One of the lessons I’ve learned in the last few years is that you have to be willing to stand up for your own ideas, especially if you’re the leader (a.k.a CEO). In the end of the day, YOU are the one running the company.

A big part of the reason you are the CEO is because of YOUR ideas and YOUR vision.

What happens is that as your team grows, you bring in other bright minds who may be very out-spoken and you probably have great respect for. To make matters more difficult, once they’ve been with you for some time, you even develop a sort of “friendship.”

2-3 years ago I was much more likely to simply say “yes” to every idea my team or key players had. I was very unlikely to disagree with them (even if internally I did), all for the fear that I may upset or disrespect them.

However, a few “slap in the face” later, I realized that I have to learn to trust my gut more. I have to be willing to say, “I think it’s a great idea, but perhaps bad timing for now…” or “I see your point, you made a great case, but for now, let’s focus on this such and such…”

There are better ways of saying no than straight out saying “no.”

The bottom line is that you need to be willing to disagree and fight for your own ideas. If you think something is not a good idea, well speak up! Either genuinely be convinced later that your initial gut feeling was wrong or simply say no to the project.

No need to feel bad, it’s YOUR decision to make - just do it the right away and no one on your team will hate you for it, heck, they’ll probably just respect you more for it.

Popularity: 70% [?]

Tags: disagree

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Managing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.