18 leadership mistakes executives see across industries

Whether your company sells software or provides hands-on accounting services, some things are the same: leadership mistakes. We’re people, after all, and we have our own motivations and understanding of how business works. The good news is that we can learn from other people’s mistakes, so we don’t make them ourselves. That’s the idea behind what you’re reading now. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members—all insightful and successful leaders in their own right—to share wisdom they earned from making or seeing others make mistakes. No matter the industry. The 18 member responses we’re sharing here can shine a light on how to be a better leader at your organization.

1. CONFUSE PERFORMANCE WITH LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL

The leadership mistake I see most often is confusing performance with leadership potential. The person who delivers the best work isn’t always the person who can inspire, develop, and align a team. Too many organizations promote based on output, then wonder why both the new leader and their team struggle. Leadership is about creating a room full of people who can succeed without you. — Emily Kortlang, Yerba Madre

2. SILENCE IS NOT ALIGNMENT

Silence in a global organization means almost nothing, and leaders who treat it as alignment are setting themselves up for failure. People go quiet for hundreds of reasons, and agreement is rarely one of them. Cultural norms, power dynamics, the sense that a decision is already made before the meeting starts—all of it looks identical to buy-in if you are not paying attention. I run a design community of over a thousand people across multiple geographies, and the most important discipline I have developed is creating explicit structures for dissent. If you are not pushing for honest disagreement, you are not leading. You are just broadcasting. — Arin Bhowmick, SAP

3. NOT MAKING A DECISION IS STILL A DECISION

Early in my career in the Coast Guard, I learned that not making a decision is still a decision, and often the riskier one. I see the same thing with AI. Too many leaders are waiting for certainty, a better tool, or a cleaner strategy. Meanwhile, the business keeps moving. The leadership job is to decide where AI can create real value, then change how the company works to get after it. — Todd James, Aurora Insights LLC

4. NOT CONTINUALLY MONITORING WHAT CUSTOMERS VALUE

I believe that a common leadership mistake is not continually monitoring what their customers value. And acting as though it is a fixed state. What customers value is a moving target that evolves as their needs, expectations, and options change. When companies stop actively listening, they lose relevance and market share, resulting in an overall decline in trust. Leadership’s job is to continuously rediscover what delights customers. — Chris Bailey, Bailey Brand Consulting

5. TREAT LEADERSHIP AS A TOP-DOWN FUNCTION

One of the most common leadership mistakes is treating leadership as a top-down function rather than a shared responsibility. We believe the best ideas can come from anywhere, which is why we operate more like a pie than a pyramid—bringing diverse perspectives into the conversation early and often. When people are trusted to help shape outcomes, they become more engaged, innovative, and invested in the organization’s success. — Susan Watts, SPACECRAFT

6. KEEP MARKETING IN SILOS

Siloing marketing from the broader customer lifecycle is a mistake leadership makes when they focus on internal structures instead of the customer. Too often, organizations treat marketing as a front-end function focused primarily on awareness and lead generation, while the rest of the customer journey sits in separate silos like sales, customer success, and renewals. The problem is that customers don’t experience your company that way. They experience every touchpoint as one continuous journey, and when teams operate in isolation, that journey becomes fragmented and inconsistent. — Melissa Puls, Ivanti

7. MICROMANAGE TEAMS WHILE DELAYING IMPORTANT DECISIONS

The most common mistake I see is leaders who micromanage their teams while simultaneously moving too slowly on the decisions that actually matter. When leaders hover over the details, they signal that they don’t trust their people. That erodes confidence, stifles initiative and drives your best talent out the door. The irony is that while they’re focused on controlling the how, they’re often paralyzed on the what. The best leaders do the opposite. They empower their teams to own the execution and reserve their energy for the big bets. In a world moving this fast, indecision is its own decision. Micromanagement is the enemy of scale. — Meredith Rosenberg, NU Advisory Partners

8. HIRE TALENTED PEOPLE AND FAIL TO TRUST THEM

One of the most common mistakes is hiring talented people and then failing to trust them. The best leaders bring in experts who are smarter than they are in specific areas and give them the space to do what they were hired to do. My role is to connect the dots, provide support, and stay close enough to the details to help make strong decisions when needed. — Ben Jeffries, Influencer

