Here are the tools managers need to properly supervise, nurture, and retain their sensitive employees.
I have watched so many leaders over the years in my various roles as lead investor, board member, board chair, investor, and advisor.
And one thing I have learned from this front-row seat is that leading from the heart is very powerful.
A leader can be the most brilliant product person, strategist, entrepreneur, and business builder, but if they cannot get people to follow them, trust them, and care for them, they will not be an effective leader.
This is a hard lesson to learn. It is a fairly natural tendency to hold your emotions in check when you are in front of a large group of people. We are taught to project strength in moments like this.
And it is also a natural tendency to hold back the most difficult-to-process information, like a fundraising process that is not going well, or conflicts in the board room, or a co-founder relationship that is fraying, or the loss of the biggest customer, or a key supplier relationship that is at risk.
And yet, it is these exact moments where leaders develop that followership, trust, and care from the team.
I am not suggesting that leaders should become deeply emotional every time they talk to the team. I am not suggesting that leaders share every little detail about the business with the team. I understand that some details about the business need to stay confidential until the appropriate time to communicate them. There is a balance to all of this.
I am (Read more...)
USV is an investor in Bolster, a marketplace for fractional and full-time executive talent for startups and growth companies.
This week Bolster launched a daily short (5min) podcast and email with actionable insights and advice from founders, operators, and investors. It is called The Daily Bolster.
I did a Daily Bolster episode and it is featured today. I’ve embedded it below and you can watch it here if you are reading AVC via email.
The daily email contains a short pull quote from the daily podcast which in and of itself is quite useful but is also a prompt to spend five minutes and watch or listen to the daily podcast.
I strongly recommend founders and operators in the startup and growth sectors subscribe to the daily email and podcast. You can do that here:
Subscribe to The Daily Bolster Email
Podcast:
Versatile leaders are effective at helping their organizations regroup, refocus, and continue to produce during periods of volatility.
Amid a looming economic downturn, employers can expect another tumultuous year.
Together with MIT business school professor Tom Kochan, former chair of the MIT faculty and many-decades expert in organized labor, we wrote this piece in Harvard Business Review…
If you respond to worker organizing in a combative or dismissive way, you might be putting your company at risk: tarnishing your brand for consumers, poisoning productive workplace relationships, and deterring future talent from joining. If a union does eventually form at your company, you’ll have thrown away an opportunity to build a collaborative relationship. You’ll start from a place of dysfunction. Such problems can burden your company for decades.
You can read the rest here: https://hbr.org/2023/01/how-businesses-should-and-shouldnt-respond-to-union-organizing
Business leaders need to take responsibility for how we respond to unionization was originally published in Also by Roy Bahat on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.