What is THE MISTAKE to avoid when scaling your startup?

The thing that’s like the toothpaste that you cannot put back in the tube, no matter what.

The threat to avoid is turning your talented workers into crappy managers.

It’s your job as CEO to get this right.

You want performance-oriented team leaders who connect with and inspire their teams.  You seek the horizontal relationships true to your culture that brought you this far.

And yet, you need the processes that will take your company further.

How are you building up the next generation of managers without losing your entrepreneurial soul?

It’s like the relay race. To scale, you run facing forward. You need your leaders to put the baton into your hand, without your having to slow down or turn back. You seek a seamless connection between your vision and your leaders’ implementation capabilities.

There is a hitch.

You hired specialists.  Top experts in their field. They are confident when it comes to writing code or building a sales funnel. But they don’t have the know-how (and often nor the confidence) to inspire and develop people.

In the Beijing Olympics, the US relay teams were the favorites. Their runners scored the best individual times. Yet they dropped the baton…and the French team won.

Don’t you want the same confidence as this CEO?

“I have the conviction that we can go far together.”
– Benoit Dupont, CEO of WeMainain
after a team training by Denise Dampierre

Get Better Results as a Team

Stay with me as I share essential challenges in bringing up to speed young managers of scaling startups.

Challenge 1: To know that “what got them here” will not “take them there”

We are talking gut-knowledge, not head-knowledge.

Your new managers previously excelled as individual contributors. Many have come through an educational and professional environment where success depended upon their own performance.

Doing more of what they were doing well propelled them to the next level. Success depends upon their personal efforts.

Oops. Success depended (past tense) on their personal efforts.

The playing field changes when stepping into managerial shoes.

“Your job, as a manager, is to get better results from a group of people working together.”
– Julie Zhuo, previously VP of Design at Facebook

How do we learn that past practices don’t dictate future results?  It’s through the daily challenges in motivating people, organizing workload, and assuring quality outcomes the realization hits.

How can you, as CEO, speed up the process?  Help them take a step back.  But, do you have the time and energy to do so…when you are sprinting at full speed?!

Challenge 2: To equip upcoming managers with tools

Great managers cast a compelling vision, communicate it clearly, and organize to make it happen.  They bring purpose to the job, connect as people, and set up processes to optimize workflow.

These are learned capabilities.  You may have gained them on the job.  It takes time.  As the CEO of a scaling startup, time is money.

It’s worth the investment to quickly equip your managers with skills that both assure performance and build team spirit.  Give them a head start

• to set and communicate priorities
• to lead 1:1 meetings that uncover obstacles and boost motivation
• to manage their emotions and those of others
• to redirect a team member respectfully and effectively
• …

It gives them a confident kickoff.

Employees who feel they belong and know they are valued want to contribute more.

The last thing you want is to promote your top performers, to blunder the navigation to manager, and to have them leave for the competition!

Challenge 3: To instore new habits

Knowing what to do is a first step.  That’s not enough.

You want your managers to create new habits so that building team performance becomes as natural as driving a car.

It means

• To learn to take a step back
• To not take challenges personally
• To seek solutions instead of searching for blame
• To listen first then, if necessary, to propose solutions

What you DON’T need

The easiest of these three needs to fill is N°2 – to equip with tools.  That’s what many management training programs do.

Scaling startups don’t need another program to build the right skills.  It’s good, but not enough. 

Your upcoming managers have knowledge.  They know it is important to build trust and listen actively.

But are they convinced of the need to change? (Challenges N°1)  How to keep them going when they try new tools which don’t work as expected the first time around?  (Challenge N°3)  These implicate a paradigm shift.

What they lack is know-how. 

• How to act when you discover a team member made a mistake…AND how to respond this time so that next time errors surface quickly to get nipped in the bud
• How to listen…when the other person lacks confidence to speak his mind
• How to tap into collective intelligence…so that team members own the decisions

The MOST VALUABLE solution

Researchers Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo present the 70:20:10 model of learning.

They estimate that 70% of learning stems from experience, 20% from mentoring and personalized feedback, and 10% from formal courses and learning.

 

The best manager-training program to help you scale up will include

• a major focus (70%) on finding solutions to current and actual challenges
• a personalized training plan (20%) to set growth goals and track progress
• an easily accessible ressource for building new skills (10%)

That’s why I launched Boost Team Trust – Devenir le manager que vous avez rêvé d’avoir
(Yes, the program is in French.  I am American-born and a long-time Parisian.  Scaling startup clients from my in-person training encouraged me to launch out with an online solution.)

Through a 6-month online training and growth-sprint program, participants learn, Practice, and GROW as leaders.

Make a personalized Growth Plan

We begin with a 1:1 coaching session to set personal and team growth goals for the next three months.  We revise these in another 1:1 discussion the middle of the program, and reconvene at the close of six months to acknowledge progress.   These goals are personalized and can include

• To set group guidelines together
• To hold meaningful and regularly 1:1 meetings.  Meaningful means _____ (measurable)
• To develop my internal network by ______ (action plan)

Learn tools when you want and when you need them

Participants have 24/7 access to training videos on managerial skills centered around tools

• To build the growth mindset
• To strengthen purpose
• To connect with people
• To create efficient processes

Solve Real Problems Together

Every two weeks we tap into collective intelligence to resolve a member’s sticky situation:  a team member is not satisfied, again – Teams that are supposed to collaborate still do not see eye to eye.This is one of the most appreciated moments of the program.

• Young managers realize others share their challenges
• They discover they can find solutions to other people’s problems…and learn to transpose those same ideas to their situation
• They come to realize some of their own behaviors which might be contributing to the complication
• …

Stay accountable and be encouraged to Keep Growing 

Every week, we connect on the community to set and review the week’s top three action steps to keep advancing towards long term goals while also managing the day to day.

Get YOUR team ready to scale

Are you aiming to take your company to the next level?  Do you want to make sure you team does not drop the baton?

I help talented, ambitious contributors become the managers they dream of having.

Run your relay with confidence.

Let’s talk.  Send me an email to set up a call.