Last year, right after my 22nd birthday, I joined a crypto start-up as a first employee. Last week was my last day working at it, so in order to make space in my head for the next chapter of my life, I decided to put on paper key takeaways from this amazing journey.
Takeaways:
If the team doesn’t believe that the project can actually succeed it would be very hard to keep the team dedicated to the overall vision.
The leader has to install mission, vision, and values early on in his employees and keep reinforcing them constantly.
You, as a leader, must not have any doubts about yourself, your team, and your company's success. Employees can smell insecurity on a mile.
Faith in your people, support, and constructive criticism make miracles happen.
If your team is scared to express their opinion something is not right.At each moment, your employees must know how valuable they are!
Having an understanding for young talent at their first job. They can be insecure, impatient, and impulsive but also creative, ambitious, and action-oriented.
Keep your personal problems to yourself and try not to let them slip into work. Working in a start-up is already stressful, your colleagues don’t need your problems on top of theirs.
Work culture is important. Nurture the team’s enthusiasm. Let employees have fun. Encourage them to meet each other. Let them talk. Let them be friends, not just co-workers.
Learn to position each individual in the team in a role that fits their strengths the best. This automatically reflects on the team's performance.
As a leader, don’t micromanage or control others. Delegate aggressively. You hired them because they are specialized in certain skills. You, as a founder, must be a generalist; therefore, hire a specialist for each position you want to fill in.
Never let your team feel like they are left behind with what is going on within a company. Make each and every member of the team feel an important part of the company and make sure they know their work is a big part of what the company is today. Make their work impactful and meaningful.
Your value is in your NETWORK. Your ability to COMMUNICATE. Your CONFIDENCE.
You must understand when talking to founders or CEOs, that they are at different state of mind than you as an employee. Therefore you have to learn to approach them at the right time and adapt your communication strategy to their frame of mind.
If your boss is criticizing you, don’t get in defense mode. Don’t attack back. Be calm and try to understand his perspective. Let him know that you acknowledged his concerns, you are ready to work on them, and that you are here for him anyway.
I should learn to express myself in a more gentle way. Deliver the message without making the person that I am talking to scared, offended, or miserable. The way I compose my messaging should be easy to accept, even if I am addressing harsh conflict.
Overall it was a great journey. I learned a lot about how big players think and operate, how hard is it to run the business, manage people, and communicate with colleagues and external clients. I get to know myself better. Improve work ethic. Earn money. Knowledge. Experience. Relations…
I remembered talking with friends from the start-up scene while I was in Buenos Aires about why some start-ups succeed and some don’t, and they said there could be many many factors. Back then, I couldn’t fully understand that. Now I know what they meant. The world is unpredictable. And there are many components that must align for such success.
That’s it for today.
Talk to you on Thursday.
xoxo Andela
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