Authentic Leadership.

Closing Keynote at the AWS Exec Summit, Sep 4th 2024.

A big thanks to Maria Teresa Mancuso & Phil Le-Brun for helping with this material.

In the spirit of authenticity I've decided to share my speaker notes. They are notes - not everything was said exactly like this. But I think it reflects 90%. Enjoy.

It’s actually quite surprising that I am here today, speaking to you about leadership.

?Not because I almost missed my train. Not because I failed to find this building. No.

?It’s because what prompted this invite.

?See, I was invited here a few months ago.

When I had finally summoned all my courage. Overcame the shame. And decided to openly talk about the failure of my last company, Ava.

A leading Swiss startup, employing almost 150 people and generating double digit revenues at its height, backed by 50 million in venture capital and the multiple winner of pretty much every startup prize in Switzerland and abroad.

Have you heard of Ava?

As you can imagine. It came as a huge shock to everyone when Ava failed. Our investors, our employees, our team. To myself.

So it took me a while to finally speak about it publicly. 2 years to be exact.

But at some point I decided that the learnings from Ava are more important to share than my desire to hide. So I spoke up.

And I expected quite a lot of public shame...

...but instead I am getting a speaking slot.??

A curious outcome, isn’t it? AWS is really taking some risks here.

And a teaching outcome about leadership. Firstly, I guess, expect the unexpected in leadership. But I won’t spend more time on exploring that principle today. It should be unexpected after all.

?Secondly though we are learning a profound lesson on leadership and authenticity.

My speaking up about the failure of Ava has resonated more than anything else I have ever put into the world. Raised tons of money for a cause we should all really care about? Medium applause. Forbes 30 under 30, medium to high applause. Speak about failure. Now we are talking.

?The reason is simple. It seems we crave authenticity. We deeply crave authenticity.

?In a time where everyone on LinkedIn is “humbled to announce”, “thrilled to share” and “deeply grateful to have experienced this and that”, authenticity has become the scarcest good.

?In a world where deep fakes change our perception of reality. Where no photo is posted without a few filters on them. In that world, authenticity has become courageous.

?The truth is, I had not just learned about the power of authenticity in leadership then. In fact I had learned that lesson years earlier. But being an authentic leader is one thing. Being an authentic leader when it comes to failure is quite the masterclass version of it. The masterclass it took me a while to get to.?

?But let me first tell you about my journey to authentic leadership.

?I started my first company right out of college. A chocolate retail and shop chain in India, called L’inou?.

I wish I could say that was just last year but as you can see from the image quality here - it's been a while.

I was 22, inexperienced as can be. I led my first team in India, mostly our production staff. Leadership was culturally different.

?At 24 I cofounded Ava with my three cofounders, Peter, Philipp and Pascal. That’s where my leadership journey really started. I hired my first team, built up our San Francisco and later Hong Kong office. Within a year from starting I led my first small team. Another year later it was 20 people. Then over a hundred. By 29 I became the CEO of over 100 people across 4 countries.

I had to be a leader fast. Didn't have much time to loose.

So I turned to the one role model that women were offered when I grew up. Remember her?

So that’s who I became. In a tech world where people wore hoodies, I wore business attire to look older. I didn’t drink at company events to always maintain control. I was so serious that one of my employees later told me in a performance review that she worried I just didn’t think she was funny and that she was considering leaving because of that.

?I was a leader. Busy. Working hard. Lonely. Decisive. On the move. Respected?

?They say a growing business hides all scars. And we grew. Tremendously. When launching Ava we sold so much that we had to take the ads offline for fear we couldn’t produce enough. We had the hockey stick growth curve that is every venture capitalist's secret dream.

?But well.

?Until we didn’t.

?Tough times came our way. And the rocket ship we had built has to be repaired left and right while flying at lighting speed.

?And two things happened.

?My leadership didn’t feel effective anymore the way it was. But, almost more importantly, I didn’t enjoy it anymore.

?1 on 1s were a chore. All hands my least favorite time of the week. I sometimes listened to 90s rap songs just to pump myself enough for larger meetings.

