Communicating values throughout the organization

All companies have, at their core, a fundamental set of values that reflect what is most important to the co-founders and in turn informs the culture and priorities of employees. And yet, many companies struggle at communicating values, especially during periods of rapid growth and hiring. (more…)

Preparing for a performance review

The performance review is one of the most impactful meetings a manager can have. It is a chance to have an open, honest conversation about the role an employee plays in the company, their career trajectory, and any issues or challenges that have arisen. (more…)

Why most startups fail because of people problems

On average, 75% of venture-backed startups don’t make it. Why do so many startups fail?

While it’s tempting to look at the more outward-facing points of failure – like the inability to solve a market need or scaling too early – there is a common point of failure: people problems.

Hiring the wrong people for the job, promoting people who aren’t ready, or ignoring the interpersonal challenges faced by founders, can bring down even a well-funded startup.

Let’s take a closer look at these common people problems for early stage startups and how you can address them to lead your startup to success.

1. Hiring the Wrong People for the Job

After studying the post-mortems of more than 100 failed startups, CBInsights identified “not the right team” as the third most common reason for failure. Having a team with diverse skill sets gives you a broader perspective when it comes to making decisions. In fact, a 2017 study from online decision-making platform Cloverpop found that diverse teams made better decisions 60% of the time.

Hiring the wrong person can be as simple as bringing on someone with the wrong skill set for their position. Vetting, recruiting, and hiring is a complex process that requires a lot of attention. Founders are often eager to fill positions quickly, but there’s a real risk of speeding through the vetting process. New hires might be a wrong fit culturally or in terms of skill set, creating more work in the future.

Many startup co-founders can be tempted to bring in friends and family to fill early roles. Whether these people are qualified or not, concerns over nepotism, how to discuss performance problems, and the inevitable stress of having to fire those who they have personal relationships with can create unnecessary tension in the company.

Mitigation strategy: Invest in HR and recruiting support

The value for startup CEOs and co-founders in bringing on human resources leadership early cannot be overstated. They can take the lead in creating role descriptions, interviewing best practices, and managing the recruiting process end-to-end.

2. Promoting People Who Aren’t Ready

Startups can grow fast. When you’re onboarding dozens of new staff in just a few months, you need leaders you can trust and a robust employee onboarding processes.

There are two paths here, and both can result in unpleasant outcomes if not addressed.

You upgrade existing positions being held by people who aren’t ready for the next level. Your marketing manager may not be ready for the responsibilities of CMO and your accountant doesn’t have experience with the strategic decisions of a CFO.
You promote your top individual contributors to management and hope that their talents translate to leadership skills.

Mitigation strategy: Foster employee growth and development early on

The key to promoting people who are ready is to provide the resources people need to succeed early on, so you’re always building your leadership bench. Particularly for high potential employees, connect them with a mentor internally or hire a leadership coach who can guide them through the process of learning to manage others. The more you invest in people at this stage, the more likely they are to succeed as they grow into their new role.

3. Solo and Co-Founder Challenges

According to the Startup Genome Project, co-founder teams are significantly more successful on average and achieve that success faster than single founder-led companies. Their research found that, “Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.”

A one-person team has to work harder, fight through adversity alone, and frequently lacks the perspective and self-awareness to know when things aren’t going in the right direction. Ego is more likely to get in the way of smart business decisions when there is no co-founder to cover or complement weak spots.

Mitigation strategy: Get coaching, get a co-founder

A solo founder may struggle to succeed, but that doesn’t mean any old co-founder will increase the likelihood of success. Plenty of startups have been torpedoed when the relationship between co-founders starts to sour. That said, finding the right co-founder can provide balance and a diversity that helps the company reach new heights.

Whether with one founder, two, or a small group, leadership coaching is essential to building understanding, learning healthy conflict resolution, and uncovering one’s own hidden opportunities to become a better leader.

