Effective business management, especially in the case of startups, requires newbie business owners and entrepreneurs to immerse themselves among their teams and collaborate more often since management roles are still limited. However, one destructive shortfall that many business startups suffer from is the presence of blocking behavior due to inexperience, pessimistic perspectives, and general unwillingness to cooperate and share constructive ideas.
As a result, many up-and-coming startups barely survive past the five-year mark, either due to blocking roles inhibiting overall performance or leaving a lasting impact that renders teams incapable of surpassing industry-specific challenges. Today, we’ll be getting to the bottom of this rampant issue, identifying what type of actions create blocking roles and the best course of action newbie self-starters must replicate to overcome blocking behavior.
Defined by Preventing Progress and Going on Tangents
Luckily enough, blocking behavior is easily observable due to its nature of preventing progress, going on tangents, and irresistible need to be under the spotlight, shifting focus away from important objectives and onto themselves. These blocking roles can take numerous shapes, forms, and tactics. The most common ones include dominating central talking points, overanalyzing every detail, incessant fault-finding of proposals, and deflecting key concerns.
- Dominating Central Talking Points: Teams expect their members to voice their ideas, share their opinions, and contribute to the thought process by relaying different angles to a problem or the agenda for a meeting. However, when individuals talk as much as possible, constantly interrupt others, and interject at every moment possible, this clearly indicates dominating and provides nothing to the conversation except general unrest. For example, when a team member is voicing their concern over declining manufacturing activity and someone steps in before they finish, this prevents the rest of the working group from understanding a different perspective.
- Overanalyzing Every Last Detail: Fundamental and technical analysis plays an essential role in understanding trends, highlighting entry points and encouraging discussion over emerging opportunities. However, when someone approaches analysis by splitting hairs and going over every last detail that should be immaterial and irrelevant in the bigger picture, this becomes a clear sign of overanalysis. It cripples a team’s potential productivity and stops them from taking any meaningful risks that would’ve resulted in a net positive otherwise.
- Incessant Fault-finding Tactics: At its core, discovering a fault out of due diligence from a team member is a benefit for the business because anything that goes under the radar imposes an unnecessary risk to operations. Nevertheless, if someone criticizes, withholds credit, and frustrates any effort of coming to a conclusion all for the sake of an issue that might not actually be as impactful as they make it sound, this is nothing short of incessant fault-finding tactics. All industries go through their fair share of challenges, but that doesn’t necessitate mulling over every supply chain disruption and new competition.
- Deflecting Key Concerns: Every business meeting is founded on a central topic or problem that must be addressed, and as the conversation develops, a structure for the resolution is built, only needing a few touches when all is said and done. Sadly, there are instances when a team member refuses to stay on topic and brings up minor points rather than staying on track, so when you’re analyzing the slowdown of home price appreciation, they’re busy disagreeing with the fact and highlighting something of less importance. This does the opposite of accounting for different angles because it pivots to a smaller detail with less influence on the situation at hand.
Work Together and Not Against Each Other
It’s crystal clear that blocking behavior and roles hurt productivity because it puts team members against each other when business startups need people to work together and collaborate. Therefore, a newbie business owner and entrepreneur should always focus on developing attitudes that contribute to team success by demonstrating and communicating integrity and acknowledging different points of view. So don’t hesitate to receive professional advice from a business growth coach and the wisdom of other business partners because their experience can also help speed up the formulation of solutions.
- Demonstrate and Communicate Integrity: Integrity is a value taught at a very young age, but many people forget to do what they say and act in accordance with their standards as time blurs their accountability. Therefore, business leaders can begin by following through on their promises and maintaining transparency in the workplace to prevent any blocking behavior.
- Acknowledge Different Points of View: Business leaders are expected to be decisive, but that doesn’t mean when you’re about to propose change, you don’t recognize the input of others. When backed by strong, clearly-presented evidence, listening to what the rest of the team has to say can help manage agreement and disagreement, bringing you closer to your target goals.
Everybody Plays a Crucial Role, Except Blockers
Overall, blockers contribute nothing to progress and only exist to hurt a company’s performance, so spot out any of these actions early to save yourself the trouble during the later stages of a project.