Why Spring Health Takes a Bottom-Up Approach to Leadership

by Colin Hanner
March 26, 2021
bottom-up leadership
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Can an individual contributor at a company have more specialized expertise than its CEO? 

April Koh, the co-founder and CEO at the mental healthcare platform Spring Health, hopes so. 

Instead of decisions trickling down from a group of leaders to individual contributors (a “top-down” approach), Koh says she instead finds the domain expert for the role who has the power to make decisions that affect everyone at the company (a “bottom-up” approach). 

“I hire domain experts because I trust that their business instincts and judgment are superior to mine in their respective domains,” Koh said. “Why wouldn’t I trust their leadership and ‘let them lead’ wherever possible?”

Below, Koh explained why Spring Health practices a bottom-up leadership approach and how that’s resulted in innovation from the team members who are closest to the customers and challenges they face every day. 

 

April Koh
Co-Founder & CEO • Spring Health

What does bottom-up leadership look like at Spring Health? 

For one, it means embodying our values. We have a value called “candor with care,” and we expect our team to be radically direct and honest but to do so with care. Whenever anyone in the company steps up during a town hall meeting and asks a candid and difficult question to the executive team, but does so in a respectful and productive way, they are exhibiting one of our core values and leading by example.

And, every so often, we brainstorm around the big bold bets that we want to place as a company, and we invite the entire company into the process. Our team exhibits bottoms-up leadership by contributing their ideas for their unique perspectives — some of the ideas are mind-blowing and incredibly valuable.
 

I want to extend the same freedom to my team to take ownership and lead bottom-up rather than top-down.”


Why have you decided to take this approach to leadership?

It’s both deeply personal for me and deeply strategic. It’s deeply personal because I am personally very motivated by freedom, and I want to extend the same freedom to my team to take ownership and lead bottom-up rather than top-down. It’s deeply strategic because bottom-up leadership results in limitless innovation from people who are closest to the challenges and to the customers.

 

How do find the right balance between leading and letting others lead, and why is this balance so important?

Every day, I ask myself: Did I make fewer decisions than I made yesterday, and were the decisions that I made more impactful? Over time, I should be making fewer and fewer decisions, as I hire the right team to take on more ownership and lead for me. The decisions that I do make should have higher and higher stakes.

I hire domain experts because I trust that their business instincts and judgment are superior to mine in their respective domains. Why wouldn’t I trust their leadership and “let them lead” wherever possible?

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