The Leader's Mind: How Great Leaders Prepare, Perform, and Prevail by Jim Afremow Phd

Author:Jim Afremow, Phd [Jim Afremow, Phd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Leadership, Personal Success, Management, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Success
ISBN: 9781400225767
Google: UQMlEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harpercollins Leadership
Published: 2021-11-09T23:59:21.507523+00:00

As Firlik moved from neurosurgery to the role of entrepreneur at her start-up, she was challenged with the need to acquire new knowledge, skills, and experience. This included providing day-to-day management, growing a sustainable company, understanding the financials, and learning to deal with venture capitalists. How does a leader, who is skilled at the highest level in a field, transition and learn in new situations? Here is how Firlik responded to that question:

I think that humility comes into play. You have to ask a lot of questions and not be scared to ask something that might come across as dumb. Luckily, because I had the neurosurgery background, people aren’t necessarily reacting to a “dumb” question with, “Okay, this is a dumb person.” They’re thinking, “Okay, this is a neurosurgeon learning something new.” So, that made it a bit easier. But, still, I did have a lot of mentors. I was constantly asking my cofounder questions, but if it was something simple like confusion over a new acronym, I would quickly do the work myself and look it up. When it came to finding answers to more complex strategy questions like, “How can we decide which people we need to hire and at what stages?” the answers came from asking a lot of people.

Luckily, my husband is a venture capitalist (by way of surgery first), and so I was able to learn a lot through him, but also from people I met who were seasoned entrepreneurs. So, just learning from other cofounders and CEOs of start-up companies, asking a lot of questions, going out for lunch, and picking their brain. That was really the goal, especially in the first year. But I spent a number of months learning before I even cofounded the company. A big part of that was just learning the ropes and understanding the lingo.

I think you have to have a lot of humility, especially in the beginning, because even though my company is in healthcare, I was not even familiar with a lot of the acronyms that would be thrown around in investor meetings or when we were dealing with the financial side of the industry. I had to rapidly learn a lot of these things, which is actually what I craved at that stage of my career. Again, as I mentioned, I love being on a steep learning curve. So the challenge of starting and building a company was one I was looking forward to. But you do need to have the humility to learn new things and to realize foremost—especially when you’re changing careers like this—that you’re not the expert. You may be the expert at certain aspects. So, as chief medical officer, the medical angle was my expertise, but you have to respect the expertise of the financial person and the executives with more managerial skills than you have.

Starting a company was exciting because I got to figure out, “How do I become a better manager?” “How do I understand how to look at

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