3 Mistakes Business Owners and Leaders Must Avoid

One of the best ways for a CEO, president, business owner or leader to earn employee mistrust is to continually make any or all of the following three blunders:

I can’t tell you how often I have personally observed people in leadership positions commit these errors. The unfortunate part about this quandary is that they are digging a deeper ditch, making it all the more difficult to crawl out of.

Let’s take a look at each one of these mistakes and see what can be done to prevent them from happening in the future. This  begins to rebuild a leader’s trust factor.

Blunder #1: Leaders who don’t admit when they make a mistake
This is an easy faux pas to commit because many times the person making the mistake doesn’t realize he or she has committed it. Like a major league baseball umpire who misses a call, he doesn’t realize it, but the 30 thousand fans know it. When it is confirmed on the huge scoreboard, it becomes clear as day for everyone to see.Fortunately, Major League Baseball (MLB) now allows the instant replay review to allow league officials to review certain types of plays in order to determine the accuracy of the initial call of the umpires on the field.What about you in your company or organization? Do you have a system to reverse bad choices, or mistakes you or your leadership team have committed? If you don’t, you may want to institute one. Why? Because when you make a mistake and don’t admit and correct it, you are building a case for mistrust.You and I are the same way. When someone we know makes a blatant mistake and refuses to acknowledge it, we start to mistrust the person. Our rationale is if they can’t see the truth, how can they be trusted to speak the truth in other similar situations?

The solution is a simple one. As Dale Carnegie once said, “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.”  You can’t go wrong by following this recommendation.

There is one more point to make, as Carnegie suggests: admit it as soon as possible. The longer you wait the less it means when you finally admit it.

Blunder #2: Leaders who don’t sincerely apologize when they have offended someone
In their article in Forbes magazine titled, Creative Leadership Humility and Being Wrong, authors,
Doug Guthrie
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and Sudhir Venkatesh, share the importance of the positive power of admitting and apologizing for one’s mistakes.  In the article they point out the following:“We are frequently taught that leaders, especially aspiring leaders, should hide weaknesses and mistakes. This view is flawed. It is not only good to admit you are wrong when you are; but also it can be a powerful tool for leaders—actually increasing legitimacy and, when practiced regularly, can help to build a culture that actually increases solidarity, innovation, openness to change and many other positive features of organizational life.”On an assignment, some time ago, I observed a retail department head who had the tendency to be blunt, insensitive and unresponsive when dealing with his employee’s requests.On one occasion he stepped over the line by not responding to the employees’ request for help in dealing with a particular customer. It was an obvious blunder, and he should have known it, but he didn’t. His attitude was, he was, “too busy and too important” to deal with customers.

To make matters worse, everyone in the department knew it. Once it was brought to his attention, do you think this supervisor apologized for his mistake? Not a chance. The result was, his entire team just silently marked him down a few more points in his ability to be a true leader.

What could he have done? Well first, he would have to admit to himself that he made the mistake. He would have to recognize that it was going to take courage and a good deal of self esteem to speak up and sincerely apologize to this individual team member. The next opportunity, and every opportunity he would need to be prompt in apologizing for any mistakes made. Word would get around and he would begin to build his trust factor throughout his organization.

Blunder #3: Leaders who don’t answer an employee’s questions, request for clarification or more informationSometimes leaders mistake a request for more information or clarification of a message they sent, as a weakness in the person requesting the information.

They reason that this person must not have the courage to take action on matters involving accountability. Sometimes that might be the case. But ultimately, whose responsibility is it to make sure they have the training and the confidence to make those decisions and take the necessary actions?
You guessed it, the leader that person reports to.

There is nothing that builds distrust more than a leader who doesn’t communicate promptly and consistently.

Let’s take a look at why this happens. First, the person requesting the information usually does it for good reason. They need to make a decision, and they believe the leader has the necessary information to help them make the best decision.

When a business owner, CEO, or president tells me he or she doesn’t have enough time to answer requests for information, I respond in this way. “You don’t have enough time not to answer the requests for information.”

Think about it. A delayed or wrong decision by one of your employees can cost the company time, money, rework of an order, hurt feelings, and even lost clients and customers. So, if you don’t think you have enough time to answer those requests, my recommendation would be – better reconsider.

Sometimes a leader doesn’t know the answer. So now what should he or she do?
“I don’t know,” is not an acceptable answer, A better way to go could include any of the following responses:

 In summary, to stop making trust building blunders, and to build your team’s belief in you, I strongly recommend doing the following:

When you are able to employ these three tools, you will be building your confidence levels and your reputation for being trustworthy and a real human being.