This week I was involved in a very insightful debate whether a founder, CEO or MD of an agency needs to be tough. A caveat: These agencies were between 20 - 80 employees and the perspective was mainly from the founders, CEOs or MDs of those businesses.

It became clear that there are different leadership styles, but luckily all of them came from a place of care. And that is the key point.

Most people have the need to be liked - without becoming overly anthropological - but it’s probably some sort of survival instinct. And some need to be liked more than others.

Whether you have children, a younger sibling or a pet you can probably relate to this: Letting them eat treats all day, just so they tell you how much they like you - is not very caring. Because we all know that if you have 500 gummy bears a day, you are probably going to die at some point!

Letting your team members do whatever they like to do, just so you avoid them saying - “oh I don’t like you anymore, you changed” - is going to cause all sorts of problems.

I think one of the hardest things for most agency leaders is to transition from a few people in a team, where all your colleagues are also your friends, to the point where you actually can’t be good friends with everyone.

Mainly because you won’t have the time.

At that point, the danger of having a handful of close friends in the business is that you may give them unconscious preferential treatment or you struggle to make tough decisions.

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet for how to transition, as every human being is different. But my tip would be to start preparing yourself as early as possible to have difficult conversations with anyone in the business, when necessary. Especially when it’s the more caring thing to approach it head on, rather than to avoid it.

The other important thing to remember is that you’ll get to a point of a business size, when you have to decide when a problem is an individual problem or a systemic problem. The reality is that you and your managers won’t be able to fix all individual problems. So you have to prioritise the things that will systematically damage or benefit your business.

And this is most relevant when you are making significant changes in the agency.

One book I highly recommend you read, if assertiveness doesn’t necessarily come naturally to you is When I Say No I Feel Guilty by Manual J. Smith

Important, always start from a place of care.
Unless of course they are taking a piss! ;)

Cheers,
Daniel