This year has been one of pivotal shifts. From embracing AI advancements to navigating macro challenges, leaders across industries have leaned into change, aligning their strategies and resetting their teams for success. It’s been a hard year—and you all deserve a break.

Leadership transformation has been front and center of the client challenges we’ve been thrown this month and there’s one theme that keeps coming up: the step change. Many of the organizations I’ve been working with are realizing that their “comfortable” ways of operating aren’t cutting it anymore. To get to the next level, leaders are having to shift—not just how they operate, but also what they tolerate.

It’s hard as a leader /manager when you’ve been told to deliver hard news on behalf of someone else’s decisions, especially one that you weren’t even involved with making or shaping. You’ve been given the script but you don’t have all the context, and you don’t have the answers.

Over the past few months, myself have the team have been leading team collaboration workshops across a range of industries, teams, and company sizes. What was interesting were the patterns that started to emerge which we can only attribute to the fact that no one was spared the changes and challenges brought on over the past few years.

In both my practice as aa practitioner and managing expectations of some fleeting founders, and as a business owner, navigating the grey that is my client’s “leadership” needs, I’ve had to excel at creating clarity through their uncertainty. When I reflect on how I do this, it brings me right back to my coaching fundamentals.

🤓 As a leader of a business, I have had to hold a lot in my head and have developed a specific way of doing things. My experience has given me great context, subject knowledge, and clarity. It can appear that solutions come naturally and easily to me and my team naturally come to me for my thoughts.

Although tempting, we can’t look forward without looking back. Like a project retrospective, it’s important to take stock of what we did well, could do better and maybe shouldn’t do at all.

I was recently on a call with a founder/CEO who stated:

“I used to have team meetings with my (global) team but no one found them to be any good, so I stopped them and now just have 1:1s with everyone.”

Gillian discussed how personal values play a role in our work life as, for founders, they are intimately tied to company values. It is important that you don’t react to situations, instead, learn to respond and reconsider, do not override your energy either, as doing so will put you in the danger zone of burnout. This kind of self-mastery starts with you understanding your values and how you approach them, these values can be anything from your behaviors to the things that guide you.

Being a product leader can be an isolating role and at the beginning of this year, I started to think about ways to support product leaders. I wanted to bring product leaders together to show that one point rings true across the board: no one has it all figured out. The undefined nature of the PM role is part of the process. It’s likely that you’ll never find “the way”, so being able to work through uncertainty is the name of the game. I wanted to create a space for product leaders to share their challenges, learn from each other and feel less isolated and more supported.

Keji Mustapha– Head of Network and Brand at Connect Ventures–a VC firm that is singularly focused on founders who are obsessed with innovating and solving hard problems at scale, “Where Product Founders Fit”, held a conversation with our founder, Gillian Davis, surrounding the importance of implementing a generalist strategy for team building and first-time founders. Keji seeks to add value to her investment companies, growing their capabilities far beyond those they had when they arrived, while at the same time connecting founders to one another to create a community of growth.

Today, we’re seeing uncertainty not only in tech but in our daily lives with the changes brought on by COVID. When we think about leadership in uncertainty, the need to adapt stands out. Leaders don’t react, they respond - with a considered choice. 2020 has reinforced that anything can happen, and when it does, leaders have to do what’s best, even if it means letting their plans go.

Product leaders don’t get enough credit. They carry a lot of responsibility within an organization but are often left by the wayside, or their role isn’t fully understood, creating tension. Organizations need strong product leaders to pull together their product and engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders. Don’t believe me, listen to my interview with Seb Saboune, Head of Product at Founders Factory.

As a coach, Phil knew his role was to build a well-rounded team that highlighted the strengths of each player. For the Bulls, it had to start with Michael. Phil couldn’t tone Michael down or bring the team to Michael’s level. But he could get Michael to become a leader on the team.

It’s time for a break. A big one. I often have to help my clients figure out how to have an actual holiday where they’re able to switch off. Now more than ever, it’s imperative that we ALL take time fully away from our busy schedules. That includes checking emails, “5 minute” calls, and peeking at Slack.

If you want to ensure you show up for your team to see them through this time of uncertainty make sure you reflect on what they need from you, not what you think they need from you.

As we adapt to a remote workforce and uncertain times, knowing how and when to take control is difficult and the value of showing empathy and compassion for our teams is clearer than ever. In order to move forward, we need to look at the leadership pendulum.

A successful world-class team comes with a lot of challenges, and building one which brings you international success depends heavily on the relationship between those in charge and those doing the work. No matter one's role in the team, everyone is vital for the overall success of the group, and when you work together - you triumph.

In my opinion, in its simplest form coaches help you to achieve results. They not only help you get really clear on what your goals are and why they matter, they see things you don’t see and are there to put a mirror up to your blind spots. Sound scary? If you’re not ready to face some truths about who you are and what gets in the way, coaching might not be right for you. As a client, you have to be willing and ready to do the work.

In recent years it’s been hard not to notice the increasing demand and supply of coaches! Having an executive coach for CEO's and management teams is not unheard of in the corporate space, so it is no surprise that this has now caught on within the start-up environment, as running a challenger business comes with a lot of pressure, speed and growth.