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take your business to the next level today one more time all lowercase shopify.com optimal minim at this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands starts Shake can I ask you a personal question now see time what if I the I'm a cybernetic organism living dissue over metal [Music] endoskeleton hello boys and girls ladies
and germs this is Tim Ferris welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to sit down with worldclass performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits routines favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives this episode is a two for one and that's
because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and passed 1 billion downloads to celebrate I've curated some of the best of the best some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we've been
calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to yes enjoy the household names the super famous folks but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars these are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you perhaps they got
lost in a busy news cycle perhaps you missed an episode just trust me on this one we went to Great pains to put these pairings together and for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at tim. blog combo and now without further Ado please enjoy and thanks thank you for listening first up Coach George raveling the first African-American head
basketball coach in the pack 8 Nike's former director of international basketball inductee of the Nay Smith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame and the custodian of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's original typewritten I Have a Dream speech you can find coach raveling on Twitter at George
raveling I had read and please feel free to correct this that um you've said the most important conversation is the one you have with yourself right yeah so could you elaborate on that please because I I think that selft talk is and I'm not sure that's what you're referring to but so so terribly important so I'd love to hear you just
elaborate on that the older I've gotten The more I've come to the conclusion that the conversation that that you have every day with yourself as you characterize it selft talk is so vital it's far more important than the conversations you have with those around you and the best part about the conversation with yourself is you're in
total control of that conversation you can craft the conversation any way you want to and so I try to have at least 90% of the conversations that I have with myself which I have two or three times a day it's positive selft talk if I start to linger on to something negative then what I'll do is I I'll
immedately deal with it and discount it for example since I'm Catholic I'll make this confession so this morning when I got up your reputation is so impeccable you I got up at 5 I'm really nervous I'm thinking to myself God what if I do a bad job I'll be so embarrassed and so the minute I start started thinking that
I said nope that's not it get fired up man you're going to do it I'm in the bathroom I'm doing this motivational talk for myself to eradicate any doubt that I have and I keep saying to myself you got to go in there you got to give them your best shot you can do it so I'm I'm getting myself fired up for it and this is out loud yeah because I really
spend as much time as I probably at least well I wouldn't say probably once a day I'll find an hour to just go someplace and sit by myself and all I do is take a notebook and and just put it in a pin in front of me and I'll just sit there and think whatever comes into my mind and then I start to fixate on those things and I'll write down notes
as a result of something that I think or I write out of strategy for example the way I govern my day Tim is I get up in the morning and I put my two feet beside the bed and I say to myself okay George you only have two choices today these are the only two choices that you have and you got to make one and the two
choices are to be happy or to be very happy and there's no other choice and so then I start to plan out my day and so I I have these points of focus Energy Management time management Environmental Management productivity and to me productivity is a byproduct of the other three so how do I manage my energy every
days so that I can be at maximum efficiency so one of the things I try to do is declutter my mind I won't do any more than four things a day and it reverts back to something one of the presidents at Nike Charlie Denon said one time in a leadership meeting he said let me ask you guys this would we be better off doing 25 things good or will
we be better off doing six things great and so to me to simplify my day I will not do more than four things I try to limit the meetings to two and and if it's two one of them is usually a breakfast meeting when I go into the office I have a total commitment once I get into the office to be totally focused on business matters try to be as
disciplined as I can not to get on the telephone and also to meet with the two people that work with me we meet every single day and we talk as a team because I want us to function as a team I want each person's opinion to be valued if one person happens to be 50 years younger than me so what their opinion is
valuable to me I respect everyone's knowledge and I think to myself they know something that I don't know and so I I want to Value their opinion so we meet every day as a staff we talk about things and it helps me grow and it keeps my day simplified I try to once a week have a personal audit I go back through the week and I audit my week and make
course Corrections along the way so that's when I really get into the self-talk part is having these little mental audits that my life's just not going on and on and on I try to evaluate am I making progress what am I doing that's good what am I doing that's not working and then make those course Corrections and at 80 years old I try to
hold myself to the most severe standards and I just despise the idea of retirement I think that it's the biggest Force that's ever been predicated on us is this idea of retirement because the first thing that happens you retire your physically and then you retire mentally and then you're just taking up residence in in society and I don't ever want to
be a resident of society I want to be a contributor to society when I was doing homework I read somewhere that you have a ction of racist momentos yes in your house wow you did do some research could you beyond that I don't know the details but that just stuck in my mind because that's something I think that a lot of
people would actively avoid so why do you have this collection no one's ever asked me that question but I spent I probably have over $100,000 worth of black Collectibles for about eight or nine years that it became an obsession with me and so I would go to antique shows and go to stores and hunt down all
black mobilia I have things that date back before I actually have a first addition of Uncle Tom's Cabin so I started to collect books figurines and postcards postcards I I start out with figurines and so a friend of mine told me about an antique store that was closing and the gentleman had a huge collection of black Collectibles and so
it was in San Pedro so I went down and I paid him $35,000 for the collectibles he had over 100 pieces and part of the deal was that he had to mark them and write a little card so I would understand the historic significance of them postcards Tim I have them back before you had this might surprise you originally that you
didn't have to put a stamp on on a postcard to send it out to mail so I have I have them back in the earliest one I have is 1891 wow but what was interesting about the black postcards was they always made blacks they picture them in a derogatory term one of the more frequent ones you see is a black person eating watermelon with a smile on
