Kiyan Foroughi

Trying too hard to be liked

When I was at the bottom of the totem pole, I also used to say to myself, “When I’m the boss, I’m not going to be a douchebag like Greg. I’m going to do things differently. Everyone will love me.”

Boy was I foolish.

Don’t go for being liked as your objective. Yeah, it’s a plus to be liked by your team but what matters is being respected and being fair, first & foremost. Liked can come later. Or not come at all. Doesn’t matter if you have the former two.

I know it’s a hard transition to make when you were just at the same level (or working alongside) the people you are now managing. It feels a little awkward. Mais c’est la vie. You are now their leader. They don’t need you to be nice. They need you to give them direction, make the right decisions and set up the platform on which they will become successful in their own roles and careers.

Don’t make promises you cannot keep either like an increase in salary, a reduction in working hours or extra leave if you don’t have the authority to do it. Don’t try to be a hero. It will come back to bite you in the ass.

Not delegating or empowering your team

One way to earn your team’s respect (and even be liked in the process) is to empower them.

You’ve just come out a role where you were in the weeds getting things done. As a manager, you need to make a mental switch now: you cannot do everything. In fact, if you’re doing everything the same as before, then something is wrong.

Your role now is to empower your team. Find out what motivates each individual, what their skills are and unleash them. Max is an organisation freak? Put him in charge of your team’s marketing calendar. Sue is detail orientated like no one you’ve ever seen? Make her responsible for checking every report before it goes out.

Empowering your team and delegating to them doesn’t make you any less of a woman or man than you were before I promoted you. In fact, it makes you more than what you used to be.

Don’t get me wrong. You’ll still be “doing” a lot. You just need to learn that sometimes, you’re not going to be needed on the battle field. You’ll be on the side, invisible, making everyone shine. And that’s very cool.

Not giving feedback or dealing with people issues fast enough

I know. It’s awkward to give feedback to someone you used to work with side-by-side and now manage. It’s just easier to avoid it, right?

Don’t. You’re accumulating people debt by doing that. One of the worst kinds of debt for businesses. It’s like sweeping something under a rug. The dirt under the rug gets bigger and eventually (without fail), you’re going to trip over it and the fall is going to hurt. I promise you.

Nip things in the bud as soon as they arise. But that doesn’t mean pointing fingers and getting angry at people the way Mom and Dad used to scream at us when we were kids. There are ways to structure these kind of conversations: by showing the other side it’s a huge professional learning and personal growth opportunity for them. That you genuinely care about their success and helping them overcome any weakness they may have. They’ll respect you for it. Maybe even like you.

“Jack, I want to help you be successful here. I’ve noticed you sometimes have issues with keeping track of all the work in progress. Can you let me know what’s been bothering you? Let’s brainstorm and find a way that will help you with this.”

Be constructive.

Also, sometimes, you’ll need to have the hard conversations (yeah, those — you know what I’m talking about). Don’t be afraid of them. With these kind of talks, it’s like losing your virginity. It’s very awkward the first time but you’ll only get better at it. If you’re fair and rational, it’s just business at the end of the day and no one can fault you for it.

Not communicating upwards

Please talk to me. Don’t think that by communicating and asking me questions that I’m going to wonder why did I even promote you or hire you into this role in the first place. Not at all.

In fact, I’m actually quite worried that you’re not talking to me about the issues you’re having. Let’s brainstorm together. I can help you come up with solutions. I won’t give you the solution — but I will teach you the methodology that will help you get to the answer.

I’ve been through what you’ve been through and I want you to be successful. If you’re successful, it is highly likely that so will I. The same way you have to empower your team, it’s my role to empower you.

So let’s talk regularly. And don’t make me be the one who has to schedule regular talks. Those are like blind dates forced upon you by your friends: awkward.

Fire fighting without finding the actual cause of the fire

You’re used to putting out fires. You do it so well that it probably explains why you made the jump to manager in the first place. In fact, you’re probably putting one (or several) out right now. The same way you used to when you were not leading the team.

Well, now, you’re leading the team.

Take the time to analyse what started the fire in the first place and prevent it from happening again. Can we improve some our internal processes? Can it be automated by the dev team? Can someone’s role be adjusted to solve this? Do you even know what is causing this in the first place?

I don’t want to be the one who always comes up with the solutions. I’d much rather hear them and see them come from you. You’re closer to the details than I am anyway.

I need you to not only be tactical, but also strategic.

If you’ve searched and are still not sure how to prevent the fire, see the previous point.

Hiring more people is always the solution

It’s not. One of the worst answers you can give me to the question “What can be done to avoid this from happening in the future? is:

“We’re too stretched. Let’s just hire someone to do it.”

Are you? Are you really? Are you and your team working 12 hour+ days and spending every weekend at the office? If you’re not (or even if you are), then maybe you should examine your team’s organisation, priorities and processes. Maybe something is broken there? Have you found the cause of the fire? Have you tried to come up with creative solutions?

You may well be understaffed. But let’s make sure we’ve left no stone uncovered before resorting to hiring someone else.

This list is not exhaustive but if you can avoid the above already, you’ll be in the top 90th percentile.

I know this all may have sounded a little harsh but it was meant to give you a little wake up call. I’m the type of guy who likes to point out potholes I’ve fallen in myself and watch with pride as you dodge them — growing both professionally and personally in the process.

Don’t worry. The best of us have made these same mistakes. No shame in it.

Some people at the top still do.

Sincerely,

Why? Because teaching is a tough one.

