What is the best leadership advice you ever received?

The road to success requires continuous learning. Sometimes we learn from our own experiences, and sometimes from others.

We meet on our path those who have made many mistakes and achieved more. It is their advice that stays with us for a long time. We asked managers from various industries about the advice that had a significant impact on how lead and manage people in business.

We encourage you to read, adjust and implement advices of our guests
Let's start!

What is the best leadership advice you ever received?

 

Treat your Team Members as partners.
The best thing I've done in business is to hire smart, driven people and treat them as partners.
They are closer to the customers, partners, potentials and problems. When I give them the vision, direction, ask a lot of questions and try to remove their obstacles from executing, then they will know what decisions to take and how to move forward. They get empowered and I'm not a bottleneck. They start to tell ME what we should do, not wait for instructions. The company starts to take better decisions, faster.

Lech Kaniuk, CEO iTaxi.pl/ / Co-founder OnlinePizza Group

Listen, be patient.
When taking my first steps as the HR Manager I often used to act too impatiently. I wanted too much, too many things at the same time, too quickly. As the time passed I came to understand that it is careful listening and patience that allow to see a different perspective and build relations based on trust. Then people also start to follow you. Not because they were encouraged or forced to do that, but out of their own will.

Katarzyna Filip – HR Manager, ASUS Polska

Success Factor 1: Stay appreciative and don’t pick on the person. Be transparent on what you want from your team member and make clear that you need his/her help for any common activity.
Success Factor 2: The best leaders are very good and patient listeners. If you talk to your people, make sure that you can completely focus on what they say and make efforts to understand, what they mean.

Armin Kreuzthaler, Director People Development & Training, Magna International

If you want people to do something in a certain way, it’s best to show them how to do it yourself.
If you expect punctuality, you must be punctual when interacting with your team. If you expect honesty, you must be honest.
There are no born leaders and we learn little about leadership at home or in school. People gain these skills from the leaders they follow. This is why it’s so important to set a good example and to show your team what you expect of them through your every action.

 Wiktor Schmidt, CEO, Netguru

Surround yourself with people better than yourself.
This is the advice many managers hear already during their studies, but you understand the depth of it in time. The truly good people urge us to continuous development and don’t let us stay in the comfort zone, even if the conditions tempt us to do so. I’ve learnt that if we don’t move forward with people they leave and then their absence is felt the most. Continuous growth as a team allows us to catch up with development in this dynamic world.

Grzegorz Rudno-Rudziński, Managing Partner, Wiceprezez Zarządu, Grupa Unity

The best leadership advice I’ve received was when I was still a teenager – “Less talking, more action”. I did not treat this as a key business characteristics at that time. However, in perspective, this is the sentence I tend to come back to most frequently. Now I am passing along this advice to my team.

Krzysztof Stypułkowski – członek zarządu/ współzałożyciel, FantasyEXPO

The most valuable advice that speaks to me is a few thousand years old: “Man learns all his life and dies stupid”. I’ve come across a lot of advice, books and training. The key is consequence and being open to development. It’s worth to read the advice of masters, e.g. Musashi Miyamoto and his “Book of Five Rings”.

Kamil Górecki – prezes zarządu/ współzałożyciel, FantasyEXPO

 

About companies

iTaxi is the first and largest tagi hailing app in Poland. There are thousands of taxi's in more then 100 cities in Poland available through the iTaxi app.

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ASUS od ponad 25 lat tworzy inteligentne rozwiązania dla użytkowników. Portfolio firmy obejmuje m.in. smartfony ZenFone, notebooki ZenBook, ROG, urządzenia i podzespoły komputerowe a także technologie AR, VR i IoT. Dzięki swym osiągnięciom i wkładowi w rozwój rynku IT, ASUS figuruje na liście „World’s Most Admired Companies” magazynu „Fortune”.

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Magna International is a leading global automotive supplier with 317 manufacturing operations and 102 product development, engineering and sales centres in 29 countries. Over 155,000 employees focused on delivering superior value to Customers through innovative processes and World Class Manufacturing. Magna strives to be the employer of choice, an ethical and responsible corporate citizen and a superior long-term investment for shareholders.

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Netguru is an international company that provides consulting services in programming, systems integration, product design and creating software solutions - from web and mobile applications to websites and ecommerce platforms. Netguru has been recognised in two rankings of fastest-growing companies in Europe: Deloitte Technology Fast 50 (two times) and, more recently, FT1000.

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Unity has been supporting the digital transformation of customers for 20 years by implementing e-commerce IT, system integration and omnichannel projects. Since 1997 we have completed over 500 IT projects, with many clients working for over 10 years. In 2016, the turnover of the company was 25 million and employment exceeded 200 of employees.

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FantasyEXPO is the biggest polish gaming agency actively operating in Poland, Chech Republic and Slovakia. We offer creative strategy consulting for brands, unique marketing sales campaigns, product, productions and events campaigns. We provide in-depth knowledge about gaming market in Poland as well as market research for our customers.
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