Invest in Your People to Achieve Business Growth

Startup founders have a lot on their plates. Building a product that solves the problems of their target market. Wooing investors to back and help build the company. Growing the company through new user acquisition. Just to name a few.

Even when all of these things fall into place, startups can fail due to people problems.

With HR support, invest in your culture early, spend time evaluating your organizational growth plan, and work on your relationships consistently to ensure you have a strong foundation on which your company can grow and thrive.

Strong leadership is the key to successful startups. Get our guide, Building Leaders At Scale, to learn how leadership coaching and mentoring program can benefit your organization.

How to prepare new CEOs to lead

No matter how long someone spends moving up the ladder, it’s impossible to ever truly be ready to run an entire company. (more…)

The importance of emotional intelligence for successful leaders

Which leader is more likely to succeed? The one that yells and threatens when under duress, or the one that can relax, step back and evaluate the situation carefully before making decisions?

We all know who we’d rather work with, and who we’d rather see leading the teams at our company.

For leaders to succeed, they must understand and work to improve their self-awareness, self-management, motivation, empathy, and social skills. We’ll take a closer look at what these skills entail, why they are considered core to emotional intelligence, and what impact they can have on leaders and the teams they manage.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Popularized by internationally renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman in the mid-nineties, emotional intelligence is how we perceive our own emotions and the emotions of others. As Goleman explains in this short video, “It’s how well we handle ourselves and our relationships.”

Goleman first came across the term in 1990 while working at the New York Times, and recalls why the idea struck him. “Those were days when the preeminence of IQ as the standard of excellence in life was unquestioned; a debate raged over whether it was set in our genes or due to experience. But here, suddenly, was a new way of thinking about the ingredients of life success.”

Now, the concept of emotional intelligence (also known as EQ, emotional quotient) is widely accepted as a key ingredient of life, and business, success.

The Five Pillars of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is based on five primary skills and you can measure emotional intelligence on different scales. These are domains in which leaders can work to improve their approach to managing relationships. We’ll examine the definition for each, as well as a simple first step to improving this skill among your leaders.

1. Self-Awareness

For leaders, self-awareness represents the ability to fully understand how they are affected by their emotions, and in turn how their actions impact others. It can provide greater clarity of their strengths and weaknesses and help them better engage with a growing team.

Taking action: A leadership self assessment is a great way to help leaders start to identify their strengths and areas for improvement. Combining a self assessment with peer feedback through a 360 provides another viewpoint.

2. Self-Management

At its core, Goleman says this skill is about handling negative emotions in an effective way. Through greater self-awareness, leaders can regulate their emotional responses to tense situations. This means fewer angry attacks and rushed decisions in “the heat of the moment.” Not only is self-management about controlling one’s emotions, it’s about a leader’s ability to hold themselves accountable when they don’t control them.

Taking action: Personalized coaching for leaders is a great way to support leaders in building the discipline and self-reflection it takes to self-manage. Coaches can be a neutral party in helping leaders unpack their response to a situation and set a good example for their team.

3. Empathy

Empathetic leaders are focused on understanding what others are feeling, especially those on their team. How does this person feel today? What do they expect and how can their lives be made better? These are the questions an empathetic leader will ask. Employees often perform better when they know that their manager cares about them on a personal level, and behaving in an empathetic way is one way managers and leaders can demonstrate this.

Taking action: What are your leaders asking of their team in one-on-ones? Guide leaders to check in with their team on a personal level to build empathy, before diving into more project-focused items.

4. Social Skills

Social skills take many forms, but in the context of emotional intelligence, this most often refers to how a leader creates and maintains meaningful relationships. This manifests in a leader’s ability to influence behaviors, communicate good and bad news, manage conflict, work through major changes in the organization, and collaborate with members of their team.

Taking action: Provide proper training for new leaders. Transitioning from individual contributor to manager is a big step for many people. Building and maintaining meaningful relationships with new direct reports and being the intermediary between one’s new team and other company leaders doesn’t come easily to everyone.