?I needed to make a change. Frankly, I was fed up with the pretending game. Pretending to be tougher. Pretending to show anger when it was really fear. Pretending to be older. Pretending to know all the answers. Pretend Pretend pretend.

?I remembered why I chose entrepreneurship in the first place. I chose it because of the freedom. So what’s all the freedom in the world worth if you can’t be free to be myself?

?And so began my journey.

?A journey to a more authentic leadership.

?And let me tell you. If you are an inexperienced, young, kind of overwhelmed leader of way too many people there is one place in the world where you want to be: San Francisco. Turns out, there are MANY inexperienced young leaders of way too many people there. And many people who gave them millions to succeed. So Silicon Valley has built a sort of a “leadership boot camp” where they train all these young leaders. Lucky me, I got in.

Authentic leadership. Could really mean anything and nothing. Like all other fun little business keywords. So here is what I mean with it:

?A style of leadership that acknowledges that organizations are made of people. And people, whether we like it or not, are human.?

They have emotions. They have context. So instead of looking at a team, at oneself as a role to be filled, we understand that everything we see a person do, present, demonstrate and write is only the tip of the iceberg.

So let’s talk about the emotions.

And I know it’s a cliché I am doing this as one of the only 30 something woman in this room. But that's ok.

?So emotions. A demonized word.

?I remember when I cried in my first internship at P&G in a particularly overwhelming situation, called my wonderful mom who I love with all my heart and told her about that incident and kindly, calmly, she did tell me that it indeed isn’t ideal for women to cry at work.

?And thus began for me and so many others the teaching. Keep emotions out of work.

?Well unless you are a man over 50. Then you are allowed to get angry.

?Or you are a woman under 30. Then you can be excited.

?But all else. Gone. Suppressed. Unspoken.

?That’s all well and good. And I don’t advocate for a crying party at work nor am I really the type for a shouting match.

But communication, decision, strategy – all these things are inherently – to a certain extent emotional.

?And as a leader you have a choice: You can take all the emotions, put them in a big box in a corner and never look at them and rationalize everything. Or you sneak into that box, look at these emotions and learn from them whatever you can. Treat them as key information pieces for your leadership.

Let’s imagine a typical meeting. A proposal is made. Dave – as usual – sits in the corner. After a long debate where he says one cynical thing the majority agrees with the proposal. Dave is quiet. Susan looks annoyed. Sara looks stressed.

There is a treasure trove of information right there for a leader.

But a treasure trove that needs to be met with curiosity.

?Sara looks stressed, so she must feel the proposal is adding work to her workload. Right? Maybe. Or maybe she just saw a missed call from her daycare.?

?Dave is quiet. He might hate this proposal and sabotage it later. Or not.

Susan might look annoyed because the proposal will need her team resources. Or maybe she looks annoyed because Dave forgot her birthday.

The issue with emotions is that, as a leader, it’s hard to decipher them. So the only right way to use emotions is to meet them with curiosity. And creating a culture where emotions can be talked about.

?How does this decision feel for everyone? I perceive you as defensive. If that’s the case, where does it come from? Why does this make you angry?

?And even better than curious enquiry is proactive sharing: I think that’s scary, let’s derisk that. I didn’t sleep well last night after you said that, let’s briefly address it again. I feel angry about that – explain to me the steps that led you to make that decision.?

Let’s look at these humans again. Emotions are what’s inside. But to understand the full person, we also need to learn from their context.

Turns out, people experience way more than just work. Health, Commutes, Family just to name a few.

Let’s go back to Sara who sat in that meeting looking stressed. Because she saw a missed call from daycare.

?I’m not sure if you have ever had a missed call from daycare. But your heart drops. “Oh my god I need to go pick up Jamie. Or maybe her dad can? No, he’s in a meeting all afternoon. But I am in a meeting too! Why is his work always more important? I’ll call him. But wait, what if something really bad happened to Jamie? Then I need to call now” and on we go.

?No wonder Sara didn’t listen to a word you said in that meeting.

Authentic leadership that includes context would have given Sara the chance to say: “I just had a call from daycare and it occupies my thoughts. Can we take a quick break so I again after.” can call them and I’ll be fully present

?As a leader you need to understand context. Be able to speak about it and have a culture where context is shared freely.

