Diethard Struelens: How To Be A Successful Leader
Diethard Struelens and I took the same class at Newhouse during the last spring semester. In addition to being an Arts Administration & Cultural Policy graduate student at Syracuse University, he is the founder and CEO of Artfuse company. For most international students, having their own company in America is too good to be true. But Struelens did it.
Struelens has always had strong passion about art, music and many other creative things. He has been a musician since the age of seven. He also gained his Bachelor of Music degree in Zuyd Hogeschool in Netherlands. After moving to America, he realized how hard it was for artists to connect with the marketplace, and for the marketplace to discover emerging artists as well. Struelens believed that he could do something to solve this problem. Thus, Artfuse was born.
Artfuse is a web-based marketplace especially built to serve the creative industry. On the one side, Artfuse enables creatives to showcase and sell their products and services. On the other side, Artfuse offers users and customers a seamless way to browse, discover and eventually buy creative work through a reliable online platform. Artfuse creates a win-win for everyone who uses it.
Managing a company is both art and science. When asked about his leadership style, Struelens says he has high concern for both relationships and tasks – a typical “selling” style. One of his success secrets is that he cares about his team and team members’ personal life. He believes that if team members feel good personally, they will feel good on the team. He likes to build and maintain a personal relationship with everyone personally, all to avoid miscommunication and stress. He does this by checking in with everyone on a regular basis. He also works with task deadlines and always explains that if he does not know what is going on, he cannot be there to help and fix it. He is very firm on good, open communication. Kindness, honesty, transparency, integrity and accountability are his pillars, and he loves working with people who share those values with him.
However, encountering problems and difficulties are unavoidable for each leader. Struelens says that the biggest challenge for him in general is keeping good, constant and open communication with others. As a leader, it often becomes a challenge to keep the overview and not to drop any balls along the way. Especially with bigger teams, the big challenge is to keep a collective communication alive as well as a personal one with every single team member. When talking about communication channels, Struelens prefers either communicating verbally or via email. He likes to cut out as many middlemen as possible, because direct lines are much simpler and more reliable. Whenever he has to communicate something to a specific person, he would do so in a direct way.
In addition, Struelens is a born mediator; whenever there is a conflict in the team, he will ask those specific members to get together and talk in a private setting. If someone comes to him with a complaint, he often says: “Get a coffee together and get to know each other better.” In the case that the situation cannot be resolved, he will take a more active role.
Motivating the followers is also one of the important tasks for leaders. Struelens insists that it is crucial to know the audience at all times. This theory also applies to followers or team members. Leaders need to know what is important to every single one of their team members, because it makes leaders decide how to frame their message. It is known to many that the art of negotiation is to let the other person do what you want done, but for their own reasons. So, he thinks motivating people is all about knowing what motivates them.
When it comes to how to redirect or adjust a follower’s behavior, Struelens gives me some specific examples: If the follower does not know the blog post is due today, he will share very clear expectations. And if the result is not good enough, he will compare the followers’ behaviors and ask what he can do to help them. Moreover, when the followers do a great job, such as finalizing the presentation in time, he will reward them by sharing wins or accomplishments with the rest.
In today’s fast-changing world, competition becomes more and more intense. I asked Struelens how can he best encourage himself as well as others to meet new challenges, and he repeats one word three times: “Read, read, read.” He thinks that a lot of what is happening in this world is described in good leadership books, and he encourages everyone to read every day. Additionally, he thinks it is important to observe changes and to listen to what people are saying. It is good to continuously be aware of changes and the challenges that come with it.
