So, you are in a leadership position or are shooting for one and have no idea where to begin. While being a leader is something we can all strive for, it is not a skill that comes naturally to everyone. Becoming a great leader takes hard work, learning from leadership mistakes, and self-awareness. 

Wasatch ActionCOACH wants to help maximize the leadership skills you already possess and work to improve problem areas that may lead you down a bad leadership path. Here are 10 leadership mistakes to avoid and a little about how you can overcome them. 

1- Avoiding Conflict

Many of us want to avoid confrontation and don’t want to approach someone who is doing something wrong. Avoiding conflict is high on the list of leadership mistakes and will cause more problems in your company. If conflict is causing contention between employees or you and an employee, it needs to be addressed and handled in order for the business to run smoothly. 

Avoiding conflict just masks the problem and is one of the biggest leadership mistakes. Try to be more open and help employees or team members feel comfortable coming to you with issues. A good leader will work to address the problem fairly and avoid setting a tone of chaos. 

2- Not Offering Employee Feedback

Open communication with your employees helps to promote growth and employee retention. Humans want to know that they are doing a good job and that their superior has recognized their hard work. 

You can help create an environment of continuous feedback, or schedule one on one time with employees to go over things that they have done well, or where they could improve. Employees without feedback may feel unappreciated or doubt their strength. Set clear times for feedback and stick to them. 

3- Not Having Faith In Your Abilities

Earning a leadership position usually doesn’t just get dropped in your lap, someone else saw your potential and skills and trusted your judgment. If you are constantly second-guessing yourself, this can rub off on your employees, causing a loss of trust. Being a leader can be intimidating, but continue to believe in yourself and work to improve. Having faith in your abilities is the only way to be successful. 

4- Saying One Thing And Doing Another

You will need to be a role model for those you oversee. Once you set expectations, you should stick to them. If you have a rule for your employees, you should follow that rule too. If you want employees to follow you and help the company to stand out, lead by example. The old saying goes “practice what you preach.” 

5- Hiring The Wrong People

Doing a quick hiring process because you are desperate for someone just leads to bigger problems down the road. Hiring someone unqualified for the job will have you right back in the thick of the hiring process. Take some time to define the perfect employee for the job, someone who is hard working and aligns with the mission of the company. 

Sometimes it can take a while to find the right person. You will want them to get along with others in the company and have integrity. Be patient and look for ways to weed out those who would not be a good fit. 

6- Being A Control Freak

But the business is your baby and no one can run it as you can! For something to grow, you have to let it go. Micromanaging your team will only create a miserable environment for everyone. Trusting that your team knows what they are doing and have the skills will help you avoid being a control freak. Avoiding this leadership mistake will help teams to run smoother, help your employees be more productive, and build trust between you and your employees. Micromanaging may even cause you to lose high-quality employees over frustration. 

7- Lacking Self-Awareness

One of the common mistakes that leaders can make is to put blinders on and stop looking at what their decisions are doing to the company. Being a leader does not mean we know the best solutions 100% of the time. Being self-aware helps you to notice what actions worked and what didn’t.

As a leader, you should be aware of the employee’s work, but also aware of where you stand and how you are handling your responsibilities. Are you communicating? Is there a course or book that you could learn more from? Are you asking for help when needed? A good leader notices their blindspots and works through them, before pointing them out in others. 

8- Getting Hooked On A Title

One of the worst leadership mistakes is to let the title and power go to your head. In reality, the title doesn’t mean much, especially to those who are true leaders who display it before they have a title. You should care about your list of responsibilities more than the title that hangs on your door. 

9- Taking The Credit, Not The Blame

A major complaint of employees is that a manager is the first to take credit for a joint effort and success, but pushes blame down the ladder when things don’t go to plan. As a leader, you should be able to take the blame if your idea was not successful. Effective leaders give credit where credit is due. This fosters morale and allows employees to do more tasks when they know they will be recognized. 

If you have done something well, take credit for it, but make sure your employees get credit for their contributions too. 

