Ep 56 - Your Bad Intentions Are Killing Your Startup

Episode 56 – Your Bad Intentions Are Killing Your Startup

Welcome back to the Career Coaching Xs and Os podcast—the show where we uncover the strategies, challenges, and breakthroughs that shape meaningful career success. In this episode, we dive into a compelling coaching session with the founder of a cutting-edge fintech startup facing a leadership crisis. After missing a critical launch deadline due to a compliance failure, the founder took swift and severe action—demoting the Compliance Officer, revoking some of his founder shares, and resorting to verbal beratement. This pattern of high-pressure leadership had begun affecting the entire executive team, pushing them toward burnout and creating a culture teetering on the edge of sabotage. Recognizing the urgent need for a reset, the founder scheduled a coaching session with me. What advice did I offer? How do you turn a failing leadership dynamic into a thriving, high-performance culture? Stay tuned as I break down the insights, strategies, and mindset shifts that could change the course of this startup—and maybe even your own leadership approach. If you enjoy this podcast, we’d love your support! Subscribe, leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or your favorite platform. To become a Loyal Listener on Spreaker.com, visit us on the Spreaker platform.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is career coaching x's and o's, and I'm your host,
Mark Anthony Peterson, Founder and thought leader at Sierra Consulting,
a small business strategy and technology consulting firm. A small
part of our practice is executive coaching. These episodes are

(00:21):
the summation of some of those sessions. Welcome to episode
fifty six entitled your bad Intentions Are Killing your startup.
For those of you who practice yoga like I do,

(00:43):
you know most of your instructors will ask you to
set an intention before you start your yoga practice. The
thought behind that if you set an intention a purpose us,
you create an atmosphere for you to achieve that goal.

(01:08):
You set an atmosphere for you to take positive steps
in that direction. And I think the same thing applies
in business, except for sometimes managers don't realize they're setting
bad intentions and those bad intentions create an atmosphere in

(01:33):
a culture that kills your company. And that's what I
had to deal with recently with the founder and CEO
of a fintech startup that has a whiz bang product.
It's going to revolutionize how individuals on the African continent

(01:58):
manage their money. The founder has been building and pushing
his team towards their upcoming launch, which would give them
coverage across many of the countries in Africa, with one
in particular being their major market. The entire product had

(02:25):
been centered around this major market because they have rich
relationships in that country and rich relationships in America that
would make customer acquisition very easy. Unfortunately, the compliance officer

(02:48):
missed new regulations that made it impossible for them to
launch in this country with one of their primary partners.
The CEO was extremely frustrated, and of course that frustration

(03:10):
spilled over onto the compliance officer, who ultimately ended up
getting moved out of that role, replaced with another compliance officer,
and had to lose half of the ownership shares in
that transition. The founder scheduled a session with me because

(03:35):
he felt like he was losing the team, that they
were burning out, and as he put it, he thought
that maybe they were trying to sabotage him, that they
were failing on purpose, and that despite his anger his yelling,

(03:58):
it just was not sinking in and the performance, instead
of getting better, was getting worse. He asks for help
in addressing that issue and managing his anger problem. Now,
many of you who are listening to this podcast may

(04:21):
either be nodding your head because you're that type of boss,
or you're an employee and you have to deal with
a boss like that every day. My first response to
this founder was the title of this episode, your bad

(04:46):
intentions are killing your startup. When you start to believe
that the people who have dedicated the last three years
of their life to your vision or trying to sabotage you,
you're creating an intention that will ultimately lead to their

(05:11):
failure and your failure. Unknowingly, you're creating a culture, You're
creating an environment, a vibration of failure with that unintentional intention,

(05:33):
compounding that with blowing up every time a failure occurs.
So how do we address the issue. First of all,
I wanted him to put himself into the accountability circle

(05:59):
with each of his executives. He needed to be in
the same boat because their failure was his failure. I
didn't get any pushback from him on that. He realized
that that it ultimately the buck stopped with him. Now,

(06:20):
in terms of addressing the performance, I had to explain
how intentions are seeds that sprout into failure. I told
him this interesting story about my uncle. My uncle always

(06:45):
fostered a competitive environment between myself and my first cousin.
We had to compete on everything, grades sports. He even
tried to make our dating lives competitive by comparing the
people that we were dating. I remember a time when

(07:16):
my first cousin was asked by my uncle to pick
up a very heavy television. Guys, this was mid to
late eighties, so there were no flat screens. There were
console TVs that started at one hundred pounds and went
up from there. My cousin attempted to pick up the

(07:41):
television and take it to my uncle's car to put
in the trunk so that it could be driven down
the street and given to my grandmother. From the point
where he picked it up in the living room, all
the way out to the car, my uncle just kept repeating,

