Founder Leadership Series: How to scale your leadership as you scale your business

‍In this three-part series, we explore different dimensions of leadership with Rachel Turner, author of The Founder’s Survival Guide and co-founder of VC Talent Lab. Throughout the series, Rachel shares simple tools to help you lead your business effectively from start, to build, to scale.

To survive and thrive as a founder, you need to understand what your business, people and stakeholders require of you at different stages of business growth and have the ability to adapt your leadership style and behaviours accordingly. To do that you need to understand and develop muscle in:

1. Three modes of leadership: Brave warrior, Considered Architect & Wise Monarch
2. Two styles of communication: Communicate to Influence & Communicate to Manage
3. Two elements of self-mastery: Mind-mastery & Energy Mastery

Session 2: Two styles of Communication: Communicate to Influence & Communicate to Manage

In this session, we explore how people problems are often symptoms of poor leadership communication, and what you can do about that, and master the skills of communicating to influence and communicating to manage, and know when to use which. You can view the on-demand webinar below, and receive associated resources by clicking 'send me resources'.

Most founders spend a lot of time talking to us at VC Talent Lab about ‘people problems’. They ask us questions like:

▶ Why aren’t my staff performing?

▶ Why are my teams complaining?

▶ Why are my investors/partners/co-founders such a pain?

Much of the time, these problems turn out to be symptoms of poor leadership communication.

To help founders unpack these challenges, and develop effective solutions to them, we differentiate between two very different styles of communication:

1. The Communicate to Manage Style

2. The Communicate to Influence Style

Communicating to Manage involves the ability to:

▶ Delegate effectively

▶ Give feedback and have tough conversations gracefully

▶ Coach your people

▶ Elicit high performance from your leadership team

At its core, the Communicate to Manage style is about giving people what they need to be successful in their roles, in a way that works for them. As a founder you may not need clarity, feedback, rules or consistency, but your team does, and your job is to set them up for success.

Communicating to Influence involves the ability to:

▶ Sell effectively

▶ Present with gravitas

▶ Speak in public

▶ Communicate your leadership brand

▶ Manage stakeholders, including investors

At its core, communicating to influence is about understanding how people form impressions and make decisions, then adapting communication in line with that. While communicating to manage as a founder is about giving your people what they need to be successful in their roles, communicating to influence is about being someone they want to follow. 

Most founders have mastered some, but not all, of these skills. In this webinar we look at two simple models to help you grow your communicate to manage and communicate to influence skills, and look at how you can apply those models to solve a large number of the communications challenges you may have.