9. CONFUSE ACTIVITY WITH PROGRESS

Leaders confuse activity with progress. They fill calendars with meetings, launch initiatives, and publish strategies, then wonder why nothing actually changes. They mistake motion for momentum. The best leaders I’ve seen, ask a deceptively simple question before committing to anything: “What would have to be true for this to matter six months from now?” Most initiatives can’t answer that. And that’s the problem. — Muneer Panjwani, Engage for Good | The Halo Awards

10. FAILURE TO SET UP PLAN

The mistake is not setting a clear three-to-five-year plan, then working backwards to show how to achieve that plan step by step. The double click to this is not linking everyone’s work to the plan (and the mission). — Alex Triplett, You.com

11. MEASURE AI TRANSFORMATION BY TOOLS AND PILOTS LAUNCHED

The pattern I keep seeing is companies measuring AI transformation by tools deployed and pilots launched, not by workflows that moved revenue, reduced cost, or improved throughput. It’s the classic vanity-metric trap. Ask one question: Which three workflows produced measurable financial impact in the last 90 days? If leadership cannot answer, the company does not have an AI program yet. It has activity and possibly a press release. — Andra Vaduva, SafeSpace

12. HAVE A VISION BEYOND THE SHORT TERM

Great leadership requires you to have a vision beyond the short term and beyond your personal incentives. Corporate systems are notorious for rewarding the short term with quarterly goals and annual review structures. Too many leaders fall into the trap of the existing structure. To affect real change and create a lasting legacy, you need a bigger picture that’s beyond yourself and even beyond your company. — Bo Zhao, Baby Gear Group

13. DISMISS EMPATHY AS A LEADERSHIP QUALITY

Empathy is often dismissed as a pleasant but optional quality in leadership. Yet it is one of the most underleveraged and powerful strategic tools in business. It reveals the truth earlier, accelerates change, invites candor, and creates an environment where people are willing to stretch, innovate, and take the risks that both business and personal growth require. Empathy is not about being agreeable; it is about being attuned. It allows leaders to ask better questions. True empathy is strength with understanding, the discipline to care enough to see clearly, and the courage to act accordingly. — Gail Zauder, AbleFly

14. COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS DISGUISED AS OPERATIONS ISSUES

Too often, leaders assume alignment exists because a strategy deck was shared or a kickoff meeting happened. In my experience, people support what they understand and can connect to their own motivations. The majority of execution problems are communication problems disguised as operations issues. — Ran Mullins, Psympl

15. MISTAKE SPEED FOR CLARITY

Mistaking speed for clarity. Under pressure, organizations often reward rapid decisions and constant responsiveness, while neglecting reflection. The result is reactive leadership. Effective leaders deliberately create cognitive space to pause, challenge assumptions, and think beyond the immediate crisis before deciding what matters most. — Ajay Tejasvi, TLEX

16. ACCOUNTABILITY FOR VISION AND BRAND

The mistake: Delegation of ultimate accountability for implementation and evangelism around vision and brand. The CEOs that reap the most benefits from these elements continually shout about them. They mandate that they are integrated into the big and small company things that matter, from objectives and key results, to all-hands rituals, to investor calls. Most do not. — Neil Barrie, 21st Century Brand

17. OVER-OPTIMIZE FOR SHORT-TERM PERFORMANCE

The leadership mistake I see most often is over-optimizing for short-term performance at the expense of long-term brand value. In a world of dashboards and instant attribution, it’s tempting to chase the next conversion, the next quarter, the next efficiency gain. But eventually you hit what I call the “consumer acquisition cost valley of death” where acquisition costs rise, growth slows, and you’ve run out of demand because you stopped investing in the brand. The best leaders understand that brand and performance aren’t opposing forces; sustainable growth requires both. — Vineet Mehra, Chime

18. DECISIONS SHOULD BE CLOSER TO THE CUSTOMER

The mistake: Not pushing decision-making closest to the customer — Larraine Segil, Exceptional Women Alliance Foundation