Written by Carlann Fergusson, Owner of Propel Forward LLC.

You read about it in the papers all the time. A successful entrepreneur is asked to step aside and let a CEO with more operational experience continue to grow the business. This move is neither a statement that the entrepreneur’s brilliance has diminished nor a statement that the leader didn’t try hard enough. Instead, it is often a reflection that the entrepreneur kept their sight fixed on the same levers it took to start the business instead of a broadening their perspective as the business grew and became more complex.

If founders want to remain with their company through the next big growth cycle they will need to prepare themselves for this leader-shift. The good news is the entrepreneur can capitalize on the strengths that made them a great entrepreneur. Those innate skills of picking up changing patterns and synthesizing information from numerous data points to identify future market needs, can be applied inward to their business to see the patterns and data points that tell them where they need to change their leadership strategy.

As a manager, you’re required to display some level of positive thinking. You serve as the ‘cheerleader’ for your team, assigning work while at the same time making sure that your employees are engaged and satisfied with the company.

Optimists are popular people because, generally speaking, they are pleasant to be around and their enthusiasm can be contagious. In fact, according to research from the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania, optimistic managers may do a better job of helping employees reach goals and be more productive.

In a cross-sectional study of 86 employees and 17 managers at an Information Technology (IT) organization, researchers Margaret Greenberg and Dana Arakawa found that positive leadership correlated with employee optimism, engagement and project performance.

You could say humor is a funny thing (pun intended). It’s subjective, for instance you might be a huge fan of “The Hangover” films while your significant other finds them as humor-less as a congressional hearing. Still, the one thing everyone can agree on is they like to laugh from time to time but, unfortunately, many workplaces operate in a laugh-free zone.

While direct reports might have a laid-back relationship and share plenty of laughs at the water cooler, it’s typically a different relationship with their boss. It’s hard to tell where the boundaries are and in our politically correct world, no wants to offend anyone.

Why not? Those two words hold a lot of power. For example, why not earn a master’s degree? Why not get married? Why not cook with olive oil?

So when was the last time you asked yourself, “why not” when it comes to defining your leadership vision? In case you need a refresher, one’s leadership vision is widely considered as the cornerstone of leadership. Leaders must generate ideas to improve processes or products that keep the organization competitive. They must be able to articulate their vision in concrete terms in order to explain it to others and obtain their cooperation and enthusiasm.

Whether you started the company at the same time, or just happen to have clicked during a company happy hour, most people end up making friends with some of their coworkers. It’s natural to do so since human beings are programmed to want to develop close and supportive relationships with others.

Some of the best friendships have been developed due to working together, however, that all can come to a screeching halt the day one friend is promoted over the other.

While it’s a common workplace struggle to effectively transition an individual performer to a leader role, it’s perhaps most difficult for the newly crowned manager. Now they are forced to adapt to not only more responsibility and work, but also understanding where the boundaries lie when it comes to friendships at work.

If you’re a fan of the AMC hit series, seeing ‘Mad Men’ and ‘loyalty’ put together might seem
confusing. After all, protagonist Don Draper is about as un-loyal as one can get as a husband. But, lucky for Don, this isn’t a relationship blog as we’re purely focused on leadership and management, and despite his many flaws, there are lessons that can be learned from this fictional character.

Take for instance, Season 6, Episode 3: “The Collaborators.” In the episode, one of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s major clients, Heinz Beans, sets up a meeting between the agency and Heinz Ketchup. Heinz Beans is a pretty important client because the company decided to work with the agency when it was struggling.

Ahhh, I recall with sincere fondness the memory of playing certain childhood games. Sorry, Monopoly, LIFE, and one of my personal favorites – Chutes and Ladders. Now, each of these has messaging, or themes, that could be related in some fashion or another to Corporate America – risk/reward; entrepreneurial spirit; getting ahead with good deeds and jobs well done; dropping down a few rungs on the ladder for our mistakes, etc., etc. However, I’ll spare you my trite connections (Connect Four!) on these beloved games, and instead turn my attention towards the focus of this article – the world of the hungry, hungry High-Potentials.

Take a moment to think about your team. Chances are your team consists of a pretty diverse group of people who all have their various strengths and weaknesses.

While a diverse team has many benefits to the workplace, whenever people get together, there are bound to be different points of views that can lead to disagreements. It’s the manager’s responsibility to take care of any difficulties that arise within teams. An important way to properly handle a difficult situation is to truly understand the personalities you’re dealing with – after all there are nine different ones to consider.

Yes, nine different personalities. According to the Enneagram of Personality, a personality-profiling tool that dates back to 750 B.C, there are nine different personality types and everyone is said to fit into one of those nine. In fact, author and speaker Michael J. Goldberg believes that one’s personality type really says a lot about how that person acts at work.

Leadership is a complicated thing. It’s not complicated in the way you might imagine a difficult math problem to be; the impossibly intricate, weaving algorithms that decide what unnecessary Facebook status you see, for example. Nor is it a scientific formula, solved via two confluent processes engineered in an elaborate way to work harmoniously together. No, the secret of leadership simply cannot be unlocked with a concrete method or procedure that guarantees results every single time.

What is the reason for all this complication? People! People are the reason that no set formula will work. People are the reason leadership only flourishes via delicate, individual cognitive processes. People are the reason people often make critical errors and end up sinking their opportunity like a dead-weight.

People don’t function socially and ethically on basic formulas and equations. They work more subtly than that, and as a leadership role is based predominantly on the social and cultural equilibrium created by you in your working environment, a basic set of formulas and equations simply won’t work. Seemingly though, many professionals, trainers and failing leaders do not know this.