Great Leaders Build More Leaders

Every founder who finds traction with their business faces an inevitable evolution in how they spend their time, from being the person who does everything (sales, tech support, emptying the garbage) to being primarily a people manager. And as the business grows larger and more complex, it becomes time to transition again to a next-level role that is trickier but more profound. Entrepreneur and author Jay Shetty recently put it this way: “The best leaders don’t create more followers, they create more leaders.” (He credited the insight to motivational author Roy T. Bennett.)

- NATHAN BAJAR

Shetty’s thoughts on this stage of entrepreneurship were one of the big takeaways for many attendees at this year’s Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala, held in October in Phoenix. “It distilled something critical for me and for all of us who started as entrepreneurs,” says attendee Alan Badia, founder and CEO of 10-Ton Partners, a consulting firm that advises founders on training leaders. “At some point, every founder has to shift gears from playing a solo sport to playing 5-on-5 basketball. They’re not the same. And confusing them is why so many founders stall right when they should be scaling.”

So what does it take to become a leader of leaders? Greater emotional intelligence is one factor, along with a sophisticated business acumen. It also requires a cultural shift within a company—one that replaces the notion that the best way to answer a tough question is to ask the founder with a philosophy that anyone with the right cultural context can solve a problem.

Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite, who interviewed Shetty onstage at the Inc. 5000 Conference, describes this leadership transition as “one of the most powerful principles for building enduring companies.” She says that at Eventbrite, she learned to “prioritize developing ‘full-stack leaders,’” who are fully immersed in customer needs as well as the business’s overall purpose, meaning they are “equipped to make the right calls when you’re not in the room.”

For Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand acquired by PepsiCo for nearly $2 billion this year, that shift took time and patience. “Growing into a leader isn’t intuitive to most founders,” she says. “Founders are so used to doing the work and running full speed that it can be hard to slow down and trust someone else to get the job done, especially if you don’t have full confidence that they will be able to do it as well or as fast as you can.”