“My days are full of turnabouts. I have to go back on promises, reshuffle priorities, and I second-guess too much. It’s wearing on me, and I feel like I am spending hard-earned goodwill,” a member of an executive leadership team told me in one of our sessions. “I want to pause for a moment and talk about how I can be a good leader in a bad economy.”

On paper, this person was being a good leader by enacting tried-and-tested strategies to prepare for an economic downturn: becoming more hands-on and moving closer to their team, setting a faster pace, and asking people to handle bigger workloads. But instead of releasing energy and instilling confidence, these moves were wearing the leader down — and their employees, too. In their effort to build a fortress, they felt like they were about to burn down the house.

This feeling may be familiar to executives and managers who are anticipating a recession on top of the aftershocks of the pandemic. The common thinking is that each crisis makes people stronger and more able to cope. But this is not the reality. Compounding crises tend to make people more vulnerable — and more shaky.

This shakiness poses a formidable challenge. It means that some of the normal crisis responses people turn to won’t work as intended. Indeed, if leaders use the standard playbook as-written, much like our executive at the beginning of this article, they actually risk setting off a destructive spiral and making the crisis worse.

To succeed as a leader in this moment, I suggest three key balances people need to get right: moving closer without suffocating others; moving faster without turning frantic; and taking on or assigning a bigger workload without sacrificing relationships.

Moving Closer Without Suffocating Others

When there are rumblings of an economic downturn, the first response from leaders is often to move closer. More meetings are called, more reporting is required, more detail goes into every conversation. This is quite natural — leaders want to understand what is going on. They want to help find answers. They want to make sure their teams are on track and doing what they can to fix the situation.

Psychologically, however, the impetus to move closer is often a need to feel in control. Moving closer is a risky maneuver and a double-edged sword. On the back of the pandemic, where teams have learned to operate independently and with less oversight, a boss looking over their shoulder can feel like outright distrust and disenfranchisement. It also draws their attention away from doing their job and on to “managing upwards.” The outcome may be stifling instead of stimulating.

Further, if leaders move too close, they clog up their own bandwidth with details and micro-management. The worst-case scenario is when a leader formally takes over their subordinates’ role because they believe they can do better. At a financial institution I was observing, for example, a top leader was so frustrated about the prospect of losing a large client that he marched into a meeting his team was having with them and interrupted the dialogue. He was short of breath, sweating, and agitated, and stood behind his employees to watch and ask questions. He later explained that he was only there to “secure that you do your job right” and to “fire up the crew.” It didn’t work; the company lost the client, citing “a hostile, immature and frantic environment that made them uncomfortable.” The team eventually dissolved, and good people quit their jobs.

To be sure, there are some legitimate reasons to move closer, like when leaders want to ground their judgment in first-hand experience or signal support by showing up on the frontlines. But they must remember that the point of moving closer is to motivate, energize, and support; not control, disengage, or sow doubt. A balanced approach is “touch and go,” engaging with teams on the issues they face, but also not taking the weight off their shoulders and onto your own. A good test is to make sure you don’t end up with a laundry list of things you need to fix for the team, but rather that your team knows their laundry list and understand that they now have control of the steering wheel again.

Move closer — but don’t hover — and have a clear exit strategy. Once you have seen enough, give the power back to your employees.

Moving Faster Without Turning Frantic

The second typical response is a healthy bias for action. In times of crisis, leaders cannot sit on their hands; time is of the essence. You can almost feel it in the jittery pace of meetings, as well as in a leader’s tone of voice or restless demeanor.

However, there is a fine line between urgent and frantic. Leaders must remember that the pandemic has made many people more brittle, not more resilient. Stress and mental health issues have skyrocketed. As a result, while most people understand the need of speed in a crisis, their tolerance for “pushy” leadership is much lower than it might have been prior to 2020.

To address this, leaders should examine the psychological traps they tend to fall into when economic times get tough. One common one is that people think they have less time than they actually do, so they come up with imaginary and self-imposed deadlines. “We need a solution by the end of the month” may create urgency, but if the better solution is another few months away, imaginary deadlines can sacrifice value in exchange for the illusion of speed.

Add to this the fact that leaders often exhibit less tolerance for dissent when things get difficult. They tend to become more ego-centric, so when others object to an idea or proposal, it’s quickly interpreted as resistance and obstruction, not as reflection or constructive feedback. Sooner or later, this pattern of behavior will lead to disengagement from the team and a sense of “false consensus” on ideas. While this might result in faster decisions, it can also hamper independent thinking and prevent better solutions from coming to the fore.

