Attunement is a concept in psychology that stems from a core human need to be seen, recognized, and honored as individuals. This happens with startup founders naturally; think about all of the founder‐specific decisions companies make. Here are a few ways I've seen attunement play out for founders at companies:

• A poker‐themed company holiday party because the founder famously loved to gamble.
• Violin giveaway at a high‐tech conference when our product and brand had nothing to do with violins or music because the founder was a violinist.
• Very few meetings, because the founder disliked them.
• Lots of meetings, because the founder liked them.
• No alcohol served at company parties, as an unwritten rule, because the founder didn't drink.
• Lots of IPAs always served at company parties, as an unwritten rule, because the founder preferred them.
• The office was located in a city that was easily accessible by the founder to get to his kids' school from his home, even though no other employees lived in that very expensive area that was a long commute for most of the team. When the idea of moving to another city closer to the majority of the staff came up, it was shot down, primarily because it would have been inconvenient for the founder.

Some of these become so baked into company culture you'd have to really trace it back to uncover it's about one or two people's preferences. These preferences become like the laws of physics at tech companies. Attunement is possible at the individual level, from the co‐founders to the lowest‐level startup employees. Enabling others' contributions rather than delivering your own requires understanding of how to empower the individuals on your team as individuals. This is also the best way to support a diverse group—expending energy to truly understand and meet diverse needs. In this chapter, we'll tackle strategies and tips for success.

BEGIN WITH THE GOAL IN MIND: EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

Most startups regularly set goals with objectives and key results, defined by measurable results (OKRs, etc., as discussed earlier in the book). To reach company goals, you'll need to reach team goals, and those are achieved through individuals meeting their goals. The unit of collaboration means empowering your startup team to deliver. Getting everyone rowing in the right direction and working on the right work is hard. It takes a lot of systems and intention to disrupt a new market. To guide your cadre of joiners to accomplish goals requires that they understand and take ownership of their areas and contribute.

Think about the best boss you ever had, and how this person treated you. It is likely they:

• Helped you always understand the team vision and strategy, even (especially) during times of ambiguity for the business.
• Helped you clearly understand your OKRs and/or individual goals and how those rolled up to the team and overall business objectives and mission.
• Encouraged you and believed in your ability to grow and accomplish more in your job and career.
• Trusted you to accomplish your work and let you truly take ownership vs. micromanaging every aspect of your work.
• Gave you a sense that they cared about you as a human being and not just for the work product you produced.
• Made it safe for you to make mistakes as long as you learned from them and to prevent making the same mistakes in the future.
• Were kinder than they needed to be.
• Treated you as an individual and didn't unilaterally impose their style and preferences on to you without understanding how you work best and what your styles were.

As you work to become a better startup leader, think of becoming the kind of boss who makes people feel seen, more supported, challenged, engaged, and encouraged. The growth that's possible professionally when we have a supportive leader is simply astounding. The more work you put into becoming a supportive leader, the bigger the impact you'll have not only on business outcomes but on people's lives.

MAKE BUILDING A HEALTHY CULTURE A TEAM PRIORITY

The choice to build a healthy team starts with you. Prioritize creating an environment where people can thrive.

“As a manager, I know that I need to have an impact not only on business outcomes but on people's lives. When I bring that awareness to my team, the drive to make the project a success improves tenfold,” says engineering leader Stephon Striplin.

Building healthy processes and resources, you'll empower your reports to deliver more value and be happier at work.

TEAM EMPOWERMENT STARTS WITH BUILDING TRUST

Anne Morriss and her co‐author Frances Frei say that the best teams include “high standards, authenticity, and empathy.”¹ Whether you inherit a team or build one as you join, invest in building trust with your reports as soon as possible. Understand that everyone's individual work styles, as well as their personal preferences around work communication and style, will need to factor into how you lead them. There is no “one size fits all” approach to management, but rather a constant calibration against the individuals whom you're managing.

Your team will also be getting to know you and your work style and, together, you'll all learn how to work as a group (fun, right?). In your management, relate to your team members as individuals with their own style, meaning your style will need to adapt somewhat to each report. An extrovert may want to interact differently from an introvert, etc. Diverse and inclusive teams require accounting for everyone having different needs and styles.

GET SUPPORT ALONG YOUR JOURNEY THROUGH A SUPPORT CIRCLE

Kalev Kaarna, VC at Superangel in Tallinn, Estonia, says that for his startup portfolio, he always recommends—and even pays for—six months of leadership and personal growth coaching for its leaders specifically so they'll build healthier companies. He says in addition to this, he also supports creating “mastermind” groups for the functional area executives. “You don't need permission to do this,” he said. “Anyone in the startup community can create a group of five or six people to meet and be each other's support.”

A coach or “support circle” can be a great place to vent to neutral parties so you're not offloading your angst to your reports. Managing (and tending to) your strong negative emotions and refraining from projecting them onto others is your number one priority as a team leader. In my opinion, this action alone is the single most powerful thing you can do in the tech world to make people's lives better.

ENSURE YOUR TEAM HAS ENOUGH RESOURCES TO BE SUCCESSFUL

Having enough resources improves the lives of those on your team. Preventing burnout on your team isn't just about giving people advice on how to set boundaries and practice self‐care on a personal level. Adding more responsibilities to your team in a cash‐strapped startup is tempting, but you need to resist unrealistic expectations. Often, high‐performing individuals will meet them at a cost to themselves. Even if you don't care about someone's happiness (you should!), that person will be more likely to quit, meaning you'll lose your valuable resource.

To fuel sustainable growth, a startup must bring on more resources, including full‐time employees (FTEs) and agencies and consultants in any area where your team is overloaded, and in new growth areas.

