Article
The Leader’s Evolving Role in Working Through Others
August 13, 2020
There are no leaders without followers. It's about leverage
The Leader’s Evolving Role in Working Through Others
In the beginning, during the organization’s early stage of growth, the leader may play many roles. It’s quite natural to wear many hats and attempt to take on a wide range of responsibilities, and for a while that may work. It may be both expedient and cost effective in the short run, but not in the long run!
You can’t do everything. As the organization grows, you will come to the realization that you can’t be an expert in all the areas essential to the growth and effectiveness of the company. You can’t take charge of engineering, sales, finance, product, marketing, and so on. It’s neither effective, nor, as the organization grows, possible. Entrepreneurs must get beyond the belief that they can and should have their hand into every part of the company. You need to bring in people who have expertise in different domains and let them lead those teams and functions.
Grow from working in the company to working on the company. In sports terms, players sometimes go from being a player, to a player-coach, and finally to being the coach. You may start out writing code, continue to lead product development, but also facilitate teamwork, build a company culture, begin to give people direction and devise and implement a strategic plan, negotiate additional funding with venture capitalists for the destiny of the organization: you are working ON the company rather than IN the company.
This is a huge transition for most people, and it is not easy. Many young tech entrepreneurs, accustomed to working creatively on their own, have never had the experience of working on a successful team or working with an effective leader. Many derive their sense of self-worth from being a “doer” and accomplishing something tangible every day. This could make it difficult to let go of details and tasks that make you feel you have done something concrete and useful. This feeling can make you reluctant to let go and “just lead”. So, to shift from being the one who is focused on task accomplishment, who solves tangible problems and makes all the decisions to seeing yourself as the one who facilitates change and works primarily or even completely through others is a major step. As leader you must accept that you are no longer just a doer but instead, someone whose role is motivating, focusing and involving, getting input and buy-in and working indirectly to get things done.
“Roberto needs to move from a position of chief doer to a position where he guides and facilitates teams and groups to proactively drive the business using team member’s own expertise and giving them a high degree of autonomy.”
In short, as the organization evolves, the leader’s role also needs to evolve. The leader continues to play an important role but his or her individual contribution is increasingly replaced by team building skills and facilitating the collective contributions of the team.
I remember well a coaching session with a very young, inexperienced CEO who started a company that had only 11 people when I began our engagement, but who saw his company growing dramatically. He opened our conversation by saying, “I’m depressed because I don’t know what I should be doing. I don’t feel I’m adding value anymore. I used to write code and get involved in managing projects but now my team has grown and I’m spending my time doing things that I don’t see as having tangible value.” I pointed out to him that his role was now to be the leader, the direction setter, the motivator, the communicator, the facilitator of teamwork and the builder of culture. I said, “It’s not the same mountain, but a different mountain to climb, and a whole new challenge in learning to play a new role.”
His self-esteem had come from being a doer, and he had no concept of what it meant to be a leader and a CEO. It was a whole new ballgame now. But he learned well: The company, that he started with college roommates, now has 400 employees and is highly successful. They’ve had seven rounds of funding that brought in over 200 million dollars. (it’s now seven years later.)
Evolution of Your Role as Leader. In their book, Leading at the Speed of Growth, Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews delineate four main stages in the growth of an organization:
- Startup
- Initial Growth
- Rapid Growth
- Continuous Growth
At each stage, the role of the leader shifts. In the Startup phase, you are an active Doer and primary Decision Maker. But as the fledgling organization starts to take off in its Initial Growth phase, hires more people and expands, you need to cut back on some of your “doing” activities in order to become the chief Delegator as well as the Direction Setter. In the third stage, as the company scales due to Rapid Growth, your role must shift to being a Team Builder, Coach, Planner, and Communicator (both internally and to the public). Finally, in the phase of Continuous Growth, the leader becomes Change Catalyst, Strategic Innovator, Chief of Culture, and overall Organization Builder.
These roles are qualitatively quite different. To maintain effective leadership as the organization progresses from one stage to the next, you’ll need to change with it, being willing to leave behind attitudes and behaviors that worked quite well at one stage but are no longer optimum as the organization scales.
Become a facilitator of collaboration and success. Use your team for collaborative, synergistic problem-solving. Stop trying to control every decision. The leader sets the tone on an executive team. As the leader, you must help the team work together effectively, resolve conflicts, support one another, solve problems, and make decisions efficiently as a group. For this, team members need to trust each other and communicate openly. As the leader it’s your role to make this happen.
