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Many people have the desire to become an entrepreneur or take on a key leadership role, but what sets the “wannabes” apart from the “movers and shakers” of the business world is the willingness to make mistakes.

Growing your business means you will make mistakes; there’s no getting around it. Nor is there anything wrong with making mistakes; it’s how we learn. In fact, if you are in a leadership role, risk-taking is likely part of your job description. And taking risks means you will undoubtedly make mistakes.   Whether you own a business or hold a leadership role in an organization, mistakes will happen. Some mistakes are obvious: underestimating financial needs; overspending; sacrificing quality for revenue growth… But there are other mistakes – more impactful mistakes – that will subliminally corrupt the very foundation of your business without your even realizing that they’ve occurred. The tricks are to understand where the truly costly mistakes are and to put a strategy in place that will allow you to avoid them to help grow your business.

I’ve identified nine common subliminal mistakes leaders make. Some of these, I suspect, are self-explanatory, others may not be.   In future posts we will be delving deeper into each as they are too important to simply be a single sentence statement.  Today I simply want to name them to get you thinking.

1. Worrying about making mistakes

2. Not unplugging

3. Undervaluing the importance of the right team

4. Having no succession plan or business continuation plan in place

5. Failure to develop key leaders

6. Failing to communicate with important constituencies

7. Not planning, not planning well enough, or not planning for the “what ifs”

8. Assuming that what got you here will get you there

9. Not seeing everything through the lens of “What can we learn from this?”

These subliminal mistakes can and will affect your ability to grow your business. Recognizing them is the first step. Step two is avoiding them, and in upcoming posts I will be discussing those strategies. Can you grow your business even making these mistakes? Of course! But you’ll experience a lot of frustration, stress and your upside potential will be limited. You have a choice not to have those be issues.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

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