his face but they were all derogatory now here's what's further interesting we've now you can put stamps on them I was able to read the messages on some of them and so the one that I remember the most is a lady's writing to one of her girlfriends and we'll just make up the name she says Helen we have a works at our house that smiles just like
him and so in those days to use the word was common place and I don't know that you ever learned to accept it but it was something that was said common place so I started to build this historic collection of memorabilia so that I could have a legacy for my children and their children and I have them on display at my home to remind me
of where we were and where we are today and the trials and tribulations that we've gone through do you collect anything else or have you collected anything else books and friends in my library at home I have well over 2500 books and probably have another six or 700 that are in storage because it just ran out of space but I I
just continue to buy books to read them I have as you probably research I have an unusual way of going about reading books and friends I I don't have a strategy or anything for friends that most times people when I meet them are not who they end up being whether it was Phil Knight bob Knight John Thompson sunny I could tell you tons of people
when I met them they were not who they ended up being but for some reason we were able to build an authentic and sustainable relationship and I've always looked upon relationships as a privilege and you at the end of the day at the core of all relationships in my mind is trust and respect and so both
of those have to be earned and so over the years I've met people and unintentionally we've stayed in touch and there's been this level of trust that's allowed the relationship to endure but it's something it's a lot like marriage you have to work at it you have to understand that there's a balance in relationships that and and with me the
number one thing that I ask myself continually is what can I do for you and your good friend Ryan holiday and I had dinner last night and one of the very last things I said to him I said Ryan is there anything I can be doing for you in the next 30 days I've always had this theory that if you help enough people get what they want you'll always get
what you want so I've never tried to enter a relationship based on selfish motives that if I know this person I'm going to get these benefits so I try to find out what do we have in common as people what is it that we can share how can I help this person no matter how famous they are how successful they are everyone has
certain needs even if they're just psychological needs or we all need truth tellers in our life and so and building relationships I try to make sure that I surround myself with people who want to see me become better and can help me become better that I can learn from them and that I can contribute to their lives
and so most of the friendships I have in life they all started by mistake you're one of the young men that that's here today that has taught me almost all I know about technology I spoke at a clinic in Orlando a friend of mine Kevin Eastman was running the clinic and I said to him I said who's going to put my presentation up on the screen and that
you have a IT guy and he said yes and so I said well introduce him to me because I want to put my presentation up I want to walk to the back of the room and make sure it's clear and so forth so I met Alex larier and during the time I was there we just hit it off and so when he I'm pretty sure he was taking me back to
the airport and I asked him if he would be interested in doing a website for me he said yes and so that's how it started and it's turned into a lifelong friendship and I think that was the start of me recognizing that I needed to be around more young people and so I I don't associate and maybe it's bad to say this but I don't hang out with many
people my own age most of the people that I associate with are younger people because I think they're the future they're smart they're naive enough that they'll tell you the truth and and they're not afraid to tell you if they think you're wrong and when I hang around people my own age it tends to always revert back to the past and I
don't want to talk about coaching at Washington State or being the first black this or the first black that what I want to do is figure out at 80 years old what is it that I don't know but need to know and how is this going to help me stay relevant in this ever changing world and so I've tend to spend
most of my time with younger people who inspire me who who I can have a partnership with that's the other thing about relationships I think relationships at their most authentic stage it's a partnership we share common Vision common goals common objectives common strategy common execution plan it's a a we mentality it's not a me
mentality and it's a win-win mentality it's not I win you lose or you lose I win it's not about that we we were in this thing together we're in the boat together we're going to row in the same direction and and we're going to get the bat to sure you mentioned books I want to make sure we give reading at least a few minutes because you are known as a
voracious reader the human Google one nickname and you've read probably I'm sure thousands of books at this point you were very kind when we first got here where recording this right now you said I learned from the wise men it's always a good thing to bear gifts or something along those lines and you gave
me several books you've also gifted many many different books how did this love affair with books start and could you tell us about how you read books because as you alluded to earlier you have a particular way of reading books as I look back on it now Tim and with a point of reference to so many times as we speak is always going to be my grandma
well my grandma told me one time when she'd be in the kitchen cook and she'd tell me stories and one time my grandma told me she said George you know back in the days of slavery the plantation owners used to put their money in books and and hide them up on the bookshelves because their banking system wasn't as
sophisticated as it is today and so I said well Grandma why did they do that and she said because they didn't have to worry about the slaves stealing the money because the slaves would never take the books off the shelf because they couldn't read and so from that I begin to understand that as long as someone can control your mind they can
control you who you are in your body and so I I decided that I was never going to allow myself to be in a position where someone can control my mind and control my body because of my lack of information and knowledge and so I decided that I was going to try to read and learn as much as I possibly could on
a continual basis because I I believe that people will have a greater respect for you if they respect you intellectually and I've often felt in life if I had to choice between Tim liking me or Tim respecting me I'd far more hope that you respect me than like me and I figure the byproduct of you respecting me will be that you'll learn
to like me so I don't work at trying to get people to like me so I've been on this mission for a reading for years and years and years and it's become an obsession now with me I don't go anywhere without a book and a notebook if I go to the doctor's office I take a book with me if I'm in I have a new system now if I go to a bookstore and
I'm in Barnes & Noble and the line has got eight or nine people in it rather than stand there for 10 minutes waiting I'll start reading the book right there in line and start underlining things so I have all these quirks that I've acquired over the years with reading books first of all I divide the book into messages I don't spend any time now
