Alisa Cohn
Guest is known for...
Alisa is an experienced startup coach and author of “From Start-Up to Grown-Up”. She has coached startup founders for almost 20 years, lectured at top universities such as Harvard and Cornell, and served on the board of the Cornell Advisory Council. Her articles have appeared in top publications, and she has been featured as an expert on Bloomberg TV, the BBC World News, and in the New York Times.
Here's what I will learn...
In our conversation, we spoke about how Start-up founders should police their passions, think about “giving away their Legos”, monitor their triggers, handle the Boards, transfer context when senior leaders come on Board and much more. Given my work with Founders, I have come to realize that this transition from a Founder to a CEO is like getting your Pilot training certification in your first and only flight where you are learning as you are learning to fly the plane.
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From the Podcast
Alisa speaks about how she gets every Founder to reflect on 4 things – Strengths, Development Areas, Triggers and Dopamine Hits. She goes on to expand on the notion of Triggers and Dopamine Hits and the implication of this on Leadership.
Alisa speaks about the phenomenon where the Founder, as the company scales up, has to give away some part of the job that he or she really really enjoyed. As the company scales up the Founder often needs to get involved with the building of the company and not really the specific activity or function that really brought him or her energy. And that can be a non-trivial transition.
Alisa speaks speaks about how with certain Founders, their passion can lead to them turning into a “bully” when they lead teams. Their internal drive and energy can spill over into the team and that can have negative consequences for the organization
Alisa speaks about how lonely it is to be a Founder and to manage multiple expectations across a range of stakeholders and when you couple that with the fact that they are often operating in areas where they don’t necessarily have deep expertise, it can be an unnerving experience.
Alisa speaks about some of the mental health challenges of Entrepreneurship. She says that stress is the child of a start up and depression is the child of stress. She says that Founders are depressed 30% more than their counterparts. She shares some suggestions on how Founders can combat this.
Alisa speaks about how authentic praise is such an unused tool in Leadership. She speaks about how the team sometimes can start spinning wheels in their head about their performance and their standing if they don’t get adequate good quality feedback.
Alisa speaks about how Entrepreneurs need to be thoughtful about assimilating new leaders and equip the incoming leaders with adequate context for them to succeed. She also goes on to speak about how Entrepreneurs need to re-onboard themselves as the context changes.
Alisa speaks about some of the elements that Founders overlook when they look for Co-Founders. She also speaks about some of the conflicts that ensue between Co-Founders as the journey carries on.