What a bad boss taught me in an early part-time job about leadership, motivation and the right way to deal with employees.
A bad boss showed him how not to do it. Today, Jason Modemann from Mawave manages over 150 employees and consciously does everything differently. Five principles that define modern leadership for him.
My co-founder Patrick and I founded a company while studying. But we couldn’t finance our lives with freelancing alone back then. So, like many other founders at the beginning, we had a part-time job. Looking back, it was one of the most important experiences of my life. Not because I learned a lot there. But because I saw how you shouldn’t do it as a boss under any circumstances.
There was constant friction between me and the managing director – over completely banal things. The most defining example: He wanted me to come to the office every day. Just to check if I’m working. He made no secret of that either. However, since an office presence was absolutely not necessary for the job and I knew that I was much more efficient at home, I simply didn’t go. A week later I was fired.
You can guess three times whether the company still exists today. Small spoiler: no. And to be honest, that doesn’t surprise me at all.
It is precisely because of this experience that I now try to do better and take these five things to heart to be a good boss:
1. Communicate at eye level
I believe that you don’t get respect through pressure, harshness or hierarchy. It’s more of a give and take. That’s why I try to show respect to everyone on the team. Regardless of whether you are a manager or an intern – we talk to each other on an equal footing. I listen, I ask questions, I explain decisions. Not because I have to, but because I want every person in the team to feel taken seriously. Because a team that feels respected thinks for itself. A team that is afraid thinks.
2. Show competence
One of the biggest struggles when you start a business without any previous experience: I can only pass on to my team the learnings that I did on the go. But that’s exactly what made me quickly understand something crucial: expertise comes from curiosity, not from years of life.
In the last few years I have experienced so many different situations, made decisions, made mistakes, corrected, scaled and built that I can now access a pool of experience that is extremely practical. And that’s why my voice is taken seriously in the team – even if I don’t have 20 years of professional experience.
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In order to further expand my competence, I consciously bring in knowledge from outside – through training, external experts, and sparring. Because for me, good leadership means not knowing everything, but wanting to learn everything.
3. Exude sovereignty
As a manager, you are constantly confronted with situations that you did not plan for. Internally there are fires in many places at the same time. It is precisely in these moments that it is decided how good a boss you really are.
For me, exuding confidence means: I can feel pressure internally, but I don’t pass it on to the team. If I appear tense, it immediately unsettles everyone else. If I get hectic, the team will panic. If I get loud, everyone loses their bearings. That’s why it’s my job to radiate calm, even if there’s chaos in the background.
This doesn’t mean sugarcoating problems or pretending that everything is easy. It means staying clear and thinking in a structured way. For me, sovereignty keeps the team together – especially when things get difficult. Because your own emotionality has an enormous influence on the entire crew. And anyone who wants to lead must be able to consciously control precisely this influence.
4. Create trust
For me, trust is the foundation of good leadership. And it only works if it is reciprocal. This means that I treat people the way I would have liked to have been treated back then: I don’t play anyone off against each other, I don’t talk badly about colleagues, I never pass on confidential information. That sounds basic – but it’s not.
5. Set the vision
A vision answers the most important question in the company: What are we actually doing all this for? In order for a vision to be effective, we always think in two stages: first individually, then collectively. This means that we formulate a personal vision for each individual in the company – i.e. what role they would like to take on in the long term, what strengths they would like to develop, what contribution they would like to make. We then elevate these individual visions to the team and company level. This creates a common direction that is not dictated from above, but is supported by everyone.
I probably would have understood what good leadership should look like even without a bad boss, but it extremely shaped my views. Because I noticed early on how much trust, respect and motivation can be destroyed if someone practices leadership incorrectly. Today my promise is: I want to be the boss I would have wanted back then. You don’t have to be perfect or infallible to do this. But fair, clear, confident and always ready to learn.
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