trying to read a whole book because there's probably in most books there's probably maybe eight to 10 chapters that are really powerful and influential and the others I skim through so I never start a book from the front and go to the back I just I'll open the index and I'll find what I believe is an interesting chapter and I start there
and that's actually how I purchase a book when I'm in the bookstore I have this routine that I go through that and if the it passes I buy the book and if it doesn't I don't buy the book what's your routine so if I let's say I'm I'm going to Envision this one so our office is in elsag gundo which is outside of
Los Angeles and so I go to Barnes & Noble where one thing I found out that because there's so many corporate offices within the 2m radius that they tend to house really excellent business books so I'll go in and soon as I go in I look at the books that are on reduction sale to see if there's something there that might be a good buy
then I go to new releases non-fiction by the way I go to a bookstore four to five days out of the week I I'm constantly going in and I just call it search and Discovery so I'll go to the new releases in a non-fiction and I'll look through the books there's usually 20 books on the table I'd say eight out of 10 times
I'm going to find a book that I had never heard of before and so I pick the book up I go to the back I read about the author then I go to the front part and I read the promos down the side and then the next thing I do is I go to the chapters and I'll find a chapter and I'll open it up and I'll see the writer style I I look at the style is this
someone that's that's a book filled with a lot of Statistics or stories because I know what I'm looking for the books that have have had the most impact are the ones that make me change the way I think or act or behave those are the books that ultimately end up being the best for me so I'll go through the book and
then once I find this one chapter I start to read some of it and I can tell if this is going to be me or not and at that point I'll purchase the book but I just don't go in and buy a book based on the top 10 not that there's there's anything wrong with that it's just that I've had better success so now here at
80 years old two of my favorite authors are Ryan holiday and Walter isacson they've both taken me on interesting intellectual Journeys the first book I read by Walter eison was Steve Jobs and I was so blown away I I had underlined about three qus of the book I was quot writing down quotes and as you noce Steve Jobs book couldn't be anything you
wanted to be it can be a thesis on leadership but it was just utterly fascinating I loved Walter isaacson's writing style so when I finished a book I went back I said damn I like the way he writes so I go back and I look to see what else he had written and so I didn't I see he's done a book on Benjamin Franklin he's done a book on on Einstein
and subsequently Kissinger and others so I go to the bookstore and I buy the Benjamin Franklin book and I am blown away and a little sad because I feel like God damn I went through all this education no one ever taught me any of this stuff other than the kite and so before that I think if You' to ask me who was the most important American of
all time I think I would have probably tended to say Abraham Lincoln but after I read ison's book on Benjamin Franklin I would now feel I mean the the lottery system banking schools streets he did so many unbelievable things and then from there I went to Einstein and anybody who can write a book on Einstein that an idiot
like me can understand the physics and it was absolutely it was a miracle so in the book Tim I read that Einstein was very active in what they would capture in those times as the Negro movement and it says that he wrote a book on Einstein in a negro movement well I had never heard of this so I immediately sto reading and go Google Einstein on the
Negro problem and lo and behold it comes up so I chase the book down so what I find a lot of times in reading books and in your book tools of the Titan I'm reading and I see this you mention in there about masterminds and I had never heard of Mastermind so I Circle it and I write Google behind it so I go back and
I go online I and I find out wow so I'm thinking to myself oh my God how do you know I never knew about this so how do I become part of it so I sent some information to Ryan holiday about this Mastermind so he gets back to me he says oh I I'm surprised you didn't know about that he says uh you want to go I'll get you in so the next thing I know I get
this invite to go to masterminds in carmell Valley and and my 80 years on Earth that was the greatest collection of intellects that I've ever been around around in my life I was so intimidated and what was marvelous that was when I knew I was on the right path cuz I'm 80 years old the next oldest person there's
probably 49 they're all young energetic people and I I was readily admit I was so intimidated I didn't think I was thinking to myself God how am I going to fit in and every night I went to bed with the worst headaches that I ever had cuz I was I couldn't process all this stuff by the second day I've already filled up a notebook of notes and uh it
was one of those lifechanging experiences so you helped me grow as a person just by what you mentioned in tools of the Titan well thank you for reading it first of all I'm sure that with all my notes here today I'm going to have to figure out a way to have another conversation with you for sure so hope hopefully I won't blow it
between now and the end of the interview but books that you've reread the most yourself or gifted to other people the most are there any books that come to mind being 80 years old it's a long span of reading uh the books that I've given out the most rarely do I I go to meet anyone I can't tell you the last time I
met someone and I didn't bring them a book it's just become a habit now to give them a book in most cases I give them two or three books but the books that I've given away the most lately are Ryan two books obstacles and ego is the enemy I give Ryan's books away a lot one thing that I like about Ryan's book is
it's easier to carry because it's smaller so I can get a little bag and I can put 12 of them in there yeah mine are mine are not as user friendly from caring perspective the one thing I found with your two books is I take them on as a personal challenge I said If he if he spent this much time with this many pages I am not going to allow the the
length of the book intimidate me I'm going to see this as as an opportunity and so what I did with tools of the Titan I call that my China book so it's 13 hours to Shanghai or 13 hours to Hong Kong and 13 coming back that's 26 hours man I can knock that sucker out I just some books you just have to find the right environment in which to read them
but most of the books I read I there are very few of them that I don't come away and feel that I'm a better person one things I like to ask myself at the close of every day is what did I do to make myself a better person than I was yesterday what did I learn today and so from a a talk that I do I say that every
day is composed of 86,000 400 seconds of of opportunities and how shameful is it for me at the close of my day to say that I didn't do anything today to make myself a better person than I was yesterday and that's shame on me because I had 86,400 seconds of opportunities to do something even if it's no more than a
thank you a random smile a pat on the back think about this Tim there are a lot of people in this country who go through 24 hours and never have anyone say anything to them positive you might be the only person that day who said something to that person that was positive or I know we're in a different culture now and I always think I'm
running a little risk but if I'm in a restaurant or somewhere and a person's waiting on me and he or she has a great smile I invariably say hey you have a great smile I I sometimes I feel a little uneasy when I say it to a female because I don't want someone might think you're trying to come on to him but at the same time I'm willing to take that