If the leader has surrounded him/herself with team members who have complementary skills, strengths, experience, and perspectives, great things can begin to happen. A key role of the leader is to guide, support, and facilitate effective team processes and interactions to get the most out of the synergy from the team. The leader needs to be sure the team is focused and aligned.
Get everyone aligned around a common sense of purpose. It is also vital to foster a common sense of purpose and identity around the mission and create a safe, supportive, open environment where differences are resolved, and problems and decisions are worked through effectively. It’s the leader’s role to get everyone working together and not let competition, ego battles and silo mentality destroy teamwork and hamper the organization’s ability to grow and thrive.
Challenge people to be and do their best. Along with fostering a supportive work environment, the leader needs to challenge individuals and teams to raise the bar, not to settle for mediocre or “okay” but to be the best they can be. He or she has to walk the line between being supportive and encouraging on one hand, and challenging people to be accountable for outcomes. Not everybody is going to produce top-quality results. Some people are lazy and want to just "get by," but as the leader that has to be unacceptable to you. Ultimately, you will be held accountable for what the team accomplishes or does not accomplish. So sometimes you may need to put on a taskmaster’s hat, express the expectation that your people will put forth their best effort, and be as demanding of results as the situation requires. The best leaders I have worked with over the years have been a blend or combination of demanding and supportive.
Respond to the need of the time. The best leaders are also attuned to the ever-changing business climate, as well as the social, macro-economic, and political trends, any or all of which could influence the direction and success of the business. Different times and conditions call for different styles of leadership.
For example, in recent years, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and CEO Ben Horowitz drew a useful contrast between what he called a Wartime CEO and a Peacetime CEO. In Peacetime (by which he means when the company has a strong competitive edge and its market is growing) leadership can afford to deploy the company’s strengths to expand in creative directions. When Google found itself with a near-monopoly in the search market, they asked employees to spend 20% of their time on creative ideas to grow the company in new directions. Peacetime leadership can comfortably allocate time to nurturing team cohesion and individual creative expression. These are times when “delegation,” “don’t micromanage,” and so on can be emphasized by the leader.
In Wartime, however, when the company is under pressure to become profitable, or it is facing severe competitive threat and its very survival may be at stake, the entire focus has to be on alignment behind the organization’s mission. Horowitz cites the example of Steve Jobs’ return to a struggling Apple, which was literally a few weeks away from bankruptcy. Jobs “needed everyone to move with precision and follow his exact plan; there was no room for individual creativity outside of the core mission.” Wartime conditions can come even to well-established, strong companies, but for startups and their leaders, it’s Wartime 24/7.
However, Horowitz’s advice for the Wartime phase can be quite extreme. Clearly, leaders need to act decisively, and especially with start-ups, they often need to decide quickly and sometimes unilaterally, especially if there has not been enough opportunity to gather a team of seasoned professionals, as I will discuss in the next chapter. But Horowitz implies that you need to stay in Wartime mode until you do have a strong competitive edge. That gives permission, and even encourages leaders to behave in a controlling and autocratic way, exercising top-down leadership rather than seeking buy-in and consensus.
This is problematic in the long run. As you begin to bring in more senior people, who expect and deserve to have a level of autonomy and a voice in decision making, if you stay in Wartime mode too long and are too controlling, you will fail to leverage the synergy of your team. You won’t be able to benefit from hearing voices and opinions that prevent you from falling into sunflower bias or confirmation bias. After all, the benefit of involving a group in decision making is to gather diverse and creative perspectives on how to deal with problems and questions.
In situations that require fast, decisive action, it may occasionally be necessary for a leader to either make a decision without input or to seek input but not have the time to reach consensus when it comes to choosing a course of action. This would be a case of, “Thank you very much for your input, I’ll let you know what I decide.Be careful not to operate in Wartime mode as a default, but only when it is truly necessary. Be adaptable. Adjust the amount of participation you allow and input you ask for, based upon the maturity and expertise of the team around you.