5. Motivation

Motivation is a leader’s ability to work towards goals regardless of the adversities they face. They hold themselves to a higher standard than anyone else, and practice daily gratitude, looking for the positive signs of success that will encourage greater resilience.

Taking action: Are your leaders generally positive about the work that they do? If you’re sensing or getting feedback that leaders are feeling defeated, this attitude can quickly spread amongst their team and lead to demotivated and disengaged employees. Help leaders find their motivation by providing clear goals like OKRs or another framework that works for your culture.

The Benefits of Improved Emotional Intelligence

IQ alone is only a partial indicator of success. The ability to know oneself, connect with others, and weather a storm of challenges as you mature as a leader are important indicators of successful leaders. In today’s best companies, hiring for emotionally intelligent leaders is imperative.

Tawni Cranz, HR Leader and Former Head of People at Waymo says, “The biggest way I’ve differentiated how to look for leaders is, looking for not just raw talent or skills or experience, but really looking for people that have strong emotional maturity and awareness. If I look back 10 years ago when we were hiring, we didn’t look as much for those types of skills. People would have deemed them soft skills. And now I think they’re the hard skills that we need to be successful in the workforce.”

Want to learn more from Tawni on hiring for increasingly human centric workplaces?
Watch her interview with Torch CEO Cameron Yarbrough below

Often, those leaders who sustain high performance are strong in a number of skills, especially those related to emotional intelligence. Some of the benefits these leaders gain from this include:

Awareness and Control of Pride
Leaders often struggle to change course on a decision made in haste. Self-aware leaders can recognize when something isn’t working and are confident enough to admit a mistake and not let strong emotions get in the way of making the right decision. Pride can be damaging not only to the leader but their team, who can see when a bad decision is made out of stubbornness. Through greater awareness, leaders can overcome this urge and make decisions in the best interest of everyone.
Balanced Delivery of Good and Bad News
One of the most impactful things a leader can do is deliver news. Done properly it can motivate a team to perform at a higher level. Done poorly and it can either devastate or lull a team into a false sense of security. Leaders with strong emotional intelligence will recognize the impact that news will have on their team and deliver it in a way that encourages everyone.
Improved Self-Care
Leaders with high emotional intelligence will not only recognize the signs of excessive stress and burnout but will proactive take steps to address the issues before they can impact employees and in turn the company. They set an example for their team and take actions to encourage employee self-care as well.
Resilience in the Face of New Challenges
The environment of a fast-growing company can be loaded with challenges. Leaders with strong emotional intelligence can recognize the emotional impact a bad day has on their team and remain resilient, taking the bad news in their stride and balancing their response with the long-term implications.

As Goleman said in a recent speaking engagement, “The higher you go in the organization, the more emotional intelligence matters. For top level jobs, like the C-suite for example, 80-90% of the competencies that companies themselves identify as distinguishing stars are based on emotional intelligence. This makes sense because what you’re doing at that point is not using your technical skills…what you’re doing mostly is managing people. The art of leadership is getting work done well through other people.”

In order to motivate people to do their best work, you need emotionally intelligent leaders. The good news is, this skill can be developed and honed by leaders on the job. Providing leaders with coaching is a great way to build a foundation of emotional intelligence. Coaches can be a guide through the 360 feedback process and ongoing throughout leaders development.

Check out our ebook, 10 Leadership Styles You Should Know, to learn more about different approaches to leadership and when and how to apply them.

Blocking off meaningful amounts of uninterrupted alone time

As an executive in a growing company, it’s difficult to disconnect from the constant activity that surrounds you.

Everyone on your team has questions, needs, and concerns, and your attention is appreciated in a hundred different places. For some co-founders, this is an exhilarating experience. For others it can be oppressive and make it difficult to focus on the areas in which they can have the biggest impact.

For both types of CEO, it’s important to take a step back and carve out meaningful amounts of uninterrupted alone time – time in which to focus on the big picture elements that will chart the future of your business. Here are some tips for ensuring you have this time and not letting routine fire drills devour it.