risk so earlier when we were leaving breakfast as we were leaving the two waitresses said thanks for coming and they had a big smile on face so I said to both of them two of you have a great smile well to me I like practicing random acts of kindness because so much today we're cruel and and unintentionally cruel we don't think how
valuable the little things are the thank yous the smiles the taking time to listen I had a situation I I still grapple with this when people stop you on the street and ask for money we were having lunch yesterday and and a lady came up and she asked if we could spare some money she wanted to get something to eat or drink so I gave her $5 and I
said now I hope you use the $5 on what you said you're going to do so she points and there a little grocery store a few doors down she comes back shows me the drink and the $3 change and so so we it was a win for both of us but I I grapple with this thing about do I give him some money or do I not in this case
I I mean I really felt good that I was able to do something for her and she did something for me because she made me feel good what what she really did is help fortify my mind that I should probably be giving more instead of less well you've given a lot in a lot of ways in many years of your life and certainly one capacity is that of coach or
educator or teacher and and we could spend days and hopefully we will hopefully we'll get to know each other even better and spend more time together but for now I thought we might jump forward at least from your childhood stories to the Olympics 1984 and there are many different angles we could take to get into this but I
suppose where I want to start there's so so many different things that I want to touch on but since we're we were talking about communicating and phrasing and words could you share the motivational quote that you came up with at that time and I think it's each one of us has a relative who gave his life for this
country the least we can do is give 40 minutes of ourselves yes that was that's actually a bob night quote and it was a motivating force because when you stop and think about it very seldom In Our Lifetime does our country ever come to us and say we need you it's always the exact opposite we're looking for something from the government but I felt
that this was a unique opportunity that the country was basically saying to the team and the coaches that we need you and we need you to bring back a gold medal for us and so this was a unique opportunity for us to serve our country and I can remember vividly in the months leading up to the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles
I would Envision that we were going to win the gold medal and we were going to be standing there and hear the national anthem play and to be at attention and and look at the American flag I know that we're in a different era now and a different time but the reality was this is how I felt and so I grew up in an era
where my grandma taught America right or wrong America whatever the problems are we'll work them out but at the end of the day we're in America and so I envisioned what was it going to be like when we stood there and received the gold medal and heard the national anthem played and you and you had the
satisfaction of saying to yourself mission accomplished and it was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had in my life to be in a position where you could represent your country and you could uh have a good feeling about it I'm sure I there'll be a lot of people who question why I felt that way but that's the truth of the
matter just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show this episode is brought to you by wealth front there is a lot happening in the US and Global economies right now a lot that's an understatement are we in a recession is it a bare Market what's going to happen with inflation so many
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and the author of scaling people tactics for management and Company building you can find Claire on Twitter C Hughes Johnson Claire thank you so much for making the time I'm so glad to be here Tim thank you for having me on and we were talking briefly about how one thing that you've observed I'm just joshing
here of course a lot of cool people go to Brown I want to ask about somebody else who seems pretty cool who I'm not sure went to Brown or not but that is Fred Kaufman and and I guess he is the origin of your second favorite operating principle perhaps say the thing you cannot say I just yeah love this say the you think you cannot say oh yeah there
we go that's actually such a critical distinction right that is such a critical distinction I simplified it that probably tells you a lot we could psychoanalyze that later but say the thing you think you cannot say can you provide listeners with a bit of context as to what this means and and why it is important I laid out and I had to think
about this for myself uh for operating principles for me as a leader and a person and I shared them with others because I think actually everybody should authentically come up with their own but this one was the second one the first one about self-awareness is is the one I probably talk about the most with with everyone and myself but the second
one is say the thing you think you cannot say that's why I started with the second one yeah yeah because you because no one asked me about now and it's a lesson that I've learned and I think there's a journey that people go on with this lesson so we can share about that but I've certainly gone on the journey
and the person who was probably one of the most pivotal to me stepping from square one which is we often just don't say the thing we just don't say it was Fred Kaufman and Fred was I'm going to get some of this wrong but as I understand it he was an accountant by training he became a professor at MIT he was teaching accounting he grew up in
Argentina by the way I don't think he to Brown and he had some sort of Life Revelation that he was not living with the True Dimensions of his being and his values and what he needed to do was stop teaching accounting and become a leadership coach and adviser and he wrote this book conscious business which I recommend I don't recommend a lot of
business books I'm just going to be perfectly honest Tim I often read the beginning of business books and then I never finish them but conscious business I have read all of it and he formed this firm called accellent at the time that Cheryl Sandberg hired at Google so Fred and his team come in to start working
with Cheryl samberg's organization of which I was a member of management and then leadership but initially I was sort of one of the senior managers like not anyone particularly special and to Cheryl's great credit cuz not a lot of companies at the stage Google was at were investing two three days of management training and Leadership
training like we all went through these 360 assessments they gave us these report outs and then they put us in these boot camps with Fred and his team and just for a snapshot in time when you say at that scale what was the status of Google at that time roughly I joined Google in May of 2004 and it was maybe around
1,800 people I mean there's a lot of contractors I'm going to be honest but I think in terms of full-time employees and it was by the way for me the biggest place I'd ever worked so I was like this place is huge huge and then just fast forward I left Google in 2014 and it was like almost 60,000 people so whoa so I
would say that the excellent engagement with Cheryl and her team was probably I joined right before the IPO which was in August of 04 and then in ' 05 I would say is when we had so you know Google actually was doubling every year probably to 4,000 you know but Google had gone public but was still maturing and establishing especially on the sort
