How to be a better leader with Egyptian entrepreneur Ahmed El Hefny

💼 Leadership isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone — it’s a skill that takes time, practice, and yes, the occasional misstep to master. In this EnterpriseAM vertical, we’re asking industry players what makes a great leader. Speaking to us this week is Ahmed El Hefny (LinkedIn), co-founder of Amazon marketing partner Amzolute and CEO and creative director of homegrown fashion brand Zonta.

EnterpriseAM: What’s a leadership lesson you wish you had learned earlier than you did?

Ahmed El Hefny (AEH): That great leaders design cultures — that’s because culture eats strategy for breakfast. What that means is, in my early days, I was more focused on strategizing and planning. What I’ve since learned is that your number one job as a leader is to create more leaders, not followers of the company strategies.

Another thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s not what you tell people, it’s how you make them feel. Entrepreneurship, at the end of the day, is a people-first endeavor. It’s not numbers, it’s not data — essentially, it’s people. So you have to understand that when you're dealing with people, a lot of the time it's never about what was said; it's about how they feel, how that person feels about what was said. That carries over to achieving the targets and the goals.

E: Being in the business of people is tough. Sometimes you find yourself trying to balance empathy with still being able to make tough decisions. How would you say you're able to achieve that?

AEH: You have to be able to have the hard conversations because, at the end of the day, you're doing both parties a disservice if you're avoiding that — it’ll all blow up. One of the key things for a leader to establish early on is trust, clear communication, and transparency with everyone on the team. That goes both ways, because the team trusts that you're going to give them transparent, open, and kind communication.

There's always a way to give feedback where it's constructive, where it empowers the team, and where there are lessons learned for everyone to grow from. So, when the time comes for a difficult conversation — whether that means someone is underperforming, or someone has reached a point where they’re no longer serving the company, or we've reached a dead end — I think it's very important in those conversations to be very honest.

People are really smart; they don't want to beat around the bush. They don't want to hear some bluff about why the company has decided to move in a different direction. I think what is actually beneficial is to have an honest conversation about what's happening, what went wrong, and why this role is no longer beneficial for both parties.

I've been in those situations many times, and honestly, I'd say nine times out of 10 it worked out best for both parties. You don't have to be harsh, you don't have to be personal, you don't have to be aggressive — always be kind.

E: Some decisions don’t land well with everyone, which can create conflict — how do you navigate that?

AEH: Everything boils down to culture. If you’re making space for constructive dialogue, disagreements won’t be viewed as personal attacks. It’s not about seniority or position. In the teams I’ve worked with, we stress that the best, most informed, data-driven opinion always comes first. This creates an environment where I encourage the team to criticize my opinions, to challenge them, to challenge their manager's opinions, and explain why x might not work.

This, in my opinion, is great for leaders because you feel protected, because you hear the mistakes or you hear the potential downfalls or the potential risks of that decision from your team first. It saves you a lot of issues from having to hear it from a client. I think that’s very important to establish early on, and it’s also very important to establish and clarify the fine line between disagreeing and being disrespectful.

E: What do you think makes a great leader?

AEH: If I were to put a silver plaque under what a great leader is, I would say great leaders create more leaders. That, to me, is the epitome of leadership. On the other hand, when a leader doesn’t know how to lead, they start micromanaging. That’s something to keep in mind. You have to trust that you are nurturing other leaders within the company, and you have to trust that they are able to lead their different departments and make their own decisions.

E: Is there a time when you felt you might have failed as a leader?

AEH: I think there are a lot of times when I feel I could have done better. I think “failed” is a very big word that I tend not to use lightly. But I think there are a lot of times when I notice there are things or decisions I should have tackled better as a leader. Most of those times are when I felt the need to take the decision myself or to jump in and fix or amend something that would have been much better served for the company and for the organization had I trusted the leader of that department and had some more patience to give them the time they needed to reach that conclusion on their own and actually learn from the process of reaching that conclusion, instead of me just jumping in.

This is something leaders have to address and work on: patience. Even if you know the answer right away, it’s much better for the company if your people can reach it on their own, even if it takes a little extra time.

E: Any last words?

AEH: Leadership is inversely related to the size and fragility of the ego. A lot of times, you have some leaders — I see it at networking events or when I meet other company leaders at conferences — with big egos. Whenever we have someone with such a big ego, it's usually a red flag because they would lack the humility and patience required to be able to nurture leaders from within the team.

A lot of times, as a leader, your team is going to challenge your ideas and your team is going to show you why your idea is actually the worst idea, not the best. You have to have humility, and you have to have the understanding and patience to handle that.

💡 Looking for more professional advice? Catch up on our interviews with the IFC’s Cheick-Oumar Sylla, Peace Cake’s Kareem Abou Gamrah, and B.Tech’s Mahmoud Khattab.