Tag Archives: Leadership

Uncomfortable Co-Founder Conversations

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By Poornima Vijayashanker

Co-Founder-ConversationsI recently met up with a friend of mine to have tea and catch up in San Francisco. I hadn’t seen him since he had sold his last company a year ago, and he was really eager to get to work on his next project. As he was telling me his idea I got excited, because I had heard this same concept only two weeks prior – a friend of mine in Seattle had already built the prototype for it! I decided I just had to introduce these two guys to each other because I thought they had complementary skills, but before I made the introduction I set both of their expectations. I said, “I don’t know where this will go, but I wanted to introduce you two to each other because you have very similar passions and interests. I’ll leave it up to the two of you to take it from here.”

After they chatted with each other they got back to me. They were pretty psyched, because they had both found someone to talk to about their idea and prior to their conversation they had just been thinking about it and working on the same idea alone. That said,they were both a little cautious about each other because they hadn’t yet met – and understandably so. They had each been in partnerships before that hadn’t worked out the way they had wanted them to.

We all at some point have the problem of finding a partner who initially inspires and excites us to excel, but then eventually things just don’t work out. You may have to have an uncomfortable co-founder conversation. Usually one person wants to go in a different direction. We have to be aware of this and acknowledge it early on, but also learn to appreciate what we’ve gained from the experience.

If you’re thinking about working on a project with someone new, make sure you take time to not only talk about the project but also about where you each think you can add value and what you want to achieve from this project. While it might seem a little touchy-feely to some, having these types of co-founder conversations helps you understand each other and make sure there is alignment. It doesn’t just stop there, though, you have to have check-ins periodically.

I know my co-founder Alex and I are pretty honest with each other regarding each other’s behavior, commending and criticizing each other professionally. Every time there is a decision to be made, we make sure we both want the same thing. We made sure to have those hard co-founder conversations early. This has made our dynamic cohesive, and the rest of the team feels reassured that they have good leaders in place.

So before you get into a partnership with someone, do the following:

  • Ask them what bad experiences they might have had in the past that they want to avoid repeating.
  • Set a clear standard for communicating both the positive and the negative.
  • Make sure there is alignment when it comes to values and the direction you’re headed in.
  • If you’re unsure at the beginning, take it one step at a time and express your reservations to each other.

How have you dealt with an uncomfortable co-founder conversation? Comment below.

Helpfulness: A Key To Unlocking Leadership Responsibility

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“Helpfulness: A Key To Unlocking Leadership Responsibility” by Karen Catlin

The best piece of advice I received when I started managing people? That my job was to make my team successful. Over time, I built on this advice, realizing that I also had to make the teams around me successful. This approach was key to unlocking more leadership responsibility. Let me explain…

At one point in my career, I was the only program manager at my software company, responsible for scheduling and organizing the work needed to create a successful product. Given that I hate reinventing the wheel, I was careful to keep track of what I did, improving how I got the job done with each project we released. When other teams started hiring program managers, I put together a kit of my best practices to help them learn the ropes and be successful. I wasn’t expecting anything in return, but, in hindsight, creating this kit was critical to my career. My personal brand became linked with strong program management, driving consistency across business units, and “dotted line” leadership of people outside my direct team. As a result of helping others, my leadership reputation and responsibilities grew.

While I like to think of myself as a generally helpful person, I’m a novice when compared to Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton. I heard about him from my friend Lise, who pointed me to a NY Times article “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?” The reporter followed Grant during a typical day, where students sought his advice as he walked across campus, stood in lines outside of his office hours waiting to get a chance to talk to him, and sent him hundreds of emails asking for help or thanking him for something he had done for them.

Adam Grant practices “extreme helpfulness,” giving his time and advice to everyone who asks for it, regardless of how busy he is. He’s truly generous with his time, without expecting anything in return. Does helpfulness pay off for Grant? According to the article, yes.

“For Grant, helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity.”

Creating the kit for program managers was my mother lode. After that experience, I wanted to help my co-workers even more. I started mentoring individuals to share my experience and advice. I continously updated the kit and encouraged others to contribute to it. I built shared engineering services teams to help other groups across the company create their software products. Like Grant, helping others increased my productivity and creativity, along the way making me a better leader.

How did I transition from simply being helpful to being recognized as a leader? There is an important distinction to make. Making people around me successful does not mean that I did their work. By contrast, I shared my experience while helping them identify their own strategies for success. If you want to turn helpfulness into leadership, consider the following:

  • Teach others to fish. If co-workers ask you to track down all the difficult bugs (because you’re so good at it), turn it into a leadership opportunity. Identify the 3-5 steps you take to reproduce any difficult bug, share it in an email or internal blog, and offer to give a casual talk about it at your next team meeting. Bonus points for giving a lightening talk about it at a local tech Meetup.
  • Embrace lessons learned. Offer to run a post-mortem or review of a customer meeting, a sprint, or a system outage. Identify things that went well and things that need to improve. Create best practices.
  • Tell stories. Every challenge that you or your team faces is fodder for a story that can guide future behavior and become part of your company’s lore. Look for opportunities to be the keeper of this knowledge and to share it via storytelling.
  • Share credit. Be generous with thanking others for what you learned from them or what they contributed to the projects you weave into your stories, your lightening talks, or your best practices.   

 

The next time you help people around you be successful, consider using one of these approaches to build your reputation as a leader. They’ve worked for me, and I hope they help you as well. If you want to explore this topic further, please consider joining Femgineer Friends, our bi-monthly group mentoring program. We meet online to discuss strategies for developing leadership skills and advancing your technical career.

Do you have other ideas for transitioning from simply being helpful to being recognized as a leader? Please leave a comment; I’d like to hear from you!

 

Karen Catlin, a former software industry executive, is now a leadership coach and the latest member of the Femgineer team. She is passionate about helping women have successful careers in tech. She’s also the author of “Use Your Inside Voice“, a blog about the intersection of leadership and parenting; a version of this post was originally published there. Find her on Twitter at @kecatlin.

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