How to create followership
Show and prove. Help others. Work long hours.
At 25 years old, I've been a Group Lead at thingsflow since last year, leading a group of 30 people. I'm responsible for an entire product of storyplay: a B2C content platform service with about 500k MAU. I'm also responsible for a budget of around 5 million dollars. As a group leader, it is ultimately my job to achieve the company OKRs and get things done.
At thingsflow we had a marketing lead, a tech lead, a content lead, and so on — senior specialists in their domain, each leading their team of 5~6 people. So my role as a group lead was more about aligning each team leader into a common bigger picture, rather than interacting with every 30 people in our group.
Organizing the strategy and setting up proper monitoring was definitely a challenge, but the biggest challenge for me was getting the senior team leaders to follow my lead. After all, I was just a young talent with less than 5 years of field experience. Ultimately I was successful in creating that alignment, and I’m going to share how I’ve done it.
These were the three main levers that created followership for me:
Show and prove.
Help others.
Work long hours.
First, show and prove.
Show and prove. Deliver actual impact.
Create success streaks, and build trust from the ground up.
This is the most important lever. And the most powerful one, too.
"Growth solves 99% of organizational problems," says Lee Seung-geun, the CEO of Viva Republica. I found this true.
Growth solves a lot of problems. I don't have a shiny title like ex-Amazon or ex-Google, so I had to prove myself with pure competence, and I needed not only competence in the process (= rational decision-making), but also competence in result (= actually deliver impact). I needed to convince my team of my decisions.
I increased the checkout conversion rate of the web version of storyplay by 5x, which resulted in a 2.5x increase in overall ROAS for the product. This was a big impact because ROAS was a key KR for our quarter. We also achieved 10M views, 100% of our product-wide KR.
As a leader I met all of our challenging quarterly goals, proved my worth, and created a much stronger followership in the process.
Second, Help others.
Help others. Listen carefully in the regular 1:1 meetings and actually solve the problems found in the 1:1s.
I held 1:1 meetings with my team leaders at least once every two weeks. In my experience, this is the fastest way to build human connection, rapport, and trust. We followed the best practices of 1:1s to build rapport, but I also listened carefully to the concerns that came up in the 1:1s and actually helped solve them.
For example, our content leader shared her concerns about the efficiency of our content-creation process. Another occasion, our marketing leader was struggling with advertising budgeting and budget allocation. Another day, our tech leader shared his concerns about how to organize the next sprint.
As I move higher into the abstraction layer, it's easier to help in these situations. Not because I'm better, but because I have access to more information. If you use this information and take action, you can help your teammates solve their problems. Giving and receiving help builds rapport, which in turn leads to followership.
Third, work long hours.
Work long hours. At least 80 hours a week.
Work long hours. Work until midnight, work on weekends. Work 80 hours a week.
While being a group lead, I was executing at a very detailed level as the only PM of our product. I was tasked as an individual contributor for product decision making, product strategy, design reviews, user interviews, and data analysis — while also multi-tasking the leader’s role.
Working long hours does two things: first, it makes you more creative and insightful because you're always fully immersed into work. Second, it shows that the leader is engaged, which builds trust and is an indirect motivator. The teammates get to feel sorry for me, as I’m fully devoting every waking hour to the success of this project, which helps to convey my level of discipline and passion.
This is not a very scalable method, and I honestly don't recommend it for everyone. But it works for me, because throughout my life I've always been successful this way. Every skill that I mastered — basketball, coding, and medical school — was a result of devoted practice and investing large bulks of time. You can’t outsmart practice, and you need to put in the grit and grind. Blood, sweat, and tears.
I do not believe in work-life balance. Skills and achievements are built by hard work and grit. You get results and followers by working long hours.
There were also three mindsets that helped me in this journey:
self-assurance
optimism
repetition
First, self-assurance is an important lever of persuasion. If you believe in it, others will believe in it. Therefore, I must have self-confidence in the blueprint I have envisioned, and this confidence is strengthened as I accumulate success experiences. Confidence → success → more confidence → more success → more confidence... in a positive feedback loop.
This can feel unnatural as a scientist, as we are trained to be constantly skeptical in uncertain situations, obsessing over p values of 0.05. However, as we experience more success, our confidence grows. You can build momentum on this positive feedback loop and make things happen.
If you believe in it, others will believe in it.
Second, be optimistic. If you divide the world into optimists and pessimists, the pessimists are usually the smart, analytical, cynical critics, but it's the optimists who actually change the world. When you exude positive energy, it has a significant impact on the morale of the entire team. Only 7% of communication is verbal, and the rest is non-verbal such as tone and body language. Therefore a leader's attitude and emotions have a huge impact (even if they don't realize it).
I think this is the reason why people from consulting are good at analyzing, but not good at starting being an entrepreneur. It’s because consultants are used to analyzing phenomena by numbers, cleverly explaining them, and making cold predictions, which requires a smart and quantitative mindset. However, rallying a team around a big, bold plan, creating momentum, and generating a sense of purpose and motivation requires a different set of skills: courage, optimism, and confidence. The ability to be optimistic and confident in the face of uncertainty is partly innate and partly learned through experience.
It's the optimists who actually change the world.
Third, repeat. You can't say it once. Say it 30 times. Even if it becomes a meme, at least everyone is aware of the team's big picture direction, blueprint, and priorities. Don't be afraid to repeat your message, and keep consistency.
Repeat with consistency.
These are perhaps some of the biggest lessons learnt here at thingsflow. I've been given a position that seemed daunting, but luckily figured out things in time and created followership while delivering results.
Stay optimistic, stay hungry. These skills would prove to be invaluable in the forthcoming journey.