Julie Meyer is founder and chief executive of Ariadne Capital, a venture capital firm based in London.

Q. How do you define good leadership?

A. I once found myself at a breakfast with Colin Powell [then the U.S. secretary of state], and he said, “Leaders are those people who create the conditions of trust that great things can happen.” That just stayed with me. The biggest difficulty in human relations of all kinds is not to just create the condition of trust, but to hold that trust together.

Q. How do you do that at your company?

A. I really try and hold myself accountable for integrity. I try not to ask people to do things that I wouldn’t do, in terms of work hours, intensity and so on. I try hard to be an example and to be clear about the objectives of the business and what is expected. It’s silly things, like apologizing when it’s my mistake, to just make sure everybody knows it’s not about ego or hierarchy, that it’s about us working together.

Q. What else?

A. I’m trying to be very transparent. In fact, I’ve got people who say I’m too transparent. But even when I was 23 years old, I wasn’t going to work for somebody who wouldn’t tell me what’s going on with the business. To expect from somebody that they give their heart and soul to this business without telling them what’s going on with the business?

I also think it’s about treating people the way you want to be treated. If you’re new to a team and the chief executive takes you out for dinner in the first couple of months, it’s going to make you feel good.

Q. What challenges have you experienced with this management style?

A. I think I come across as a nice person, and some people interpret nice as weak. It’s not that I’m not nice, but I’m definitely not weak. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, maybe it’s because I’m nice, but occasionally people would interpret it as weakness and then they hit a wall and they hit it hard.

Q. Can you explain that in more detail?

A. I am here to create shareholder value and occasionally people take the view that maybe everything I do is for Julie. I’ve had people say to me, “I had no idea you would enforce the rules.”

I think the challenge for me is that men do it differently. Men give out an aura that if you do that, I’ll cut your head off. I don’t want to do that. I don’t believe in control. I believe in influence. I believe in carrots, not sticks, and that can get interpreted as weakness.

Q. Why do you think carrot is better than stick?

A. I don’t think stick works. I could go around like a titan and keep them under my thumb and say, “I’m the boss, so you do what I want.” Half of them would leave immediately.

When I was younger, I went to Paris, and instead of a linear career, I worked myself into these zigzags. As a result, I think of myself as an individual capitalist. A lot of these 20-year olds over in the room next door think of themselves like I thought of myself when I was 22. I thought, “Julie Meyer Inc. Ltd.” And yes, I’ve worked for people along the way, but I always felt like I was working for myself.

Q. It sounds like you felt very entrepreneurial from a very early age. Was there something in your upbringing to nurture that?

A. My father was an entrepreneur. I didn’t realize that because he is a doctor, who set up a medical practice. He had all sorts of issues with his partner at his medical practice. I saw the ups and the downs of business. I thought it was part of being a doctor, but it wasn’t. The doctor bit worked. It was the business world that didn’t work. So I understood at a very early age that being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. The good news is, I didn’t think it would be easy. I thought that the struggle and the painful thing you go through to build a business is normal.

Q. In your job you come across a lot of leaders and other entrepreneurs. What has impressed you most about some of them?

A. What impressed me in general is the commitment that people make to their values. They have a vision of how the world should be and they feel compelled to realize that vision. That can be an institution they feel compelled to create or a piece of software or something else.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/global/06iht-manager06.html?partner=rss&emc=rss