It requires time — the most precious of commodities — and patience. Given that in most fast-paced environments we rarely have the former, having the latter doesn’t even matter. It’s not an “either/or” relationship, it’s an “and” relationship. So we go on firefighting and getting things done as we usually do hoping that those we lead will magically pick up on how we do things.

And some people will. But most won’t. It’s not because they’re not smart. Far from that. It’s because of human psychology: methodologies are taught, they are not innate.

To lead is to teach.

Figuring out what to teach

A leader needs to make the time to teach their various methodologies to those that they lead. What you should teach depends on the business and the type of environment you’re in, but I’ve usually found that if you teach the following, 90%+ of daily scenarios are covered:

how to approach a problem and go about solving it

how to ask the right questions to get to solutions

how to do proper research

how to checklist deliverables or strategic initiatives

how to react in tough situations

how to prioritise

how to manage others

and…. how one can teach himself/herself

The list above is not exhaustive but imagine that your lieutenants were able to do all of the above on their own, there would probably be very little left for you to do and you can focus on big picture, strategic issues that are equally (if not more) important to the success of your business.

Making the time

For the time poor (who isn’t?), a great way to do this is to incorporate these teachings every time a problem is served to you on a plate and you’re asked to solve it.

You can say “I’m not going to tell you what to do here but I will tell you how I would go about solving this issue.” And then ask the student to come back with their solution and see if they got it or not.

One thing that I have been doing at Garena is taking the time to teach about a particular topic at my weekly meetings with the various teams. The topics vary: what to look for when hiring, how to organise your teams, recognising when things are breaking and how to address it, the ingredients of word of mouth etc.

It takes no more than 15–20 minutes of my time but afterwards, the time required from me on the topic I discussed is reduced greatly, leaving me time to do other things. Through this (and other things which I will discuss in another post soon), I’m able to manage hundreds of people in several geographies, launch new ones and push big initiatives.

That’s the irony about teaching others: it takes time, you got no time, but make the time, and suddenly, you have loads of time.

Being able to do everything yourself is not cool. Teaching methodologies and empowering others to is.

Wolf & Badger is best known for its two award-winning concept stores, in Notting Hill and on Dover Street in Mayfair, but its unique model goes far beyond just bricks-and-mortar. The business provides independent designers with a multi-channel sales and marketing function, customer service and international distribution so that its member brands are free to focus on design and production. With this acquisition, the Wolf & Badger business will strengthen its existing online capabilities and further extend its global reach as it looks to internationalise its web platform at www.wolfandbadger.com and open stores in New York and other fashion capitals worldwide.

Founded in 2010, Boticca.com is a content-led, global curated marketplace that allows customers to connect with independent designers of fashion accessories around the world, discover their stories and shop directly from their studios. With brands in 40 countries worldwide and customers from over 60 countries every month, Boticca.com established itself as a unique and truly international online destination for one-of-a-kind accessories and jewellery.

The combined business will now work with over 600 individually selected independent brands and sell to an existing user email database of over 800,000. Wolf & Badger will bring on-board a number of the Boticca.com team in the merger, strengthening the already expert management team based in London which will continue to be led by brothers George Graham, CEO and Henry Graham, Creative Director.

Boticca.com CEO, Kiyan Foroughi, comments "As the lines of commerce between the offline and online worlds blur, omni-channel retailing is where the industry is heading to. Combining Boticca's strength in the online world with Wolf & Badger's established offline presence is a natural step in this evolution.  This merger enables us to build the world's leading omni-channel platform for independent brands and designers to get access to global distribution, bringing an exciting retail destination to customers across the world."

Wolf & Badger CEO, George Graham, adds “We have long shared a vision to provide independent brands with the opportunity to gain the global reach and scale previously reserved for only for the largest and best capitalised luxury fashion brands. This merger will enable us to introduce many more customers globally to the unique and wonderful collections that are produced by the world’s most talented designers.”

All of this bad news. Constantly. After a while, in what is a perfectly human reaction, you become numb to it. It doesn’t mean we don’t care — quite the opposite in fact. But you learn to look for the positives, the lessons learnt and not dwell on the negatives because let’s face it, becoming depressed doesn’t help the cause. You have to show strength for the rest of the team.

We need to put on a facade for the “outside” world of customers, investors and partners: boundless optimism and energy in the face of unrelenting challenges, all with a constant smile on our face.

This takes its toll on us. Sometimes, we let our guards down. And this happens mostly in the sanctuary of our own “homes”: the office.

Early on in my entrepreneurial adventure, I was very guilty of this. I became so numb to the bad news that I was also becoming numb to the good news. A marketing campaign delivered positive ROI. A change you made to your website increased our conversion rate by 10%. We hired a star employee. We raised a round of investment. Signed a great partnership. We got cash!

“All great news. I’m happy. But what’s next? Let’s get back to work! We still have a lot to do.”

That was not the right approach. Not for the team. Not for me.

You need to celebrate each and every success within the business. No matter how small. As entrepreneurs, we note it, and carry on. But the team are ultimately there to build shareholder value — our value — and that means that there is no massive endgame for them, maybe a small one with options, but not like it is for the founders and major investors.

Get some cake, beers or whatever you fancy. It feeds your team with the optimism that they can keep driving positive change. It also crystallises their success and sets a platform for them to repeat that accomplishment again.

For you, the entrepreneur, it gives you the energy and belief you require to keep taking your business to the next level. You can receive 20 pieces of bad news that day but celebrating the one good piece keeps you going. You know it deep down inside.

So for my founders who live this day in and day out, for those of you who ride the roller coaster of the highs and the lows, don’t forget to celebrate the highs. Your team needs it. And you need it.