Leader To Follower

Over my entrepreneurial journey, I have been in a leadership position to decide where to head myself and my team. Most of the time, I have been thinking about what direction has a higher chance of the impact. What project should be created for the team. Whom to promote, whom to hire, whom to encourage for better performance.

This year (2025) was a big move for me because I steped away from a co-foduned startup, and joined another startup with the similar growth stage. The stage of the new and previous companies is 8-10 employees and around a million Euro revenue, fast (though not hyper-fast).

As I joined an early stage-startup, there is still a lot of flexibility and responsibility, but far less than being a leader or founder. First thought I had after only a week of working as an individual contributor was that being in a leadership role pushes me to work more for the orginization than for the boss.

The pitfall of focusing on the wrong topic is very common in all types of work. Even if one has solved very tough and hard problems, it results nothing if it’s at the wrong timing or in the wrong direction.

Continuously seeking for feedback and alignment is crucial. Even if everything is aligned ans syced, sometimes one should look up and try to see the forest in their own view.

A leader is not necessarily right all-the-time. Of course, when everything is uncertain, makeing quick dicisions and iterating fast is essential. Then the whole team should trust what the leader is pointing at. However, as long as you have a strong evidence for altering the deicision. Go challenging your leader about one’s decision with the respect.

There will be a handful of leaders who might frustrate you for your challenge. Then, it’s an obvious sign telling you are not in the right place. When that happens, it’s time to seek another direction.