Managing Email

The average person sends and receives 124 work emails per day and as much as 28% of their work week reading, writing, and replying to email. That number is likely even higher for an executive. When you spend 2-3 hours a day in your inbox, a lot of other things fall by the wayside, especially silent, alone-time for you to be with your thoughts.

There are several ways to address this. First, set specific times each day during which you will check email. Some CEOs go as far as only checking email once a day, while others take a beginning, middle and end of the day approach. Regardless of frequency, avoid replying instantly to messages that may not need it.

Immediate replies encourage the same in return, and the chain can go on throughout the day. Not only will you find people solving problems on their own if they know you won’t get to your email for several hours, meaning fewer emails overall, but you’ll find yourself sending fewer yourself. Encourage people to call or text if something needs an urgent reply.

Managing Your Calendar

Meetings are another time sink if you’re not careful, but it’s a fine balancing act. You need facetime with your team and you need to communicate with direct reports as often as possible. But a calendar completely blocked up by meetings can be exhausting and sap productivity. If you spend that much time talking about everything, when will you actually do it?

The solution is simple – block off chunks of time on your calendar every day and share your availability with your team. If they can see you are busy, they are much less likely to book or request a meeting. Over time, people will learn that this 1-3 hour block of time is off limits.

Know When You’ll Work Best

One of the biggest obstacles to alone time is…time. When you’re working long hours every day of the week, when exactly are you going to carve out yet more time for yourself? Simple. You improve your efficiency.

Everyone has a time each day when they work best. A 2-4 hour chunk during which they work at 300% and can get their best work done. The problem is that many people don’t recognize when this is and instead fill it with busy work, meetings and other “easy” work that doesn’t always generate results.

If you’re the sharpest at 7:30 in the morning, but you spend that time checking email, showering, and getting to the office, you’re seriously missing out!

Spend some time thinking about when you work best and adjust your schedule accordingly. If that means waking up earlier, moving your email time to the afternoon, or blocking out all meeting slots in the morning, then do it – you’ll be amazed how much more you can get done when you leverage those hours to their greatest effect.

Listen to Your Body

Co-founders and senior managers tend to be high-performers. They work long and hard and get a LOT done every day. But they also push up against a potentially dangerous line in their work-life balance that, when crossed, can lead to burnout.

Not only will your efforts to improve efficiency be for naught, you might find your productivity and ambition drop sharply if you ignore the warning signs that you’re overworking yourself. Listen to your body, get enough sleep every night, manage your caffeine intake with only 2-3 cups of coffee each day, and regular exercise every week to stay sharp and avoid falling off the proverbial cliff.

Create a Morning Ritual

This goes hand in hand with the “best work” tip above. While not universal, most people find that mornings are incredibly valuable, and yet many waste large portions of them. They stay up too late and are therefore tired in the morning and unproductive. They don’t eat a solid breakfast. They check their phones even before getting out of bed, going into reactive mode before even fully awake.

To take back your mornings and what could be your most productive hours of the day, build a ritual that you can stick to.

This will be different for everyone, but some common morning tasks include meditation and/or prayer, drinking a bottle of water to hydrate, stretching or doing some light exercise, writing for a few minutes in a journal, or reading a book to get your creative juices flowing.

Don’t dive right into work the moment you roll out of bed. Spend time just “being” and let the day come to you.

The Value of Truly Uninterrupted Time to Your Business

Your time is the most valuable resource you have. When your company first launched, you used it to write code, meet with investors, and read resumes. Today, you use it in a very different way to manage, lead, and grow your business.

But those hours alone to focus on the big picture are still important. When balanced against hands-on time with your team, the daily responsibilities of a co-founder and executive, and your mental and physical health, you can be better prepared for the next steps you and your business will face.

A valuable way to spend your uninterrupted time is to invest in your own development. Download our 18 Leadership Books For Every Stage Of Your Career ebook to learn additional ways to improve yourself as a leader.