10- Not Delegating

Once in a leadership position, managers and leaders assume they need to do everything themselves, but these leadership mistakes can be avoided. Delegating tasks can be a great leadership tactic when done correctly. When you delegate, it helps the staff to have the opportunity to see the bigger picture and help the company. The truth is that you can not carry the whole company on your back, so share the load. 

Avoid Leadership Mistakes With Wasatch ActionCOACH

Our team at Wasatch ActionCOACH wants to help you make the most of the leadership skills you already have. Leadership mistakes are avoidable if you make an effort to improve your thinking. 

Research has shown that leadership coaching results in more effective leaders who also have higher job satisfaction. When employees have authentic leadership, they are more driven and feel motivated to stay loyal to a company. Unlock your full potential as a leader with our coaching. Contact Wasatch ActionCOACH in Kaysville, UT today and avoid common leadership mistakes in your business.

Coach Frank Bonnin

As a business owner you want more customers, more clients. You want to have greater revenue and to increase your profits. Because those are the things that really define a business and make it work. If you are seeking more clients, more revenue and greater profits, it’s really hard to affect change in those things. Because those are results of other activities.

So ultimately, there are 5 ways that you can affect change in your business and increase your profits. Those 5 Ways affect change to those three result-driven items: Clients, Revenue, and Profits.

1. # of Leads – how many potential clients do you attract?
2. Conversion Rate – How many leads do you convert into clients?
3. # of Transactions – How many times a year do your clients buy from you?
4. Average $ Sale – How much do your clients spend each time they buy from you?
5. Margins – What is the gross or net margin your business achieves?

#1 – Leads

To gain more clients or customers, you have to first look at your leads. Leads are defined as people who have in some fashion raised their hand, at least a little, showing interest in what you have to offer. A lead has not purchased from you yet. While you can’t have a direct effect on increasing the number of customers you have, you can affect change on how many leads you get.  First identify the number of leads you are currently getting and where they’re coming from. Then you begin to identify additional ways to gain more leads.  ActionCOACH has 87 different strategies to do so.  Some of these include:  Tradeshows, Strategic Alliances, writing articles or ebooks.

#2 – Conversion Rate

Next you want to look at what your conversion rate is. The conversion rate is the percentage of those leads who actually buy something. When you multiply the number of leads by the conversion rate, you end up with your number of customers or clients.   While you can’t affect change directly on your number of customers, you can affect change on leads and conversion rate which translates into more customers.  ActionCOACH shares with our clients a list of 85 different strategies to do so, including providing guarantees, educating prospects on value, selling an exclusive line.

#3 – Number of Transactions

You can affect change on how often a customer comes back. If you own a hardware store, how often do customers come back in a month or six months? If you are an insurance salesman, how often do clients come in and look at different products that you might be selling? In any business, the frequency of purchases relates directly to the actual revenue. So, you can’t directly affect change on your revenue, but you can affect change on how often customers come back. ActionCOACH has 68 tried and true strategies to increase the number of transactions, including under promise & over deliver, post-purchase reassurance, special occasion gifts, creating magical moments for your customers.

#4 – Average Dollar Sale

Similarly, you can affect change on how much your customers buy, what the average dollar of sale is. If you have defined what your value is and communicated that value to the client, they are no longer making a decision based on price.  They are making a purchase decision based on value. So you are not competing on price. Instead, you’re going to be going to be selling based on your value and you can affect change on the average dollar of sale that you have. We share 58 strategies for increasing the average dollar sale with our coaching clients, including creating a loyalty program, in-store video promotions, creating package deals.

#5 – Profit Margins

There are numerous ways a business can improve their profit margin.  Sometimes the simple act of measuring can improve your profit margin.  Let’s say you own a restaurant.  Start measuring the amount of food that is wasted by the end of each day.  Your team will become more conscious about the amount of food prepped in advance because they know if it isn’t used, it will be measured.  Another possibility is continuous improvement processes.  Building systems that are focused on efficiency, monitoring and measuring those systems.  You and your team continually asking how each process can be improved can have a significant impact on your bottom line.     

