Words of Wisdom from Dick Costolo

by Scott Edward Walker on September 26th, 2013

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.”  Each week, we share a favorite video clip of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics.  This week, we again present Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter and a very impressive leader.

In this interesting, seven-minute speech from a couple of weeks ago (at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco), Dick shares some words of wisdom for entrepreneurs, including the following:

• “Even…as you go from two people to ‘n’ people, if you don’t deal with [leadership issues], dysfunction becomes embedded in your company.” (at 0:53)
• “As a leader, you need to care deeply, deeply about your people – while not worrying or even caring what they think about you.” (at 1:33)
• “Managing by trying to be liked is the path to ruin.” (at 1:46)
•  “The way you build trust with your team and your people is by being forthright and clear with them from day one.” (at 3:07)
• “There are many different ways to be successful.” (at 3:52)
• “Find your own means of being successful and…understand there are many different ways.” (at 5:38)
• “Find your individual superpower (what that is) and leverage that — and be successful in your own way.” (at 5:47)
• “You may think people are fooled if you’re telling them what they want to hear; they are not fooled.  As a leader, you are totally transparent.” (at 6:20)
• “If you try to lead in some way that isn’t true to who you are, [people] will see it and see through it – and you will lose the trust of the team.” (at 6:30)

I hope you enjoy it.  Cheers, Scott