?When our first daughter was born, she was born with a certain health issues. We faced a personal context that had an impact on my leadership. Communicating it helped not only me but also my team to know where I stand.

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I’ve spoken about how emotions and context are key information pieces for a leader. But in order to use them you need a culture that is driven by curiosity, allows for questions and promotes open sharing. How to be a leader that creates that environment?

I promise I haven't become a book saleswoman after Ava.

My good friend Justin, the former founder of Twitch – a company purchased by Amazon for a billion dollars a decade ago, handed it to me in my transformation journey. It’s called the 15 commitments of leadership. And many of these commitments have become my guiding light. Let me share the ones that resonated the most with me:

1. Above / Below the Line

?I love the concept of being above or below the line.

?It basically describes curiosity vs. defensiveness. At any given time in any given situation you are above or below the line.

?Above the line you are curious, creative, not fearful. You are open to new ideas.

?Below the line you are defensive, protecting yourself.

?As a person, you will always fall below the line. It’s critical you locate yourself. So let’s do that right now: Right now, in this moment, are you above the line or below?

?After answering that key question you can try to shift your mindset to be above the line again.

?It’s a tool we used at Ava. In an intense meeting someone might notice we have collectively fallen below the line on an issue. And we take a moment to shift and restart the conversation.

2. ?Take 100% responsibility

?Taking 100% responsibility means we take full responsibility for our situation, our choices, and actions.

?It’s the exact opposite of being a victim and blaming others.

?Being an authentic leader means taking responsibility but also demanding the same from your team.

?You likely have this one friend that whenever you meet them for dinner will complain about their boss, their colleagues, the management. Are you thinking of someone?

?Taking a 100% responsibility would mean for them to ask themselves how they created this situation.?

The same is true for your management. Your sales lead doesn’t perform? What did you do to create the situation? Your numbers are down? What did you do?

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It’s not a concept that wants to blame everything on you. The concept is clear that you taking a 100% responsibility doesn’t mean the others take zero. But also 100%. It questions that responsibility is a 100% cake split among people but instead is always 100% for every single person.

?It’s empowering for your and your team. At Ava, when things didn’t go the way we wanted we would sit there as a management and each talk about how we – each one of us – created the situation versus throwing blame. ?

3. Communicate with candor

?We already explored that principle when I spoke about sharing emotions and context.

?Communicating with candor means proactively sharing your unarguable truth? pro-actively as a leader. Unarguable meaning you share your truth and someone else might have another one.

?A big piece of that is an open, fast feedback culture.

Don’t like how your salesperson just started that call. Tell them. Don’t like how your engineer just sneered at your proposal, tell them.

Candor requires courage and vulnerability, as it involves sharing potentially uncomfortable truths. And usually people think they hurt relationships instead of understanding that they are actually building them in giving feedback.

At Ava, we had a feedback section in each 1:1. We made it a point to add feedback weekly, even if tiny. While uncomfortable at first we got into a rhythm very quickly. ?

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?Now, so far I asked you to understand and share your emotions and context while being curious about others. I asked you to be above the line, take responsibility and live candor.

?Sounds like a lot of work.

?Especially at the end of such a full, inspirational day.

?Time to tell you why I encourage you to do so.

Being an authentic leader made me a happier leader.?

I didn’t have to pretend anymore. Was free to be myself. I started to enjoy team leadership meetings? Today, when I lead a tiny team again of 3 people, a curious thing happens. I actually miss leadership. Something that I could have never imagined before.?

Our team has gotten much more effective. Now, effective is again one of this business BS words so here is what I mean with that:? My team members were happier. They had more information. They had more clarity and more safety. They became more loyal. We got more done.?I actually believe Ava had one of the best running teams I have ever seen especially towards the end.

This is especially true for difficult times. In difficult times, your team needs to come together and step up. And the only reason why our team did was because we were authentic.??

But the single most important impact of authenticity wasn’t about all having a great time together and constantly succeeding. It was the opposite. Authentic leadership helped us fail. Often.