How to encourage strong communication in a global team

Communication is the lifeblood of any successful organization. But it takes on particular importance in distributed teams who don’t have the benefit of a central work space. (more…)

CEO interview series: Michael Seibel on leadership attributes in successful startup leaders

I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Seibel, currently a partner at Y Combinator and a co-founder of two well-known startups – Justin.tv and Socialcam. For the last five years, as a Y Combinator partner, Michael has worked with hundreds of startups, providing key insights as they work towards product/market fit. (more…)

CEO interview series: Michael Seibel on leadership attributes in successful startup leaders

Setting leadership goals for the new year

December is one of the busiest times of the year. Holidays. Travel. End of year financials. You’re running non-stop to get everything done before the calendar flips to 2019, and it’s difficult to carve out time to set professional and career goals for the year ahead. But, don’t let it fall to the wayside. Reflection and a bit of forward-thinking can transform not only what you achieve in the New Year, but how you approach your efforts. (more…)

3 steps to establish work-life boundaries for yourself and your team

Work-life balance is tenuous for a large percentage of workers, especially in the fast-paced environments of small- and medium-sized businesses. A 40-hour week can quickly turn into a 60- or 70-hour week as work tasks spill past the boundaries of nine-to-five. (more…)

How leaders address mental health

In recent years, mental health has become an increasingly important point of emphasis for leaders in all-size organizations. Mental health professionals and workplace health associations are increasingly working together to facilitate better and more direct discussions about the impact of workplace stress on mental health and the changes leaders can champion to address it. (more…)

How to build credibility with your team

Credibility separates a boss from a leader. If your team knows you’ll “go to war” for them, they will place their confidence in you and the organization. (more…)

The difference between leadership development and performance management

The average tenure for a modern worker is 4.4 years, but for workers under 40, that number is less than three years. The vast majority of this workforce is mobile and not only expect to change jobs frequently, but actively seek it out. (more…)

Helping your employees get back to balance after workplace burnout

Burnout can hit anyone in your organization at any time. Part of the problem is that we live in a culture that glorifies hard work, long hours, achievement, and “being busy”. The long-term effect of this is that our human bodies can only sustain that level of stress and pressure for so long without starting to break down physically and mentally. (more…)

How to fire with compassion

Whether you’re a new manager or a seasoned executive, firing an employee is never easy. As hard as it is to let someone go, however, letting them stay in a role that is not a fit – or in which they are consistently underperforming – does longer term damage to your company, the team members who have to pick up the slack, and, ultimately, to the employee.

So, you’ve made the decision to let someone go. What do you do now?

First Things First… Check That You’ve Met All Legal Requirements

Laws regarding termination vary from state to state. Consult with your HR manager – or HR consultant or lawyer – to understand the laws that apply to you. Ideally your company has created “termination guidelines” that you can follow. Make sure you know what you should – and should not – say to avoid risks of wrongful termination suits.

Even in an “at will” state such as California, if the employee falls within a protected class, it may be extra important to document the actions you have taken to help them improve their performance, and the factors leading to the termination.

Give Fair Warning and a Chance to Improve

While some terminations are immediate – in response to gross misconduct, for example – the more typical scenario is that it has been brewing for some time.

Ideally you have already discussed their poor performance or failure to meet expectations, and revisited their progress over a period of time. You’ve reiterated the company’s expectations of their role, and given them a chance to improve (such as a Performance Improvement Plan). If the decision to terminate is based on the employee’s failure to meet those expectations, or lack of suitability for the role, it will not come as a shock.

Choose a Private Setting

This may sound obvious, but in the modern world of open plan workspaces and glass-walled offices, privacy can require forethought. Your employee may have an intense emotional response… Accord them dignity and respect by giving them a private, unexposed setting.

Have another (appropriate) person present – your HR manager if you have one, or a senior colleague. As well as providing “moral support”, it provides a witness in the event of a wrongful termination claim.

If your employee works remotely, this may be more challenging still. However, do your best to have the conversation in person rather than virtually.

