Leadership is a never ending discovery of yourself and that comes with lot of challenges. But what I always admired the most about true leaders is how good they are at protecting their people while things are bad.
It’s incredibly difficult to be positive, not letting your team down and be present while things are bad. Even more when you don’t believe you will be able to fix that. Your investors, a bad board meeting, that customer you were supposed to win last month, payrolls knocking at your door and so on. There are moments in your company where everything goes bad and it gets worse day by day. It’s incredibly hard to show up to your all-hands and be strong, positive, smiling. It took me years to manage myself into that and understand that be there for my people was the most important thing to do anyway.
It’s incredibly difficult to be a shield for your people.
It’s something I still need to get better at, but every time I see a founder dealing with it, it reminds me what’s really difficult about leadership and why it has such a toll on you as a person.