A balanced approach is to create a deliberate delay between ideas, decisions, and actions. Think of it as impulse control by design: Create structures and processes where you allow others (the board, external advisors, peers, or good colleagues) to vet and question your plans. You don’t have time or patience for endless bureaucracy, so design these processes to be fast and informal. Sometimes they can be as short as a quick phone call where you spell out what you want to do and test the immediate reaction of someone you trust.

Increasing Workloads Without Sacrificing Relationships

The third typical response to economic downturns is that leaders become more task-oriented and less mindful of relationships. Just like the frustrated executive earlier in this article, many leaders will ask their teams to take on a bigger workload. To-do list gets longer and longer because “more” feels better and “more” feels like responsible leadership. You might also hear versions of the statement, “We need to fix problems now, not coddle people.” As a result, off-sites are canceled, talent programs are put on hold, perks are cut, and courteousness and empathy go down the drain.

However, relationship work is not coddling; it is hard-core performance management. We have learned from the aftermath of the pandemic that good people rarely quit or “quiet quit” because their job becomes more difficult or because times turn harder. They quit because they lose faith in their leaders, their colleagues, or the future of the company. They withdraw because they feel unfairly treated or neglected. Yes, people go to work to complete the mission and finish their tasks, but more than anything they go to work because of the connection and community they feel they have with their colleagues. So, continue to invest in relationship-building. Maybe downgrade on the luxury, but still spend the time investing in creating connections. Go for five-star content, impact, and interaction, but in a three-star setting.

Part of doing this involves maintaining a balanced approach around relationship and task priorities. Be transparent with your team: What’s the nature and quality of work relationships you expect to see during a tough period? What kind of challenges and supports do you expect of each other? What kind of relationship compromises are you not willing to make, even if they would deliver short-term results? Ultimately, if you find yourself in an extended downturn, take a step back with the team and redefine what success looks like – and not only for the work tasks themselves.

. . .

Being a good leader in a bad economy has always been challenging. This time around is even more so because the usual burden of a bad economy may be compounded by the emotional disruptions of the pandemic. This means that leaders must turn the pages of the standard crisis playbook with care and moderation.

Leaders cannot stand still in the face of an economic downturn, but their bias for action and their instinctive responses — moving closer, moving faster, and increasing workload — must be harnessed. If these natural and legitimate leadership moves are not made in a balanced way, leaders may actually amplify the crisis.

When building a team at a startup earlier in my career, our investors, advisors, and I crafted what looked like a bullet-proof recruiting strategy. Our advisory group collectively had more than 100 years of experience operating companies. But despite the wealth of expertise behind our hiring process, I learned an important lesson the hard way: Even the most rigorous recruiting strategy is only as strong as the decision-maker’s biggest blind spot.

“Elliot,” a media professional I interviewed, was articulate, energetic, and showed a natural affinity for our product. His credentials were solid, and — crucially — he was willing to take an equity position in lieu of a large salary. For a startup, this was a big factor. We hired him.*

But in recommending this decision, I overlooked a few red flags. Notably, Elliot admitted to leaving a trail of burned bridges with former employers and was convinced he’d been repeatedly victimized by unappreciative bosses and bad environments. He didn’t make a good impression on our lead investor, and his own references spoke about him in neutral tones. But he had what I thought counted: passion and potential. I believed I could fix the rest.

Elliot ultimately stirred up numerous problems for the company. We believe that he stole information, lied, and destroyed intellectual property. While we couldn’t have foreseen the extent of this behavior, we dismissed warning signs right from the start. Our problem wasn’t a lack of knowledge about hiring best practices — it was my own blind spot. I downplayed the risk, thinking we could rehabilitate this troubled candidate and bring out his potential. So, despite the warning signs and a major investor’s concerns, I made the recommendation to bring him on board.

Having now worked with and mentored dozens of leaders and founders, I know I’m not alone. Nearly every hiring manager has a blind spot that, if left unidentified, can lead to devastating consequences even within well-planned systems. Over time, I’ve identified five of the most common blind spots that compromise recruitment outcomes.

Fixing and rescuing

This was my blind spot with Elliot, and one that is common among founders and other entrepreneurial leaders. Entrepreneurs are by nature more likely than average to believe they can affect massive change. This can extend to an overconfidence in their ability to “develop” employees, even in light of evidence that a person is lacking the requisite character traits for growth, like accountability and openness to feedback. A superstar sports coach rehabilitating a talented but self-destructive athlete makes for good television, but the reality is that most hiring managers don’t have the resources, skills, or time to reform troubled hires.

Beyond overconfidence in their problem-solving skills, entrepreneurs are also vulnerable to this pattern because of their tight budgets. They’re often looking for a deal, and a candidate willing to take a sizeable portion of their salary in equity represents just that. Leaders with pride in their organization will assume that the individual’s motivation is their passion for the business. They’ll overlook the possibility that other reasons may drive someone to take a step down financially — including a lack of options.