Timing…

This will depend largely on whether the termination will take immediate effect. If so, it’s generally recommended to do it on a Tuesday or Wednesday, to give the employee the chance to contact recruiters and start looking for another position.

However, if they will continue to work in their position for some time after receiving notice, Friday may be better. This gives them the weekend to process their emotions privately.

Preparation

As well as making sure you have planned for the most conducive timing and setting, and you have arranged to have another person present, we recommend that you write down the main points that you want to cover. This ensures you don’t get thrown off by the employee’s emotional response and say – or not say – something that may cause you legal problems down the road.

Go through these with your executive coach or a trusted advisor, even role-playing the conversation so that you are prepared.

The Conversation

This is the part that everyone with a heart dreads. It can be tempting to sugar-coat or procrastinate. Don’t. Be direct, clear and succinct.

Remember, in most cases, the termination is because of a mismatch between the requirements of the role/company, and the strengths/capacities of the employee. There is nothing “wrong” with that person, but rather, this job is wrong for them.

Get straight to the point. You can frame the conversation this way:

The company and/or role requires X.
The employee’s strengths and capacities are Y (i.e., not X).
Despite efforts to support the employee to meet the expectations of the role, they have not done so.
Therefore this decision has been made.

Make Sure Termination Details are Clear

Present the terms of the termination clearly. If you are offering options to the employee, ensure each is understood.

Important details to include:

Date termination takes effect
Severance package compensation
Any legal requirements (such as waiver of right to sue)
Unemployment benefits
Your willingness to provide a good reference

Be Compassionate But Firm

While sugar-coating is not helpful, there is room for you to authentically express your own disappointment that the relationship has not worked out. If the employee becomes angry or emotional, acknowledge their feelings, be kind, but do not engage in a back and forth about “why” this is happening. Here is an example:

“I imagine this is hard to hear, and I wish it could be different. But I’m confident you will find a better fit for your strengths and skillset.”

After delivering the salient information, focus on their strengths and interests – and what might be a better fit for them. Acknowledge the work that they have done well, and their service to the company.

While it won’t necessarily soften the blow, focusing on the mismatch of this person’s strengths or priorities with the requirements of the role is more empowering and honors them as an individual. In most cases, on some level, they will also know it is true.

Follow Up

You made it through the hard part. The next step is to notify your team of the employee’s departure to mitigate any uncertainty or fall-out. Again, consult with HR for guidelines and protocols. In general, however, your goal is to convey enough basic information to your staff without going into detail.

You can offer the general reason of “fit” or “mismatch” as discussed above. Ideally you can make the announcement in a team or all-hands meeting, but invite them to approach you privately if they have questions or concerns. It is also a good time to reassure your remaining team members that you value them, and that their positions are secure.

Finally…

Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Firing someone can be stressful. Give yourself the support and time you need to debrief. Seek support from your coach or a trusted confidante. And refocus on the knowledge that letting someone go, when they are not the right fit for the job, is the kindest thing for everyone.

According to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, “When you fire someone, you create the possibility for the person to excel and find happiness performing meaningful work elsewhere.”

5 tips to build a healthy culture that lasts in your company

Culture is the lifeblood of a successful company. It’s the beating heart and soul of what you do, a manifestation of your values in a team that is all-in on your vision. You hear about it constantly, and are committed to creating an environment that attracts the right people for your company to grow. (more…)

The secret to a successful Co-founder relationship

The cofounder relationship is a special one. It’s one of implicit trust; relying on another person in almost every way possible. It requires near-constant communication and even then, it can become turbulent.

So, what’s the secret to a successful co-founder relationship?

Invest in it.

Yes, it’s that simple and that difficult.

No matter how well you know each other, the potential for turbulence makes it so important for co-founders to invest in their relationship. To thrive, both parties must work together, recognize their symmetrical values and complementary skills, and communicate their needs on a daily basis.

When approached with the care that a true relationship deserves, your co-founder relationship will be stronger and so will your business. Let’s look at some of the strategies you can apply to invest in your relationship with your co-founder.

