Speaker 1: 0:10

Why are we not learning from past mistakes of tech companies? Mostly, it's down to inexperienced leadership. Okay, now, it's all right to be a beginner, but what is not okay is not having the support you need, not learning new skills that you need and not having self-awareness. So that's the problem. Hi everyone, welcome to the Web3 Thrive Podcast. I'm your host, emily Rosdellara. This podcast was designed to give you the confidence, knowledge and clarity needed to succeed and lead in Web3. I teach proven strategies and tactics you can apply immediately to become confident and successful working in Web3. So take 20, plug in and learn how to really thrive in Web3. And if you'd like what you hear, leave me five stars and subscribe and Spotify or follow an Apple podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up to my newsletter to get exclusive content, tips and strategies to help you thrive at work without the burnout and formal, direct to your inbox each week. Plus, you'll get full access to exclusive leadership and coaching Q&As, free workshops and all the Web3 Thrive Podcast episodes in one place. So just head over to learnweb3thrivecom forward slash newsletter.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Let's get into today's show. Hello everybody, I am really excited to record this show today. It's actually from an aha moment I've had recently. It's from a lot of discussions that I've had with my besties, my business besties and it's something that I've been thinking about for the last few months. Now, if you've been following Web3 or you follow me over on LinkedIn and you've ended up here, you'll know that over the last year, I've worked solely in Web3 and blockchain and in fact, I've worked for over eight years now in Web3 and blockchain and I've been primarily working with leaders and founders in Web3 for nearly the last year and a half to help them improve, to help them grow, to help them get buying, learn how to negotiate and make decisions better. Now this isn't going to change, but over the last two to three months, I've realized that there is a bigger problem. That's way bigger than just leadership in Web3. We're working on it. I'm actively working with clients every single day, businesses every single day, accelerators every single day, to make sure that leadership improves, that the experience for everybody working here is a good one, right?

Speaker 1: 2:44

But when I speak to startups and founders and scale-ups and leaders in Web3, there are a few keywords that keep coming up in conversations, and these keywords are politics, toxic work environments, no sleep, feeling burned out, never feeling good enough, imposter syndrome and having a lack of leadership in their company or feeling like they lack leadership experience. This keeps coming up and I knew it was a problem in Web3, but the more people that I work with outside of Web3 in AI and emerging tech and wherever else we go in the tech industry I've realized that this work that I'm doing in Web3 needs to also move into emerging tech, because we haven't changed the way we work in years. And what do I mean by that? I mean we still complain about the same shit all the time, like I just said, the politics, the burning out. They're not feeling good enough, and this shows me that there is a core problem that needs to be changed. And the only way that we can change this core problem is in a disruptive way. We don't know how to do this ourselves. No one's done it. Obviously. We've got leadership coaches, we've got training programs. It's not enough, right? We need to be disruptive on an individual level, we need to go into companies and we need to make sure that we lead to the best of our abilities, that the people around us get so much energy and so much fulfillment from working with us that it also seeps into everything they do. I'm here to disrupt emerging tech, not just Web3. I have this new mission to change the way things have been Now.

Speaker 1: 4:40

What I mean by have been is in the tech industry. It's known for hustle, grind, culture, layoffs, mismanagement of money, multiple fundraisers that don't go well. So many things right and the biggest one being this burning out, this, not feeling good enough, this not supporting of people and I'm not talking about the corporates, because I feel like corporations like Google, for example, do leadership and workplace being really, really well. I'm talking about the scale-ups and the startups who become corporates. They are not setting the foundations that are necessary to retain talent. Okay, you've probably experienced this before. It's something that I experienced time and time again working with companies. In fact, I work with multiple big companies at the moment and this is a problem in the big companies. They're a scale-up, they're startups and not having this figured out is really fucking up their teams, it's fucking up their progress, it's fucking up their revenue.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Right, it is a core. It's like a disease. It's like a leadership disease within the company that is disrupting success and it's disrupting work-life balance and it's disrupting happiness and fulfillment. It's not good. Basically, that's what I'm saying Now. We can't all be like Google. We can't all have masseuses, workout classes at work, free health food. We can't always allocate budgets to personal development. We don't need that right now, but we have proof that it's possible. That proof is up there. But why do we have to wait until we are this big, until we are building or working and becoming a corporate? Why do we have to wait? We can start now and I'm doing it right. I'm working with leaders, I'm working to help them, help other people, and that's all I wanna do. I wanna make sure that leaders are set up so they're able to feel fulfilled and have the life that they want and the work-life that they want, which then helps other people feel fulfilled and have the work-life balance that they want, which then helps them create a successful, sustainable company. That's all that I want.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Now, why is this problem here? Why are we not learning from past mistakes of tech companies In early web three, like, I'm sure, coinbase was this way before they become more of a corporate right? The big problem is caused by many things, but mostly it's down to inexperienced leadership. Okay Now, it's all right to be a beginner, but what is not okay is not having the support you need, not learning new skills that you need and not having self-awareness. So that's the problem this inexperienced leadership and leaders who know their beginners but they are letting their ego stop them from growing and stop them from becoming competent.

