You’re great at what you do. An amazing accountant, for example. And your team wants a manager who deeply understands their work, who can help them and represent them to leadership. So you work hard to get promoted and you get the job. Congratulations—now you lead an accounting team.

So as a manager, you have to find what connects with your team. How can you share your passion with them, motivate them?

The answer, as usual, comes down to communication. You have to tell the team why. Why am I this passionate? Why is this mission meaningful? Why is this small detail so important that I’m flipping out right now when nobody else seems to think it matters? Nobody wants to follow someone who throws themselves at windmills for no reason. To get people to join you, to truly become a team, to fill them with the same energy and drive that’s bubbling within you, you need to tell them the why.

Your company is an organism; its cells need to divide to multiply, they need to differentiate to become something new. Don’t worry about what you’re going to lose—think about what you’re going to become.

Happy, functional, effective boards are all relatively small, full of experienced operators who have built companies before, think of themselves as mentors and coaches, and actually do the work—they help you recruit and get funding and expand your expertise, sharpen your business and product strategy, watch for land mines, and give it to you straight when you’re about to step on one.

Even if they have the exact skills that I’m looking for, it’s better not to try to fit a round peg into a square hole. Each of us ought to be working in an environment that we love with the people who share our passions. And if along the way we realize that we’re meant to do something else, let’s celebrate that instead of seeing it as a failure.