* What does bad leadership has to do with an ostrich?

* How can information sharing be discriminating?

* Why are empty promises poison for company culture?

* Why is accountability so goddamn important?

* Why do we need to praise immediately and loudly?

* Why do you need to be in the room, and why does a leader need to be the story's narrator?

All of these questions are going to be answered in this real-life article. But let’s start with the elephant in the room: the ostrich.

The ostrich

It’s 11:03 on October the 4th, 2023, a typical, indecisive weather day in Munich. The mood at our office is quiet and calm. But my inner feeling is quite the opposite: I am upset, and I have been for the last months. I am frustrated because my boss, the CEO and founder, didn't attend our weekly with our oldest client…again. At that point in time, our company was in distress. We have been waiting for a big chunk of money for months. Suppliers and partners are getting louder and demanding to get paid. Hard times for a founder and a team of about 20 relatively young professionals. Many of the employees have been working day and night to deliver yet another feature. A “feature that will let us break even in the second quarter of 2024” - this time for sure!

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At that moment, I knew I had to leave. I needed to because I was desperate for leadership in this miserable situation. Wherever I looked, there was nothing but leadership failures. Let's spill the tea on what drove me up the walls over my 10 months.

Communication discrimination

I understand that it’s important to be strategic in how and what a leader communicates about a company's situation - especially in a crisis. Leadership chose to use various ways in communicating with various stakeholders. Partners with which we had strong relationships were left in the dark. Only until we needed a time extension of some sort or, well, money.

Employees were split into 3 categories:

* The clueless: Our techies, also because they were in a different office in another country, had no intel on what was going on.

* The half-ass knowing: The second category would be normal employees at HQ who would get tiny bits - late.

* The inner circle: Close relatives or long-lasting employees, who would get information more or less first-hand.

I belonged to the second category, and understandably one could claim that I am speaking as a disgruntled employee. But a) I had links to the inner circle so I would have more insights than most. B) after continuously demanding better communication and leadership I left before everything went to s**t. You decide. My point is that communication is extremely important, no matter the company's size. By discriminating who knows what and deliberately choosing to hide information from some is not caution and mechanism of protection. It's rather the first nail in the coffin for your company culture. And remember there is no way back. Because gaining back trust, is going to take so much time. Time that startups don’t have.

Empty promises

Compensation, shares, positions, 300m in revenue, parties, you name it...was promised, and that kept us going. As soon as the first promises were broken it looked like a genuine mistake. In the end, one could see that it was intentional and that promises were made to keep people calm and quiet. I thought about this for a long time and why it upset me so much. The leading factor for me was not the unpaid compensation, etc. but the mere fact that the leader’s actions consistently didn’t match his words.

Always someone else’s fault

We were the greatest at everything, and everyone else was incapable and amateur. That was what you could hear in the hallway. It was never our fault but always someone else’s. If the investment money didn't come through. it was the investor's fault, not our insanely high burn rate. If a potential client backed out of the conversation, “they don’t understand the product”. Instead of investigating where we fell short, fingers were being pointed. Most of us were doing what we were doing for the first time. Making mistakes would have been inevitable, and no one would have been shocked. It would have been refreshing to see that authentic self-reflection of a leader to analyse an issue, figure out our shortcomings and learn from it - as a team. There is such strength in admitting being wrong; why not use this to build confidence and a great culture?

Praise - immediately and loudly

It is dear to my heart to thank people if they go out of their way, put in extra effort or show dedication for someone else’s project. So, I find it important to praise, when milestones or important due dates are being met. As the saying goes, “Criticise privately and praise publicly”. The small wins we as a company had could have been praised and faced with gratitude. This has to be done immediately and genuinely, though. Showing appreciation too late or too little leaves the impression that all that urgency before was unnecessary. And that is a killer for any urgent tasks in the future.

Be. In. The. Room.

Being physically present doesn't mean that a person is mentally present. I bet you have experienced this before: you are talking to a friend and your words seem to bounce off that person like a tennis ball off the racket. Don't get me wrong, sometimes we get distracted. Constantly checking the phone and leaving the laptop open to skim through incoming emails or notifications are nerve-racking and disrespectful to the person on the other side of the table. I get it; founders are important, and everyone wants a piece of you every single minute of the day. But if you are in a leadership position you need to be able to manage the urge to check your phone. Try your best to be in the room with the people you are dealing with in this moment. If your employees are having to repeat discussions or points over and over again like our team did, then you are clearly facing an issue. Usually a leader is hard to get ahold of, so people do value their time with him or her. They come prepared with questions that are important to them and also to the business. It is of utmost importance to be there, physically and mentally.

Leaving space for interpretation

There is no room for cutting back on communication in times of uncertainty. Leaving people to interpret situations with their limited knowledge is going to be a huge mess. Despite discriminating against people in terms of information sharing but being seemingly responsive to messages and emails, I saw a leader who perfected the ostrich mentality. There is no benefit in shutting down and leaving people with the tough task of making it make sense themselves. What is the truth now, after realising that the last "5 truths" were indeed lies or wishful thinking?

So what?

Do we need naked truth, or do we need fabricated messages - in the end this hard to tell and only in hindsight easier to pinpoint. But above all, our team needed a person who was there to have difficult conversations with the people who built the company and who worked so hard to keep the company alive. All that with genuine leadership. With an open heart. With the humility to acknowledge mistakes. With the accountability to own bad decisions. A leader that is brave enough to search for the tough words and say them. A leader who, instead of hiding away like an ostrich, goes straight into the tough conversations. It’s not fun, but it’s necessary and people will be grateful for the courage.

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