Opinion: Good startups forge leaders by creating tough learning experiences

Photo credit: Wokandapix.

The insights from this article were taken from the book Cut the Crap and Jargon: Lessons from the Startup Trenches, co-written by the author and Shradha Sharma.

How should startups forge leaders? What is a good leadership framework for startups? Are there some universal competencies that leaders in startups need to demonstrate? These are questions my co-author, Shardha Sharma, and I have been grappling with for over a decade.

Putting startup people through traditional development programs simply don’t work.

If you ask anyone about what has been the biggest influence in their lives or what has helped them get to where they are, very few will say that it was some training program they attended or a certification they acquired.

Instead, people will tell you that it was a person they worked with (either in a professional or personal capacity) or a real-life experience.

Leaders are forged from tough experiences and shaped by scrutinizing leaders/mentors. This is true in companies as much as in real life. But when such situations and mentors appear, people curse their misfortune. But what we’ve learned is that good companies create tough learning experiences by design. Here are some specific examples:

Tough love

Brutal monthly review meetings

In one of the large startups we worked for, there was a monthly review meeting (MRM). It was a forum for forging leaders, but it could be intimidating if you were attending it for the first time.

The executive team would sit through the full review while each member presented an update of their department from the last month. This was a great opportunity for the executive team to observe individuals they otherwise would not have seen in action.

But the questions in the meeting were brutal—there was no mincing of words or niceties. You had to hold your ground and present your point of view. These questions were designed to see how these leaders responded to difficult questions and to check out their depth and clarity, customer centricity, and their ability to communicate.

If you survived six of these in a row, you could write a new CV, as you’ll have learned to develop a point of view and defend it, handle three questions at once (so what, why, and what if), solve problems, and handle aggressive environments.

No amount of classroom training can ever substitute this experience.

Sitting in on meetings

70:20:10 model

Conclusion