The Foundation of a Strong Co-Founder Relationship: Daily Touchpoints

For co-founders to work well together, they need to invest in their relationship consistently. That means frequent one-on-ones for at least 15 minutes between founders, ideally every day.

In a high stress environment, it’s common for issues to arise and for the seeds of resentment to sprout. A daily meeting addresses these issues immediately and keeps them from festering. Moreover, make sure both parties are 100% clear on the desired outcome of a conversation. A literal approach is recommended, asking “Are we clear?” when discussing a potentially thorny topic. Only when the other party says “Yes, we’re clear,” should the issue be settled.

Fifteen minutes a day can go a long way in strengthening the bond between co-founders and keeping them on the same page, but it’s important to carve out larger chunks of time every few months for deeper introspection. Quarterly founder retreats are a perfect time to discuss subjects like the co-founder relationship, company mission, vision, and other higher-level items that might have changed in the last few months.

Conflict Resolution Basics for Co-Founders

Limited resources, uncertainty, a high likelihood of failure – these are just some of the daily hurdles you and your co-founder will face. These stressors can bring out the worst in people, but behavior driven by fear response is often a zero sum game.

Conflict can sprout from almost anywhere. It can center around everything from personal relationships to business decisions, but will almost always manifest in communication, power dynamics and trust.

The secret to managing these challenges is to strive for healthy disagreement that is solution oriented and leads to new ideas. In an ideal situation, in which a strong relationship runs smoothly, there are certain best practices you should aim to follow:

Limit Hyperbole: Stick to the facts. It’s easy to become emotionally engaged in an argument and use extreme examples. This can be disingenuous and it doesn’t accurately frame your concerns.
Use I-Messages: Focus on your feelings and beliefs rather than those you might attribute to your co-founder. It’s easy to fall into a habit of blame based on assumptions about the other person. Instead share how their actions make you feel and what your beliefs are about the current situation.
Address Behavior: In conflict, speak to the actions and behavior with which you have an issue, not the character of your co-founder. Make the conflict about the issue, not the person.
Open Ended Questions: Encourage communication and discussion with open-ended questions that draw meaningful responses from each other. The goal of your questions should not be to solicit regret or apology, but to understand the other person’s perspective. In business this can lead to new and exciting ideas that help both you and your partner grow alongside the business.

The relationship with your co-founder will have ups and downs. Engage in open-ended dialogue daily to avoid issues that could undermine what you’ve created together.

The Evolution of Co-Founder Relationships as a Company Grows

Co-founder relationships are apt to change with time – evolving to reflect the current state of your business and the strengths or weaknesses of each individual.

Scale is a prime example.

The problems a company faces when they have 10 employees are very different from the ones faced when it has 50, 80 or 150 people. A technical cofounder might be a phenomenal software engineer but struggle in relationships. In the early days of the company, they can focus exclusively on code and building the best possible product, but when it comes to managing large teams, they might struggle.

If one co-founder scales well into leadership and the other struggles to adjust to a larger company in which their time is less hands-on and more focused on interpersonal relationships, tension can develop. These pivotal junctures in the growth of a company can break a co-founder relationship.

When to Bring in the Support of a Coach

In situations like the one above, the co-founder who is struggling may accept help and be open to coaching as they learn to fill a new role in the business. In the short term, however, they may have to be flexible and tolerate the introduction of new executives in the org chart for the health of the company.

Pivotal moments for your company, like when you’re preparing to fundraise or before you hire executives, are natural times to get the additional support of a coach. Investing in your relationship with your co-founder one-on-one, can only be enhanced by the guidance that a professional executive coach can bring.

Coaches can help you and your co-founder stay open to feedback from one another and keep the lines of communication open so it never feels personal when you receive criticism or development opportunities.

At Torch, we’ve helped founders like you create more successful relationships that lead to business success through our best-in-class leadership coaching.

We’re here to support you.