Founder Superpower #16: The Courage to be Disliked
This is an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here.
“A manager is severely handicapped, dangerously vulnerable, and certain to be ineffective if he is an approval seeker, a person who needs to be liked by his subordinates.” – Dan Kennedy
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” – Marcus Aurelius
Most people want to be liked, respected, and admired; it’s built into our DNA to want these things and get along with our tribe. I wish business was all about camaraderie, good feelings, and dancing around maypoles, but that’s simply not how it works a lot the time. The truth is that the most effective leaders, as I’ve shown, are usually not so nice and may even be actively disliked by their team. If our presidents, generals, CEOs, and other leaders in our society led on the basis of being liked, nothing hard would ever get done, and the organizations would likely fall apart.
In reality, many of the most effective teams actually have quite a bit of argument and disagreement; that’s how they arrive at honest solutions. Patrick Collison, the co-founder of Stripe, has mentioned that his Irish heritage and cultural tendency to argue over things constantly is actually a great reason why the culture of Stripe is so successful. They’re not afraid to mix it up, and this helps get to the truth of things and build better solutions. This can be upsetting to certain personality types, especially the thin-skinned.
As discussed, the average employee, if you’re effective and holding them accountable, may not like you that much. It would be great if they did (and as I recommend, you should hire employees that like to be held accountable), and hopefully you will at least earn their respect, but as discussed earlier, you need to produce consistent results, and that usually means being pretty demanding. You need the courage to be disliked if necessary.
Leaders that want to be liked will be very vulnerable to a host of issues, including the inability to confront problems, a fear of holding people accountable, a lack of assertiveness (they’ll get railroaded by aggressive employees under them), and the worst of all (if and when you hire managers yourself), the inability to deal with or report these issues to their superiors because they know it makes them look bad.
I hope you can see how badly problems can spiral out of control under this type of leader. They won’t confront problems, they won’t hold people accountable, the truth about problems will never come out (perhaps even business-ending problems or vulnerabilities, potential lawsuits, theft, etc.), and their staff may bully, ignore, or actively undermine them. This is a recipe for chaos and a toxic environment.
The Balancing Act of Leadership: Respected But (Maybe) Not Liked
As I’ve mentioned multiple times (so I hope the message is clear), leadership is not a license to be a jerk, and there’s no reason for you to be a jerk to be an effective leader. There are many examples of leaders who are well-liked by their team. The problem is that some people will think you’re a jerk merely for holding them accountable or noticing poor performance. This is the main issue of this superpower: You have to be willing to be disliked. But there is a balancing act I’ve seen great leaders do, and there is a way to be respected not liked. I think being respected, if this is something you desire, can be important so long as the person respecting you is respectable themselves.
Habits of Respected Leaders:
- Be the example. If you don’t hold people accountable and confront problems yourself, how do you expect your team to learn or act?
- Be calm. Nobody wants to work for a neurotic or angry busy-body who gets frazzled by every decision. Make relaxation a priority (consider meditation or other relaxation tools), delegate things you dislike doing, and remember what I stated in the Energy Superpower: It’s all a game. Speaking or communicating while angry is a huge source of regret for many leaders—don’t do it. Wait 24 hours; the other party will be corrected or informed eventually.
- Be humble. Being humble can make your personality more tolerable, especially when you’re demanding. You can be humble and very effective at the same time. Practice quiet, competent leadership.
- Be positive. Positivity is critical. Be the Happy Warrior, which I think is a good combination of ruthlessness in getting things done and keeping things upbeat and motivational. Nobody likes to work for a professional bummer, and negative people at work are absolutely toxic and need to go (especially mean, gossiping, and insubordinate ones).
- Be honest. If you are honest with your staff, then most good people will respect that even if the truth hurts. Be careful, too much honesty and revealing of fears can terrify a team, so be strategic with how much honesty you reveal; you don’t want to constantly scare the team into thinking the business is doomed.
- Be assertive. If you’re not assertive, then you’ll get bullied, not only by your staff, but by customers, vendors, family members, and life in general. You want to assert that you have a right to be heard and to take the necessary actions you feel are necessary to succeed at whatever you do. Certainly, don’t be intimidated by your subordinates.
- Be solution focused. Don’t take things personally; focus on the problem. Take your ego out of business and team decisions. You want the team to succeed, and sometimes you need to swallow your pride and do or say things you don’t want to do for the good of the team and ultimately yourself.
- Be strategic about hiring. Don’t hire thin-skinned people and especially those who cannot take any criticism whatsoever. Hypersensitive people generally do not belong in a startup. It’s important for your team to realize that disagreement is not an argument.
- Be accepting. This may be the hardest lesson for many high achievers, but you want to accept that other people can do things differently than you, and sometimes it doesn’t look effective at first. Accept that others may have a better way of doing things, and let them show you and teach you.
I believe these tactics and the other superpowers mentioned in this chapter will help you become a dramatically more effective leader. As we’ve seen, Leadership is many times not about being nice or inspiring but is mostly about vision, getting results, and a good honest rapport going with your team. The Leadership Superpower, in my opinion, is easily the hardest to master, so don’t fault yourself if you start with very few abilities. As I’ve mentioned, I struggle with Leadership myself, even after 17 years. You, like me, may realize you may be better served by hiring great leaders and focusing on your other superpowers.
This was an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here or see our previous excerpts here.