When a leader spends more time managing than leading, morale suffers among the troops. Most people would prefer a goal to shoot for and some freedom to figure out how to reach that goal. "We all crave at least a partial sense of control,"

In a study several years ago, two teams of leaders were given a difficult problem to solve. The complex problem involved mental gymnastics, difficult decisions, and intense concentration. Both teams participated in the project in a room where distracting sounds were piped in through speakers. The music, noise, and voices were enough to drive you to distraction. Which, of course, was the point.

Team A couldn't do anything about the distracting sounds. They just had to put up with them. Team B was told that by pushing a button they could silence the distractions for five minutes. The only catch was that they could only use the button once each hour. Each team was then scored on various phases of their group task.

Mistaking individual loyalty for team building.

The next mistake is a bit more subtle and difficult to detect. Ron calls it, "The Newton's Cradle approach to leadership."

Let's say that you are the person at the top of the leadership chain in your organization. You are the crossbeam. Those steel spheres hanging beneath the crossbeam are the people who work closely with you. The plastic connectors are the individual relationships you make with those people.

You, the leader, pull one of your team members away from the others and get him pumped up about a change that needs to be made. That's like pulling one of the steel balls and holding it there. Then when you let him go, you expect him to return to the rest of the team, where they will all function with superb team dynamics, solving the current problems, achieving team goals, and making changes.

We shouldn't neglect the individual relationships with those who work closely with us. We also can't miss the important steps necessary to putting those people together in team situations where they learn what it means to work together.

Failing to apply what motivates us.

What motivates you?The ability to create? The freedom to apply what you know in order to solve problems? The thrill of a new challenge? Ask most leaders what motivates them and those items will surface. But when we get our jobs down to a science and there are no new challenges, we get bored or lose interest.

A leader may know what motivates him, but he forgets that the same things motivate those who work for him.

We want our people to be competent so that everything always runs smoothly. But when we lock people into the routine of sameness, we wind up killing their motivation. When we stretch people into new areas of challenges, we know they are going to make mistakes. But when we keep them "safe," we take the motivational wind out of their sails.