What I learned to start the decade
By: Elina Arponen
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership, Startup Lessons

The year 2020 has given some time for self-reflection. I have been in a leadership position for the last 14 years of my professional life. In my earliest team leader positions my team members used to tease me by calling me “the boss”. They knew it made me uneasy and it was a joke we shared.

For the last 10 years I have been in the role of the managing director. This means I not only lead people but also the whole company. I have read many books on how to effectively manage myself and the company, but somewhat less about the leadership of people. I have just naturally stumbled on a style of leadership that seems to work. People are not leaving the company (or three different companies over the years) voluntarily and I know they are not sticking around just for the paycheck. They share the vision, the spirit and we work together for a common goal. That is an ideal team for a startup and somehow we managed to create that together with my co-founders. But how did we do it?

One key factor is leading from the front — by an example — as we put ourselves in the trenches and work alongside everyone else. Some suitable words that are in fashion would be vulnerability and transparency. We are open about how we see the world and would admit mistakes when we do them. I would like to include ”radical candor” to the list, but to be truthful to myself I’m still learning that. I’m still learning how to be direct about mistakes other people have made and how to take it well when other people besides myself point out my mistakes. For the context though — I’m a Finn — and Finnish people usually don’t beat around the bush when they have something to say. So it could be I’m much better at radical candor than I give myself credit. Self evaluation is hard.

Another corner stone could be that we see every team member as a full bodied human being who has a myriad of needs and aspirations — also outside the work premises. We have very friendly relationships inside the company which makes it much easier to see everyone holisticly. I recently learned there is a name for this style of leadership: “Essence focused leadership”. You focus on the essence of each person and help them flourish and that will lead the team and the company to succeed too.

There is much still for me to develop in my skills of leadership, but I believe I have now found the direction. As a leader I want to develop my coaching skills to help others to grow and excel. That is very much about being present and listening. Often people already know what they should do to fix the problem they are facing. They just need to have the courage to formulate the answer aloud and do it.

Sounds easy, right? Well listening takes patience and as a quick-moving and always-looking-for-solutions startup entrepreneur it can be hard to slow down and take the time it takes to actually meet with a person. But, given time, I know I can do it. Mastering anything comes down to small practicalities and allotments in your calendar. Get into it, make it a habit, and you’ll succeed.

The year 2020 has meant our team works remotely. Every live interaction needs to be premeditated, because you don’t run into anyone accidentally in the coffee room or just happen to go to lunch together. I have started weekly or biweekly 1–1 meetings with everyone in the team so I know how they are doing. This has been a tremendous help to get the projects running smoothly, but also just to check on people how they are doing as people. Going forward I don’t plan to lose this whether we work remotely or not.

I’m looking forward to growing as a leader. One way I’ve been working on this has been just actively finding the words to describe the process and goals on what needs to be done. I believe leadership is a bit like company culture — there is no one size fits all model. There can be guidelines, but in the end everyone builds their own unique culture and their own unique way of leadership.

What is also valuable both for the company culture and the style of leadership is writing it down. Making it official and more tangible so that you know what you’ve got and you don’t lose sight of it. You can use your own words and you don’t have to quote models from prestigious books. This essay has been a great first step for me to start analyzing in words what leadership means to me. Thank you for reading.

This essay has been written for the essay competition of the R.N.G. community.