Lessons in Leadership

Description: Trusting your people allows you to lead from afar, says Mycoskie.

Question: How do you juggle your responsibilities as a leader? 

Transcript:  In terms of leadership, what I’ve found is you really do have to wear every hat before you can ask other people to do it.  So with TOMS Shoes, even though we’ve grown really fast, I have kind of worn every single hat along the way.  I might’ve only worn it for a week or two.  But at least, when I hired that person or brought that person on, you know, I’ve been able to say, “These are the challenges.  These are the opportunities, and go after it.”  And with that point, one of the things that I really kind of-- is a cornerstone of my business philosophy and leadership is really not to micromanage people.  Spend a lot of time making that decision on who to hire.  But once you hire them, just let them go.  And it’s very interesting in that I’m only in the office maybe five or six days a month.  And there are times when I’m not in the office for two months at a time.  So you can imagine a fast growing company of a lot of young people, who don’t have a lot of experience, with a boss that’s only 31 years old, who’s never around.  So it really takes a lot of trust in the people that you have.  And you also have to be a good leader from afar.  You’ve got to be able to use technology and tools available to lead people.  And so that’s one thing that I think that I have an advantage being young over a lot of older CEOs is that I really embrace the use of technology, writing a blog, keeping the whole team kind of understanding what I’m doing every day when they don’t see me every day.

Recorded on: 3/28/08