Small, seemingly innocent missteps can sometimes become big career traps. But you can fortunately avoid them if you know where they lurk. A worldwide vice president of human resources at a health products company has identified some of the key ways that workers trip themselves up. Based on studies of experts, here are some most common mistakes and the strategies to avoid them:

• If you have no plan: Conflict is inevitable in the workplace. But when your conflict is with someone who could derail your career, always ask yourself, what exactly do I want the outcome to be? For instance, at your workplace, you discovered that a colleague with a much lighter workload was earning a higher salary. But in this case you will not have to be furious, but coolheaded enough to avoid storming into the boss’s office. Instead, you should have to be carefully rehearsed what you planned to say to the boss. Experts recommend that before going into any workplace encounter that could turn angry, you should prepare an agenda and stick to it. Finally, sit down with your boss and lay out your job responsibilities and those of your colleagues. By battling for what you knew to be right, but in such a way that your boss came to feel like your ally, you can achieve exactly what you wanted.

• If you lack expectations: People who don’t understand their employer’s charter may be headed for one of the most common and yet most avoidable career traps. If your boss doesn’t take the time to properly explain your position’s parameters, keep asking questions until you know precisely what’s expected of you. Don’t limit your questions to matters of everyday routine. If your boss is vague about what your goals should be, try this technique suggested by an expert. Read your job description and identify the two or three most important tasks it mentions. Then meet your boss, point out the tasks you’ve chosen and ask if they accurately reflect what your boss considers important.

• Being a loner: Someone has truly said, just as the golden rule of real estate is location, location, location, the golden rule of work is relationships, relationships, relationships. Unfortunately, many workers focus so hard on the job at hand that they never develop useful relationships with people in other parts of their organization. Worse, when they do interact with colleagues in other departments, it may be under less than friendly circumstances. Winning allies throughout your organization has an additional benefit. These days, it’s far too risky to expect your work to speak for itself. Having allies who speak well of you increases your visibility to top management.

• Waffling: Business never has any shortage of problems. So people who are willing to make the tough decisions naturally stand out. People who continually waffle on decisions, however, stand out for the wrong reason. If waffling is ever a problem, a professor of marketing and behavioral science suggests trying a simple technique. He calls it framing. When you take a photograph, you focus on the most important elements in the background. In the same way, if you can focus on the most important parts of any decisions, you’ll find that lesser issues will tend to fade, making your choices easier. 

• Covering up: When you commit a blunder, the best thing to do is to own up to it and fix it as soon as possible. Handle it right, and you may even come out ahead of the game.

When you find yourself in career trap, how you climb out may ultimately be more important than how you fell in.