Startup Scaling: From Founder To Truly Human Leader

One of the most difficult parts of scaling is what I call “the inside job”. That is the work of transitioning from being a founder to becoming a leader. It requires the transformation of the mindset and acquiring new capabilities. Founders who were able to make the transition to become great leaders end up building great organizations.

When an organization is testing its product in the market, you can remain as a founder. However, the moment you attain the problem-solution fit, you need to start developing yourself to become a leader; Truly Human Leader. The work of a founder is to create a solution that solves the problem of people, but the work of a leader is to work with people to create an organization that serves people.

While working on my book, Truly Human Company, I studied Barry-Wehmiller and companies that are part of the Conscious Capitalism movement. I discovered that for them to get to where they are, they needed to have four important traits. I called them the pillars of a Truly Human Company. There are seven of them. Here are the four:

1. Inspiring Purpose and Cause

2. Truly Human Business Model

3. Truly Human Culture

4. Truly Human Leadership

You could be the CEO by virtue of your position as the founder but that doesn’t make you a leader. Leadership is influence, not position or title. And Truly Human Leadership is all about caring for the people under you. Founders end up building dysfunctional companies where people don’t really feel at home.

Take Steve Jobs for instance. When he started Apple with Steve Wozniak, he never transformed into a leader. He remained as a founder and acted like one. He acted like someone who owned the company and could do whatever he wanted to do. That was okay until he brought in someone as CEO.

It was more or else like there were two leaders in the organization. There was war brewing and at the end of the day he lost out. He was fired from the company he founded.

Years later, after learning from his experience and becoming a better leader, he came back to Apple and built it into one of the most iconic companies in the world. He left a cause that stirs up people, a business model so robust that made it a trillion-dollar company, and a culture that empowers everyone to work. Only a leader could do that.

Mark Zuckerberg was able to make the transition to become a leader easily without much challenge and built Facebook into what it is today. However, not many founders are able to do this. When Founders don’t make the transition, their companies continually remain as startups unable to scale.

The major role of a Truly Human Leader is to create a place where people are free to learn more, become more, and do more. Truly Human Leadership is not about what the leader is able to achieve through His people but rather what the people are able to become, do and achieve through their leader.

To scale your startup to become a Truly Human Company, you will need to become a Truly Human Leader. What does that mean?

1. Fighting A Cause: Have a cause that is bigger than life and that is a rallying call for everyone to join you in advance that cause in the world. It should be a problem that has to do with people. Truly Human Leadership is out to fight a cause. What is your cause? They leverage their organization to advance the cause in the world. A cause is the inspirational tool leaders use to lead others to do great things.

2. Treat People As Humans Not Functions: When you become a Truly Human Leader you won’t address people as functions or based on their roles and job descriptions but as humans. You will care for everyone under your care. You will understand that they also have purpose and aspirations. They are other people’s spouses, siblings, and children. You will treat them exactly the way you will want your own children and family to be treated. This will require you to be humble. The way you treat people determines how they treat their families. Treating people as humans unlock their humanity.

3. Send People Home Safe and Fulfilled: You will ensure that people’s work brings meaning to their life and work is fun. That way they will go home each day fulfilled that they did a great work that touches people’s lives. You will also ensure that they are safe at work. The way people feel at home will determine how they make other people feel. If they feel happy, safe, and fulfilled at work, they will go home and into their community and spread the happiness. People are committed to the place where they feel safe and fulfilled.

4. Everybody Matters: When you celebrate your people for what they do, they will feel they matter. People want to do meaningful work. Truly Human Leaders celebrate and reward their people for the good they do. When people are taken for granted and not celebrated for the many goods they do but noticed and queried for one wrong they do. Truly Human Leaders focus on the good in their people. They see value in people and celebrate it.

5. Respect Them By Listening To Them: Every human wants to feel respected and the best way to respect people is to listen to them and empathize with them. Founders want people to listen to them, understand them, and do what they say. They hardly listen to anyone. They own the company and know what it needs. As such most people feel deflated and depleted of motivation. When founders become Truly Human Leaders, they listen and empathize more to people. They intentionally see every criticism and complaint as feedback to improve and get better. Truly Human Leaders are free of ego.

6. Measure Success By The Lives You Transform: Founders measure success by the financial returns but Truly Human Leaders measure success by the transformation that happens to the people who join them to advance the cause, their customers, their investors, and the communities where they are located. To founders, transformation is the by-product of making money. They use people to make money. However, to Truly Human Leaders, money is the by-product of transformation. Their focus is impacting lives and using their economic success to better the lives of people.

7. Develop People Into Leaders: Founders treat their people as slaves and as people below them. Truly Human Leaders, on the other hand, cultivate the leadership potential of people. They transform their company into a company of leaders. Everyone who joins is transformed into a leader. They are a factory for the development of leaders. Their people are their products. They produce book human and economic value in harmony. They make people better humans. And that is why their impact goes beyond the company to building a better world. They fix the people in order to fix the world. The potential of a company is not its product or service but the potential of the people working in it. Only a leader can see and cultivate that potential.

To build a business, be a founder. But to build a great business you have to become a Truly Human Leader, someone who serves others and helps them become a better version of themselves. When leaders unlock the ingenuity and unleash the potential of their people, they build great companies.

JOIN THE APRIL COHORT

When you join the April Cohort of the Startup Academy, you will be guided to transform your mindset from being a founder to becoming a Truly Human Leader who can scale your business. To be part, kindly send a WhatsApp message to +2348101671745

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