Essentially, this is the formula to Increase Your Profits:

Take the number of Leads and multiply by Conversion Rate, which gives you your number of Customers.  If you take the number of clients or Customers you have, multiply that by the average Number of Transactions and then by Average Dollar Sale, you arrive at your Revenue.  Multiply Revenue by your Margins and you get your Profits.

These are the 5 Ways that you can increase your profits!  In further articles we will discuss them each more in depth. 

If you’d like to learn more about the 5 Ways and how they can significantly increase your profits, schedule a free coaching strategy session.  

Coach Frank Bonnin

Most people start a business because they want to provide a product or service. They feel that they can make the best product or can provide the best service. They’re passionate about a business that will do that. And at some point in the future, they likely want to sell the company, because ownership isn’t forever. If you have a successful business, then selling to somebody else at some point is almost inevitable. At the very beginning identify what your end goal is and then pick a date when you want to be done with it.  Then you can plan ahead to add value to your business.

Let’s say five or ten years ago you started a business and now have decided you’ve done what you need to do. And you think it’s time to sell it. Well, if you talk to a business broker about that, they will tell you there are certain things that add value to your business. This is not necessarily something that people consider when starting a business.

When you start your business, you are the main person in the business, perhaps the only person in the business. And so you’re doing everything. At that point, what you really own is a job. If you own a home inspection company and are the home inspector, you can be very busy doing home inspections every day and generating enough revenue. Let’s say you decide ten years later it’s time for you to move on and you want to sell the company. However, you are still the only home inspector doing inspections. The business depends on you being there. It cannot function without you. You aren’t selling a business… you’re selling a job!

Same thing if you are a plumber. If you are doing all the plumbing work yourself, when it comes time to sell it, the only people who are going to be able to buy it is another plumber who wants to come in and do the plumbing work themselves.

Instead, you want to make a business that is truly valuable. One that can operate without you. You want be be able to add value to your business! At ActionCOACH, our definition of a business is, ‘A commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.’ 

In order to make your plumbing business work without you, you must step away from actually doing the plumbing jobs. And that may be difficult since you started the business because you’re excited about plumbing. You like doing plumbing. You enjoy that work. Maybe you’re an electrician, you like fixing the problems. You’re a problem solver. And people come to you with the problems and you help them out.

In order to add value to your business, what you must do is extricate yourself from the business. Build a team that is able to do the work on their own and solve the problems. Build systems for each area of your business. Production, Operations, Marketing, Sales, Business Development, etc.  

Let’s say your business is dependent on you and your revenue is $100,000 a year. How much can you sell it for? Likely not more than $100,000. However, if you have a business that is working without you, that has a profit of $100,000, how much is that worth? It’s worth a lot more than $100,000. It’s worth a multiplier of that. And that multiplier depends on a variety of things, including the industry you’re in.

Do you have to go into your business daily? The multiplier may not be as high. Do you go into your business weekly? Perhaps you simply call in on a weekly team meeting? That’s a pretty good ownership level there.

Maybe your general manager is running the business very well. You as the owner can say, “Hey, I’m going to go to Aruba for six months and I’ll call you when I get back.” Okay. That’s a business where that value is much more than $100,000 a year. That’s probably worth ten times that when it comes time to sell it. So that business would be worth $1,000,000. And if your revenue or profit is $1,000,000 a year, maybe the business is worth $10 million.

Creating a business that can work without you is absolutely key to add value to your business. Yes, profit matters. Yes, revenue matters. But that multiplier is a function of how much or how little the owner must be involved in the business and impacts the value greatly. The lesson here is: Don’t sell a job. Sell a business that works without you.

If you are interested in learning more about how to add value to your business: Attend one of our Lunch-n-Learns where our Coaches will share strategies related to growth and value. Or sign up for a free 1-hour coaching session with a certified business coach!