Mediaboss Marketing

HOPR co-founders Rik Krieger and Sebastian Brgel

In case you hadnt noticed, the balance has tipped.

Individuals in today's workplace have more leverage than ever before in the history of work.

Even before the global pandemic, the emerging trends were clear: employees were placing increasing importance on meaning, integrity and autonomy wanting to be considered as human beings, not human resources.

Now, if theyre unsatisfied, they have more options than ever.

Expand your leadership range.

To align the demands of talent with the demands of growing a business, leaders will need an expanded repertoire of leadership skills to toggle between dramatically different modes of being: knowing when to be decisive and data-driven, on the one hand, or empathetic and comfortable with ambiguity, on the other, for example.

This kind of leadership versatility will be especially critical for companies seeking to innovate and disrupt.

Thats the space in which HOPR is playing. Co-founded by Sebastian Brgel and Rik Krieger in 2020, HOPR is using blockchain technology to increase data privacy with a token-incentivized solution that lays the groundwork for a more sovereign and safe internet. Its grown to 19 employees in the past 15 months, with 12 members of the team based in Switzerland and the others abroad.

I spoke with Rik about being a multi-faceted leader, and in particular the challenges of communication created by flexible and remote working conditions.

Rik: Leadership is becoming more of a 4D chess game. People expect you to be the approachable team leader but also the tough guy who takes hard decisions. They want freedom, to be heard and understood, but they also want guardrails. At the end of the day, they still expect you to step in and say, "No, that's too much. Stop it.

Renita: Ah, like a good parent.

Its not just the money.

Rik: Yes, and they really care about values and transparency. For example, in one interview with a developer, I explained that we have an open salary policy and showed him the range for the IT team, including my salary.

He did the calculation on his calculator and said, "Yeah, my other offer is 1.5 times more."

Well, I can go on the cusp of that range, I said, "but we have an open salary policy so if I pay you much more than the others you'll need to deliver much more and this will not work at all."

He smiled and said, "I would have been very surprised and told you that I'm not coming if you now would have offered me a lot more."

So people appreciate when we stick to our values. If we say, Yeah, but for you we make an exception"

Renita: How can you trust that person?!

Rik: Exactly. So, as a leader you need to be a chameleon, to adapt to the situation, but also stay true to yourself.

It's hard because when youre working with smart people and they're frickin challenging you on a daily basis. You need to be showing these diverse facets strong and flexible, masculine and feminine, etc. the 4D chess game is always on. It's impossible if you don't have a strong sense of yourself.

Renita: It takes self-awareness and energy to manage that constant push back.

Rik: Yes, but when you see on a daily basis that it's working, that gives energy back. It also shows you found the right team. If your team members are not demanding at all, then something's wrong. At least in a startup where you need to be learning fast as hell.

Renita: So we're talking about a different kind of leader. Someone whose ego isn't so fragile, whos okay with being challenged and doesnt have to know all the answers.

The power of coffee communication.

Rik: Absolutely. And in-person connection is crucial, especially in our combination of circumstances: tech work is often remote, crypto favors decentralization and the constraints of the pandemic on top of all that.

Here in Zurich, we're setting things up so that everybody is in the office a minimum of two days per week. Thats to facilitate what I call 'coffee communication, where we can run into each other in the kitchen or queuing for the printer, to create opportunities to talk about personal things that help us understand each other.

Because if youre chatting online about an IT problem, you don't say my newborn baby was crying for the last three days, I'm not feeling so good.

Renita: Right, we miss all the personal asides, the body language.

Rik: One of our employees someone we really value was demonstrating some unproductive behaviors, complaining to others on the team, but not to Sebastian or me.

It was the middle of the pandemic, so he was working offsite. Originally, we had said we would meet in person once a week, but he had resisted and I let it slide.

Finally, I told him: We need to talk, and not on Zoom. Bring a list of things youre not happy about and we are going to sit in the same frickin office and talk.'

And for four and a half hours, we talked. Without even a bathroom break.

I changed my costume 100 times during that conversation, Renita, going between 'I understand you, I hear you, I appreciate you' and 'If you want to threaten us, you can leave the company. We would regret it, of course, but we will find somebody else.

The next day he sent an email basically saying: "That was a really good talk. No, I don't need more salary. No, I don't need to work less. At the end of the day, Im super happy here. And Rik was right that we need to meet once a week in order to talk personally."

Renita: Wow, it just goes to show how face-to-face conversations can release the build up of tension. You know how you work yourself up into a frenzy when you're mad at someone and then when you see them in person you're like, Oh, they're not the devil.'

Rik: Exactly. We act differently in person. Thats why we need these human interactions, where we don't only talk business.

Give them the opportunity to shine.

Renita: So how do you find these people who have a growth mindset, who want to challenge and be challenged?

Rik: When people apply for a position with us, we give them a questionnaire with 20 to 25 questions. They range from How do you like to be supervised? and "What bothers you most about other people and how do you deal with it? to "Tell us something you think is missing in the world.

Their answers give us such valuable information about them as a person and whether theres a cultural match. Even with a simple question like "Whats your favorite color? One guy said, The golden light yellow on a butter croissant when you take it out of the oven."

Exceptional people dont want to just do whats expected. They want to take your ideas and develop them further, which is exactly what you need to be an innovative and disruptive company. As leaders, our job is to give them that opportunity to shine and be creative.

See the original post here:
Leadership As A 4D Chess Game: What It Takes To Win - Forbes