(This is an article David co-authored with our Kellogg colleague Brooke Vuckovic for Entrepreneur Magazine)

The “profound apology” issued by Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick that he must “fundamentally change as a leader and grow up,” in response to a video showing him berating a driver that went viral, underscores how the pressures of a high-growth startup can undermine leadership development when and where it’s needed most.

In his apology, posted on the Uber site, Kalanick admitted, “This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.” For Kalanick, who has also faced criticism for the culture at his company after sexual harassment allegations went public in a blog by a former employee, this is a crucial admission. The serial entrepreneur, who founded file sharing startup Red Swoosh in his early 20s and Uber in his early 30s, shows the importance of entrepreneurs developing holistically — vertically into self-awareness and self-management, as well as horizontally across the skills needed to run a business.

Kalanick’s statement that, “My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud,” is also a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs who don’t put sufficient emphasis on personal and leadership development.

As our work with young entrepreneurs shows, capturing the investors’ interest takes more than just a great idea or even good results. Founders who exhibit self-awareness, leadership ability and agility, and who can grow along with their company, will be more likely to go the distance. The intensity and pace of launching and scaling a high-growth startup are so great, young founders, in particular, must pay attention to the amplifying effects of speed on their leadership. Entrepreneurs who develop holistically establish the foundation for building the necessary confidence to manage complex relationships, competing priorities, and fast-paced decisions.

While it’s common for young entrepreneurs to have mentors, many of whom are experienced entrepreneurs and investors, much of the feedback from these sources is focused on the functional elements of business-building (product development, marketing, design, finance etc.). What’s far less common is thoughtful guidance on how these founders successfully evolve into leaders — and how their “executive DNA” may positively or negatively impact the success of their early ventures.

No matter how good the idea or convincing the business model, a startup rises and falls on the leader’s capacity to develop and grow alongside the business. There are three dimensions of awareness that deepen a young founders EQ.

Awareness One: Strengths, Weaknesses and Derailers

Without self-awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses, it becomes difficult if not impossible to build a team with complementary skills and expertise. To gain this awareness, young founders need to reflect on the key strengths essential to the team and to the success of the business. They also should know when to rely on others’ strengths and perspectives.

The temptation among many organizations, including startups, is for leaders to gravitate toward those who are “same as me.” But as research has found, homogeneity can stifle creativity and hold back the organization. A team that is diverse in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, as well as experience, thinking styles, and background is better equipped to tackle problems and bring to bear insights that create breakthrough innovations. One cannot do this without a high degree of self-awareness.

Awareness Two: Orientation to Conflict

Without understanding their orientation to conflict, founders will struggle to manage difficult or disappointing conversations. Key reflections here are how they manage interpersonal conflict with others, and how they manage operational conflicts among competing priorities and commitments.

For founding leaders of startups, there’s no avoiding bad news, disappointing results, tough feedback, and making hard decisions that leave others unhappy. A “softer” version of conflict comes into play internally as the young founder struggles with when and how to say no. The leader who learns the art of a “positive no” is more apt to maintain a laser focus on priorities in the business and in their personal productivity. They will also avoid the classic trap of becoming over-committed and yielding anemic results across the board; unable to prioritize and delegate authority to others, particularly as the company grows.

Awareness Three: Your Values and Purpose

Though last on this list, knowing one’s values is perhaps the most important awareness founders must have, as their personal values establish their startup’s culture. Key questions here are what do you stand for, and why does this venture exist?

Much like the process of product development, developing one’s identity as a leader is an iterative, others-focused process that involves trial and error. However, the leader’s identity and toolkit are often developed at warp speed as their business begins to scale. Without a clear sense of one’s values and purpose, founders are less likely to project the optimism and confidence demanded of them, and are more likely to become over-invested in their image, less open to learning, and less clear about their goals.

In the corporate world, leaders typically gain these three dimensions of awareness as they build a sense of self over time, through training, experience, and classic management relationships. But high-growth startups are a “heat inducing laboratory” in which young founders are thrust into high-stakes leadership roles quickly, and sometimes prematurely, as the business scales and the team grows. This makes foundational coaching and interpersonal development more important early on, even before a startup is launched.  In this respect, founder-leader fit is a close second to product-market fit.

For many young founders, the first taste of executive leadership accompanies the excitement and pressure of a startup launch. For those who grow both horizontally across business functions and vertically in leadership maturity and skill, success may be more likely, and certainly more satisfying. Chances are, they’ll never have to apologize publicly for a lack of leadership maturity as Kalanick just did.

(Originally published by David in Fortune Insiders)

A mistake that is not only foolish in the moment, but that can have long-term negative impact is letting difficult decisions linger. Maybe you’re procrastinating on dealing with a “people issue,” such as needing to let someone go for the good of the organization. Or, perhaps you’re reluctant to admit that your current business strategy or product just isn’t working out and you need to start over. If you agonize over informing stakeholders of a problem that has come to your attention, issues like these will only get worse.

Many of us tend to avoid the hard things — the decisions and actions that may make others unhappy or prove to be unpopular. As humans, we don’t like to be the bearer of bad news and disappoint people.

With difficult decisions, though, the longer you procrastinate in taking action, the worse things can become. For example, firing someone can be painful, and having empathy for the person to be terminated may delay your decision. But the longer the person stays in a job that, for whatever reason, is no longer a good fit, the worse it is for the rest of the organization. In my own experience, I can recall situations in which people needed to be let go, but we dragged our feet on making the decision because it was hard (not because the choice wasn’t clear). By the time we acted, what had started as a manageable problem had mushroomed into a major organizational issue.

When it becomes clear that a product or strategy isn’t working, the thought of disappointing stakeholders can be so overwhelming that you put off the decision to change direction or go back to the drawing board. That reticence may be tied up in not wanting to disappoint others, including customers and investors. But often, there is a deeper reason — ego. You’ve invested so much time, money, and energy into a particular strategy or product, that now you’re disinclined to admit that you were wrong. In this instance, your reticence to make the decision is all about your need to be right.

In startups, the ego issue is further inflated because of the glamour associated with entrepreneurship; you may tell yourself that the only way to bask in that glow is to be right. With this thinking, “humble pie” becomes very unappetizing. True entrepreneurial leadership, though, requires having the maturity to know that things don’t work out all the time. Moreover, telling investors about a problem as soon as it hits your radar may actually net a positive , even if the news is disappointing initially.

With startups and other early-stage companies, experienced investors expect problems and setbacks. Even more important, savvy investors have ideas, connections, and other resources that can help solve problems. But if you wait too long to tell your supporters, there may be nothing they can do.

There is another decision that should never be delayed: when there is an ethical problem. The longer a breach of ethics goes unaddressed, the worse the problem becomes — a potentially fatal mistake for the company, its brand and reputation, and its longevity. For example, Theranos is facing federal, civil, and criminal investigations after serious questions were raised about the validity of its testing products that were said to require only a few drops of blood. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been banned from operating a laboratory for at least two years, and the company continues to face difficulties, including an investor lawsuit.

In contrast, consider the actions of Johnson & Johnson and its McNeil Consumer Products subsidiary when several people died in 1982 after taking Tylenol that, unbeknownst to anyone, had been contaminated with cyanide. The swiftness of the company’s response and the transparency of its actions allowed it to recover consumers’ trust and preserve the valuable brand. It’s hard not to wonder what would have happened had Theranos followed J&J’s lead and disclosed the reported problems with its blood tests as soon as they surfaced.

For startups and early-stage companies, the road forward is often bumpy and unpredictable. But being unable or unwilling to make tough decisions quickly will only compound problems, and lead you to regret a foolish mistake.