In this short talk, the speaker cautions founders against using Elon Musk as a universal template for leadership, noting that Musk’s rare talent makes his style unsuitable for most. He recounts a case where a founder’s relentless criticism, despite strong fundraising and hiring skills, drove his team to the brink of mutiny. The speaker identifies the root causes: lack of trust, absence of positive feedback, and unclear vision. He advises founders to build a culture of trust, give regular positive reinforcement, set clear goals, and acknowledge uncertainty. Finally, he highlights that many founders are internally self‑critical, and that this inner voice often manifests as external harshness, suggesting founders examine and tame their own dissatisfaction to prevent it from harming their teams.
Chapters
If a founder comes to me and says, you know, but Elon Musk does it, it works for him, right? I would always kind of say in the nicest possible way, Elon Musk is once in a generation. I suspect that you're not going to get that glow. Okay, I just want to say that. Do what works for you. Right, right, right, exactly. But I did work with a founder once and his team was on the verge of mutiny because he was so critical, constantly critical, nothing was good enough. And he did all the things. He worked super hard, the hardest one in the office. He like was an ingenious at finding fundraising. He was doing all the things. He hired a great team. And he was so critical of them that they couldn't take him. So by the way, there are consequences of that, right? Yeah. So like, it's not like— this is not my rule. This is their rule. They were on the verge of mutiny and about to quit, OK? And that's when he hired me to help him understand, like, what's the problem of just being— I just have high standards, right? But it turned out he hadn't done the work around building the right culture, building the right community around— And trust. Trust, 100%. Even like positive feedback, what is going well. And then what he really didn't do is set a clear vision and agenda. So they were all doing the best they could and it was never good enough because he was never clear on what he really wanted. What that meant. Yeah. So setting clear goals and objectives, acknowledging you don't know what they are, thinking like, wow, it's kind of like out here, let's figure it out together. All of those kinds of things help you be not so critical. But I would just say the last thing is that many founders are themselves super driven and self-critical. And so the other thing is to really look inward to see what's the inner voice that I'm giving myself saying and how is that showing up in the outside world. That usually manifests externally. It does. It always does. And, you know, they say about the founders, right, chips on shoulders like chips in pockets, right? And I think that's really true that a drive for founders often comes from that, like, sense of dissatisfaction and it's great and it has to be tamed.