Speaker 1: 7:32

That's number one, which then leads me to hiring the wrong people. If you have identified somebody that you want to hire but you're not sure that they have leadership skills, you are then responsible to help them develop. If you really want to bring someone into the company who will be in a leadership role, who will impact other people's livelihood and work results, you need to then put in the time and effort to help them get there. It's also putting the focus on the wrong areas. It's looking at budgets and marketing and external factors instead of looking at the people. So we need to shift it to people focused management. We need to shift it to okay. Instead of putting all this budget into marketing ads, why don't we put all this budget into people development? Then we won't need the fucking ads.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Another problem is not creating space for growth, not allowing people to have time like downtime, making them feel like they're not good enough if they're not showing up to every single meeting, making them not feel like they are good enough, when they're not getting results, instead of helping them get results right. So many things. When you're a leader and you feel like you just can't stop it because it's all going to fall down. You need space, and if you don't have the ability to make space, you're going to just burn out. We need to make sure in the hiring process that that is added in, that that space and time out is mandatory, okay.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Another thing that causes this problem of leadership in all of our emerging tech companies and our Web3 companies is comparison People who run these businesses from experience you may have a different opinion, but this is my opinion is they're constantly comparing themselves to other people. They're not focused on what their mission is. In fact, you've heard me say this before. They don't even know what their fucking mission is. They know that they want to make money and they'll do anything to get there. They don't really understand why they're doing it. They maybe build a product and they decide other people might want it, and then they look at other people for inspiration or, worse, not inspiration. They'll look at other people to see what they're doing and then they'll try and copy them. Maybe that's why we have so many exchanges. People have seen them make money and they're like, oh, we're just going to go do that right, and they don't fully understand the skill sets required to make that happen. So that's where comparison is really dangerous.

Speaker 1: 9:54

And the last thing that I want to speak about is compassion. Lack of compassion for humans, that's all it is. If you are hiring people who look like you and sound like you and maybe have the same experience as you and if you don't have much experience in leadership that's always a problem you will feel that you're under so much pressure to deliver and get results that you forget how to be compassionate. And I always remind my leaders how would you speak to somebody that you loved if they're doing something wrong? If you identify that somebody that you loved, or a child, is doing something wrong, you would be compassionate and you would help them find a solution. This doesn't happen enough. When leaders are working together, when leaders have a big team, when leaders are under stress, compassion seems to be the last thing on their mind. Instead, it turns into constant slack back and forth, it turns into catty emails. It turns into rash decisions. If you brought compassion to the table at step one, maybe we wouldn't have this problem.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Another factor that contributes to this core, fundamental problem that we see constantly in our industries is Putting health last. Now we all talk about Work-life balance and we talk about eating well and we talk about having enough sleep, but are any of us actually advocating for that at work? Are we leading by example? I'm not sure. Okay, this is something that I'm really strong on and I actually drill into my clients to Put in practice for themselves. First, because when you, as a leader, are putting things into practice, like Taking time out, meditating, having rituals, setting boundaries Around the hours that you work, it rubs off. Honestly, it's like contagious. If people see you doing it and you set boundaries, then they know that it's okay to set boundaries to okay. It's just a ripple effect, and that's what I want to create with this disruption and that's it Okay. I want to see the status quo change. I want to be part of this disruption. I want to see, I want to see people talking about work Like I fucking love this right, and if there's a problem, we're all going to communicate and talk about this Politics. What politics?

Speaker 1: 12:10

We've put things in place that prevent this happening. We prevent toxic work environments. We we have a formula that helps us to create good work environments. We have processes, we have HR, and it doesn't mean we need armies of people in our companies. We just need good leadership. We need people who put that in place every day for their humans, for their teams, for their armies of people. We see small teams being led by Incredible leaders. Why can't we all do that? We can. It's a skill that we can learn. We just have to want to learn, and that's it we need to learn and we need to work on ourselves.

Speaker 1: 12:49

I don't think it's too much to ask. It's a big mission, but I don't think that is impossible and that is what I'm willing to put my everything into change in. This is really, I Feel, why I'm meant to be here. This is why I became a coach to help other people make change, to help other people, help other people. That's all I want to see. That's, if this happens in my life, I will be so happy and from now on, you'll see, most of my content is Helping people just like you.

Speaker 1: 13:18

To create that ripple effect, to create the disruption, because I can't do it on my own, is a shift, and it's one that I truly believe we can make happen in our working lifetimes. All right, by the time we retire, we will be on the way to this. Okay, I think we will have made a huge dent. We will see startups Not operating in the way they operate now. In fact, there will be no. Oh, you know, I'm gonna go for a corporate versus a startup because startups I'm manic and chaotic and everyone gets laid off and it's stressful. I don't want to see that anymore. I want to have Good work environments in both, because it's possible now.

Speaker 1: 13:55

If you're on board with this and you want to be part of this shift, the biggest thing that you can do right now is subscribe to this podcast and, as a thank you and to help you start making a difference right now in what you're doing, I created a free five-step leadership essentials course. It's five emails that you'll get consecutively over the five days and Actually get a surprise on day six. So you need to wait out for that one and this will help you to start getting results, making change quicker, getting buying from the people that you need to get buying from and you can get that at web three and thrive com forward slash leadership Hyphen essentials. I'll also just put the link in the show, not description. Okay, thanks so much for listening.

Speaker 1: 14:40

As usual, it was a bit of a different episode, but I just wanted to get that out to the world. This is what's happening now. I Don't know where this is gonna go. I'm gonna keep doing the work. If you're interested, you know where I'm at. Thanks so much for listening and I'll speak to you next time. So that's all I've got for you today, as always, thank you for listening. Don't forget to drop me a review and subscribe, whatever you get, your podcast and head on over to Instagram and TikTok, emily and web3 for daily content to help you thrive in web3. Also, feel free to drop me a DM, a message or a question. I am here to serve you. See you next time. You.