5 Bad Work Habits That Can Stunt Business Growth

As a business owner, you have to commit to providing the best possible product or service available to consumers in need. You may have developed some bad work habits that are hindering your business from growing. We want to help you reach your company’s true potential by shaking off 5 bad habits often committed by entrepreneurs.

Bad Work Habits to Avoid

 1. A Negative Attitude

As the owner of your business, you need to lead your team by being the best salesperson you can possibly be. Being a good salesperson includes framing statements that are appealing to your target market. You want to leave all potential customers with a positive and hopeful impression of your business.

MetLife Insurance hired psychologist, Martin Seligman, to attempt to improve their salesforce numbers and success rates. Dr. Seligman tested the new sales candidates and concluded,

“Salespeople who scored high in optimism sold 33 percent more insurance than those who scored low.”

When conducting business, try to steer clear of negativity and pessimism in order to be a success. 

2. Making Tardiness a Predisposition

Whether you are in the habit of showing up late for meetings or are always backed up with delivery orders, tardiness is not something you should be known for. If you don’t respect your customers’ time, you are giving them every reason to take their business to a competitor.

There are lots of different ways to adopt a punctual habit, but it all comes down to putting in the effort to be on time. To help you brainstorm what habit changing method will help you be on time, here are some known examples:

• • Trick your mind by setting your clocks and watches forward.
• • Wake up earlier each day to allow more time to complete your daily tasks.
• • Eliminate distractions that keep you from more productive work.
• • Hire an assistant for help at the office, or a maid for help at home.

3. Micromanaging or Delegating Fears

A bad work habit that many entrepreneurs commit is failing to be able to trust in outsourcing and sharing the workload. Your business is your baby and so it’s natural to be hesitant with trusting new people to take care of it. But successful business owners get over these fears because they understand that hiring help is essential for the growth of their business.

How do you hire people you can trust to help get over micromanaging and much needed delegation?

1. 1.) Don’t take interviews lightly. Properly research all employee candidates before selecting one. If you don’t find your ideal employee for the position in the first round, don’t rush it. Conduct several waves of interviews before offering the position to the perfect person.  

1. 2.) Have a detailed training period. Give your new employees a chance at meeting your expectations right off the bat. Provide enough training time and resources in order to make sure they know your company’s policies, procedures and practices.

1. 3.) Check in for general updates. Now that you hired the right person for the job and invested in their training, it’s time to give them some space. Trust that you have performed your duties as CEO and don’t micromanage the team you have put in place. Hold routine meetings with your management team to stay in the loop, but give them enough space to do what you hired them to.  

4. Being Too Passionate

Being passionate is a characteristic that all hopeful entrepreneurs need in order to get their business up and running. When you become too passionate about your business or a specific idea, it blinds you to make internal changes that are necessary for your business’s health.

We all know Albert Einstein’s infamous words by heart, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Sometimes when you are so passionate about an idea or process, you see your business through rose-colored glasses. In order to remain impartial, you need to realize that your business is far from perfect.

Great business owners are able to remain neutral when analyzing their business’s systems, values and policies. Successful business owners are not afraid to make changes or tweaks in order to better their business.

5. Not Changing with the Times

Business owners have a responsibility to their consumers to modernize their business to today’s standards. Just a few decades ago, advertising your business in the phonebook was essential to reaching new customers. A decade ago it became necessary for all businesses to have a website acting as your business’s calling card. Five years ago a social media presence was gaining traction and businesses started personally connecting with their target market.

Conforming to social media marketing and understanding the IoT (Internet of Things) is now essential to grow your modern day business. We recommend reading one of our recent articles dedicated to this subject: Business Advice for Startups: 5 Trending Social Media Platforms in 2016.

Kick the bad habit of sticking with certain processes just because they’re all you know. A business that constantly evolves will last.   

66 Days to Change Your Bad Work Habits

Okay, it’s hard to break a bad habit. Here at A Courteous Communications we want to supply you with ever more information to help you kick your bad habits. Take the pressure off replacing bad habits and know that it takes only a few months to adopt a good habit. 

A research study conducted by Phillippa Lally concluded, “The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days…” James Clear simplifies the findings for us and shares, “On average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact.”

As you start to work on these bad habits, take comfort in knowing that you can change and redirect your routines in just 66 days.  

It’s time to break those bad work habits!

We hope our digital call center has helped you define some of the bad work habits you are guilty of and given you good habits to strive towards. To leave on a positive and optimistic note, please shoot over to our article, 7 Habits of Great Business Owners, to read more about the habits of highly successful business owners.