9 Popular Leadership “Rules” That Are Dead Wrong
They sound wise and smart, but they're completely wrong and you need to break them.
We’ve all heard them.
The “rules” of leadership.
Passed down in books, podcasts, and panels. Repeated in LinkedIn threads with thousands of likes.
They sound wise, smart, and proven…
Until you actually try to lead a team with them.
And you realize… they don’t work. Or worse, they backfire.
Over the past two decades in the corporate world, I’ve followed many of these myself, only to find myself struggling and failing.
Here’s what I’ve learned over these years:
The most popular leadership advice isn’t always the most “helpful”.
Sometimes, it’s exactly what’s holding you and your team back.
Okay, so let’s break down 9 leadership “rules” that are widely believed… and why they’re dead wrong.
1. “The customer is always right.”
This one’s baked into corporate culture.
And how could it be wrong? Putting the customer first feels like the most obviously correct business advice you’ve heard.
But when taken literally, and to an extreme level, this mindset can backfire for your team and your business.
You end up:
Overriding your team’s decisions to appease a loud customer
Rewarding bad customer behavior
Prioritizing short-term wins over long-term trust
What to do instead:
Prioritize your customers, but don’t worship them. Do what’s right for the business, while taking care of your team.
2. “Move fast and break things.”
It sounds bold, energetic, and disruptive.
And yes, speed matters. But speed without clarity is just confusion and chaos.
When you move fast and break things:
You confuse your team
You create unnecessary rework
You celebrate action over impact
It creates a dopamine loop of busyness, without much progress.
What to do instead:
Move fast, but with purpose. Speed is only useful when it’s aligned with the direction that you want to get to.
Clarity first. Speed second.
3. “Leaders eat last.”
Simon Sinek made this phrase famous through his bestselling book, and to be fair, the spirit behind it is good.
Serve your team, share the spotlight, and don’t hog credit. All that makes sense.
But here’s the trap: some leaders take this so literally, they become martyrs.
They skip breaks, avoid recognition, and burn out slowly, all in the name of “service.”
What to do instead:
Lead by example, and take care of yourself so you can take care of your team.
You don’t need to eat first, but you do need to eat.
4. “Give 100% all the time.”
In this competitive world, sure you need to put your best foot forward.
“Hustle is the new mantra,” as they say.
But if you’re always hustling, you’re going to burn out yourself and your team, and it’s not sustainable. This behavior signals your team that rest is failure.
If 100% is the baseline, then:
Recovery looks like weakness
Asking for help looks like slacking
Burnout becomes a badge of honor
What to do instead:
Encourage sustainable performance. Sure, there will be times when your team will slog and work their a$$es off, but that cannot become the norm. You need to let your team breathe.
5. “Never play favorites.”
This is one of the most misunderstood rules I’ve come across.
Sure, you shouldn’t be playing favorites in your team. You should treat everyone fairly.
But many managers take ‘fairness’ for ‘equality’. They start treating everyone the same.
But the reality is that everyone isn’t the same. People have different strengths, goals, and working styles. When you pretend they’re identical, you ignore what makes them unique.
And worse, your high performers will feel ignored and unrewarded, while low performers will stay comfortable without being challenged.
What to do instead:
Be fair, but not equal. Give more attention to people who need the support. Support each person based on what they need, not what looks ‘even’.
6. “Don’t get too close to your team.”
Somewhere along the way, we decided that good leaders can’t get too close to their teams.
The leadership gurus would tell you to “keep it professional” and “don’t blur the lines”.
And what happens when you keep distance from your team? You come across as cold, transactional, and robotic.
You sound like you’re talking down at them from a pedestal. You might get compliance, but you don’t get real commitment or trust.
What to do instead:
Get to know your team as humans. Ask about their lives, share a bit of yours.
People work harder for leaders they actually like.
7. “Always be positive.”
Optimism is a good thing, but when taken to the extreme, it can kill honest, real conversations.
If everything is always “great”, there’s no real room for feedback or improvement.
Over time, the culture can turn toxic, and it teaches your team to hide their problems.
What to do instead:
Be optimistic, but don’t lose touch with reality.
Acknowledge when things are hard, and work with your team to find a path forward.
8. “Good leaders never doubt themselves.”
Let me say this clearly: self-doubt is normal.
In fact, I’d be more worried about a leader who never questions themselves.
Leadership is full of unknowns: high-stakes decisions, new threats, unpredictable outcomes.
The pressure to “always know” leads to:
Impostor syndrome
Overconfidence
Silence (when you really need help)
What to do instead:
Normalize doubt, and ask for input from your team and others around you. Admit what you don’t know, and be willing to learn.
Real confidence isn’t the absence of doubt. It’s the ability to move forward with it.
9. “Reward results, not effort.”
This one is especially dangerous in fast-growing startups and innovation cultures.
Only rewarding outcomes sounds bold and efficient, but it kills experimentation. Because smart experiments often fail, and if you’re only chasing successful outcomes, you will miss out on learning from those experiments.
If you only reward results:
Teams only focus on outcomes, not learning
People avoid risks, and focus on ‘what works’
Work becomes performative, not real
What to do instead:
Celebrate focused effort, even if it didn’t work, as long as it led to some learning.
Reward initiative, curiosity, and learning, not just “results”.
So, which rules have you fallen into, and which ones have you broken? Let me know in the comments below!
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Leaders are human. People being led are human. Effective and sustainable leadership should align with human nature, not go against it.