Leading people is, above all, sustaining ambivalences. It's recognizing that you need to be predictable for the team, but flexible for the market. That you must give direction, but also yield space. That you'll be judged for decisions no one else was willing to make. Leading, in the end, isn't about "knowing more," it's about carrying more too.
The first illusion that breaks down is that people follow logic. They follow security. Context. Consistency. They're not spreadsheets that optimize with formulas lol, they're adaptive systems, and you, I, we're part of them. You change, they change. The environment changes. So, management begins to shape behaviors, not intentions. Small rituals, almost imperceptible, shape culture more than any alignment meeting. A compliment for initiative is worth more than a generic directive.
There's a common mistake in first-cycle leadership: assuming that chaos is resolved with control. But chaos, in living companies, is an expression of complexity. And complexity doesn't organize itself by force: it's understood through patterns, not exceptions. That's why the leader's role isn't to put out fires, but to build systems where fire doesn't spread. It's to form new leaders capable of deciding in your absence, not just executing in your presence. It's difficult, I know!
With each new layer of growth, the dilemma repeats: you need to become useless in everything that was once essential. This hurts, because letting go of operations feels like a loss of identity. But if you're still the "best" at everything, the team is a reflection of your limitation, not your excellence. 🥲
Real leadership requires facing yourself with rigor and kindness. Having clarity about our limitations, not to protect yourself from them, but to decide where you need to grow and where you need to trust. This discernment is technical, not emotional.
The greatest risk isn't in the error. It's in the lack of intention about what you're modeling. Every culture is a system of incentives. What you tolerate, you teach. What you reinforce, expands. And what you ignore, rots.
Leading, sometimes, is less about inspiring and more about designing. BJ Fogg, from the book Tiny Habits, shows that sustainable behaviors are born from well-designed environments: not from willpower. Naval Ravikant (author of one of my favorite books btw) argues that effective systems are those that work without constant friction.
Between one and the other, the dilemma arises: are we creating structures that favor what is essential or just facilitating what is comfortable?