Virtual Entrepreneur

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Winning too much
When you work with entrepreneurs, what most often keeps them from becoming great leaders? A classic problem for them is that they are too competitive. Say you’ve had a hard day at work; you come home and your partner says, ‘I had a hard day today.’ You say, ‘You had a hard day! You had a hard day! You wouldn’t believe the kind of day I had.’ They’re so competitive that they have to prove they’re more miserable than the person they live with.

Starting with ‘no,’ ‘but’ or ‘however’
Don’t start sentences with ‘but,’ ‘no,’ or ‘however.’ The overuse of these negative qualifiers secretly says to everyone, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’ ‘No,’ ‘but,’ or ‘however’ means disregard everything that came before this word. Basically what you’re telling the person is shut up. So every time you do it today you’re going to owe me $20.

But … That’s $40.

Okay, explain why wanting to win all the time is harmful. How do you think your spouse feels when you tell her that your day was harder than hers? It’s the same in the office with your employees. Your need to win can make them feel bad about themselves.
Okay, explain why wanting to win all the time is harmful. How do you think your spouse feels when you tell her that your day was harder than hers? It’s the same in the office with your employees. Your need to win can make them feel bad about themselves.

One thing entrepreneurs have to realize is that their suggestions are orders.

So before you speak, ask yourself, ‘What’s more important? Me winning this point or my relationship with this person?’

Adding too much value
You’re the boss. I’m a young, smart and enthusiastic employee, and I come to you with what I think is a great idea. Instead of saying, ‘That’s a great idea,’ your tendency is to say, ‘That’s a great idea, but …’

Here’s the problem: The quality of the idea may go up 5%, but my commitment to its execution may go down 50%, because now it’s your idea, not mine. It’s hard for an entrepreneur to realize that the effectiveness of execution is a function of the quality of the idea times this human being’s commitment to make it work. We get so focused on trying to improve the quality that we forget about what we’re doing to commitment.

Playing favorites
One bad habit you identify as particularly hard to kick is playing favorites. None of us think we play favorites. Every leader, every entrepreneur I’ve known, says they hate suck-ups. If everyone hates suck-ups so much, how come so much sucking up goes on? We’ve created environments where people learn to suck up to us, and we don’t know we encourage it.

In my coaching classes I ask, ‘Who owns a dog that you love?’ A number raise their hand. I ask them the names of their pets, and they all get excited talking about their dogs. Then I say, ‘All right, who gets the most unqualified, positive recognition in your home, your husband, wife, partner, your kids or your dog?’ Some 80% of the time it’s the dog. Why? The dog doesn’t talk back, doesn’t give me negative feedback, he’s happy to see me, he wags his tail. He’s a suck-up.

To avoid playing favorites, ask yourself 4 questions:

1. How much do your employees actually like you? You don’t know how much they like you – it doesn’t matter. It’s how much you think they like you.

2. Ask how much are they like me? Owners who are engineers are often guilty of this. They’ll say, ‘The employee may be a jerk, but that’s okay, because he’s one of us, he’s an engineer. How much do they remind me of that ever so wonderful me?’

3. How much do they contribute to our company, and

4. How much personal recognition do I give them?

If we’re honest with ourselves, recognition is more highly correlated with question one or 2 than it is with 3. We fall into a trap where we’re teaching people to suck up to us. In another West Coast small high-tech company, a technically brilliant engineer hires a technically brilliant engineer. And he keeps hiring engineers and wondering why sales and marketing aren’t doing all that well. He hired all geeks.

Goal obsession
Entrepreneurs, almost by definition, are obsessed with achieving their goals. You say that can cause difficulties. I worked with a guy on Wall Street who was clocking 80 hours a week, and he said he was doing it because he needed to make a lot of money. When I asked him why, he said that he’d been married 3 times, and ‘Do you know how much alimony I pay?’ Then I asked, ‘Why have you been married three times?’ He replied, ‘None of my wives understood how hard I had to work.’

A lot of entrepreneurs bust their butts for years to acquire worth, ruin their marriage, and 50% of everything they made – at least here in CA – is gone. How smart is that? They get so wrapped up in a goal they forget other things that were more important.

Entrepreneurs kill themselves, literally. They work themselves to death, they don’t get physical exams, their health goes straight to hell. For what? You have to find balance.

But entrepreneurs by nature are goal obsessed.

Now you owe me $60.

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