Your company and your character: The high price of avoidance

There are countless articles and books on what you should do as you attempt to grow your business. But very little advice focuses on the aspect of your daily business life that has the most effect on your company's success: your character.

For good or ill, your character affects everything you do every day. It affects every decision you make - or fail to make. It determines how your employees perceive your ability to lead the company - and their enthusiasm or discouragement. It affects how much your customers trust you and how much your competitors fear you - or not.

As we go through life, we develop habits of character. We tend to rely on certain skills that we have practiced since childhood, and turn a blind eye to most of our deficiencies. Friends and loved ones try to point out how much our deficiencies are hurting us, and every so often, we admit that they are right. But it's easier to keep doing what we've always done than it is to actually make changes.

It is surprising how successful we can be, even though we fail to improve in our weaker areas. Of course, we're also currently operating in a very robust economic environment. When that changes, the "little things" will have more of an effect on our success.

The most common - and most damaging - character flaws that I find in CEOs and entrepreneurs are closely related. They are: Avoidance, procrastination, and rationalization.

Avoidance. Of the hundreds of company owners and leaders I have worked with, I can count on one hand the number of them who face every issue with the same forthrightness. Sometime in their lives, those few people had made the decision that they would never run from dealing with a problem. Needless to say, they are very successful.

If you are this person, you'll need to hire like-minded people (other face-it-now types). If you change your ways and shift from being an avoider to a face-it-now person, expect that the avoiders who work for you will become very uncomfortable. They will either stomp out or you will let them go (sooner rather than later, because you have changed your ways). Replace them with other face-it-now types, and expect success to follow.

What do you typically avoid? Tough decisions? Necessary confrontations? Conflict? The least effective leaders are those who will attempt to avoid conflict at any cost. After a few years, they pay the ultimate price. If they're working for someone else, they lose their job. If they own a company, they lose the company. Yes, that's right. Sooner or later, that issue they have so skillfully avoided comes around to bite them, and the result is a disaster from which recovery is impossible.

Procrastination. You may decide that you need to face something unpleasant - which is a good decision - but then you decide to face it "tomorrow."

How many times during each business day do you find yourself saying, "I don't want to deal with this right now"?

In our age of myriad distractions, it's much easier for the self-employed entrepreneur to look at the latest video on You Tube or read a political rant online than it is to buckle down and attack something difficult on the to-do list.

For the CEO managing other people, it's much easier to have a pleasant meeting with a respected employee or consultant than it is to face the fact that one of your employees is just not cutting the mustard, or that an important process just isn't working effectively anymore.

There are many "cures" for procrastination - such as "doing the worst thing first." But no cure will work if you don't first face the fact that you're hurting everyone by putting something off.

The best, first thing you can do is ask yourself: "What am I avoiding, and why am I avoiding it?" Then use whatever method works for you, to face it, analyze it, and deal with it.

Rationalization. Let's say you've been avoiding an issue, or decided to face it "later." Now you have to deal with the fact that you knew better, but you did the wrong thing anyway. So you rationalize - to yourself and to others. You try to convince yourself that you're still OK.

You'll say: "This other thing was more pressing/important/critical." Or, "I really didn't have the energy to face it, after killing myself on that other project." Or, "I can't deal with this right now. That other issue was so emotionally draining that I just can't cope with another serious problem." Or, "I've been putting this off for hours/days/weeks/months/years, and it hasn't hurt me yet."

All plausible, but the fact remains that you still didn't do what you knew you should have done.

Here's a suggestion for you. Create a special to-do list on a 3x5 card or in your PDA. Call this list the "Important things I'm putting off" list. Attack one of those things every day. The goal is to get to the point where there are no items left on that list, and no new items get added.

Rationalization only makes matters worse. It gives you a way to feel good about being bad. Meanwhile, the world keeps moving on without you. That competitor who does a better job of "getting around to it" will someday drive his company right through your habitual weakness.

You don't want to be the person who suddenly realizes that your weakness turned into the big opportunity for your worst competitor. That's one of the most unpleasant moments in the course of a business life. Time to face up to the unpleasant issues and make it impossible for any competitor to find a chink in your armor.