Support your employees while growing your early-stage startup

As a founder, you are under pressure to deliver results in a short amount of time. This pressure is something you are used to and probably thrive with. It is a source of meaning and enjoyment! It can sometimes turn into negative stress, but you have learnt how to handle it so that it doesn't become a chronic condition.

However, what about anyone else working at your company? There will be transition periods for your company where you are small enough that your direct efforts matter and large enough to employ non-founders in your company. This transition period is the one I found the hardest to manage personally as founder/CEO.

You will probably always be understaffed for what you want/need to do, and this pressure will trickle down to everyone in the organisation. You have been training to handle these feelings and have decided to start a company. Your employees did not. Setting up a culture where everyone can thrive with it is key to scaling an organisation. How do you do that while you can focus only a limited part of your time on "managing" instead of "doing"?

Here are some thoughts from my first-hand experience in your shoes:

• Have regular chats with everyone and ask open questions
• When you feel something is off, probe in depth with open questions to get to the real core.
• To do that, you need to be present and listen. It is better to meet fewer minutes but higher quality minutes.
• Understand what is essential for each of your employees and what is their coping strategy for stress. What makes them excited, motivated and connects with their strengths?
• Lift responsibility for the outcome of tough choices from your employees as much as possible.
• Take complete ownership of the result, and ask them to take ownership of their efforts.
• Joint prioritisation is the best antidote to the overwhelming feeling that there is too much to do. Formalise with your employees the decision on priorities.
• Help make fluffy and abstract incumbent feelings of stress into something tangible, concrete and fully actionable in the short term.
• Most of all, show that you are in this together. No one is alone. And the journey is extremely rewarding if you look for it!