I think a successful relationship between somebody you manage or somebody you get managed by is very situational. And it’s situational on two fronts, it’s situational on the development of that person in their career, or developing of you and the person as a career. And second thing is recognizing that those circumstances change. So, for me, I always think that when I’m starting a new phase in my journey, I’m the freshman of that class, and after you’ve sort of got experience, you graduate, then move to the next class.
So, for example, when I took the company public, I explicitly acknowledged in my mind, I’m now a freshman of being a public company CEO, and for a year, a few months under my belt, I’m still learning etc. And so just explicitly acknowledging these phases and changes in life. Or when I first became a CEO of a young startup, what are the changes you have to do? Or, for example, I’ve been on a couple of different boards over time. And even as a board member, you have to change your stripes, you can’t just bring everything there. So that place is important for you to acknowledge and then seek mentors and people who can acknowledge you.
And if you can do that effectively at each stage, then you can be a very successful manager and leader, which is, you’re coming from their point of view and not from your point of view. Because sometimes command and control is right, sometimes partnership is right, sometimes slight direction is right, and you have to kind of adapt to that.
The other thing is that even for the same person, if you look at different aspects, they may be very technically good at what they do, but they’re still learning on people management. So, you can be a little bit more prescriptive on people management, or if you are prescriptive and technical, they will resent. So just working through those pieces is a challenge. So especially when you’re managing a very heterogeneous set of skill set, it’s very, very challenging, I think it’s actually easier sometimes from that perspective, being a CEO, because you have a certain sort of, you know, as the company gets bigger, but having that empathy is super important as a leader.
