--- title: The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make description: How not to be the Donald Trump or Michael Scott in your office canonical: https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-23T16:32:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:39:00.748Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make og:description: How not to be the Donald Trump or Michael Scott in your office og:url: https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make twitter:description: How not to be the Donald Trump or Michael Scott in your office twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make > Sponsored content. 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In the Loop is TIME's AI newsletter, built on original reporting and access to the people building and governing AI. It publishes Tuesdays and Fridays and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes TIME's In the Loop? Harry Booth, a tech reporter at TIME, writes In the Loop. #### Is In the Loop free? Yes. In the Loop is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Geoff Smart](https://time.com/author/geoff-smart/), [Randy Street](https://time.com/author/randy-street/) and [Alan Foster](https://time.com/author/alan-foster/) Jul 23, 2015 4:32 PM UTC by [Geoff Smart](https://time.com/author/geoff-smart/), [Randy Street](https://time.com/author/randy-street/) and [Alan Foster](https://time.com/author/alan-foster/) Jul 23, 2015 4:32 PM UTC Imagine if there were an Uber for hiring. Instead of trawling through résumés and endless interviews, you could just open an app and order yourself a new data scientist or marketing analyst. Then you could track their expected arrival time and only accept them if they are 4.5 stars or greater. It’s a nice idea but, despite the hype, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Well, not for senior hires, at least. And although everyone agrees that hiring is tough, most managers struggle with an even more prevalent leadership mistake. It’s an affliction as prevalent as the common cold and one of the least recognized in the workplace today. Over the last 20 years at ghSMART, we have been able to empirically observe where executives excel and where they get in their own way. We have conducted five-hour interviews of more than 15,000 leaders across every major industry, producing more than 9 million data points. So, what is the number one most common mistake that holds leaders back? The complete inability to remove underperformers. New managers struggle with it. So do CEOs, CFOs, COOs, you name it – it’s endemic. And why do we all struggle with this? Here are the top five reasons that we see: 1. **You are an eternal optimist**. You somehow believe that you will fix poor Mark in Finance or Emma in Marketing. Or, even better, perhaps they will magically fix themselves. 2. **You don’t want to rock the boat.** You believe in accepting the cards that you are dealt. You have been taught to make do. As kids learn at daycare today, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” 3. **You dislike conflict**. Difficult conversations are difficult. So it is easier to suffer through it even if your whole team can now get less done. 4. **You will look bad**. You may have hired or promoted them into the role. You don’t want to just pass the buck. 5. **You excel at procrastinating**. Why do today what can safely be put off for another day? Besides, who knows? He or she might resign, and that would make it easier for everyone. You may suffer from just one, or more likely a combination, of these reasons. And yet our research found that executives who excelled at removing underperformers from their teams are more than twice as likely to have had a successful career than all other senior leaders. Yes, that’s right: twice as likely. The best leaders we meet tell us that it makes all the difference. Panos Anastassiadis is one who does it very well. He was the CEO of Cyveilance, which grew over 1500 percent in five years. Panos shared how he thought about the “who” in his business: “Every quarter I start with a blank sheet of paper and I design an organizational chart based on my biggest priorities. I make the assumption that I have to operate with only 50 percent of my staff. Who would be on my team? Then I increase my assumption to 70 percent, 85 percent and 95 percent. Immediately, I know who my stellar personnel are and who are key and indispensable. Whoever is not in the 85 percent group is very dispensable, and I average up on the first occasion. As a result of that, our involuntary attrition has been less than 2 percent.” What was the result? “The team we built has been the single decisive factor for our success. I have simply been constantly averaging up who is on the team.” And yet many of us have watched Ricky Gervais’s or Steve Carrel’s portrayal of the appalling boss on _The Office_ and sympathized. Yes, David Brent and poor old Michael Scott are terrible managers, but we identify with their deep-seated need to be liked. Like them, we also seek approval from our co-workers and teams. We don’t want to be a narcissistic Donald Trump shouting, “You’re fired!” That’s not what we signed up for. There are ways you can do it and still do right by the individual in question. You can set them clear goals and craft the role to play to their strengths. But when it is clearly not working, it is time to take action. Run a fair, objective talent management process; tell them that their performance is not where it needs to be; and give them 30, 60 or 90 days to turn their situation around. But if that does not work, it is time to have that tough conversation that deep down you know you should have had 6, 12 or maybe 24 months ago. And only then you can get out your Uber-like hiring app and order yourself the A player that you need. ### See The 7 Most Important Tech CEOs You Wouldn't Recognize  Jack Ma, founder of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, stepped down as that firm's CEO in 2013\. But he's still the company's most public face, and after Alibaba's September IPO, China's single richest man. Scott Eells—Bloomberg/Getty Images  Larry Ellison stunned the tech world in September by announcing he's stepping down as CEO of Oracle, the enterprise software company he co-founded in 1977\. Since Oracle doesn't sell products to the public like Apple or Microsoft, Ellison's a little less-known outside Silicon Valley: But he's a hugely important figure, having heavily influenced Steve Jobs and a host of other tech leaders. Tomohiro Ohsumi—Bloomberg/Getty Images  Tony Hsieh, CEO of shoe-tailer Zappos.com, is a controversial figure in the world of tech chief officers. He's pouring money into Zappos' corporate home of Las Vegas, Nevada, which is welcome by some locals but spurned by others. Still, Zappos is known for being a very fun and very different place to work, thanks in part to Hsieh setting those qualities up as priorities for the company. Noah Berger—Bloomberg/Getty Images  Satya Nadella just took over the reins at Microsoft earlier this year from now-Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, but he's already making his presence known through sizable layoffs and simultaneous acquisitions. Nadella's Microsoft has let go of nearly 15,000 employees this year — a chunk of whom were made redundant when Microsoft closed an approximately $7.2 billion deal for Nokia's device wing. Also on Microsoft's tab? $2.5 billion for the Swedish gaming company behind top-hit Minecraft. Microsoft/Corbis  Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner, formerly a longtime Yahoo employee, has grown the "Facebook For Professionals'" user base and revenue exponentially since coming becoming CEO in 2009\. He's got quite the fan base, too: His workers, 100% of whom support him as CEO, according to Glassdoor. Robert Galbrath—Reuters/Corbis  John Donahoe has been president and CEO of eBay since 2008\. He's now guiding the company in a time of deep uncertainty: In early 2014, eBay settled a nasty public feud with activist investor Carl Icahn, who wants eBay to spin off payment service PayPal as an independent business — and Icahn isn't the only one who thinks that's a good idea. Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images  Don Mattrick became CEO of Zynga, the social gaming company that brought us FarmVille, in 2013, coming over from Microsoft. He's been tasked with leading Zynga through a tumultuous period — the now publicly-traded company hasn't been able to replicate its FarmVille success, leaving many to wonder about the company's future. Michal Czerwonka—Getty Images _Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster are the authors of_ [Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success](http://www.amazon.com/Power-Score-Formula-Leadership-Success/dp/0345547357/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434042789&sr=8-1&keywords=the+power+score+geoff+smart)_, published by Ballantine in June 2015._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/"},"headline":"The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make","datePublished":"2015-07-23T16:32:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:39:00.748Z","description":"How not to be the Donald Trump or Michael Scott in your office","url":"https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/","keywords":["Books","politics","Business topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Geoff Smart","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/geoff-smart/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Randy Street","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/randy-street/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Alan Foster","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/alan-foster/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3944644/biggest-leadership-mistakes/","name":"The 5 Biggest Mistakes All Leaders Make"}}]}] ```