Watching the two of us line up our shots, I saw that I was bouncing and shimmying around the tee while Woods stood perfectly still. My pro underlined the lesson by concluding, “A big part of my job is not teaching people new movements, but teaching them to eliminate the unnecessary ones.”

Here are 10 hegemony behaviours that everyone who seeks success should try to eliminate. Acknowledging bad habits isn’t easy, but in business — as in golf — it’s the key to mastery.

//////////Getting Into the weeds Many executives reach their august positions by being damn good at things like sales, production or financial analysis. The people who take over these functions from them frequently don’t possess the same skill level. Or even worse, they sometimes want to do things differently.

Many leaders find it tantalizingly easy to stop focusing on the crux of their own jobs (envisioning the future and rallying others to achieve it) and to start doing other people’s jobs. I call it “acquirement into the weeds,” and it’s just as mucky as the name implies. When you fixate on the details of how things get done, your progress slows to zilch: your shoes get muddy, and you get nowhere wildly. In the meantime, those senior managers who trust their subordinates to do the job, even if they make a few mistakes along the way, are getting way ahead of you.

It’s hard to give up “doing.” But the job of a leader is to conduct the orchestra, not play all the instruments. Let other people sweat the details while you focus on the broader initiatives. That is why they are paying you the blustering bucks, isn’t it?

/////////Expecting colleagues and subordinates to be like you Over several years of executive coaching and charged with execution search, I have met many impressive people who have forgotten that not everyone around them knows as much or moves as fast as they do. So they don’t put in the time needed to bestow direction or explain things. They think a 30-minute meeting (including 10 minutes of small talk) is long enough to explain and get buy-in on a new initiative — because that’s all the time they would strait. Successful leaders respect individual differences. They take advantage of other people’s styles and talents. They encourage questions and feedback. They know they get better results by engaging people’s creativity, not conformity.

////////Attending too many meetings Once you become a senior leader in your organization, your presence in a room changes the dynamic. Sure, you want to show you after what is stated care about the marketing committee. Sometimes you want to find out first-hand what’s going on. And other people will try to pull you into meetings so they can feel closer to the top.

Beware of these traps. When the boss is in the room, the conversation changes. There are no exceptions to this rule — no matter how chummy you are (or think you are) with the troops.

There’s also a tendency for the people who should be making the decisions to defer to the biggest comp package at the table. This stalls growth. Other people need to develop just as you were allowed to. And that’ll happen more effectively if you ain’t there. Err on the take sides of empowering people, not babying them.

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