Art Of Leadership In Start-ups

Entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders in startups can learn many leadership lessons by volunteering at events for children. Here are some key leadership lessons I observed over the last nine days as a volunteer co-counselor at a children’s camp in Bowling Green, Virginia.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Leadership is about creating an environment that cultivates natural talent and creates opportunities to expand possibilities. Listed below are some great leadership lessons I derived by observing both children and adults at the camp.

Look beyond the noise

In any human endeavor, those who successfully work on their immediate responsibilities and are open to learn from the process are able to look beyond the noise. While doing that avoid drama like the plague. Do not get entangled in negative talk and gossip. All this is made possible by embracing the fact that perfection is statistically and humanly impossible. Looking beyond the noise involves embracing imperfection in one’s own self, others, and the immediate environment, while always seeking ways to positively improve one’s own self and inner beauty.

The key to successfully looking beyond the noise is in doing the very best while not letting complaints and the surrounding negative drama cause distractions or sap energy. This is accomplished by pursuing a quiet and humble leadership style.

Quiet and humble leadership

Leadership is not about being loud, seeking self-serving attention, and directing others with a leadership “baton”. Successful leaders (those who are led by a vision larger than themselves and aimed for a larger good) have a nonchalant behavior about their authority. Stephen Covey (RIP), Jim Collins and many others extensively wrote about this aspect of leadership. However, these leaders laboriously observe developments with a keen eye on the most important KPI’s (key performance indicators). When a leader has a strong functional team manned with folks who can look beyond the noise (as discussed in the point above) humility in behavior settles-in naturally.

This aspect of leadership can be established by measuring how successful individual members are in accomplishing their tasks, and how positively they interact and communicate.

Stay cool to be cool

Keep a light-humored air about yourself, mistakes and non-performance. But learn from your mistakes such that they are not repeated and your performance improves. Learn, re-learn and adapt. Always remember that mistakes are inevitable. If you can do all this and make the whole experience pleasant, you are on your way to being cool. Every other metric (especially, financial) wears off with time and is just to keep a score-card.

Adapt to expand

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have a vision for yourself and your work will automatically bring more meaning. In pursuit of that vision harbor a childlike innocence without getting distracted by noise. Children do not have many barriers and filters. They are curious, they try more stuff more easily and get over language and cultural barriers best. They are more expressive. Learn from children. Do not limit yourself to the confines of your knowledge and experience. Work to be easily understood and to make things less complicated.

Leadership in Startups

In your startup team, try and bring together the points listed above. Moreover, keep a strong hold on the following.

Roll of your sleeves and take an active part in some form of voluntary work. It is more enjoyable because it reflects results that are close to your heart. For your work, pursue results that are close to your heart. Make voluntary work part of your leadership development curriculum, not just a PR exercise to garner brownie points with the press, social media and stakeholders. It will be best if top leadership at a startup has a direct ownership of this aspect of leadership development.

As indicated above, pursuit of a quiet and humble leadership style cultivates natural talent in teams. When natural talent germinates and bears fruit, teams witness genuine leadership.

A big part to the secret to success is staying well organized in thought, word and deed. As best as possible, leave nothing to chance by preparing well and developing some level of readiness for uncertainty and accepting unexpected outcomes.

Have goals to stay motivated. Measure your goals with results and milestones. However, don’t tie yourself or your performance to results: have holistic goals and be driven by a vision that is aimed at the greater good. Such a motivation will help glide through uncertain times and will guide the pursuit of sustainable other success metrics.

When making decisions, remember there is no “one right answer”. A holistic view is important to make best choices; don’t overkill the decision making process with information deluge. If you have too many variables and information points, something is awry somewhere. Bring down the key variables points to a handful or less.

If your goals are well aligned to your vision, decision making becomes so much easier because end-goals define which option to take. When you feel confident that you can make a sound decision, make the decision, and act on it.

Functional expertise is crucial to make a strong team. A well coordinated team of strong functional areas can lead to great results. Keep bureaucracy to a minimum. Support each other when there is a need. Clearly defined responsibilities lead to less supervision.

Diversity is good but too much diversity does not produce cohesive results if there is no clear direction and work structure. Diversity is not an asset if it is only about bringing together a disparate group. Forced group work is counter-productive. Diversity is an asset when a diverse collective is empowered with the right tools to identify talent, nurture natural talent, and is given adequate and appropriate resources (time and material included) to generate results.

Keep moving and act. Listen to others. Don’t take feedback negatively. Plan and prepare. Keep room for flexibility and realigning maneuvers. After doing all this, have no expectations and keep your best foot forward. If you can do this one successfully, tell me how!

Working with children was a humbling experience for me. If you are fortunate, you will create opportunities for your team and yourself to work with children.