What Stops You From Starting?

Are you primed to start something new? To begin a new project, a new phase, a new job, a new—whatever? What might stop you from doing so? Here are some of the biggest roadblocks to moving forward when you’re trying a reset in life or work:

Distractions. The best leaders put their own preferences aside when working with a team or toward a specific goal. That is, even though they might find something fascinating, if it’s not going to help the group do what they need to do, they won’t bring it up. You’ve been there—the conversation begins on topic, then a thought about something completely unrelated is voiced and before you know it the whole effort is derailed. The antidote to distraction is focus. As a leader, it’s important to remember that you’re responsible for the team’s success, and for reaching the milestones you set, and you have to stay attentive to what will and won’t support that success. When starting something new, outline the goals and process up front to help everyone, including yourself!, to stay on task. Are there distractions that are taking you away from moving forward with your initiative?

Misunderstanding the lead role. A second way good leaders keep everything moving forward is understanding that they are never just another member of the team, no matter how egalitarian their leadership style. Former Disney chief Michael Eisner recounted an experience early in his tenure as CEO where he made an offhand remark about a design feature of a new hotel. The team responsible quickly went behind the scenes to completely re-engineer the feature. Later when asked about the change he wanted, Eisner said he never said he wanted a change, it was just a remark about a personal preference—he trusted that his team had made the right call to begin with. When you’re the leader, your reactions and your words are amplified, and if you speak or react without recognizing that, you can bring your team or your project to a screeching halt. As a leader, you can throw out possibilities or make comments that send your folks off on various wild goose chases. Make sure that what you say and do reflects your true intentions. Do your words and actions reflect what you really want, or are they filled with hypotheticals, or opinions that don’t really matter?

Obstacles. Some leaders can shut down conversation (and movement) by pointing out obstacles without offering solutions. For example, in a meeting, someone suggests that they might be able to reduce their cycle time in responding to customer orders by making some common custom requests “standard,” allowing them to go through the much faster process. A leader responds with a list of all the ways in which it would be difficult to make that change happen.  The idea, then, isn’t pursued. A habitual negative response to initiatives can have a chilling effect on new ideas and forward movement. A leader may see this as just being realistic. But that fails to understand one of the most useful things a leader can do in the early stages of an idea: to think with his or her folks about how it might be possible to remove or overcome the obstacles, rather than focusing on how those obstacles will make execution impossible. When a team decides to pursue an idea, great leaders do everything in their power to help get past those obstacles, rather than to be the obstacle. Is your leadership helping your team along, or holding them back?

Lack of Enthusiasm. The most effective leaders have a habit of supporting their people’s commitment and passion. If someone comes to you excited about working on something that the team is tasked with doing, let your first response always be some version of “I love how excited you are about this,” or “your commitment will make this happen.” This attitude can be hugely motivating: it’s like fuel for the fire of their existing enthusiasm.  On the other hand, leaders who respond to their employees’ excitement with snide remarks, cautionary statements, or world-weary ennui are sending out the signal that it’s not cool to be passionate about work... and soon they’ll stop getting that response. Do you lead your team with enthusiasm?

Lack of learning. There are several important facets to this. Without a focus on learning, it is easy to allow ideas and behaviors to become stagnant. This may be what has led to a desire to “restart” in the first place. Leaders must continually consider their strengths and developmental areas as they grow professionally and personally. Only a focus on learning and development will lead to improvement. 

An important step in being a more effective learner is to declare that one does not know—to question everything one believes. This attitude makes it possible to consider different perspectives and to learn from others. Rarely do people receive praise for saying, “I don’t know,” but learning takes place only when one makes that declaration and is curious. Formal education includes learning facts and information, much of which is retained for only a few days. Genuine learning includes not only facts and concepts, but it also means taking on new behavior that becomes comfortable over time. Ideally, learning leads to wisdom—judicious thought and decisions based on both experience and knowledge. Do you lead a lifestyle of continual learning?

Lack of conclusion. One sure way to keep your initiative and your team from finishing something they begin is by reopening conversations at the eleventh-and-a-half hour. A group will be right on the verge of deciding something important, all feeling signed up and ready to go, and then a leader says, “But what about...” and the conversation is back to square one. You may not do this on purpose, but you also may be surprised when the team doesn’t make more progress.  Good leaders, on the other hand, work to bring their team to agreement, to make sure everyone is clear on what needs to be done and ready and able to go do it. And if these leaders have minor concerns or related issues to bring up, they do that separately, so as not to impede the core work. Are you helping to finish what you start, or do you keep finding changes at the last minute?

A leader who avoids these pitfalls can enjoy a greater degree of confidence that what they begin they will complete. Having a leader who succumbs these stop signs can feel like having sand poured into the gears. By knowing these “movers,” you can sometimes break bad habits that get in the way of forward progress.

Includes suggestions from Forbes’ career coach Erika Andersen, at the Forbes.com blog.