I asked if I could sit in on a team meeting to scope out situation. "Be my guest," he said. "But I don't see what good it'll do. The problem isn't in meetings. Everybody agrees what needs to get done when they're in meetings. The problem is results after meetings."

The meeting had been going only for only a couple of minutes when I saw what was wrong. Afterwards, alone in his office, I told him: "They're not problem. YOU'RE problem. You've fallen into two leadership traps."

He looked at me incredulously. "What traps?"

I explained that leaders often fall into traps that prevent them from getting full measure of results they're capable of. And deadliest traps are often ones of their own making.

The first trap is "I need . . . " trap.

Leaders fall into this trap when they say, "I need you to hit marketing targets, I need you to get more productive, I need you to (fill in blank)". I NEED ... I NEED ... I NEED ....

Why is this a trap? The answer: Leader's Fallacy. The Leader's Fallacy is mistaken belief by leaders that their own needs are automatically reciprocated by needs of people they lead. It's a fallacy because automatic reciprocity doesn't exist. But so many leaders go blithely along driven by Fallacy and so fall into "I need . . . " trap.

For instance, marketing leader thought he was motivating people to get great results. However, during meeting, he was constantly repeating, "I need ... ". So, in reality, he was ordering people to get average results. Of course, leaders don't order people to get average results. But average results are usually outcome of order leadership.

The order is lowest form of motivation. The order leader's focus of my-way-or-the-highway can't get great results from people on a consistent basis simply because people usually can't be ordered to undertake extraordinary endeavors. They must choose to do so. When he said, "The bad news is they ONLY do what I tell them.", he was unknowingly afflicting them. They were simply responding to an order then going into a kind of suspended animation (masked by busy work) until next order came along.

In Part 2, I'll describe how to get out of this trap.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

An aspect of interior design for bargain hunters that many people do not ever even consider is labor involved with creating designs. This can include services such as painting, moving, carpet cleaning, ect. Labor prices are end of interior design that often are most costly (with exception of furniture and flooring). Bargain hunting for labor is a bit different then bargain hunting for actual physical items. You might think that perhaps you can afford to hire someone for less actual dollars an hour that possess perhaps less skill then another more expensive worker. This is a tricky aspect of interior design for bargain hunters.

Keep in mind that many times workers who have more experience or are better skilled at a certain task will complete work at a faster pace then unskilled worker, thus actually evening out hourly price, and also there is not as much of a possibility of costly mistakes. So, honestly, depending on skill level of worker involved, you might be better off with more expensive yet more efficient laborer.

Whatever market or product you are searching for, be a smart, price-savvy comparison shopper and exercise control over spending amounts. Establishing pre-set spending amounts is a form of self-discipline and should be exercised throughout interior design process. Bargain hunting for interior design can be as simple as taking this principle to heart and applying it to all of your decorating activities.

Finally, hard work and attention to detail can enormously decrease project costs so if you have time and understanding to see an aspect of designing through yourself, this alone can turn a large budgeted project into a small one. After all, that elbow grease is worth a little something!