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As a business owner or corporate leader, your employees look to you to keep things moving. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy, and certain personality flaws, such as having a one-track mind and daydreaming during meetings, can push you off track. However, with self-awareness, training, and preemptive measures, you can overcome any potential deficits and be the best possible leader you can be.
The Devil Is in The Details
The big picture of your business is not just what is front facing to your customers. Failure to have a fundamental understanding of all the moving parts is a critical mistake. Acumen Learning’s training can help you increase your productivity, spot new career opportunities, pay more attention during important calls and meetings, and stop being intimidated by financial statements.
If these shortcomings sound familiar, there’s also a good chance that you don’t prioritize administrative tasks either. A few examples of these include business formation, employee communication, and file storage. Fortunately, each of these actions can be handled by an employee or an outsource service. Your business formation, for example, can be finalized using an online service, which can help you start an LLC in Utah so that you are no longer personally liable for business losses due to legal actions. Employee communication might be something as simple as bringing in a freelance writer to draft a weekly or monthly newsletter. File storage is perhaps the easiest of all, and a simple account with a cloud services provider can automatically save your and your employees documents so that they are not locked or lost in case of a technology disruption.
Intelligence Beyond Brains
You no doubt got to where you are in business by having knowledge and intelligence. But, intelligence is so much more than brains. When you are dealing with employees and customers, you have to have more than just smarts. You must also be emotionally aware, which means prioritizing the elements of emotional intelligence. These include self-awareness, social skills, empathy, self-regulation, and motivation. Poor emotional intelligence can lead to shaky or nonexistent relationships with your employees, superiors, and vendors. Further, a lack of emotional maturity makes it more difficult to know when you need redirecting, such as if you need coaching or can’t commit to a project.
Comfort Isn’t Comfortable
As you climb further and further up the ladder of success, it’s easy to get comfortable with the view. Unfortunately, the ladder only keeps growing taller, and your competition will surely ascend. Although it’s great to be confident in your business, you have to learn how to listen to your employees, especially if they tell you things you may not want to hear. And, even if you think you are doing everything right, don’t ignore your customers. When you have negative feedback, even if it’s only one negative customer experience, it is an opportunity to see where your company or individual employees need improvement. Negative feedback also helps you improve your product development efforts and, as customer satisfaction reporting company Happy Or Not points out, is also great feedback that can help drive your marketing efforts.
If you don’t want to be among the 66% of businesses that go under within the first decade, you have to learn how to focus on a broad vision. While you may have expertise in one area, you must gain and maintain a fundamental understanding of all components that make up your organization. When you are a business leader, your success is in your hands. And while it’s absolutely essential to have employees and outsourced services, in the fight against failure, your favorite childhood cartoon was right, and knowing really is half the battle.
Acumen Learning’s business acumen courses are now available online with access to free book resources.
Written by Contributing Author: Derek Goodman of Inbizability