Ellie Mirman's Startup Marketing Blog

There may be lots of articles and books and podcasts about what it takes to be a great leader, but this audio podcast presented by Bob Sutton had some great hallmarks of great leaders.

Over the last three years, I've learned that I'm a startup girl. I love the chaotic, exciting, difficult life of a startup. Honestly, it surprised me. I'm not sure why - I've always loved working in small, hard-working groups. My university had 18,000 undergrads and yet I ended up in a program where I knew almost everyone in my 60-person (hey that was a decently small size!) classes.

I'm excited to share a video that was posted by one of very own blog readers (and of course fellow HubSpotter extraordinaire), Yoav Shapira. This video presentation, "Broken meetings (and how you'll fix them)" had some great tips that I just had to pass on, despite finding that the presenter himself was a bit annoying (sorry).

I'm a big believer in the power of your mindset over your success and happiness in work and life. A positive mindset has pulled me through a bunch of hard times and a negative mindset has dragged me through the mud even when things were going pretty darn well for me.

I was surprised to find that, in this leadership interview with VMWare CEO Paul Maritz, he cites "self-awareness" as a key quality when hiring employees. He shares that his favorite question to ask in an interview is, taking a project they've done in the past, "Thinking about it now, what would you have done differently? What did you learn from that?" If the answer ends with a lot of blame placed on someone else, for example, you can conclude that the person didn't learn much from the project and that they're not very self-aware.

If you ever catch yourself going to your boss and asking, "How should I...?" stop, turn around, and take another look at your project. (I've recently become addicted to Harvard Business Review, and) I loved this article for articulating something I try to remind myself and my coworkers:

I have yet to hear any stories of a leader or manager succeeding by having strict control over a project or team. Again and again, it seems the key to success is a scary one: losing control.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to The Successful You Women's Leadership Forum hosted by MITX and Microsoft. There was a great turnout and we got to hear from a variety of really incredible women, from the General Manager of Boston.com to VP of Educational Partnerships at the Museum of Science to the founder of oneforty.com.

It's great to work at a place that values fun and remarkable content generation. Our latest masterpiece? This one-take lip-dub video featuring 60 of my lovely HubSpot coworkers. See if you can spot me...

While reading a recent article by our CEO Brian Halligan on HubSpot's startup culture, it struck me how important transparency is to the success of an organization. Frequently transparency is touted as a key component to a great company culture. But perhaps just as importantly, transparency is a great means of professional development.