I love the phrase vanishing mediary. This is what I aspire to be. It’s the opposite of a visible intermediary.
Leaders are told to lead from the front, even if all they do is get up on a white horse and exit stage left as soon as the battle starts. Tweet This Quote
In our ego-fueled world, many people want to be front and center. Leaders are told to lead from the front, even if all they do is get up on a white horse and exit stage left as soon as the battle starts. We all know the leaders who are more about themselves than about the organizations and the people they lead. Many of us interact with this type of leader on a daily basis, and while it can be invigorating for a while when things are going well and there are bright lights shining all around you and celebrations around every corner, it’s often complete and total misery when things get tough.
The media wants hero stories. It also wants goat stories. The most glorious media story arc is rags to riches to rags with redemption back to riches. None of this is new—it’s been going on since the beginning of time. Just look at the covers of magazines going back 100 years. And I find it completely boring and tedious.
Vanishing mediary…is the notion of a leader who helps get things started and gets out of the way. Tweet This Quote
I can’t remember who first shared the word vanishing mediary with me (if it was you, please tell me so I can update this post), but I instantly loved it. It’s the notion of a leader who helps get things started and gets out of the way. She’s available if needed and continues to lead by example, but she doesn’t need to be front and center on a daily basis. When needed, especially when things are difficult, complicated, or a mess, she shows up, does her thing, and then gets out of the way again.
When I reflect on how I like to lead, it’s very consistent with the notion of a vanishing mediary. As an investor, as long as I support the CEO, I work for her. If I’m not needed, I hang out in the background and offer thoughts and data without emotion when I encounter things. If suddenly I’m needed for something, or get an assignment from the CEO or anyone else on the leadership team, I get after it. If there’s a crisis, I’m there every day for the CEO for whatever she needs.
I’m a resource that can appear on a moment’s notice and provide any kind of leadership they need, but I don’t have to be front and center. Tweet This Quote
My role with Techstars is similar. While I have some visibility as a co-founder, I offer it up to David Cohen, David Brown, Mark Solon, and the rest of the Techstars leadership team to use however they want. If they need me, I’m there. If they don’t, that’s cool. I’m a resource that can appear on a moment’s notice and provide any kind of leadership they need, but I don’t have to be front and center.
Great startup communities work the same way. Whenever someone introduces me as the leader of…, the king of…, or the creator of the Boulder Startup Community, I cringe and go into a rant about how I’m not that. I’m just one of the many leaders in the Boulder Startup Community. I’ve helped create a number of things that contribute to it, and I play an active role in it. But, like many others, including serial creators like Andrew Hyde (Startup Weekend, Ignite, TEDx Boulder, Startup Week, now at Techstars) I am most happy when I can hand something off that I created to someone else to take it to the next level. (Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is a great example of this – thanks to my co-founder Ryan Martens and my partner Seth Levine for providing leadership that has made it what it is today.)
I can play a strong leadership role through my actions, rather than by a title that anoints me. Tweet This Quote
In the 1990s, I ended up being a chairman or co-chairman of a bunch of companies, including two that went public. Today, even though I’m asked, I don’t want to hold the title of chairman for anything (there are a few exceptions—all nonprofits). I don’t want to be at the top of the organizational hierarchy. I can play a strong leadership role through my actions, rather than by a title that anoints me.
Most of all, I want to provide leadership through doing. And I think I can best do that by being a vanishing mediary. And, I recognize that mediary isn’t a well defined word, or may not even be an official word, so hopefully we’ll get an urban dictionary definition of vanishing mediary soon.
This originally appeared on Brad’s blog.