Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)
October 8, 2026
As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.
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“If you can overthink all the bad stuff, why can't you overthink all the good stuff?”
As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.
Leslie also explains how Slone protects culture by listening for what different people need. The firm's culture ambassador helps turn that feedback into action, while Leslie reflects on when leaders should solve a problem, when they should simply listen, and why some issues need time to breathe.
Looking ahead, Leslie sees growing demand across medtech, healthtech, AI, and machine learning. She discusses the limits of recruiting from the same blue-chip companies, the realities of relocation and family decisions, the tension between remote and on-site work, and the people who helped her build the firm.
Key Topics Covered:
- Delegation and the difficulty of letting go as a company grows
- Accepting different communication and work styles
- Listening before jumping into problem-solving mode
- Using a culture ambassador to gather and act on employee feedback
- Building executive team leadership inside a growing search firm
- AI and machine learning hiring demand in medtech and healthtech
- Why technology can improve executive search without replacing human intuition
- Expanding candidate searches beyond blue-chip companies and primary biotech markets
- Relocation, family considerations, and executive hiring decisions
- Balancing remote, hybrid, and on-site work models
- The value of documenting institutional knowledge in distributed organizations
- Gratitude toward family, employees, and long-term clients
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Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1
Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/
NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/
Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/
Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:53 The Hard Part of Growing Beyond Five People
02:43 Learning When to Speak Up
03:25 Different Ways of Doing the Work
04:09 A Type A Leader Learns to Slow Down
04:36 People Need Different Things
05:07 The Culture Ambassador Role
07:39 When Listening Beats Problem Solving
09:43 Giving Problems Time to Breathe
12:32 Slone's Next Growth Areas
12:55 Creating an Executive Team Mindset
13:58 Technology, Efficiency, and Human Intuition
17:33 The NBA Draft Mentality in AI Recruiting
19:16 Looking Beyond the Usual Biotech Markets
24:19 Remote Work, Relocation, and Role Fit
33:53 Overthinking the Good Stuff
35:38 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.