Startup Leaders: You’re Probably Lacking This Critical Skill
Because you probably haven’t had to use it yet, but you will
In this week’s issue of Teaching Startup (#68), I answered a question from a former corporate leader turned first-time entrepreneur about how to deal with the loss of a key employee for an indeterminate length of time for personal reasons.
I laid out an answer as best I could about replacing key functions and how early stage startups especially have to spread that risk of loss across all their resources. I also talked about separating the emotional response from the business response, but also clarifying that separating the emotional response doesn’t mean removing it.
In other words, if empathy isn’t in your arsenal of leadership skills, it’s time to get up to speed really quickly.
Don’t Be Steve Jobs, Because None Of Us Are
The fact that this startup leader reached out for help in figuring out how to handle this situation is a sign that this person cares about that employee. And that’s an upset in my book, considering where this startup leader came from and how little experience they had running such a small organization.
The traits I hate to see the most in startup leaders are the ones that are obviously learned from corporate leaders. Why? Because startups don’t have the room for error that large corporations have. If you lead your startup like you think Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or God forbid Jack Welch would lead your startup, you’re going to kill your startup.
For example, I’ve met at least one first-time founder CEO who has like five employees and one of them is a personal assistant. It makes me want to scream.
On a more serious note, it’s a little-known fact that startup leaders need to care very much about every single person in their organization. Most startup leaders I know are brilliant people, and they can be very good at vision, at tech, at finance, at deal-making, at networking.
But they suck at personal relationships.
Hey. Me too. No judgment here.
