From The
Editor
Leadership Style
I’ve worked closely with many paintball
companies, teams and event producers
over the years. I’ve seen the inner
workings in dozens of situations. I have
seen companies, teams and organizations
have great long-term success, great short-
term success, complete failures and utter
disasters. I’ve seen what happens when
people are under pressure; what happens
when the pile of startup money runs out;
and I’ve seen what happens when the
initial success wears—sometimes things
get even better when the pressure is on.
And sometimes not.
In almost every instance, failure or success
there’s one common denominator—
leadership style. There have been a
thousand books and dozens of movies
about leadership but in my world success
almost always comes down to one simple
thing—the interaction between the
owner/leader of the company, team or
organization and the rest of the staff/team.
If you get this right you will thrive.
When I say interaction I don’t just mean the
way you handle communicating with your
team. There’s much more to it than that,
although that is important. Is your team at
ease around you or do you rule by fear? The
latter will never work in the long term. Do
you handle all of the important tasks or do
you trust your team to take on meaningful
responsibilities? Only the latter will work.
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Do you listen more than you talk? I hope
you answered “yes.” Do you have one or
two trusted team members you can work
through difficult situations as they arise or
do you make all of the tough calls on your
own? You will inevitably kill your company,
team or organization if you have no “go
to” people to help council you through
tough times and issues.
I’m smart enough to know this: I have
published more than 300 paintball
magazine issues over the course of 26
years and although I have always been the
one making the final decisions on almost
everything, I wouldn’t have lasted five
years with a lone wolf leadership mentality.
I have developed a trusted team over the
years that help me walk through tough
times, hard decisions, new directions and
other mission-critical aspects of running
this company. There have been times
where I let the team make decisions that
I was not fully on board with and looking
back I made the right call almost every
time by listening to them.
So how can you make your company,
team or organization better, stronger and
healthier?
John Amodea
President
Paintball.Media