When I started building a team a few years ago, nobody could have warned me about what it takes to be an authentic leader. Or really how to be a leader.
The reality is when you are a leader, a manager, a director, a CEO, a founder, there is a lot of weight and responsibility on what you do, how you do it, and the results you yield. I have met so many people over the years, who have worked in various capacities for me, whether through outsourced projects or freelancing, whether daily, weekly, or ongoing projects.
The reality is I have seen both good workers and bad workers. Don’t get me wrong; I am not casting judgment whatsoever. As I know, I have also been probably guilty of both of these at various points in my career. However, you must learn how to build and manage effective leadership in your given job, especially if you are starting a business or continuing to build your brand.
With that being said, here are a few things that I have learned over the years about being a leader.
How to be a leader
First, it is better to be respected than to be liked.
This is a hard pill to swallow for naturally recovering perfectionists like me, who want to be liked by people. But, on the other hand, I have never set out to be a bully or make anyone’s life harder. So in many ways, I always wanted to make people feel comfortable, make them feel included, and make them feel welcome.
While those are all wonderful things that I absolutely recommend you do as a leader, sometimes what that can result in are you trying too hard to be liked by someone. So, for instance, if people do a project incorrectly, or they consistently show up late for work, you continuously give them a pass or make an excuse for their behavior so that they continue to feel good about themselves. And they don’t look at you a certain way. What this ultimately does, though, is stifle their growth, and in many cases, creates an atmosphere for them to take advantage of you.
While I never assume the worst intentions of people, I have seen for myself that if you give many people an inch, they will take a mile. So I changed my thought process around this a few years ago, where I would much rather be respected as a business leader than necessarily liked. That doesn’t mean that I am mean or rude, or I give people a hard time just for the heck of it. But what it means is that I have to stand on what it is that will push myself and the business forward.
It may hurt your feelings.
It may challenge you in ways that feel uncomfortable or make you sometimes wonder why I am expecting a certain level from you. But I always remember that I would never expect something of someone else that I would not first expect of myself. So even if I am a hard manager, or I’m not necessarily putting up with someone’s crap, you can’t turn around and then say that I treated you wrong, or I mistreated you, or even that you don’t have any respect for me.
I think a lot about this, especially when I think about women like Oprah or Beyonce, Briana, or even, I don’t know, national news reporters or politicians. In many ways, people probably want to perceive them a certain way when they make certain demands because they are women. But you cannot turn around and say that you don’t respect them because they are handling their work at the end of the day, and they’re doing what they need to do to push the business ahead. You can very much so be nice and not allow people to walk all over you in business.
And in fact, the earlier you learn this, the better off you will be. First, seek to be respected for the work you do and who you are, and lay off the idea that everyone will like you. It is a very unrealistic expectation. But also it is not your job to make sure other people like you. However, it is your job to make sure that people respect you and the boundaries that you Institute.
Secondly, much in tandem with the first point is to hire slow and fire fast.
I don’t remember when I first heard this statement, but it is constantly circulating when it comes to growing and scaling a business. In many ways, it is the very philosophy that is thought of, especially in the startup world, when founders are looking to build up a team but know that they need a very dedicated group of individuals to help bring those dreams to fruition. The reason why I personally like this is that it is very true. Sometimes you have to prune dead weight and trim the fat to have a very lean and steady product.
Of course, I would want to give every single person who ever expressed interest in my brand a job. But if they don’t do the job well or don’t actually add anything to work. At that point, they’re there for good measure. This is why I like this point in conjunction with point number one. Because oftentimes, as founders, you may want to keep the person on your team simply because you feel bad about letting him go. I have learned that letting go of dead weight allows me and my brand better room to grow. And sometimes dead weight doesn’t necessarily mean that the person was terrible at their job or that they were a bad employee.
Sometimes there’s not an alignment, as far as personality types, or even in alignment with ultimate career goals. If you are working towards level 10 and are only trying to get to level two, there’s going to come to a point where heads are not seeing eye to eye, and you probably will crash multiple times because of various problems. The reality is, you can’t take everybody with you.
Knowing when to hire and when to fire will help you as a business owner learn how to make executive decisions, Institute boundaries, set standards, and execute. Lastly, it is so important that you remember your why above all else.
I have worked for various bosses, who would sometimes take the reins and do a project themselves out of fear that the person to who they actually assigned it to would do it wrong. At first, I would really get upset when I noticed them do these things. Because I always believed that people can’t grow if you always handhold or do it for them. However, as a business owner, I see this every day. If you assign a project to someone, it goes out on social media with typos or errors. The reality is prospective clients don’t look at that work and assume ill of the person who did it.
They assume ill of you and the business that you run. I’m not saying that you need to be a micromanager or even that you need to jump in and do every job in your company. In fact, I very much so am against this because I understand firsthand the stress of founder burnout in many ways. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is understandable why you may be truly invested in making sure everything’s perfect before it goes out. For instance, if you are selling copywriting services, you can’t have things go out on your social media that have errors in them.
Sometimes, you need to recheck your information and make sure all of your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted. The work that you do, whether you actually did it or someone else did it for you, will be a reflection of your brand. And the last thing you want is for someone to take the wrong impression of your company or your brand because you didn’t take an extra moment to make sure that everything was in place. So these are the few lessons that I have learned as a founder.
They have definitely come with their own levels of highs and lows, that I’m thankful for the experience. Do you own your own brand or business? What are some lessons you’ve learned along the way on how to be a leader?