If you recognize this blind spot in yourself, one of the best ways to mitigate the danger is obvious but underused: Don’t make hiring decisions alone. Seek out a second opinion. If you already have a second opinion, don’t make my mistake — listen to it.

Validation seeking

“Emily,” a tech startup CEO, found her business in jeopardy when her product experienced a massive feature failure in beta testing. No one on her team had voiced any criticisms pre-launch. She didn’t understand how this was possible. But Emily admitted that she only hired people who showed unbounded enthusiasm in interviews. She deemed candidates who under-praised the product “not passionate enough.”

As a result, she overlooked contrarian candidates, the exact people who call out problems even when doing so is unpopular. A study out of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management warns that leaders who develop “heightened overconfidence from high levels of such ingratiatory behavior” will be less likely to “initiate needed strategic change.” Emily, who conflated validation with passion, was a case in point.

If you have a validation-seeking blind spot, also known as “affect-based” decision making, realize that pointing out flaws does take passion. It requires attention, analysis, and the courage to speak up. Praise is easy. Don’t overlook the candidates who offer thought-provoking criticism of your business, even if your knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss them.

Boundary breaching

“Anna,” a marketing executive, believed a selling point for job candidates was that her team was “like a family” — at least until a colleague confessed that the team resented how much time Anna spent helping “Jill,” one of her direct reports, navigate her divorce. With Jill, something was always wrong — with her partner, her parents, her social life, her car — and Anna felt it was her duty to indulge these “emergencies,” often at the expense of the rest of the team, who picked up the slack.

Anna remembered how drawn Jill was to the idea of a tight-knit team during the interview process. What Anna didn’t understand is that there is a time and place for empathy. Empathy can turn a good leader into a great leader, but it can also be misapplied.

In describing her team as a family, Anna thought she was signaling an empathetic culture to job candidates. But language like “we’re a family” or “we’re always there for each other no matter what,” actually signals a lack of professional boundaries.

If you find yourself attracting high-drama candidates who monopolize everyone’s time, make a note of any overly personalized language you might be using. Also be wary of oversharing by candidates, particularly when they present personal stories as mitigating factors for recurring problems at work.

Micromanaging

Most people accept, at least in theory, that micromanagement is an undesirable practice rooted in self-doubt and uncertainty. Nevertheless, many leaders still signal a micromanaged culture to candidates while recruiting them. Self-determination, autonomy, and a strong internal locus of control inspire the creative impulse. Enterprising people require the freedom to take risks, make mistakes, and challenge engrained suppositions.

Thus, a hiring manager who hints at heavy oversight during recruitment will likely attract candidates who tolerate inflexible environments well — individuals who lack passion, are not highly engaged, prefer linear work, and are not highly driven.

If you find yourself struggling to attract and hire self-managing, creative people, it’s worth considering the signals you’re sending. Think about whether you may be placing too much emphasis on rules and procedures, glamorizing the hierarchy or org chart, or suggesting that all conflict (some of which can be productive) is unwelcome.

Detachment

“Jamie,” a health care leader, was forced to fire someone she’d hired after he bullied colleagues. This was not the first time a hire of Jamie’s didn’t get along with the team, and she didn’t understand how it happened again. Upon review, we realized that Jamie touted “total freedom” in interviews as a hallmark of company culture, telling candidates she would only weigh in on an as-needed basis so as not to get in their way.

Jamie thought she was signaling that she didn’t micromanage. But according to colleagues, she instead telegraphed that she didn’t really care.

While hands-off management can show your team that you trust them, emotional detachment tells people that they’re on their own. Research indicates that teams with an absent leader often end up feeling like they’re in a sink-or-swim environment, which can become a breeding ground for unhealthy conflict. A laissez-faire leadership style creates a vacuum that allows bullies to thrive. Jamie had never considered that her interview style attracted power-seekers instead of team players.

Going too far with the “you’re on your own, good luck” messaging can also result in a transactional group of individuals looking to clock in, clock out, and not be bothered. If this is your team, consider balancing the independence messaging with reassurance that a strong network and committed leadership are in place.

. . .

All of these blind spots are damaging not just because of who they attract — but because of what they lead you to miss out on. Every time a leader brings in a team member who lacks accountability or is unengaged or a bully, the rest of the team pays the price. With a bit of self-reflection and an honest assessment of the oversights that may be driving repeat hiring offenses, managers can nip many of these patterns in the bud — and begin to notice the superstars they’ve passed over.

* Some details have been changed for privacy.