How Leadership Helped Me Increase My Value 200 Times | Jina Kim (2/2) | EO

Carta's employee number four on why leadership is a relationship

Jina Kim joined Carta as employee number four and left when it was worth $8bn. The lesson she drew from that run is that leadership depends on relationships rather than authority. A 2016 survey comment saying someone did not want to work with her forced her to reread her Slack messages and see she had been giving orders on the strength of her early-employee status. She rebuilt her style around taking the toughest job on the team and asking people what they want, even when the answer is another company.

Takeaways

• A survey comment exposed her communication problem. In 2016, while eShares was still growing, a company survey comment said someone did not want to work with her. Rereading her Slack messages, she saw she gave orders to the product team on the strength of being employee number four.
• Leaders who think they know everything still learn. She says anyone who believes they have been there and done that is wrong, because there is still something to learn from everyone, including a new intern straight out of college.
• Uncorrected founder mistakes can fail a startup. Many founders stick to their own vision and keep going down the wrong path after a mistake, she says. Everyone already knows the mistake happened, and unless a leader corrects course immediately, that decision can fail the startup.
• Taking the hardest job earns a team's respect. At Carta, a promotion drew "I feel sorry for you" rather than congratulations, because managers held the toughest job. She argues that taking that job is the only way to earn a team's respect, and that directing people gets 100% when a startup needs 120%.
• Employee happiness becomes customer happiness. She says a happy customer success employee transfers that feeling to the customer. Carta ran like a sports team where managers coached, and a leader who cannot watch employees all day has to trust and motivate them.
• One-on-ones should serve the employee's goals. In those conversations she asks team members what they ultimately want and helps them get there, even if that means leaving for another company. She also unblocks their problems and personally handles the hardest customers.
• Her best coaching came from informal mentors. She had no formal personal coach until two years before this recording, and before that used people around her, including Henry and a colleague in her 70s, a former single mother who encouraged her to move to California.

What comes next

• Customers told her they wanted to focus on the product rather than stock options and investors.
• Her measure of a session is the look on a founder's face when it clicks.