In starting a new venture which my wife and I call our own, people refer to us for everything. As we grow our team (who are an amazing group of people btw), the frequency of people referring to us increases. From simple things such as “do I pull the shutter down now” to heavier things such as “the customer has comments about the cake”.

I am reminded of a talk on leadership which I attended which can be summarised in 6 words:

Leadership is about timely decision making.

Is a leader supposed to be looking at the big picture? or look into the details?

Is a leader supposed to be passive, or aggressive, pushy “my way or the highway” style?

Is a leader supposed to talk more or listen more?

The answer to that is a decision needs to be made. A leader needs to be all that, in a timely manner. And this is true is all aspects of leadership, regardless of the size of an organisation, from being a class rep in a university, to running your own small venture, to running multinationals.

People who have been a staff to a bad manager know the frustration of poor leadership – having a leader who doesn’t speak up during your promotion evaluation, who doesn’t listen when you want to speak, who micromanages your work, pushy and worse, asks someone else to decide for them.

Don’t be that guy. Learn to decide who you have to be and when someone asks you something important, decide.

I say “when someone ask you something important” because God knows, when my colleagues ask me “where to go for lunch”, I’m bad at that 🙂