Matt Polega is a cofounder and head of external affairs at Mark43, a leading cloud-based public safety software company.
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In the 10 years since I became a founder and leader of a growing technology startup, I have learned a few lessons and gained some wisdom. That wisdom has not come from sudden revelations in the night but from stubbing my toe in the dark—a process of trying, falling short, recalculating and trying again.
I have learned that successful leadership does not come from knowing everything but from knowing myself, my weaknesses and strengths and how to hire the very best people to do what I cannot. My job is to empower them and make hard decisions based on what is good for the company, not what is good for any one individual.
When the people on my teams ask me what is important to keep in mind as a corporate leader, here are some of the tips I share.
Conflict avoidance is the silent killer of companies.
It has long been said that cigarette smoking is the silent killer of people. Well, if there is a silent killer of companies, it is the leader who avoids conflict and shies away from hard conversations. When you avoid conflict, you end up saying yes to everything. That creates a lack of focus for staff and unnecessary pressures. Having hard conversations up front will avoid a great deal of grief.
Take, for example, the situation that is often most difficult to confront: terminating an employee.
If you’re contemplating terminating a team member (for any reason—maybe they’re toxic or unwilling to perform), you will probably feel like saying, “I’m going to think about it a little bit more.” But your gut feeling is correct. One more day or one more week of contemplation is not to provide new and more useful information. That toxic team member is going to irritate more people and drag the team down. The choice is between having an uncomfortable conversation with one person quickly or prolonging damage to the culture of the company.
Know when the most positive thing to say is “no.”
Sometimes customers and employees are going to ask for things you can’t or should not provide. And while you want to be able to say yes at the moment, the best thing that you can do to strengthen the relationship and build trust is to tell them no. Perhaps you have to tell a customer asking for a new product: “That’s not our specialty. We aren’t going to be able to strategically support that in the medium or long term.” It may be a hard conversation up front, but honesty and realistic expectation setting will pay off in spades in the future.
You are not alone.
You don’t have to take it all on yourself, even though it sometimes feels that way. Whether it’s supportive parents or cofounders, there is usually someone there who wants to help.
But as your company grows and your responsibilities increase, fewer and fewer people will understand what you’re going through. So, it becomes more and more important to find those people who can provide that support.
Therapists and coaches are valuable professionals whom you can talk to. They can take a bit of the load off.
Multitasking eats up time and mental calories.
It’s easy to bounce from task to task inefficiently. You go to Gmail, go to your notebook, go to the internet and use up time and energy every time you switch. It takes me three to five minutes every time I switch to a new context to say, “Okay, what am I doing here? What are the things that I have to remember? Who’s involved?”
As a result, I work to create “moments of flow”—longer periods when I work with deep concentration. When I’m on a train or a plane eight hours a day, I get into the zone. Find that “plane” or “train” for your team members.
Does it really matter?
I think in the early days of my company, simply doing things felt really great. But we didn’t challenge ourselves to say, “What’s the actual impact of the things we’re doing?” The activities involved in a project may seem terrific. But the real question is, “What impact will the project have on the business in the long term, the customers buying the product or those who could benefit from it?” When you constantly challenge yourself with that question, you realize that the efforts you might have planned may not matter, and it’s time to reassess.
Empower the experts and get out of the way.
When I inherited the marketing team, I thought I had to get a Ph.D. in marketing and chart the path forward when it comes to SQLs and demand gen and all those buzzy marketing words. And one day, someone told me: “You don’t need to do this. You have to hire the people who know that stuff.”
That took me a while to internalize. But at this stage, I know that my job is not to be a marketing wizard. My job is to unblock that person’s path, give them support and make sure that they have everything they need to do their job.
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