of investment in management and organizational skills but Cheryl of course ahead of her time on things like that was making the investment and had the budget that was a benefit of Google as we certainly had nice margins Tim that we could spend on Management training and so we did this boot camp with excellent but one of the things
that Fred has as he has some really great Frameworks he has one about being a victim versus being a player but one of his Frameworks is how do you take what he calls your left-hand column so you and I are talking right now say we're having a conversation in the workplace our brain is always operating in the background and it's often
thinking some things about the conversation about the person about sometimes it's thinking what should I be doing what do I want to have for dinner you know but we have this ongoing monologue in our brain and the left-and column with respect to look it's about our conversation Fred was really pushing us as a group he's like how do you he'd
say detoxify I can't do his accent detoxify the leftand column and actually say like say the thing and then we'd go through these exercises and so this was sort of a light bulb for me which is like really about giving hard feedback at that time I was in management training but what I've come to learn is
not only is say the thing you think you cannot say certainly about giving feedback and being more direct in your management conversations but I actually think it's a really tremendous leadership skill which is to get in a room and I don't care if I'm in charge of the team or I'm just a person on a board I'm on some boards now and we're
sitting there and there's often an unspoken thing you've been there you've been in the like Tim you seem like someone who would actually put the thing on the table like I think you and I sometimes to my detriment but yes well I think I need help and this is where I'm going to ask you if you could give an example could be hypothetical or real
yeah of this type of experience and also the detoxifying sort of like how do you detoxify the like gentrifying your inner language so that you don't sound like a complete right and I think I mean the short answer is you got to ask some stuff as a question often to to stop yourself from making a big judgment but
Tim yeah I think what I pick up in you and from listening to you is you're willing to take some risks and so I think this is really about risk-taking and saying something that you're not sure you should say but you're going to put it out there and then the question is how do you do it with as much finesse as possible so that you don't end up
having blowback which believe me I've sometimes said the thing I think I cannot say and had people look at me like oh my goodness but most of the time I'm reading the room right here's an example which is I mean just classic more of a business example but certainly happens in my personal life too so we
went through various business planning types of tactics at stripe but one of them we were using for a while was your classic quarterly Business Review you have teams come in we've given them a template and we say please fill out these things let's see your data let's see where you are versus your goals what's your strategy what's your plan
right write this memo we're all going to read the memo and then we're going to have this discussion about how you're doing and often teams come in and they want more resources or they want us to solve something or decide something and we're of course saying like well it's actually you you're supposed to be deciding and solving but it's a
discussion with the executive team and I'm sitting in one of these reviews with a team that's primarily working on an area of the product so it's product and Engineering leaders it's not my part of the org that I run but I'm invited to be there and I like to be there I like to be close to the product and I'm listening to the discussion and it
starts to become incredibly clear to me that the team is feeling defensive or blocked or angry I couldn't quite tell what it was that there's another team doing some similar work and by the way if you've read any Jack Welch stuff he actually had this tactic as a leader where he'd put two teams on the same problem and sort of like get them to
compete these tiger teams that was not Stripes tactic I just want to be clear we were not interested we never had enough people there's no way we would put Engineers on the same believe me so it was mystifying and I think by the way I could hear it because I wasn't in the room super close to the material this
wasn't my part of the or I hadn't heard about the details of some of these projects until this meeting I'm reading the document I'm listening to them talk and I just said can I just ask if there's something we're not talking about here and they're all looking at me because I rarely like poke in on certain
moments with respect to like what's our product road map and is there something we're not talking about and everyone looks at me and I said I feel like you're really concerned about this other team what they're building or what they're up to are you concerned and initially no no no I mean you know it's fine it's fine like they've got this
thing they're doing that it's I said well is it do you think it's the same thing is that what I'm hearing and I just started to ask a bunch of questions of the leader of the discussion and I said well should that team be in the room right now should we have a meeting with both of you because feels like there's asymmetrical information
and that you all don't feel confident in what they're building and that you're either dependent on them or competing with them with what you're building and they were like maybe I mean it eventually became like we don't have the right people in the room to have a conversation about the problem and so we sort of stopped it and said let's go do
that to the credit of the rest of the people in the room but as we left one of the engineers who was sitting on the sort of periphery walked up to me on the stairs and he was like that was refreshing but why I'm bringing it up is to me that was a moment of leadership which by the way you don't have to be a VP or a COO to do that the leadership is
to say I am observing a thing that people are clearly not saying and are uncomfortable and is actually seems to me like a bad practice happening and I am going to just call it like I'm going to ask is this going on am I seeing this correctly and it's going to change the whole trajectory of the meeting and the
conversation and maybe of the team and their work it did result in some dding ultimately but I think that's what I mean by say the thing dding meaning having people working on less similar overlapping vend diagrams of responsibilities exactly and I think really what it was is they both had a part of their team that was sort of
doing the same thing and they were feeling dependent on each other it was almost like a ying-yang and they like didn't have the whole picture and I was like all right someone needs to have the whole thing under their control so it was almost duplicate plus dependency which is sort of worse sounds a recipe
for lots of headaches exactly but there's also Tim I'm sure you can picture an example in a personal situation where you know they all the time or you take a risk you know with a friend and you say hey have you uh told your husband that you feel that way so the detoxifying though in any of these examples is in your mind you're having a
judgment we're always judging the brain looks for shortcuts we know this I'm judging and I'm like oh I'm convinced that they're pissed at this other team or I'm convinced my friend and her husband are having problems and I'm going to solve them but like to detoxify it you have to sort of float above
yourself and say it is not going to be productive for me to open my mouth and issue a judgment on another person or someone else's work product yeah people take that really well yeah exactly people super don't like that so what can I do what can I say and my feeling is it's usually a question that opens the aperture of the
