When you start a company, it’s tempting to consider yourself an automatic expert leader. But management skills don’t come standard with the founder title.
Leadership is developed through intentional practice over time. As a first-timer, acknowledging your gaps is the critical first step to level up.
Most Founders are Untrained Managers
Common deficiencies in novice startup founders:
- Delegation – Doing too much yourself rather than empowering others
- Performance management – Discomfort having direct development conversations
- Motivation – Struggling to inspire and align people
- Influence skills – Challenges driving change or selling ideas
- Emotional intelligence – Low awareness of impact on others
- Strategic thinking – Getting bogged down in tactics rather than big picture
- Communication – Failing to convey vision clearly and relate to others
- Coaching/mentoring – Impatience to develop junior members of the team
Expertise in your start-up’s domain doesn’t automatically confer people leadership abilities. Be honest about your gaps.
Management Skills Require Intentional Development
In addition to business knowledge, startup founders need capabilities like:
- Emotional intelligence – Reading team dynamics and personalities to lead effectively. Building rapport.
- Strategic thinking – Evaluating decisions in context of big picture vision vs. tactical minutiae.
- Influence – Persuading teams, winning support, negotiating successfully.
- Communication – Conveying complex concepts clearly. Inspiring and aligning people.
- Coaching / mentoring – Supporting individual growth. Counselling through struggles. Developing rising stars.
- Resilience – Bouncing back from failures and criticism. Maintaining tenacity despite setbacks.
These muscles strengthen over time through deliberate practice and application.
Work with an Executive Coach
An outside expert provides objective guidance on your blind spots as a founder:
- A qualified executive coach observes your leadership approach to identify strengths, weaknesses, and development areas.
- Through regular sessions, they impart frameworks, tools, and customised exercises to coach skills.
- An effective coach challenges you beyond your comfort zone while providing encouragement and accountability.
Prioritise leadership coaching early on before bad habits become ingrained.
Study Management Best Practices
Learn from other startup founders who have scaled successfully:
- Read books and blogs on topics like motivating teams, clear communication, delegating effectively, reshaping culture, hiring for fit.
- Follow UK startup founders you admire online and attend their talks to absorb their leadership philosophies.
- Join a peer group of founders to exchange management advice and get guidance on challenges.
- Connect with experienced entrepreneurs further along than you as mentors to provide wisdom.
Leverage others’ hard-won knowledge rather than reinventing the wheel.
Invest in Management Training
Supplement real-world experience with structured learning:
- Take online courses in business leadership, emotional intelligence, strategic planning, change management and other critical startup skills.
- Attend seminars and events focused on startup people management topics like communication, delegation, execution.
- Consider an executive education programme at a business school on entrepreneurial leadership and growth.
- Work through seminal management books like High Output Management and Leaders Eat Last.
Formal coursework fills experience gaps with management theory, tools and frameworks.
Observe Examples of Leadership
Learn vicariously by watching other founders:
- Take notes when colleagues handle challenging situations effectively that you struggle with. Internalize those techniques.
- Deconstruct why founders who inspire you resonate. Identify strengths to emulate.
- Analyse unimpressive leaders’ styles too. Spot which pitfalls to avoid replicating.
Founders exhibit leadership abilities at various stages of maturity. Absorb these lessons.
Ask for Constructive Feedback
Blind spots often obscure developing self-awareness. Proactively solicit input from:
- Your team through anonymous surveys on your management strengths and weaknesses.
- Board members, investors and close advisors who interact with you frequently.
- Founder friends candidly sharing their perceptions of your leadership approach.
The truth can sting but is critical for self-improvement. Invite it.
Build Self-Awareness
Continuously self-reflect on your leadership:
- What situations recently triggered unease, frustration or avoidance? Analyse why.
- When conflicts arise, consider what behaviors you demonstrated that worsened or resolved them?
- Which advice do you frequently give employees that you should heed yourself first?
- What would your team say are your biggest leadership blindspots currently?
The best development stems from looking inward at your own experiences.
Practice Core Management Skills
Strengthening underdeveloped abilities requires repetitious practice:
- Roleplay challenging leadership conversations with mentors to get feedback.
- Give real direct feedback to reports – both praise and criticism. Discomfort leads to growth.
- Make mistakes and evaluate what went wrong and how you’d approach differently next time.
- Have subordinates shadow you periodically and provide improvement suggestions.
Management muscle memory develops through practice, failure, recalibration.
Set Leadership Goals
Define clear metrics and milestones for continual progress:
- Establish specific goals like “providing individualized coaching to each direct report monthly”.
- Outline measurable targets for the next quarter/year illustrating your evolution as a leader.
- Celebrate hitting milestones while using lags to reassess approaches. Remain a lifelong student.
What’s measured improves. Quantify your leadership advancement.
Make Time for Reflection
In the start-up frenzy, founders easily neglect self-improvement. Prioritise time for:
- Reading, courses, and podcasts expanding your management mindset
- Reflecting on takeaways from books, talks, and your experiences
- Considering your identity as a founder and leader apart from day-to-day work
- Crafting a long-term vision for your leadership journey over years
Carving out space for this personal growth work compounds your impact over time.
Maintain Perspective and Humility
Check ego and remain open-minded:
- When employees critique you or resist changes, listen to understand their viewpoint before reacting.
- Adopt a growth mentality. Setbacks and feedback are opportunities to improve, not attacks.
- Remind yourself regularly that you have more to learn. No founder has leadership completely figured out.
A stance of curiosity and humility prevents blindness to your inevitable blind spots.
In Conclusion
Management expertise isn’t inborn, it’s cultivated. Be patient with yourself as a first-time founder focused on intentional development. Success comes not from eliminating weaknesses entirely but continually strengthening your leadership muscles.
By investing time into management training, ongoing learning, and self-reflection, your inevitable stumbles become productive lessons. Leadership is a lifelong journey. Embrace it.
