Thriving Under Pressure – Shift 1
SHIFT #1: Open-Hearted Compassionate Leadership
Whether it’s the pressure of your own savings on the line, or the weightiness of having raised capital, financial risk is one of many contributors to the pressure and resulting stress of entrepreneurial leadership.
Through my own journey, wisdom accumulated along the way and in collaboration with many others around me, I have found five purposeful shifts to be key in transforming stress into energy and thriving in the midst of it all.
Today we can discuss Shift #1 – Open-Hearted Compassionate Leadership -- dropping the criticism and embracing compassion.
My least favorite part of my entrepreneurial journey is that nagging feeling, usually at the end of a day, as I’m winding down, that something is off. It’s usually related to something that happened with another person that day, often someone on my team. The feeling is somewhere between regret and concern that I’ve hurt a relationship - I’m not proud of the way I behaved or communicated. Have you felt that after a tense work situation?
Looking beneath the surface, I’d discovered that at the core of such conversations is a criticism of another person, usually for not being able to generate an outcome that I really wanted (e.g. my head of sales not delivering the growth target for two quarters in a row).
I don’t even need to have said anything harsh for that feeling to be there. I may have successfully bit my tongue. But I’ve seen that communication can be very subtle, even down to our nervous systems transferring our states to one another. So by the time I was upset with them internally, it was too late – the person already felt my disappointment and judgment. That would often lead to a deterioration of the trust in the relationship, even if it is just the slightest bit. At the end of the day, the message is sent that I care more about the result than I do about the person responsible for it.
To actually move beyond the reaction of judgment or criticism towards others at that deep of a level, I’ve had to traverse the journey of my own self-criticism. The earliest driving force that led to lots of success has been criticism from my family, which ultimately I took on as my own inner critic. Working with that has been quite the journey. And yet, to move beyond the energy of a hard charging workhorse and step into the energy of an inspiring leader, this shift needs to be made to respond with compassion not criticism.
The most impact I’ve had in shifting that emotional state has been getting familiar with the feeling of self-compassion – in the toughest moments and with the biggest failures, tapping into that feeling of comforting oneself, non-judgment, and a supportive inner voice to replace any criticism. I practice at work, I practice in sports, I practice in social relationships – wherever there was loss, failure, not achieving something I wanted, I practice providing myself with that compassionate supporting energy.
Making this shift with ourselves then allows for a similar shift with others. What a difference it makes! Not only do I go home without any lingering feelings of regret or concern, but I’m also able to be completely non personal when someone misses a goal. There is no disappointment at the person whatsoever. In fact, knowing that they are likely as much of a competitor and/or have as high standards as I do, my tendency now is to comfort them first, for the miss. Then, we can both move on in a higher trust context, to go on and brainstorm what went wrong and what changes may be needed.
At first I feared that such an approach would render me ‘soft’ or lower accountability. I have found this not to be true. Results are better and when they are not, it can even lead to faster two-way clarity that a person is not a good fit for that role.
Keeping this open-hearted compassionate approach in fact keeps relationships intact and developing, keeps the energy positive, amplifies safety in the environment, and leads to a higher performing culture.
May we all know the inner critic and move through it to self-compassion and beyond to compassionate leadership.
At Manifestations, we aim to pay attention to not just the “what” of our partner companies, but also the “how”, encouraging high-performing cultures with compassionate leaders.
Stay tuned for the discussions on the four other shifts to thrive under entrepreneurial pressure.
FUND ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We are excited to announce our 5th investment, Salvo Health. Led by a team of serial successful entrepreneurs, including the CEO, Jeff Glueck, former CEO of Four Square (amongst many other achievements), the company works with GI practices to expand their offering by bringing a functional medicine approach to helping patients heal their gut challenges. Congrats to the team for closing this round and turning their attention to continuing to build the business.
Choose Your Horizons which has had strong performance, is presenting a unique opportunity to invest alongside the founders and advisors as last money into a bridge round to the company's Series A in Q2 '24. The original goal for the bridge round was $500k and we are oversubscribed at $600k+ raised. There is a time-sensitive opportunity to onboard a couple of new investor advisors with preferred economics into the final tranche of this raise. Please let us know if you would like a 1x1 meeting with company management and we will schedule.
Company Description:
Choose Your Horizons (CHY) provides responsible and affordable access to psychedelic assisted therapy and other modern integrative psychiatry services across 22 US States.
CYH generated $2M in full year 2023 revenue, 600% increase YoY '22. On track to deliver a $6M+ budget in 2024.
CYH has delivered over 10,000+ at-home, proven and evidence-based ketamine assisted therapy sessions for anxiety, depression and PTSD over the past 18 months.
CYH expects to raise the Series A at a 3X valuation increase to the existing bridge round opportunity.
Company presentation is here
Thank you as always for your support and for being a part of the Manifestations community.