share this
Related Articles
Related Articles
Reprint from Thought Economics, A Journey of Intellectual Capital
Startup founders represent the ultimate paradox: celebrated for their innovative brilliance yet notoriously susceptible to failure. In reality, the difference between astronomical success and dismal failure boils down to a surprisingly consistent set of behaviors and personality traits. Drawing from extensive 360 feedback studies, personality assessments, and deep insights from Founders Keepers, we've unraveled exactly what separates winners from losers in the startup world. Myth-busting: Genius Jerks Rarely Prevail A common myth persists that successful founders must be narcissistic, domineering, and abrasive—the stereotypical "genius jerk." Yet, our rigorous analysis of data from 122 founders, comparing the top performers (at least 10X returns) with bottom performers (zero returns), decisively shatters this myth. Successful founders, contrary to popular belief, rarely succeed because of egocentric ruthlessness. Instead, they thrive due to their extraordinary adaptability, relationship-building skills, disciplined execution, and deep personal grounding. Meanwhile, unsuccessful founders often implode because of their rigidity, isolation, impulsivity, and inability to truly lead teams. Adaptability: The Endless Pursuit of Product-Market Fit Successful founders understand one critical truth: product-market fit isn't a finish line; it’s a continuous process. They show an exceptional ability to: Remain open to input, eagerly soliciting and integrating team feedback. Effectively manage resistance, empathetically addressing team concerns. Skillfully create buy-in, building commitment through transparency and genuine engagement. In contrast, unsuccessful founders typically fail due to rigidity. They stubbornly anchor themselves to outdated strategies, ignore valuable feedback, and react defensively to challenges, eventually becoming roadblocks in their own companies. Relationship Building: From Loners to Leaders A pivotal distinction lies in the ability to work effectively through others. Successful founders consistently excel in empowering their teams. They: Delegate effectively, granting autonomy while clearly defining expectations. Maintain trust through consistent behavior, integrity, and transparency. Develop robust emotional intelligence, adeptly managing conflict and strengthening team cohesion. Unsuccessful founders, on the other hand, struggle profoundly with delegation. Their chronic micromanagement erodes trust and morale, creating environments of fear and resentment. They often isolate themselves, failing to build genuine relationships, thus missing critical insights and innovations their teams could provide. Execution: Discipline Over Charisma Execution—arguably the most underrated pillar of startup leadership—truly separates winners from losers. Successful founders meticulously: Set clear, measurable, and achievable goals. Follow through relentlessly, holding themselves and others accountable. Create robust systems and processes to scale effectively. Conversely, unsuccessful founders typically suffer from chronic disorganization and impulsivity. Their inability to prioritize, constant pivots without strategic clarity, and poor follow-through generate chaos and stifle growth. Personal Grounding: Stability Amidst Chaos Perhaps most counterintuitively, successful founders exhibit deep personal grounding—a trait seldom highlighted in sensational startup narratives. They: Demonstrate emotional resilience, remaining composed under extreme stress. Exhibit patience, tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty with grace. Maintain optimistic yet realistic perspectives, avoiding destructive cycles of anxiety or panic. Unsuccessful founders, however, often spiral under pressure. Their volatility and emotional reactivity exacerbate crises, leading to poor decision-making and destructive interpersonal dynamics. Self-Awareness: The Hidden Driver of Success Underpinning all these traits is profound self-awareness—arguably the most critical competency of all. Successful founders consistently seek self-improvement, humbly recognizing their weaknesses and proactively addressing them. They actively solicit honest feedback, never fearing the vulnerability required for growth. Unsuccessful founders, conversely, often display a tragic lack of self-awareness. Their denial of shortcomings, defensiveness to feedback, and unwillingness to evolve ultimately doom their startups. Real-World Wisdom: Voices from the Trenches Beyond the data, the human stories captured in 360 feedback illustrate these differences vividly: Successful founders receive praise like, “He constantly solicits input, adapts swiftly, and builds deep trust. His humility makes everyone want to follow him.” Unsuccessful founders, by contrast, earn harsh critiques: “He ignores input, reacts defensively, and insists on controlling every detail. The team is disengaged and demoralized.” These narratives underscore the simple but powerful truth that the best founders aren't isolated geniuses—they’re skilled leaders who build environments where everyone can thrive. The Path Forward: Turning Insights into Action If you're a founder, investor, or leader within the startup ecosystem, confront these truths head-on. Assess yourself and your organization rigorously: Are you truly adaptable, or merely superficially agile? Are you empowering your team, or stifling their potential? Are you executing with discipline, or flailing with chaos? Are you grounded emotionally, or reactive and volatile? Are you genuinely self-aware, or defensively delusional? Final Thoughts Ultimately, founder success isn’t about flashy charisma or ruthless ambition. It’s about a disciplined commitment to growth—both personal and organizational. Embrace adaptability, deepen your self-awareness, and master the art of leadership grounded in trust and integrity. This is not merely good advice—it’s the proven difference between a startup’s spectacular success and its avoidable failure. What traits do you see defining successful and unsuccessful founders in your experience? Let's discuss!