conversation they but keeps them in a mode of curiosity openness how can I ask and the problem and the art here and this is why you have to practice it and it's uncomfortable is sometimes you say something too General you're like is there something you're not telling me that's not going to work because that's going to make them think wait a minute
is there some like paranoid thing so it has to be more like you can use the words I'm hearing a concern about the work of this other team say more are you concerned and I'm all about hypoth es I love management by hypothesis which is like I think this is happening I'm going to name it I'm going to name the
hypothesis I have and then I want you to validate it or by the way fight with me say to me no no no I have data to the contrary and I'm happy to revise my hypothesis but if you don't state it you're not going to get anywhere we're going to come back to what people might perceive as uncomfortable conversations and I want to ask later we're going to
take a side quest for a minute about giving feedback to direct reports because a lot of people who listen to this or who are watching this have smaller teams and my experience is that often people who are good at having these direct conversations in a personal context or a business context are sometimes compartmentalized in their capability in
the sense that they're very good for instance I think I'm better on the personal side than I am in the business side specifically when it is team members of mine employees if it's with contractors or joint venture Partners I can do that for whatever reason I think it's probably we can also do years of psychotherapy on this but a fear of
someone say abruptly quitting or something if I don't deliver the message properly whereas I'm not worried about my friend quitting our friendship they might get pissed and put me on ice for a week and give me the silent treatment but it's not going to be a forever thing so I want to come back to that but
before we go there I want to come back for a second to Fred Kaufman and victim versus player can you explain what this is I love this one because I think it's so simplifying and clarifying really about are you managing someone or interacting with someone who has agency takes responsibility friend when he introduces this framework tells the
story of how young children and he's the I think he has six or seven children by the way but how young children when something has happened that they know is bad will not take responsibility so they will say things like the coat is at school so not I left my coat at school right right or a thing has happened things have happened the toy is broken
you're like well did you break it you know so he has this really disarming way of introducing this concept which is we're all laughing just like you and I we're like haha the toy is broken but then he's like okay now let's talk about if one of your direct reports came to you and said the report was not written
yeah and you're like the report that you were meant to write but how it actually manifests is you're supposed to write some report up or some summary of a meeting and you say oh tell me where that is and the player says completely my fault I had planned to get it to you by 5:00 yesterday I prioritized this
emergency that came up didn't tell you my bad can we renegotiate can I get it to you at 5:00 today and you're like fine I wish you'd told me that you weren't going to get it but the victim says let me tell you about that report Lucy owes me her notes and I can't finish it without Lucy and Lucy you know is super slow at getting her notes and
I'm sorry I don't know when I'm going to get it but that actually is pretty common people are like well it's this other person that I'm depending on and therefore I have no responsibility and they're a victim and they're going to play the victim and I think that's a very hard person to coach how much do you have to select that in your hiring
process versus coach people from one side to the other have you had much success or seen much success in moving people from the victim side to the player side and that's a bit of a leading question by my tone I guess I suspect there are a lot of instances where that's hard but in the success cases what does that coaching process
look like I've seen both I feel like with people who are earlier in their career they're more I'm all growth mindset but they're a little more moldable and you can actually coach people out of this as like a way of operating if they're later in their career it's a little more ingrained and it's quite hard especially because they
tend to not be aware of it because they've somehow been successful operating in that mode and so they're kind of like what are you saying you see leaders who and you know how they behave Tim is they say well if it's not under my direct control then I am not responsible and so they become Empire Builders and some organizations let them get away with it
they're like sure you can have all the infrastructure teams then like it becomes this weird failing upward problem where people say well if I can control it I'll take responsibility if it's within my house then I'll take responsibility so people satisfy that checkbox by giving them more and more resources what a nightmare exactly and
it becomes this weird expanded scope of this person who actually doesn't take responsibility it's a pattern I've seen for people earlier in their career the easiest coaching move you do which I'm sure you've heard or someone's done it to you I've certainly had it done to me they're saying Lucy didn't send me her
notes and you're saying what could you have done differently and you have to let uncomfortable silence then and some people will then say what do you mean you know like you're like oh my gosh but some people will say well I guess I could have helped Lucy write the notes so what I try to do is stay in the
discomfort which is hard and just sort of like let's list out a few things you could have done differently and not be judgmental like not judge the things just say what was so you could have helped Lucy write the notes you could have set a deadline with her that was right put a deadline in a SAA where people can actually see it you could use
a productivity tool where you could see I love those tools because that's sunshine sunshine is a great disinfectant Tim like if everybody can see that Lucy has not done her action item that is going to help Lucy be more accountable but the point is you come up with this list and the person often is like wow you're right really what you're
they're kind of going to have to admit to you is they're being a little lazy they're not helping others do the work they're not a good collaborator and that's what I sometimes do with someone is like you know if this is a pattern I say you know I see this pattern do you see this pattern where you're waiting
for other people all the time tell me more about why you think that's happening why are people not delivering for you and the question is like either it's because they haven't figured out how to do action items or accountability or be clear about deadlines or there's someone people don't like to work with I always call it like going meta like
you're looking from the balcony at the sit which is a term from adaptive leadership are you on the balcony or are you on the Dance Floor and if you're on the balcony you try to get the person up there with you you say why do you have this pattern of people not helping you get your work done and then I think of
it as going to the basement I know this is I'm a very visual person so we look down and they sort of if they acknowledge it they say yeah I guess I see that and I say well let's talk about a few examples and we come up with some examples then we go down and we're in the scenario and I say let's do the five
