Building and managing great teams is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of startup leadership. Understanding what motivates people and creating an environment where they can thrive is essential for success.
What People Want
Most people are motivated by three fundamental needs:
Mastery
People want to learn new skills, solve challenging problems, and create meaningful work. They thrive when they can continuously grow and develop their expertise. As a leader, provide opportunities for skill development, challenging projects, and learning experiences.
Autonomy
People want to have control over their work and how they approach problems. They perform best when they can manage their own time, make decisions about their work, and have flexibility in how they achieve their goals. Micromanagement kills motivation and creativity.
Purpose
People want to feel that their work matters and contributes to something larger than themselves. Connect individual contributions to the company’s mission and show how their work impacts customers and the broader world.
Core People Principles
The Head of People Role
The Head of People role is often an afterthought, but in my opinion it is just as important to get right as your other executive hires. The reason is that besides you and your co-founders, they are the second most important steward of your company culture. Look for someone who combines two qualities: they should be like a parent who nurtures and develops people, but also tells you straight when you’re off track. They should also have the forgiveness and understanding of a pastor who can help people through difficult times while maintaining high standards.
Get the Right People First
As Jim Collins says in “Good to Great”: First get the right people on the bus, in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then figure out where to drive it. Hiring the right people is more important than having the perfect strategy. Great people will figure out how to execute and adapt.
Focus Top Talent on Opportunities
Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. While it’s tempting to throw your strongest performers at every crisis, you’ll get better results by having them focus on growth and new initiatives.
Deal with Disruptors Immediately
Toxic team members are poison to company culture. They can destroy morale, drive away top talent, and undermine all your efforts to build a positive environment. Address disruptive behavior head-on and quickly. Don’t let one person ruin the experience for everyone else.
Build a Challenge Culture
Create an environment where people challenge ideas, debate solutions, and push each other to do better work. This requires psychological safety where people feel comfortable speaking up without fear of retaliation.
Hiring and Retention Best Practices
Understand Why People Leave: When interviewing candidates, dig deep into why they left their previous jobs. This reveals what they value and what might cause them to leave your company. Common reasons include lack of growth opportunities, poor management, unclear expectations, or misalignment with company values.
Be Honest and Transparent: Be honest and transparent in all communications with candidates. People appreciate directness and will trust you more when you’re upfront about the challenges and expectations of your company and the role they’re interviewing for. The best people are motivated by big challenges.
Practice Radical Candor: As Kim Scott outlines in her book 📙 Radical Candor, combine caring personally with challenging directly. Give honest feedback because you care about people’s growth and success.
Celebrate Unrecognized Contributors: Make sure to recognize people who don’t naturally self-promote but do excellent work. These are often your most valuable team members who keep things running smoothly.
Build Your Dream Team List: For each role, maintain a list of ideal candidates and build relationships with them over time. Great hiring often comes from relationships built before you need to hire.
Leadership Behaviors
Show, Don’t Tell
Lead by example. Your actions speak louder than any company values poster. If you want people to work hard, work hard yourself. If you want people to be collaborative, be collaborative.
Encourage Healthy Debate
Create forums for people to disagree respectfully and push back on ideas. The best solutions emerge from teams that can challenge each other’s thinking while maintaining respect and trust.
Give Feedback Early and Often
Don’t wait for formal reviews to give feedback. Regular, timely feedback helps people course-correct quickly and shows that you care about their development.
Building Engineering Teams
Four Types of Engineers
Understanding the different types of engineers helps you build balanced teams. Depending on the product you’re building, you will need different amounts of each type.
-
Product Hackers: Love building features that users will interact with directly. They’re motivated by user feedback and seeing their work in action.
-
Architects: Think in systems and love designing scalable, maintainable infrastructure. They’re motivated by technical elegance and solving complex problems.
-
Tinkerers: Enjoy experimenting with new technologies and approaches. They’re motivated by learning and trying new things.
-
Academics: Love the theoretical aspects of computer science and applying research to practical problems. They’re motivated by intellectual challenges and deep problem-solving.
Recommended Reading
- 📝 How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management - Insights on why technical people should care about management
- 📙 Radical Candor by Kim Scott - Framework for caring personally while challenging directly
- 📙 Good to Great by Jim Collins - Research on what makes companies transition from good to great performance