, and empower teams to focus on long-term value over short-term activity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are common leadership mistakes managers make?
Common leadership mistakes managers make include micromanaging, trying to solve every problem, tracking activity instead of outcomes, failing to delegate, and staying too far from the actual work. These mistakes can make teams slower, more dependent, and less confident.
How can managers avoid common leadership mistakes?
Managers can avoid common leadership mistakes by setting clear expectations, staying close to the work, focusing on outcomes, and giving people room to take ownership. Strong management is not about being involved in every decision. It is about helping the team make better decisions without needing constant approval.
Why is micromanagement a leadership mistake?
Micromanagement is a leadership mistake because it usually creates the opposite of what managers want. Instead of improving performance, it can weaken trust, slow people down, and make employees feel like their judgment is not valued.
What makes a manager effective?
An effective manager creates clarity, gives useful feedback, removes obstacles, and helps people do their best work. The strongest managers know when to step in, when to step back, and when the team needs a clearer standard.
What should managers do instead of micromanaging?
Instead of micromanaging, managers should set clear expectations, agree on outcomes, provide support, and let people own the work. The goal is not to disappear. The goal is to give employees enough clarity and trust to do strong work without needing constant oversight.
