Alisa
Cohn
Track Timing
-
Triggers and Dopamine Hits (08:16) |
Giving away your Legos (12:49) |
Policing your passion (21:46) |
Imposter syndrome as a founder (23:46) |
Stress and Depression (30:04) |
Economics of praise (32:07) |
Handling Leadership transitions (37:59) |
Co-founder dynamics (53:27) |
Startup Founder Coach
Alisa has been coaching startup Founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She has recently authored the book - From Start-Up to Grown-Up.
Alisa is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Cornell Universities, Henley Business School and the Naval War College. She serves on the board of the Cornell Advisory Council. Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been featured as an expert on Bloomberg TV, the BBC World News and in the New York Times.
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.
Published in May 2022.
Nuggets from the
Conversation
Triggers and Dopamine Hits
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.
Giving away your Legos
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.
Policing your passion
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
Imposter syndrome as a founder
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.
Stress and Depression
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.
Economics of praise
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.
Handling Leadership transitions
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.
Co-founder dynamics
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.
