Peter Sorgenfrei outlines five behaviors CEOs and founders should drop: sharing half-baked ideas with your team, flexing positional power, leaning on too few advisors, pretending you have all the answers, and setting vague expectations. He draws from a dinner with clients and real employee interactions.
Last night I was in a dinner conversation with 2 of my clients, and it reminded me of the 5 things that you should stop doing as a founder and CEO. And the reminder came because one of them told the story of how she had discovered me now some time ago, and it was because of a post I made around those issues. So I thought I'd record a little video about it. So number one is to not share ideas when they are not fully baked. The problem is when you're a founder CEO and people listen to you, if you kind of just toss out an idea into the open, you have to make very well sure that people are not seeing it as this is the direction we're going in. Essentially, you're the captain of the ship, and if you look left, The entire ship starts steering left. So thinking about when do you share ideas and how do you share it can be helpful in managing better as a founder and a CEO. Another one, which is a little bit controversial, is, you know, not getting to enjoy the power too much. I got the question if it was intoxicating to have the kind of following that I have or sort of, you know, when you run a company? And my answer was, yeah, you know, sometimes it can get to your head, and you should enjoy the fact that you are able to motivate and inspire a bunch of people so they want to follow you, but you also have to be careful that it doesn't get to your head. So that was another one, you know, to be aware of. A third one that we talked about was relying on a lot of people or a few people for advice. So what's the right balance between the people that you listen to as you manage your business? And my advice there always is, well, find a couple of people who have no agenda, right? No board member, no spouse, no investor, no agenda with the business other than to give your perspective for you. Essentially, that's what I do as a coach. But it's also what you could get from other people who could provide advice to you. We had 2 more, I think. One was being afraid of not knowing all the answers. You should just stop doing that. You won't. You never will. And in fact, it's better for your company and for your team that they see the whole human who also doubts on occasion and who also says, well, you know what, I actually do not know So let's figure it out together, or why don't you figure it out and then we'll probably go with your solution. So don't be afraid of admitting when there's something that you do not know and have other people pitch in. And then the last one is maybe the most important one, which is setting or giving unclear expectations. I was in a chat also here yesterday with one of the employees at my client's company And the first thing he said when I sat down and had to talk to him about some stuff, he said, thank you for being so clear. That is clear, direct communication. And in the moment, I didn't know whether he appreciated what I said, but I knew that he appreciated how I said it. And I think that's a really important thing. So if you're not setting clear direction and clear expectations of your people, You need to start doing that now. So those were 5 things around things that you, you should stop doing or start, the other side of the coin. I hope you found this helpful. If I can talk about any other topic, as always, let me know and I'd be happy to record the video for you. Thank you.
