As CEO of CoA Academy, a leadership development platform, I speak daily with founders and team leaders who find themselves in this unique situation: Their company is growing rapidly, their business model is resonating well in the market. At the same time, problems are piling up. They're in the fast lane and are quickly thrown off track. Indeed, many young companies struggle to establish a high-performing leadership culture that maintains high motivation while simultaneously producing good results. I'm familiar with these challenges and am glad that, as a client, I have strong mentors at my side in my own company, and our clients are also at my side as sparring partners.
The CoA Academy was founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Christian Kohlhof and Michael Portz and offers a leadership program for executives in multinational growth companies. Christian lives in Munich and is, among other things, an active mentor in Master Accelerator Program for LMU students.
Well-known companies from Munich also participate in the CoA Academy's Chief of the Year program and benefit from the network and the leadership toolbox provided there: Cake gossip (known from the TV show “The Lion’s Den”), Chimera Entertainment or Recup, Germany's largest reusable system for the catering industry. They all share a grand vision, as is often the case with startups. To achieve this, they recognized early on that they would be more successful if their team leaders shared experiences with like-minded people and learned from each other. They and many other of our customers have already experienced the following AHA moments and put them into practice:
1. My team can be better than me.
In my role as a manager, I often feel the pressure to be the best at everything. After all, it's my job to guide others and show them how it's done. This is precisely the kind of belief that is fatal. My responsibility is to put together a team that delivers the best possible results. Better than I can myself. After all, how likely is it that I will be the best at all the tasks we have to accomplish? When I hire someone new, I choose a candidate who is far better at the advertised job than I am and also provide them with opportunities for continuous development. If someone on the team comes to me and asks, "How should I do this?" I don't give a quick answer because I think I have the perfect solution. I prefer to ask, "What options can you think of?" It's surprising how many solutions employees come up with without any guidance or instructions from me.
2. I deliberately hire people who think differently than I do.
In the past, I preferred to hire people who were very similar to me. We got along really well, which of course felt fantastic. Today I realize that I wasted a lot of potential by doing that. In this type of team, we almost always agreed and approached everything the same way. As a result, we missed out on many other ideas, perspectives, and approaches. We could have avoided some mistakes if someone with different preferences, ways of thinking, and a different personality type had pointed them out to us. When people are different, healthy conflicts arise that ultimately lead to the best results. That's why at CoA we use a psychometric personality model to put together diverse teams. We are very open about our different preferences and celebrate the fact that we all complement each other.
3. Everything that happens around me is my responsibility.
As a leader, it is my job to support my employees so that they can get the best out of themselves. I have learned that if something goes wrong, I, as the manager, am responsible for it myself. Here at the CoA Academy, we define leadership like this: 'Leadership is my ability to influence.' I lead myself and everyone else around me. By 'influence,' of course, we mean it in a positive sense. As a leader, I want to achieve certain goals, such as retaining employees and achieving results. I want my employees to have fun and be motivated, and as a result, achieve world-class results. My job, therefore, is to influence them in this direction through my behavior. Everything I do as a boss has an impact on precisely this goal. I am constantly reminded of this. If something happens that I didn't intend, I consider how I can adapt my behavior so that next time things go the way I would like them to.
Conclusion
As a leader, especially in a fast-growing company, one of my main tasks is to bring the right people on board. As a team, we are successful when each of us can live out our strengths. By taking responsibility, the learning curve becomes steeper and the results better. As a boss, I can of course support this. If every employee is better than me in their field and hardly needs my help anymore, I have done everything right. This allows me to concentrate on working harder on the company, rather than in the company. The team is also more relaxed, productive, and motivated. This way we achieve our common goal, our vision.