y's I mean everyone loves the five wise I'm like why do you think Lucy didn't send you the notes well she's not good at deadlines H okay and then this is a wonderful expression that I learned from some coach I had a million years AG be that as it may which is not normal English language but I don't know it works sort of like be that as it may
okay maybe Lucy is terrible at deadlines but why else well I didn't ask her to get it to me at a specific time okay so maybe there's the thing why else you know and you're sort of pushing them and sometimes not every time they'll sort of say well I don't know Lucy and I don't work that well together Aha and you're like oh say more about
that what do you think's going on and of course by the way your left-hand column Tim is it's because Lucy doesn't like you because you blame her for all of your Miss deadlines right but I can't say that cuz that person is going to go from learning to barely in learning mode I'm trying to bring them along with me
and they're going to just shut down and by the way they may never admit that Lucy doesn't like them because they blame her for Miss deadlines but they're going to realize that their manager who's me is not letting them off the hook if they can't get into an agency a player mindset I'm a responsible party for my work and others then they are
going to be off my team if I can't coach them out of it to your point there's two gaps that I think are really hard one is people who can't stop being victims and the other gap I call self-awareness Gap where they think they are the best in the world I once worked with this BD person who was like I can negotiate a
deal feel better than anyone and talk about not being in a learning mindset I'm like do you not think we should get any outside advice I'm exaggerating a little bit but really unaware that they had any potential blind spot or had never done a deal like this deal and I'm like how are we going to close this
awareness Gap because the people around you are saying you are not the best person to negotiate this deal and I'm trying to hand it to someone else and you're like what you have no one better than me you know and that's very hard Gap to close yeah totally and I promise we are going to spend some time on self-awareness the book I've probably
gifted most my friends and house guests and so on in the last few years is actually very short book called awareness by Anthony Dello which is outstanding I need to read it again I read it probably once or twice a year so we are going to spend that some time there I'm kind of tiptoeing around the edges of the dance floor as it were and
tiptoeing and side stepping on the balcony because I want to S of paint a picture of you also as a person not just the concepts so we are going to spend some time there I also just a side note if you decide to write another book I think the toy is broken as the title and then the subtitle could be like a high performers guide to taking
responsibility responsibility oh my God so good the toy is broken Tim you're hired for my marketing team I got to tell you we're not always the best at naming things it's right one thing that I'm good at this the one thing that I am good at you're on the team congratulations thank you that's a hell of a team I'm in my boss sucks oh wait
I'm my boss you're the terrible terrible you said you don't recommend a lot of business books and I am going to come back to Cheryl in excellent in a little bit but you don't recommend a lot of business books sometimes you read the introduction and you're like that's enough thank you let's talk about a non-
business book and that book is to the lighthouse by Virginia wolf what is your history with this book and why do you recommend it I love great literature I think that's how I grew up my parents are both teachers my father was a high school English department chair and teacher and baseball coach by the way he would probably say he was a baseball
coach and then he would say and a teacher and my mom was a college professor for a long time and I wish more people loved literature because I think how do you understand the Human Condition literature is like the best shortcut to that in your life but I think there are some authors for someone who becomes a student of literature that
sort of change their worldview about really what's possible with writing so not just the book changes how they feel and think but actually the process sort of like when you see a product I think you love Innovative products you know when you see something that you're like that is going to change my life and so I
think that to the lighthouse represents I mean Virginia wolf is a writer that resonated for me and I think if you understand if you've also studied history and you think okay she's writing some stuff in like the early 1900s 1920s not a lot of women publishing a lot in that time in Britain she gets herself into this writers Collective with men
and women she also has relationships with men and women she's like pretty Avant guard person but if you read A Room of One's Own it's basically one of the ear EST feminist manifestos that exist and this is where I think Tim you're like me I love people who are polymaths you're like not just this amazing novelist thank you Virginia wolf
but you're also writing just your thoughts on things like women should have a room of their own I mean actually figuratively you know not just literally and I think that she is fascinating her life is fascinating and I want to acknowledge not all of her personal views are great on some things as that happens I worry that we've started to
not study certain artists because they've said some things or or done some things which I would disagree with I think people think she was an anti-semite and it does appear that she said some very anti-semitic things in some of her writing I still think you should study Virginia wolf and I will own that as my position on her but I
think to the lighthouse most people would say is her most important novel I will be honest with you and say when I wrote my thesis in college I was gonna write it onto the lighthouse and then I actually decided to write it on Mrs dooway which is another one of her novels because I love the parallels from
Mrs delay with a book called The Passion by Janette wierson so Janette wierson is a female British writer more in the modern era who had broken through with a memoir called oranges are not the only fruit and then had published this book the passion and then a book called sexing the Cherry she's she's published now several books but Janette wierson I
think is a descendant in my opinion of Virginia wolf and I was like I'm going to examine these two novels and I didn't choose to the lighthouse but I will say that and to the light is not an easy read and I want to own that also I think it's very Mrs delay much more digestible shorter book it has some repetition in
it some beautiful rhythm in the writing where you're like oh and I'm coming back around in this circular way to the way the story sort of moves you to the lighthouse is like a dream state you feel like you're in a dream state you're like the points of view are shifting who's the real narrator here what is the story there's not like you're not being
driven by your classic plot or character driven story it is much more internal it's like John Wick in some sense I'm kidding I'm kidding I feel like the plot of John Wick is pretty clear you know I am going to take Vengeance excuse me now I'm going to come out of retirement and kill everyone oh what a great work of
art I'll be the first one to tell you I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers and and I like movies like that actually so I'm very multi-dimensional but I think for to the lighthouse you find something new every time you read it you think about life death The Human Condition what is love what is family what does it mean to connect with other
human beings and there's something about the way the writing works I mean it's set in this island in Scotland and there's a lighthouse and they go out in the boat like you literally feel like you're surfing in a boat like that feeling when you're like I'm not really connected to firm land but I'm in this