(08:02):
if you drop it, it's all over, it's broken, it's
done with, don't drop it, repeatedly. Every step he took,
the same message was reiterated over and over until he
got to the edge of the trunk and went to

(08:25):
put it in. And for all of you listening, you
know exactly what happened next. He dropped it and of
course my uncle began to berate and remind him of
what he had just done, as he did so many

(08:46):
times when my first cousin failed to beat me in basketball,
failed to beat me in grades, or in his mind
get the prettiest girl. He was through his intentions, programming

(09:08):
him to fail. I relate that story to this founder
and tried to help him see that his management style
was programming his people to fail, because if all you

(09:28):
could see was negativity in their actions, that's what would
ultimately end up being produced. The outcomes were pre programmed
for failure, just like my cousin. The harder he tried

(09:49):
to hold on to that console TV, the more it
was likely to slip through his fingers. So how do
we suggest that this founder approach his executive team going forward?

(10:18):
I gave him two tenants that I wanted him to
apply moving forward. The first tenant, if you fail and
tell me you failed, but also give me a plan

(10:40):
of how you're going to fix it, I will not
get mad at you. Let me repeat that, if you fail,
tell me, but also come to me with a plan
of how to fix it. Not only will I not

(11:00):
be mad with you, I will help you implement it.
As I relate to the founder, some of the richest
people in the world. Warren Buffett, for one, says he
doesn't worry about failure. He wants to fail fast and
find the answer because he can implement it before the

(11:25):
market figures out what the best solution is. Yeah, I
told the founder, you're doing stuff that has not been done,
so you're literally writing the manual on how to build
this industry. You should expect failure, you should welcome failure,

(11:54):
and you should also welcome the answers your employees can
bring you to fix it. When things are hard, those
represent barriers to entry for other players coming behind you,
and not all of them will have the fortitude to
fight through failure. But if you teach your team how

(12:19):
to expect the pain, expect the failure, but also to
embrace finding the solution, now you're building a cohesive team.
They aren't afraid to fail because they know that if

(12:42):
they come with a solution, they're gonna get your help
implementing it. I relate to the founder that I use
this same approach at home with my kids. I tell
them they don't bring the problem to me with an

(13:07):
answer on how we can fix it. I said, no
matter what it is, you come to me with that approach,
I will not get angry and I will help implement
the solution. And I have been amazed over the years

(13:33):
how many issues have been brought to me and how
well we've worked together to solve them, which ultimately have
brought me closer to both my son and my daughter.
And it has worked wonders everywhere I've had a senior

(13:56):
management role. So that first tenant is the key to
addressing the anger issue as well as the frequent failure
that will ultimately happen in a startup, especially if you're
working on the bleeding edge. I always expect to fail

(14:28):
when I start new projects, especially where there's no owner's
man you will connect it to it. When I fail,
I document it, share it and say we are not
repeating that error so we can get a little bit

(14:48):
better the next day. Now, what's the second tenant? Because
ultimately there needs to be some accountability at some point.
The second tenant, if I am doing your job, I

(15:09):
can't do my job. And if I can't do my job,
you won't have a job. So for individuals who repeatedly
fail but don't bring answers. That's what you have to
tell them that there is accountability. If I am doing

(15:39):
your job, I can't do my job, and if I'm
I can't do my job, you won't have a job.
You want to let people know that we are all
pulling for each other, but you're accountable for doing your
part of It. Doesn't mean I can't help you, but

(16:05):
you do have some accountability in doing your job and
part of that fixing the problems you create. Now, if
that framework is applied to your senior team, what do
you think your organization looks like when they apply it
to their teams. You end up with a company full

(16:33):
of leaders, thinkers, and that's a fun place to manage.
I'm gonna have to give you an update on this
episode because I want to see how this turns out

(16:55):
for this founder. He and I are scheduled to get
back together in about a month, and I hope these
two tenants are the seeds that start to create a
new culture for his startup and for those of you
who are listening, I hope you can take these two
tenants and use them within your respective businesses, departments, small

(17:22):
businesses and startups. It's tried and true. I have used
it for more than twenty years as a father and
as a senior executive. I hope you found this episode helpful.
If so, hit that subscribe button. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram,

(17:44):
and Facebook at Sierra Consulting. I know you're going to
share this episode with your colleagues because the best people
listen to this podcast. And if you need more support
for your career, please find us on the web at
cerro dot com, c E Y E r O dot

(18:07):
com and let us help you develop a plan for
your career. This has been career coaching x'es and o's,
and I'm your host, Mark Anthony Peterson, Founder and thought
leader at Cerro Consulting,