Ben Horowitz’s & Dick Costolo’s Top 10 Leadership Lessons
The A16Z podcast series delivers brain food in 30 minute chunks. I can actually feel my neurons firing from the ideas shared. I’ve even started looking forward to commute time. Last week, Shaka Senghor, who spent 19 years in prison, shared what’s wrong with the US Prison System. https://medium.com/@CoachACM/truth-from-behind-bars-add9cfc8c3e2#.weoihzpor
This week bhorowitz and dick costolo discussed leadership.
They noted leadership isn’t taught in colleges or business schools, it is essentially learned on the job. Or it is learned by looking at other models. Military leadership can be applied to entrepreneurial leadership, as both are about survival. Entrepreneurial leadership is not survival in the Life/ Death kind of battle, but in the Darwinian sense of innovate or become extinct.
Top 10 Leadership Ideas (with my editorial comments mingled in):
1. Don’t Do Easy: The easy thing to do is usually the wrong thing to do.
2. Build Trust: Don’t manage by trying to be liked, manage by telling everyone the truth. Tell people what they need to hear. Be honest and direct.
3. Make the cause bigger than yourself. Here we can learn from the military. The military trains its soldiers to believe in the bigger mission. Find your bigger mission.
4. Don’t get distracted by what the press is saying about you... Or what your teenager tweets about you. Costolo’s teenager re-tweeted an article naming him one of top 5 worst CEOs of 2014. Yikes! There will be nasty critical articles about you and your company. Accept it. Develop a mantra, a saying, you can repeat to yourself when this sh%#! happens. “It is what it is…It is what it is”.
5. Systems thinking. A CEO needs to think about his company in a systems context. In the military, there is a clear system to how it organizes and how instructions come down. The same should go with start-ups. The more the system is understood by all, the better.
6. Transparency & Consistency. Make sure everyone understands what you understand. Walk around at night, check in with different teams and ask “What do you see are our top 3 priorities?” Listen for consistency.
7. Speak Your Leadership Examples in Colorful Ways & Teach the Lessons you Want Known. If precision is what you want, then model precision through teaching the small things. For Intel, CEO Andy Grove knew he needed a precision culture. So, one of his leadership principles was to demand punctuality. He is famous for calling out an executive, who was 5 minutes late to a meeting, with “All I have in the world is time and you are wasting it.” He didn’t berate, lose his cool, or yell. The example he made of this one employee spread like wildfire, and we all still reference that great leadership moment.
8. You get the environment you create. Your people will behave the way you do. Your flaws get magnified if you don’t work on yourself…To make sure you are the kind of person people want to work with, you have to work on yourself. Spoiler alert: This is where executive coaching can come in. I am an executive coach so I believe in the power of coaching to impact your leadership. Working with a coach 1:1 gives you that space and time to work on yourself.
9. Peaceful CEO vs Wartime CEO. There are two key CEO archetypes, the peaceful CEO and the wartime CEO. These are radically different leadership styles. Figure out what your company needs, what the market demands, and adapt your leadership style.
10. Teach the Why, You Can’t Just teach the What. Your team needs to know the Why behind their mission and their purpose. For more on Why the Why is important, check out Simon Sinek’s powerful TedTalk.
I’m Anne Mitchell. I’m an executive coach with 15 years of venture capital experience and extensive training in positive psychology, coaching, and mindfulness. I work with entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and company boards to help them maximize their performance, overcome obstacles, and dare to be great. Learn more at http://www.coachacm.com/
