Running a Football Startup Pt 1. Man-Management
I called my cousin and co-founder Darrell last year to let him know that I was up for taking on the CEO role. At that time, we didn’t even have a company, just an idea that we were passionate about. I had a couple of years of work experience under my belt working in a really high pressure environment, while Darrell was fresh out of university, so I felt it made more sense for me to take the responsibility of being the CEO. Looking back on it, I made that decision blindly, because I had no idea what being a CEO at a startup even involved. A year and a half later, I’m finally starting to get it.
How do you define the role of a CEO? It’s a question I kept asking myself – mainly because every day on the job was so different and the remit seemed almost never-ending. But when I read ‘Leading’ by Sir Alex Ferguson I started to become less confused about my position. In the book, Sir Alex talks about how he changed as a leader during his career as he went from managing Queen’s Park in Scotland to managing Manchester United. I saw a lot of similarities between how he saw his responsibilities and the role I had found myself doing that past year.
For me, one of the most important roles of a football manager is man-management — the art of understanding what makes people tick. The same is true for the CEO role. I’ve found that the most important quality of good man-managers is empathy — this is something that admittedly doesn’t come too naturally to me, so I have to put in an extra effort to remind myself to be sensitive to everyone. I’ve also actively been searching for man-management tricks, like ‘praise in public, criticise in private’ – little rules that over time I hope will become second-nature.
Man-management is all about those 1-to-1, more intimate conversations. I’ve been involved in these a few times this past year — for example, every so often a team-member reaches out to me for support when they are having a tough time. Also, sometimes I find myself going out of my way to explain my views and give advice directly to individuals in the team. But, even in a team of five, everyone’s character is so different and so I’m always trying to adapt how I interact with everyone. I want to prioritise understanding each of the team’s personalities inside-out, as it will help make sure that my words and actions have a positive impact on them. This will become a lot harder to do as we scale, mainly due to Dunbar’s number. But, in the early days of the business, I have no excuse.
Next week, I’ll be talking about ‘Selection’ — here you’ll get to hear a bit more about the other members of our team.
