Through the Leader's Lens: Interview with Gal Ringel, Co-Founder and CEO of MineOS

Welcome back to “Through the Leader’s Lens”! Today, we have the privilege of diving into the world of exceptional leadership with Gal Ringel, one of the brilliant minds behind MineOS. During our time together, Gal emphasized the importance of effective communication and empowerment of employees and team members, two pillars that have transformed MineOS into a thriving workplace.

Join us as we explore Gal’s unique leadership philosophy, learn from his experiences, and discover the secrets that have forged an extraordinary team environment at MineOS. Let’s get started.

What is your leadership philosophy when it comes to creating and maintaining a collaborative and aligned team environment?
 

I’ve always valued communication and empowerment. To me, surrounding yourself with the right people and knowing how to delegate to them is one of the drivers of success, so if you’ve done that, you just need to empower employees to do what you know they can. If you have that in place and good lines of communication, where you are always available to talk and help out anyone, you can keep a healthy environment going.
 
 

How do you ensure that every team member is aware of their individual goals, as well as the team’s goals, and that they are working towards achieving them?
 

Setting and communicating realistic goals and metrics for people and making it clear how that is part of the bigger picture is key to helping employees stay on track and contributing to the overall goal. What’s reasonable to ask of someone? What tools do they have at their disposal? How much is their work connected to others? We factor all that in as we set quarterly OKRs and we keep everyone in the loop for company-wide goals on a monthly basis.
 
 

 

How do you build and maintain trust with your team members to create a positive work environment?
 

Respecting an employee as a person first and a staff member second. You want to create an environment where everyone respects each other and treats each other well. That means choosing new staff carefully, championing work-life balance, and being approachable for when problems arise. If you do all that, you can lean on employees when urgent tasks come up and know they’re putting their best foot forward, since you aren’t constantly grinding them.
 
 

How do you manage conflicts or disagreements within the team to ensure that everyone is working together effectively?
 

You have to hear everyone out and give them their time to explain their position in a conflict, but you have to make sure that happens respectfully. Nobody needs to yell or insult others. Being in the same company means you’re on the same team and you likely want the same thing, so breaking that down and being logical and empathetic can help ease over tensions, make conflict remediation clear, and help people most past any conflicts that arise.
 
 

How do you promote team building/bonding?
 

Respecting them and their time. Don’t force things or put people out of their comfort zones. I think taking that general approach really helps create a relaxed workplace full of professionals who can be themselves and form relationships more naturally.
 

How do you help your team manage the constantly overload of information both within your organization and from external sources?
 

For us, you need to cut through the noise and focus on the most essential data. If you get too focused on details you can lose a lot of time trying to isolate noise and solve for variables, so you always need to keep your North Star. How can you make the most impact with the least amount of resources? You need to answer that question, and from there you can divide any extra resources to other areas.

As a manager, how do you decide which tasks, projects or initiatives to prioritize on?
 

We are a customer-obsessed company. We have the foundation for the product in place and of course have ideas on where to go long-term, but a lot of the short-term priorities arise out of customer needs and requests that we know are compatible with the overall vision of what the platform should be.
 
 

What are some of the key challenges you have faced in leading a team, and how did you overcome them?
 

Finding and bringing in the right people is very tough, particularly for leadership positions. Those jobs can make or break a company, and we looked exhaustively to fill them because we were being so careful. The VP of Marketing, VP of Engineering and VP of Customer Success roles took us many months of searching to find the right candidates. Throughout that time, myself and my 2 co-founders were trying to fill those roles, so we were stretched thin and working unimaginable hours. At a point though, when you can feel a candidate fits, you need to pull the trigger, and finding the right candidates for those positions has made our lives much easier.
 
 

A heartfelt thank you to Gal Ringel for generously sharing his invaluable leadership insights. With his emphasis on communication and empowerment, MineOS flourishes as a harmonious and motivated team, ready to conquer new heights.
 

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