What makes a good leader

 Reflective Blog #2

For this reflective blog I pick Paul Hardej, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of FarmedHere. FarmedHere runs a vertical indoor farming area which is more efficient and more local than outdoor farms.

Paul studied Architecture, Interior Design and Merchandising. Before his time at FarmedHere, Paul developed award winning real estate projects. He has also been involved in many non-profit organizations.

Since 2010, Paul Hardej had a huge participation in developing the first in-door Vertical Aquaponic Farm in the U.S. He designed and developed all farm operating procedures as well as the artificial grow lighting technology.

During the short time I met Paul I was able to see hints of which leadership styles he uses. During our meeting he asked our group some questions, e.g. how we liked the farm and whether this type of business could also work in Germany. This shows that Paul Hardej is using the participative leadership style in order to get new insight, this time from third parties. The new insight can then for example be used by him to question the business model of FarmedHere.

When it comes to characteristics I see in and want to attain from Paul Hardej it is firstly the humbleness he transmits to others. Even though in my opinion Paul achieved many things through building up FarmedHere with new and innovative ideas he did not look like he was bragging about anything of that even for a second.

This is also one of the reasons why Paul Hardej impressed and inspired me. He also impressed me by his huge knowledge pool. We already knew that he needed to be good in Architecture and Technology in order to build up what he did. But even when we asked some finance questions he showed a very good understanding.

This is also connecting to which characteristics a good leader should have. In my opinion, a good leader needs to have superior and wide knowledge compared to his staff. Without that, a leader cannot be fully accepted within a group. The leaders’ decisions will always be heavily questioned and there is a huge possibility that lower ranked, but smarter staff will try to outplay the current leader in order to get promoted. In addition to that, a good leader also needs to be at least a little bit humble in his appearance. Without that a leader can never fully encourage and motivate his staff for work and moreover this leader would not be a great role model to look up to.

That being said, Paul Hardej did not change the type of leader I inspire to be. For a longer time I have great leaders in my mind which have the same basic characteristics as Paul and which I try to persue, for example Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Nevertheless, having met a person like Paul Hardej in real life helped me in reinforcing the type of leader I want to be in the future.

sources: http://vfua.org/speaker/paul-hardej-chief-technology-officer-vertical-farming/, http://farmedhere.com/