What is your leadership style?
Part of Conscious Leadership series
The way you look at the world tells a lot about how your leadership style is perceived.
“Your title makes you a manager. Your people will decide if you’re a leader, and it’s up to you to live up to that.” Bill Campbell
The typical question I ask entrepreneurs and their teams when I first meet them is
tell me about your idea and team background and how your team came together
Having seen nearly 2,000 startup ideas and products by teams from all over the world, I have a good understanding of how their response relates to how they view themselves in the world.
More specifically, are they the “to me” kind of leader? Someone who sees the world through a scarcity lens and starts something to win over competition.
Are they the “by me” kind of leader? These entrepreneurs see the world as a collection of people who are working on creative ideas. They only take part in the game if they know they can add real original value and not just add competition. They look at the world through the lens of abundance.
Majority of the entrepreneurs I’ve seen are the to me kind. They either don’t have an original idea or can’t be bothered to build something bold. They play it safe and go to existing markets. The problem is that many investors look for this kind of thinking as well. These are the startups that will never achieve capital efficiency and will give you only 3–5x return at best.
There is a small group of entrepreneurs who have the power to look beyond the markets, even dare to be contrarian. They know that the world is created with abundance and that it is up to them to unlock access to it. For them their startup product is a sustainable means to reaching and distributing that abundance in their teams, communities and the world. They tend to be more collaborative and highly specialized in their own chosen subject.
The two other ways of leading, through me and as me, are much harder to come by. These kind of entrepreneurs have such big hearts and visions, so big that they might seem stupid at first…until proven. They have crazy belief in their own abilities and sometimes see themselves with superpowers that are hard to justify from an outsider’s point of view. They know that they’re born to do what they’re doing at their startup and that it’s their destiny. They rarely care what the competition is doing and attract talent in a cult-like way.
Venture Capital & Conscious Leadership
The hard part about all this is that investing opportunities exist in startups by all types of leaders. There’s no one way of leading that is the shortcut to investing riches. However, the odds of outperforming in the through me way of leading is much more favorable to risk loving investors, these types of entrepreneurs either make it big or fail big. Statistically speaking they will fail big. My job as an investor is to be there for these entrepreneurs if that happens but also enjoy the rewards when the odd one out emerges!
What kind of leadership style do you think you have?
If you’re interested to discover your leadership style, we’re running a new coaching program for entrepreneurs. You can register your interest by completing this questionnaire.
This is the third in a series of posts about Conscious Leadership applied to Global Entrepreneurs which was also posted on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from teams with crazy (but commercial) startups. If you’re looking for funding don’t forget to get your IV Score to prepare for your next VC meeting. If you’re funded and are looking for coaching, start here.
