Leaders are rare, followers are essential, but what about back-benchers? How should startups handle them?

Mark Suster is a prominent VC and blogger in the American tech scene. A major turning point in his career was selling his startup Koral to Salesforce in 2007.

Last year he wrote a blog post titled, “Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way” in which offers his theory on the leader-follower dilemma.

In it, he says, “Leadership is about not worrying about how people will think about you for hard calls. It is about being willing to be wrong.”

Followers then play a crucial role of aligning departments and teams to all pull in the same direction.

Also Read: Technology proposes and man disposes

But what about the third tenant? The (apologies for the vulgarity), get the fuck out of the way group? These are the people that offer dissent without ideas. Furthermore, on some projects a person may be an excellent follower, and on something else, they may find themselves back-benching.

e27 community, how should startups handle these dynamics? Discuss below!

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Photo courtesy of Gratisogrpahy.

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