8 Signs of A Weak Entrepreneur

Most people associate a weak leader with being docile, deferential, timid or meek. While that may have some merit, weak leaders can also be bombastic, egocentric, domineering, dictatorial and imperious. Even if you are successful at bringing in new clients or building out new products, how you manage your organization as a whole is extremely important.

It can be easy to spot a winning personality, someone with drive, charisma and all the qualities that people warm up to in both business and life in general. However, what about the other side, what about those people who are repeatedly unsuccessful? We have to ask ourselves what it is that they’re doing wrong that is hindering their success.

Here are 8 signs of a weak entrepreneur:

1. Lacks Planning

Many unsuccessful and weak entrepreneurs run into problems that could easily have been avoided had they taken the time before they started to properly plan. If you don’t have the dedication to plan out your moves before making them, then you’re going to have a tough time making it with your own business.

2. Avoids Making Tough Calls

As an entrepreneur, you are always put in a position where you must have to make tough decisions. Weak leaders are constantly avoiding tough decisions or they are prolonging them until the last minute. While you should never make a rash decision, as a leader you have to decide one way or the other and be willing to live with the consequences of your actions. If you are scared or avoiding the tough decisions, you’re going to appear to be a weak entrepreneur.

3. Plays The Blame Game 

In some situations, appointing blame is self-defense or deflection. It can prevent a person from understanding their failures or taking responsibility and learning from them. It also serves to maintain the desired self-image for the person avoiding blame. In addition to that, they’re focused on keeping their self-esteem and reputation intact. Blame can be a lie or a way of undermining someone else to usurp them or to degrade them. Strong entrepreneurs bring out the best in people, not the worst.

4. They Have Not Defined A Clear Direction For The Company

No one in their right mind wants to follow an entrepreneur who can’t articulate where they are going, yet most of the entrepreneurs I meet cannot tell me their business goals for the current year. To attract the best employees, an entrepreneur needs to have a tangible vision for the company. It’s okay to change the plan over the course of time, but it’s important to have some sort of concrete vision.

5. Makes Commitments But Does Not Follow Through

You routinely swoop into an important client meeting and to assert your position, you seize the moment with grand gestures and assurances that you will personally see certain actions through. This makes you look good for the moment, but you totally forget about this commitment once you lock in the sale. You move on to the next big thing and the rest of the team is left to pick up the slack and figure out how to address what the client thinks is a done deal. Over time, this will diminish your credibility and people will view you as all talk and no action.

6. Micromanaging Everything

Even the best entrepreneurs can’t do it all. At some point, you need to put some trust in your employees. If you hired good people and trained them correctly, then take the training wheels off and let them go. Sometimes they will surprise you! If the employee can’t do the task you need them to do, they may need additional training or you may need to look for another employee.

7. Complicating Things For No Reason 

If something is simple, don’t over explain or overcomplicate it for others. As soon as you do this, an easy task becomes difficult. Good entrepreneurs and leaders have the ability to take difficult tasks and simplify them. However, as soon as you begin to do the opposite, productivity levels will take a massive dip within your organization.

8. Doesn’t Provide Honest Feedback

In order not to hurt someone’s feelings or to keep them happy, many people do not provide truthful actionable feedback. However, honest feedback is extremely important to be successful. If you cannot be transparent and provide honest opinions of employees, clients and even your business partners, your business will become stagnant.

Conclusion

Being a strong leader requires equal amounts of self-awareness, self-management and humility. In this post, I shared with you 8 signs of a weak entrepreneur.