It's one thing to ask team members to take on stretch projects for their own career growth while helping them de‐prioritize other areas. It's quite another to ask your head of content to now build a new user community and monitor it several hours per day while also QA testing the app. As you mature in your role, anticipating where you'll need more resources and investing in them early (before it becomes a painful situation) will save you and your team headaches.

LET YOUR TEAM KNOW YOU, TO THE DEGREE YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH

As an openly LGBTQ+ woman in tech, I've been surprised by how many of my team members and members of other teams have confided in me that they are LGBTQ+ or have a LGBTQ+ family member. I think it puts them at ease to know that they are not alone and to see representation. Being open yourself can make it feel safer for others on the team.

I know a lot of executives who are working parents who are honest with their teams about their struggles (and joys), and who have said that this is crucial for creating the authenticity culture on their team.

As a team leader, you'll have to decide what makes sense for you. Not everyone feels comfortable or has the same privilege to share parts of their identity, particularly depending on where in the world they are working and the type of startup. Don't feel you have to over‐share or put yourself in an uncomfortable position. The idea is to reveal and open up parts of yourself that will help people see you as an individual, which in turn can give them more permission and freedom to be their own individual selves. That authenticity can go a long way to build trust and create a safe environment in which to solve the tough problems startups face.

EMPOWERING YOUR TEAM TO DELIVER AND LET GO OF TASKS IN YOUR “ZONE OF EXCELLENCE”

Executive coach and venture capitalist Sue Heilbronner says leaders that she coaches were often promoted based on the skills that they exhibited as individual contributors.

“In the early phases, it gets very difficult to let go of performing those individual contributor tasks in your ‘Zone of Excellence',” says Heilbronner, referencing Gay Hendricks' concept of “Zone of Excellence” vs. “Zone of Genius,” which refers to working in areas that we are truly genius at versus just excellent at. For example, think of a world‐famous artist painting vs. driving a car. They may be an excellent driver, but it is not necessarily their “genius.”

Heilbronner and Hendricks describe the “zone of excellence” as things that you're really great at but they're actually not the things that are going to carry you into the highest level of success in an executive role.

“Because those things are so comfortable and because you've been praised your whole career for doing those things, it's difficult to let them go, not as a delegation issue, but as just a habitual issue, you're used to doing them as one person,” says Heilbronner.

BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY BY CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE MISTAKES ARE HANDLED WITH CARE, NOT BLAME

Startups require learning; you're testing assumptions and getting data from the market. Sometimes, these tests don't work out. If we make a place for learning and growth, we're able to move faster than if we create an environment where mistakes are hidden due to fear of retribution.

When we openly learn from our own mistakes, we also engender a sense among our team members that they, too, can make mistakes, and make amends for them. This flexibility creates a healthier team dynamic than one that purports not to ever make mistakes (impossible) and acts from a place of perfectionism. In the repair process with our teams—the coming apart and coming together again—we can learn how to build healthier workplaces, as well as healthier environments for people to thrive as individuals.

Teams make mistakes. Retrospectives are at the heart of agile methodology for a reason—they enable us to learn, adapt, and grow faster. Startups themselves are a metaphor for trial and error, an attempt to boldly disrupt an industry, in the vulnerable state of not knowing for sure how things will turn out. Unlike established enterprises, vulnerability is baked into the heart of startup life.

That's not to say that you shouldn't address continued mistakes; if an individual or if your team is continuing to make the same mistake, that needs to be discussed and dealt with. No matter what, however, you can treat the mistake harshly while treating the person or people involved with kindness and respect. Getting this right is one of the best things you can do as a boss. It's worth investing time to work on learning how to treat yourself with kindness when you also make mistakes.

CONSIDER INSTITUTING A “NO MEETING” DAY

When it comes to managing health and wellbeing at work, taking a day per week focusing on doing deep work and taking breaks from endless meetings can help your team deliver their best. Many companies are now doing this; consider it for your organization.

A WORD ON BEING A MEMBER OF AN UNDER‐REPRESENTED GROUP AND NAVIGATING MAKING MISTAKES

Based on conversations with friends who are also leaders from under‐represented backgrounds in the startup world, there can be more pressure on us to not make mistakes or to do everything “twice as well” because we are sometimes not assumed to be qualified or to be fit for the role based on industry biases.

With such low percentages of people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women of all backgrounds in startup leadership, we can feel added pressure to “get it right” all the time. That kind of pressure is exhausting and unfair, and, frankly, is unrealistic, because all startups require making choices, getting data on whether they succeed or fail, and then learning from them.

Recognizing the issue is the first step in creating space for change, so notice and pay attention to situations where you're putting extra pressure on yourself and/or your team to perform “perfectly” and see if it's possible to still continue to perform without chasing the unattainable “perfection” goal. It can help to get feedback from peers and mentors, particularly others from under‐represented groups. Get positive feedback on your accomplishments as well as get support in this area of perfectionism due to imposter syndrome or fear of failing if not delivering perfectly all the time.

CREATE A ROADMAP WITH INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES AND AGREEMENTS FOR WORKING TOGETHER AS A TEAM

Consider creating a “how you work” strategic document, including preferred communication channels, schedules around everyone's time zones, preferred ways of working, and more. You can keep this in a company wiki or a shared doc with your team. When you're clear about your own boundaries and needs, and encourage your own team to do the same, it is easier to work together.

Think of these as “unauthorized guides” to working with you. Include everything from your operating approach, how you like to do 1:1's, manager handbooks, and the ins and outs of how you think about working. You can also include how you approach chat, what your work style is, what you expect of your team, and what things don't work well for you. These things all help those who work with you (your own team members and other teams) to learn quickly how to meet your style and adapt to your needs. What a time‐saver. Consider doing one of these for your teams so they can know you better sooner, and you can reduce friction working together.