Leadership as a Service – Turning Mindset Into Practice
At Metacore, leadership means enabling teams to do great work through support, clarity, and trust. While that may sound simple on paper, in practice it requires time investment, consistency, and focus. Especially for a company at our stage, building a strong foundation for leadership is essential. That’s why we’re investing time and energy into developing it.
We follow a Leadership as a Service approach: a practical way of leading where supervisors set direction, remove obstacles, and ensure people have what they need to succeed. It’s about showing up, staying consistent, and leading in ways that help people focus and grow.
Most importantly, we want this to be more than just a mindset – it should show up in our everyday work. That’s why we’ve co-created a shared approach to leadership together with our supervisors, one that’s woven into how we operate and continues to evolve as we scale.
Here’s what that looks like in action:
Our Supervisor Fundamentals
Our Supervisor Fundamentals define what effective leadership looks like at Metacore. They’re simple enough, actionable, and adaptable across teams.
Be present
Leadership starts with showing up. Every supervisor is expected to hold regular 1:1s with each team member – it’s a company-wide standard. Supervisors dedicate time to meet with the team members individually to discuss their progress and possible concerns, offer support proactively and help with difficult situations.
Ensure flow
Supervisors help the team move forward and to the right direction. That means clarifying priorities, aligning and working together with other teams, and stepping in when something’s blocking progress. Their job is to keep the work and collaboration flowing smoothly.
Enable growth
Growth isn’t a side activity, it’s part of the job. Supervisors coach their team members, give feedback, and connect the dots between daily work and the company’s long-term goals.
These fundamentals give our supervisors a strong, shared foundation: flexible enough to fit different teams, and consistent enough to grow with us.
A balance of high care and high performance
At Metacore, we expect our leaders to find the balance between high care and high performance. One without the other won’t get us where we want to go.
High care is about providing real support to team members. It means asking how someone’s doing – and actually listening. It’s modeling healthy work-life boundaries, being available when personal struggles come up, and serving employees with tangible support.
High performance is about setting clear expectations and helping people meet them. That includes giving timely feedback, following up on commitments, and staying focused on outcomes and impact, not just activities.
With new employees regularly joining, supervisors play a key role in making Metacore’s culture visible and real. They provide context during change, explain why decisions are made, and model how we work together. They lead by example and make sure newcomers quickly understand not just what we do, but how we work and what we stand for.
Scaling Leadership with the Company
At Metacore, we know what worked yesterday won’t always work tomorrow. As the company scales, we continuously develop our leadership capabilities to match. Leadership isn’t left to chance: we invest in tools, structures, and habits that help supervisors lead with clarity and consistency.
Our expectations for leadership are high and so is the support. We invest heavily in leadership development, offering tailored support for different needs and situations. From coaching and formal training to mentoring, peer learning, and curated leadership reads, there’s something for everyone – whether you're just starting out or sharpening your approach.
We’ve created a Supervisor Toolkit that offers ready-to-use resources: from feedback frameworks and development templates to communication tips and other learning materials. Whether it's preparing for a tough conversation or planning the next OKRs, supervisors don’t have to start from scratch. Our People Partners also support teams by staying close to their daily work. They might sit with the team, join weekly meetings, and make themselves easy to approach in the everyday. Their presence helps build the kind of trust that doesn’t happen from a distance.
We also design our teams to support good leadership. We aim to keep team sizes intentionally small, around 7 people, so supervisors have the time and space to lead well. For new supervisors, teams are ideally even smaller to allow room for learning.
Metacore is a young company – around five years old – and so is our leadership journey. That brings both advantages and challenges. There’s still a lot to build: clearer structures, consistent ways of working, and a shared view of what good leadership looks like. But we’re also free from the baggage of “we’ve always done it this way”.
We have a rare opportunity to shape our leadership approach from the ground up and make sure it fits us: our culture, values, business, and people.
Hanna Kontinen is the People Development Lead at Metacore, with nearly 15 years of experience in People Operations. She works on company-wide development initiatives, with a focus on leadership, performance management, and organizational development.