By Susan Cramm

There's only one kind of leadership malpractice: wasting the lives of those we lead.

Consider this multiple offender (sent to me in response to my last blog concerning compassion in leadership):

"I'm to show these fools some kind of compassion? For what? So they can go back to their cubicle or cubicles and sit at their decks and talk on their cell phones to their friends and look at porn on the computer that I paid for? I don't think so. More than a few have been fired for just that reason. I do not give a damn about the hired help. You are there to
make me a profit, just that simple. If you don't like it, hit the street."

Most leaders aren't this angry--or this clueless. But every leader makes errors in judgment that steal precious moments from the lives of others.

Click here to read Cramm's examples of leadership malpractice and her advice for overcoming them.

Susan Cramm is the founder and president of Valuedance. A former CFO and CIO, she is an expert on IT leadership. She is the author of 8 Things We Hate About IT.

This post originally appeared on Cramm's HarvardBusiness.org blog.