Behind every successful and thriving company, is a group of leaders that steer it in the right direction. It’s their insight, expertise, knowledge, and heart that keep a company in business. In turn, this helps the company and its employees to grow year after year. No leader is an island, and many of them value the perspectives and advice shared by like-minded people. Leaders across the globe find it fruitful to learn from other leaders in the industry or a completely different field. The same sentiments can be said by Ryan Bacher, one of the co-founders of NetFlorist, who we had an interview with. Not only did we get to hear some of these leadership tips, but we also found out about his leadership style, opinion on leadership and his experiences thus far.
Q 1: What’s the hardest part about being a leader?
I sometimes find leadership an overwhelming responsibility. We’re very privileged to employ a lot of people and the decisions you make as a leader hopefully positively impact our employees. Sometimes you can make the wrong decision that affects the employees and the customers.
I find it a huge honour to be a leader and to share this position with the many leaders we have at NetFlorist. We have a strong leadership team and it’s been great working alongside those groups of people and watching their leadership growth.
Q 2: Who do you seek guidance/mentorship from?
In terms of mentorship, I lean on my two partners, Lawrence Brick and Jonathan Hackner a lot. I get ideas from them and guidance on how to lead those who report to me.
In terms of guidance, I don’t have one particular go-to person. I listen to a lot of podcasts on leadership and read on the topic. I’m not good at following one particular philosophy, so I pick and choose. The podcast that I listen to the most is The Tim Ferriss Show. He interviews a lot of leaders and entrepreneurs and I get a lot of insights from the people he interviews.
Q 3: How do you measure success?
We too often mention success through sales. We’re always looking for a sales number and that shouldn’t be the sole focus. We have measures that we look at like customer satisfaction (that’s a big one for us) and employee satisfaction in terms of retention rate.
Q 4: What characteristics do you believe every leader should possess?
There are so many characteristics in terms of good leadership that comes to mind. I believe one of the important traits a leader should have is the ability to pick the right course for the company. If you’re placing bets on a lot of things that don’t work, you’re going to sink your company.
Humility is another important part of leadership, because, although you may pick the right course for the company, it’s your team that implements that course. So, I think a good leader feels like they’re not doing it on their own.
Supporting senior staff is another characteristic that a leader should have. When you have lots of employees, it’s hard for a leader to interact with everyone, which is unfortunate. But the people that directly report to the senior leaders should feel that they have exceptional support.
Q 5: Do you think leadership can be taught or is one simply born with it?
No, I think leadership can be taught. Many people could be leaders but never have the opportunity to be one. I think that most people can lead. Some people shy away from it and often they say that those who shy away from leadership are the best leaders. I would imagine that most people, given the opportunity and guidance, could lead.
Q 6: Has your leadership style changed much from during the Covid-19 pandemic and now post-pandemic?
What I think changed between myself and my two partners in the pandemic is the slight shift to a more open leadership style. Normally if you are the leader or boss, you must hide your anxiety because if the leader is anxious then everyone is. But during the covid-19 pandemic, we were all pretty anxious. We were anxious for health, and we were anxious for our employees and our company. I don’t think any of us hid that. Maybe before covid, we wouldn’t have been so open about any anxiety, or worries we had about the business.
As you can see, every person has a different approach to leading a team or a company. But with the right mentorship and tools in hand, you can be a great leader too. With strong qualities like humility, right-decision making skills and the desire to support others, you can also get your employees on board with your company’s vision. Not forgetting to note that there are other valuable things other than sales growth to measure what success looks like in a business. We hope you’ve found some valuable insights and leadership tips from Ryan Bacher that you can apply to your company.
