Business owners are all leaders, but not all act that way. The best ones inspire peak performance, passion, engagement and enthusiasm by everyone associated with the business. For them, “lackluster” isn’t an option. Real leadership equity is earned, not bestowed, says John Hamm, a high-profile venture capitalist who’s led investments in many successful high-growth companies as a partner at several Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Just because you’ve been granted authority doesn’t mean you’re getting the full, collaborative effort of others.
In the heat of day-to-day business battles, business owners can lose sight of basic principles of leadership. In other cases, they never learned leadership fundamentals or just aren’t cut out to lead and need to understand why. “Normal” leadership is a complex system of behaviors that can tolerate a lot of little mistakes, says Hamm. But extraordinary leadership cannot. Small deficiencies create a radical difference in outcome.
Here are some of Hamm’s top leadership lessons:
• Authenticity wins. Authenticity is about owning your failures and shortcomings. It’s about allowing others to really know you, warts and all. It’s about having the guts to seek feedback from others in a sincere fashion. And it’s about being able to maintain your authentic self under difficult circumstances.
• Your words and moods carry great weight. Leaders must think carefully about every word they say, because others certainly will. “Every conversation with, and every communication from, a leader carries added weight because of the authority of the position behind it,” said Hamm. “Have a bad day and snap at one of your subordinates, and that person may go back to a cramped cubicle and start updating his résumé or miss a night’s sleep.”
• “Good failures” are like shooting digital pictures. A digital camera is the perfect analogy to the kind of culture you want to create. There’s no expense associated with a flawed digital photo. Hit delete and it disappears. And we know it, so we take many more photos digitally than we would have in a world of costly film and sometimes get that one amazing picture that we wouldn’t have if we were paying for all the mistakes.
• Chronic underperformers must be dealt with. Chronic underperformers spoil things for everyone else. They create resentment among employees who are giving it their all, and they drag down productivity. Leaders must have a plan for getting these problem children off the playground – and they must act on that plan without procrastination. •
Dan Kehrer can be reached at
editor@bizbest.com.
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