Leadership Skills for MedTech Founders and CEOs: Webinar Summary

Leading a MedTech startup is a unique challenge, demanding more than technical skill or innovative ideas. In "Leadership Skills for MedTech Founders and CEOs," presented by Avio MedTech Consulting and led by executive coach Nirav Sheth, participants were invited to explore what separates competent founders from truly effective, resilient leaders.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch a recording below

Avio Medtech and Nirav Sheth Present

The Startup Reality: Leadership Beyond the Technical

In early stage medical device companies, attention is often focused on the technical aspects—regulatory navigation, R&D milestones, and fundraising. Yet, the human and leadership elements are frequently under-addressed—even though they're as mission-critical as a well-designed prototype. Leadership in startups, as Sheth emphasized, is fundamentally different from that in large, resource-rich organizations. Founders must operate with scarce resources, relentless uncertainty, and constant personal stakes.

Making It Personal: Where Are You Growing As a Leader?

Rather than defaulting to abstract theory, Sheth challenged attendees to reflect on their own most pressing performance goal for the coming year. He asked founders to consider:

• What is your most important goal for fiscal 2025?

• What is the biggest challenge you face in reaching this goal?

• Which leadership skill, if sharpened, would most move the needle for you?

Responses from the (interactive) audience highlighted familiar dilemmas:

• Engaging and building credibility with investors

• Balancing urgent priorities and limited time

• Onboarding and motivating new team members

• Building resilience in tough fundraising environments

• Learning and scaling as first-time CEOs

• Hitting ambitious commercial milestones while maintaining product quality

The Most Universal Leadership Challenge: Mindset

Common startup pain points—capital raising, managing uncertainty, building high-functioning teams, balancing strategy and execution, and burnout—were addressed not as separate problems, but as different faces of a single challenge: mindset.

Sheth presented his hypothesis, informed by research in positive psychology and neuroscience: Almost every leadership skill can be sharpened by working on your mental habits and mindset. He illustrated this with the well-known "two wolves" metaphor: every person has both negative and positive internal voices, and performance is determined by which one we choose to feed.

The Mental Models: Saboteurs and Sages

Central to the workshop was the "Sage vs. Saboteur" framework (derived from the Positive Intelligence model).

Saboteurs: Self-limiting mental habits and stories that undermine performance. The principal saboteur is "The Judge," prone to self-criticism, blaming others, or fixating on what's wrong. Other common saboteurs (almost archetypes) for startup leaders include:

• Controller: Needing to control all outcomes

• Hyper-Achiever: Overidentifying with success

• Restless: Constant dissatisfaction, chasing the next thing

• Stickler: Perfectionism taken to extremes

• Pleaser: Sacrificing own needs to appease others

• Hyper-vigilant, Avoider, Victim, and Hyper-Rational each present their own traps.

Audience members candidly recognized themselves in several of these patterns—avoidance of tough conversations, restless multitasking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and more.

The Sage: The higher-brain mindset associated with equanimity, curiosity, creativity, and resilience. Sheth described five “sage powers”:

• Navigate: Vision, purpose, big-picture thinking

• Empathize: Self-compassion and empathy for others

• Explore: Curiosity and open-mindedness

• Innovate: Creative problem-solving and collaboration

• Activate: Laser-focused execution and flow

The “sage perspective” is summed up by the conviction that every challenge hides a gift or opportunity—a belief Sheth illustrated with a memorable story about adversity turning unexpectedly to advantage.

Practical Applications: How Mindset Tools Build Real-World Leadership Skills

Sheth methodically tied each core startup challenge to specific elements of the sage mindset:

Investor engagement: Empathize to build authentic relationships; Navigate to inspire with vision rather than only data; Explore to understand what truly matters to investors.

Managing uncertainty: Use Navigate power (big-picture thinking and anchoring to purpose) and Activate power (focused decisions and execution) to avoid paralysis and react constructively.

Team building and motivation: Activate and Navigate to align the team, Empathize to delegate and build trust (including self-compassion to avoid trying to do everything alone).

Balancing strategy and execution: The interplay of Navigate and Activate powers is fundamental to this.

Preventing burnout: Empathize (self-care), Activate (prioritization), plus the sage perspective to reframe stress and setbacks constructively.

Sheth's essential claim, supported by his coaching experience and behavioral research, is that:

Leadership excellence comes from building “mental muscles” that default more often to sage mode and less to saboteur patterns.

Building Sage Muscles: Micro-Practices and Neuroplasticity

Awareness alone isn’t enough—change occurs through new habits. Sheth shared simple “micro-mindfulness” exercises, such as a 30-second focused breathing or tactile anchor (rubbing thumb and forefinger together), which can interrupt negative rumination and reinforce sage wiring. He referenced neuroscience: just as physical muscles grow through repeated reps, so do these brain circuits, thanks to neuroplasticity.

Consistency is key. Even tiny practices, repeated over weeks, can begin to tilt the balance toward more positive, resilient, resourceful leadership responses.

Resources and Community

Sheth closed by offering free resources:

• A saboteur assessment to identify an individual’s dominant negative mental habits

• A “sage strength” survey to baseline current mindset habits

• Invitations to ongoing peer community gatherings for MedTech founders and CEOs to foster mutual leadership growth (all offered pro bono by Sheth as part of his practice)

Additionally, he described a formal leadership development program focused on reinforcing these mindset muscles in a structured, accountable way.

Real-World Nuance: Neurodiversity, Energy Management, and Accessibility

The Q&A captured nuance: one founder shared how neurodiversity (being on the spectrum/ADHD) both created strength and additional internal saboteurs, especially under stress. Sheth acknowledged that “changing your mindset” isn’t achieved by wishing—it requires sustained, practical micro-practices. Even something as small as a 30-second mindfulness pause can measurable shift the internal balance and lower emotional reactivity.

Conclusion: "Be the Sage"

For MedTech founders and CEOs, technical or market insight alone is not enough. Leading in this field is a marathon of ambiguity, obstacles, and reinvention. The key message: Transcending recurring leadership challenges is less about acquiring new tips and more about fundamental shifts in how you think—about yourself, about challenges, and about opportunity itself.

The actionable takeaway? Be the Sage. Make time for small, often-overlooked mindset practices. Develop your self-awareness of "saboteurs," and deliberately strengthen your capacity for compassion, vision, curiosity, and focused execution. In doing so, you’ll not only grow as a founder—you’ll build the leadership stamina your company (and your mission) demands.

If you would like to connect with Nirav Sheth you can reach him at niravsheth@stratosphere-llc.com or visit his website https://stratosphere-llc.com/