Startup Blog Insights: Exit Mourning to Are You Listening

We believe in startups. Our SocialGreg had the opportunity to sit down with Taffy Williams, the author and voice of the Startup Blog. So, what would you do if you are a founder of a startup and got suddenly ousted by investors? As a leader, Do you listen to enough to understand and respond to the right things? Do you listen to trusted people you hired? In this episode, Taffy talks about how his experiences is reflected in his blog, a recent column written about listening leadership and finally the five stages of mourning people go through when suddenly ousted from a company.

If I Had Only Done This Differently...

"...the communication between people is not always as crisp as you think they are"

"...you are hearing what you think you want to hear"

"poor communication creates a problem when you provide people with direction"

"Sometimes the (5) stages (of mourning) occur rapidly or may skip one but you may experience all of them"

"this(stages of mourning) can happen if you lose your job, you've been replaced, or your company fails...lose of a love one"

"Some people can't get out of the depression and anger phase and that can influence their ability to get a  job"

The five stages of mourning are Denial & Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Most people go through these stages when a traumatic event happens in their life. Losing a job is in the Top 10 stressful events as characterized by Holmes and Rahe stress scale where death of a spouse the highest. Taffy explains that some of these stages can be paralyzing if one cannot emerge from each of these stages to finally reach acceptance. Taffy has gone through this personally over his years of experience and his advice to startup founders is "have an exit strategy" because something can happen at any time.