At every point in my professional life, I thought I was a good leader, let's say. For the people on my team, for the company. A good partner for the founders.
There's just one catch.
Believing in yourself while working on your own blind spots. For me, those are two ingredients that should stay with us all the way through life, not just through our careers.
How do you tell when others see the way we act as a problem that is theirs, not ours? And when is it, on the contrary, better for the cause to change yourself?
The answer is three situations I lived through and like to come back to over time.
Stand behind what protects the business. Even when the founder doesn't like it
I was a project manager. I remember one of the founders shouting at me in the office, asking why I hadn't paid a supplier yet. Picture the kind of shouting that makes you want to slam the door and walk out.
"I'm the founder here and you do what I tell you."
I hadn't paid because the supplier hadn't met the process conditions for payment. I keep order and rules in that. If I had paid, it would have been harder to get the undelivered and agreed things out of them afterwards.
That moment was anything but pleasant.
When he left, I wanted to hand in my notice. I was shaking with anger and helplessness that he was shouting at me at all, when I was basically protecting his business.
It's hard to stand your ground and get through a situation like that. I knew why I was doing it.
I didn't back down. It taught me not to back down where you shouldn't.
Don't put others on a pedestal
When I meet people today, from LinkedIn or from the Master the Flow community, I see in them what I used to struggle with myself. We put others on a pedestal.
My grandmother likes to say: "Never put yourself above anyone, never put yourself below anyone."
I used to put people on a pedestal who had founded a business or had more experience. One experience brought me a deep personal turning point.
I was sitting on a sofa with my colleague Karel opposite me. He was supposed to go on ČT24, the Czech news channel, and he told me to my face that he couldn't. After all, across from him would be a guy with ten more years of experience in the field.
I told him: "Karel, this way you'll never go. In ten years he'll be ten years further ahead again. Try looking at it differently. He already has operational blinkers on. You have a fresh perspective. You can look at the field outside the box."
And in that moment it clicked. Just like Karel, I used to put people who had been in the field longer above me. What I was telling Karel, I was telling myself too.
I like to remind myself of this experience every time I feel I can't stand among others because they know more, have been around longer, have been in the field longer. It's just a point of view and experience. Thanks to that, today I go to meet people wearing Rolex watches as a partner. Not as someone looking up from below.
Trust people. Micromanagement kills initiative and people's potential
Micromanagement will kill your business sooner or later.
When I got into the startup world, I believed I knew best. I was in the details like nobody else on the team. I knew about the last pencil we bought, figuratively speaking.
People on the team started relying on me a lot, way too much. That made it all the harder for me. I felt I was on my own with everything, and I had created that myself, ha.
Micromanagement kills the business, kills you, kills the people around you. Because people learn that you'll check everything anyway, that they have no say in it anyway.
The experiences that taught me to believe in myself led me to trust others too. I only step in when someone breaks a promise or trust. I don't want to be in the micro-details. Micro-details kill initiative and people's potential.
I learned to trust people. I tore down the belief in myself that only my opinion is right.
For me, trusting people means trusting their decisions, judgement and approach. I let them try. And if it doesn't work out, we look at it differently.
Whatever you're building, this is one of the most beautiful and most important lessons for me:
"If you don't believe in yourself, you can't believe in others either."
A good leader lifts others up
I wrote these lessons down briefly, over one coffee. Experience can't be handed over, we probably all know that. Some things we have to live through ourselves before we can change them.
But if I knock on your door and tell you that one woman learned from her fuckups, maybe it will open your doors a little too. That's what I'm after, even if I only open them a crack.
A good leader lifts others up. They speak openly, but keep kindness and calm in their conversations with people. They don't put themselves below anyone or above anyone. They know where they speak from and from what experience, and what and whom they stand behind.
I'm still learning. And the more I know, the more I feel I don't know. That's not a bad thing. For me, it's a state of being that's good to be in. Thanks to it, one woman carries humility, understanding and faith not just in herself, but in others too.