How leaders build their founding team

Over the years of working at various places, I had a chance of meeting amazing mentors and leaders, who gave a quick tip from their years of experience during my initial days which I adhere to as much as possible in building a team and creating a culture within built team.

I personally feel that, some advices aren’t free in this world, rather it’s quite expensive and seldom.

When thought deeply, a mentor who has lost a million rupees in a startup over the span of five years, might give you the whole of their experience under five hours, without you wasting either your one million or five years in a startup.

For quite sometime, I wanted to write about what did such leaders actually did to their founding team, and to keep building and turn thoughts into a culture, and strengthening it.

Below are some of the points which are on top of my mind that have been shared by them, and whole lot of credit goes to them, and am just summarising it in own words here.

Being mindful, and practising it.
Leaders have always been solid and less-affected during times of stress where other’s easily break.

A simple secret behind this dust turning into gold is being mindful.

Mindfulness, is act of being completely aware of the present moment without being judgemental.

Practising mindfulness creates a huge difference between responding and reacting to a situation.

Gratitude works great, every time.
Relationship are number one indicator of our happiness, the best way to cultivate them is to appreciate the people around you, founding members of every successful startup have a great way of showing gratitude to their early employees and early adaptors.

People sometimes confuse thanking someone as being formal when they are tad closer than usual in a workplace.

Irrespective of whether we deny it, or accept a thanks, deep inside everybody needs to be recognised and reciprocated with equal goodness.

For instance, thanking someone for keeping the dustbin cover open until you throw a tissue, keeping the door open for someone to walk in, and even offering a chair to someone who has come to meet your colleague sitting next to you.

This slowly ripples, and eventually you would start doing it for others.

Probably managers can keep an appreciation cards in your drawer, and often send them out to your team on a monthly basis if that isn’t objecting any HR policy or culture.

Not taking what’s not yours.
For any effort, no matter how small or how big it is, leaders have proven it to share it with rightful owners.
This builds trust and integrity in the process.

When someone has done something out of their way, recognise them before the world, they will stand with you when the whole world is against you!

Focus on positive
Focussing on strength and positive is a counter-intuitive method, most weaknesses can be made irrelevant and don’t even need to be fixed sometimes.

It’s like when you build a 100% flawless product, there’s no scope of improvement. All that needs to be done is just maintaining it.

Untouched for a brief period.
I have heard of this Hard work vs. Smart work, but haven’t really understood how exactly to do a work smartly.

Later it dawned on me, that first step towards working smart is to focus all your energy into the work at your hand giving your fullest.

I know of an entrepreneur who has this quiet hours policy in his startup in Bay area. It’s a two hour duration where everybody’s phone would be in DND/silent mode, except support and sales and the team would be in complete silence.

Initially, it seemed a bad idea, but later when actually thinking through tough times during ideation or other arms of creative work, having less distraction, and noise free floor sure helps in increasing the productivity.

Leading with evidence
When you want your team to follow your suit, you have to start with yourself.

Practice what you preach — If you aren’t actively working on your said habits or rules, your team won’t either.
Honestly, nobody wants to be told what to do when the instructor don’t know what they’re talking about.

Spreading smiles
Our predecessors brain contains something called as mirror neurons, meaning that when you’re have a strong emotion, the individuals around you shall catch your strong emotions.

Probably, one of the reasons why you cry when there’s a sentimental sequence going on in a movie,or just smiling when someone smiles at you in walk way.

In simple terms, spreading smile and happiness is the most simplest way of becoming successful.

Patience is virtue.
Leaders sure knows when they’re sowing the seeds of success, and when to expect the growth.

They don’t expect an overnight success,since they sincerely belive that,

Usain Bolt wasn’t the fastest crawling baby.

Bare minimum, and reasoning.
Leaders have always found the knack of saying a no to many things, and saying yes to only few things they deal with.

They keep asking why for every thing they initiate, if they aren’t convinced in what they’re doing, they don’t ask others to join them with full confidence.

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