But I started speaking today about failure and it didn’t sound like fun – why would you want to fail at all? ?

Failure is the price you pay when you attempt to do something big.?

We are living in the fastest technological development that has ever existed. Everything that is right today will be wrong in the future. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But change is inevitable.

?And change, by design, needs iteration. It needs risk taking. It needs innovation. And all these things come, forcefully, with failure.

?A fast team is a team that will fail quickly. An innovative team is a team that fails often. You want to fail 1000 times on the path to success than succeed 1000 times and finally fail.

?And as leaders, it is our duty to build organizations that appreciate the failures as well as the successes. And learn from them quickly, move, adapt.

The issue is that the world doesn’t see it this way. In fact, we hate the word failure.

When writing this speech a suggestion was to replace the word failure with learning.

Tempting. But ultimately nothing else than wrapping an ugly monster in a cozy blanket and put a little party hat on it.

Let’s name the monster under the bed by the name. Failure.

?In Switzerland, we have a certain aversion to failure. I would know. I failed publicly. In a pretty big way. And since that happened people approach me time and time again and tell me about their failure. Or let me be more precise – they whisper.

We’ve created a culture that shames failure. Blames failure. Hides failure in a corner and never speaks of it.

In short: We have created the antithesis of authenticity around failure.

??But authentic leaders change that for their teams. They recognize that failure is critical for their organizations ?but shamed in our culture.

?Similar to candor, failure culture is uncomfortable. After all, we were promoted to leaders to succeed, not to fail. If I let my team fail, do I fail?

?The answer here is authentic leadership. When we are above the line we recognize failure as necessary parts of the process. We shift from fear to curiosity.

?We build resilience.

And resilience is critical. Remember when Elon’s rockets blasted up the first three times ? It was the price he paid for gotten Space X to where it is today.

But resilience is also hard:

When I sold my last company in a fire sale and the buyer subsequently folded – and therefore didn’t pay out my investors and employees, it was one of the hardest things I had ever experienced.

?I felt shame. I felt inadequate. I hid.

?But I also started a new company right away. Expeerly, a company I founded a year ago, put authenticity at its center. We recognized the need for authenticity in the buying journey and support brands with authentic end customer video testimonials that we then place at point of sales, retail and on social and search.

?Funny, how my path led me to make authenticity my new work. Isn’t it??

?I said at the beginning of this speech that it took me a long time to talk about my failure of Ava publicly. That even having mastered most concepts of authentic leadership, it took me two years after Ava to speak about it openly.

?Mastering authentic leadership is a journey. It’s not black or white and certain concepts are implemented faster than others. And while I was invited to speak here that doesn't mean that not many of you might already master all this better.

But what I want to leave you with are a few inspirations on how to get started.

Buy this book.

I once did a leadership seminar in San Francisco called Leaders in Tech.

?After 3 days we were excited. Or pumped, as the cool kids would say. We were ready to go back to our teams. Change everything we had done before. Restructure our 1:1. Rethink our all hands.

?And, in the very last session, we got the most valuable advice: Start with yourself.

?If you want to be a more authentic leader, start with yourself first. If it’s a big shift from who you typically are then tell your team you are experimenting with something. But make sure you feel comfortable with these concepts before you make them get comfortable with them.

?Want to build candor? Start talking about your emotions first. Start sharing context.

?Want to build a culture of responsibility? Start by taking responsibility first. In a situation where blame is thrown. Don’t join in. Instead, state how you contributed to the situation.

?Want to build a failure culture?? Give more freedom. Appreciate risk taking. Celebrate learnings.

?But start with yourself.?

Now I know this isn’t possible for everyone. But if you can: Find a coach that ensures your accountability.

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Once you feel comfortable with the concepts, loop in a small group of people.

?Start working with your direct management before demanding the whole company joins in.

?At Ava, we started working on these concepts as a management team. Once we were more comfortable, we had a monthly voluntary session with a leadership coach for all team members.

?It helps to take this step by step.

I want to leave you with one thing. Work isn’t as serious as we all think.

?Sometimes it helps to look at everything as the game it is. Be playful.

?So have fun experimenting.