Great leaders tend to be optimistic and positive, but that can come at a very real cost. When you don’t think about or listen to what could go wrong, you’re setting yourself up for guaranteed failure. There is value in giving a voice to the negative possibilities.

Bill once made a $2 million mistake by not considering what could go wrong. He quickly learned to balance his naturally positive approach with realistic and even negative possibilities. A great leader knows the value of empowering the voices on their team to play devil’s advocate once in a while.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, or, as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Business has a way of punching us in the face on a regular basis. If you want your team and your business to be more successful, don’t shy away from conversations about the biggest things that could go wrong, and what you are going to do about it.

Resources:

20,000 Scaleups

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

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