inner sanctum of people's heads so I think that it changed me because of the way it felt to read it frankly the themes are much more sophisticated than my 19-year-old self probably could have handled like I should actually you just said you should read awareness again I should go read to the lighthouse again because now that I am a mother and a
wife of a certain age I'm like this book is going to resonate a lot more for me but what's amazing is Virginia wolf was never that she didn't have children and she unfortunately did kill herself like she had a lot lot of demons and actually the way that she killed herself brutal right she filled her Pockets with rocks
and like drowned herself you know and I think that a lot of artists are tortured but the fact that she could project into this Mrs Ramsay and this woman this very maternal figure was a sign of true art Artistry sorry that was very long that's why I have a long podcast so I'm not going to let it go I'm going to continue
to chew on this bone a little bit and for the record I actually love John Wick but I don't want to dwell on John W I was going to say first if you like dream state evoking novels the one that blew my mind and nine out of 10 people hate this book so it's a very strong caveat but it's little big by John Crowley who's actually a poet by training it is
so unbelievably good you have to slog through the first 150 pages but beyond that it's absolutely stunning so what are the reasons to read fiction aside from the I think you put it earlier the insight into The Human Condition if you were trying to get someone to take that first bite of the forbidden apple of fiction are there any other points that
you would make how do you build empathy how do you understand everybody has a story I mean you've traveled a lot Tim but a lot of people you and I both know haven't traveled the world they haven't been to that many countries you want to go to another country find a great novel that's been translated from that country
and read it and like you will understand that country in a way that no travel guide will ever give you in my opinion so I think it's a very cheap way and there's also to build like emotional intelligence I've worked now in tech companies for over 20 years and when you sort of get to certain levels of responsibility with management and
Leadership you could be technically the smartest person in the room but if you have no emotional intelligence or dimensional ity in contemplating emotional states you are going to struggle you are going to struggle to lead and so when I say understand The Human Condition I don't just mean like I'm reading a book and I understand wow
that's how it might feel to be in a divorce or that's how it might feel to lose your child or you know I'm saying no you yourself as the reader if the book is really good start to feel the feelings you start to feel like oh I lost a child emotional exercise is hard it's either happening to you so you're going through an
emotional situation in your own life which is hard but doesn't happen every day to most people or you're going to get emotional exercise from in my experience a lot of people get it from film they get it from video content short form video gives you like a dopamine hit in my opinion but not an actual deep story emotional resonant hit
we think we're getting it when we see oh that dog fell through the ice and then that guy rescued the dog and you're sort of like crying and you're so happy but like in a 30-second YouTube video like no that's not an emotional Arc that's just I like to see people rescue animals who are drowning but like no I really
want I think it's a serious film it's maybe it's John Wick John Wick might be a way to detoxify your left I almost cried I said to my friend who'd seen it before I was like if they touch that dog I'm going to lose it and he just stayed silent and I was like oh no here it comes yeah anyway so but anyway point is I think it's emotional workout
literature great films yeah the other thing I would say is fiction is often much more efficient and elegant in delivering truths than non-fiction and that's speaking of someone who was a militant non-fiction purist for decades and I really wish I'd started earlier with reading very very high quality fiction
so what was your gateway fiction what got you I'm so glad to hear you're a convert Gateway fiction I mean I would say that early on I was an avid fiction reader so as a kid there were books like The Never Ending Story and then later Dune for instance science fiction A Stranger in a Strange Land by hind line which were also very condensed thought
experiments this is part of the reason why I like sci-fi quite a lot so for folks who are male also female but if they male Tech on the Spectrum over performers I'll usually steer them to say Ted Chang short stories like exhalation is his second collection then I stopped for a long time because it was time to get serious and follow rules and
be a business guy and so on and so forth so I read all the non-fiction stuff and then I would say later on now that I'm reflecting on it because I'm trying to pinpoint and maybe it's because you seated me with the Argentina I used to live in Argentina for about 9 months in 2004 and in an effort this is going to
sound ridiculous to people who are familiar with his work but I wanted to read fiction in an effort to get better at Spanish so I found side by side horge Lis bores which is incredibly challenging in Spanish I will say right up front but that ethereal kind of magic realism yes dream type of conjuring that he was able to
accomplish was intoxicating to me because it's effectively mind control right like language on some level is mind control if you said to me like what's the other to the lighthouse I would say 100 Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez and my introduction to magical realism and what's interesting is you went to this because a lot of guys I talked to
they're like Neil Stevenson three body problem like it's like there's a Sci-Fi Dune is always in there contact you know like whatever you depends on when they were born but like you get this sort of sci-fi but what you just did I love which is where else is there sci-fi in a lot of Latin American literature Isabella yende ores Marquez and that's
where like maybe the genders can meet which is like really emotional gripping multi-era stories but really wild stuff is like dream state is happening totally and wondering like were they on drugs like what What's Happening Here of course they were on drugs must 100% love that you went there because I think it's
when you're pushing the Sci-Fi into like a different realm is magical realism the most creative people I know this includes business for sure the most creative if they're the most creative dealmakers they read and consume very widely they're not going to this huge buffet and always eating the shredded
carrots okay fine like shredded carrots yeah they're healthy for you easy to eat I get it there's a whole buffet and they end up being able to connect disperate fields and ideas in a way that end up being ultimately incredibly interesting and sometimes very profitable and I would say who was it he worked with Daniel Conan want to say a waski
something like that but he said something along the lines of researchers waste years not being able to waste hours I'm butchering the quote but it's like if you feel so rushed that you cannot read a short fiction book that is a symptom of a much larger problem I would say and so proving to yourself like creating the slack in the
system to do that has its own benefits all right fiction conversation check we believe in it yeah we believe we believe all right so let's come back to I'm going to take a further not digression because this is just a natural conversation but we are going to come back to feedback for direct reports but I feel like we need a smoother off-ramp
so what might make a nice off-ramp from the fiction is something that is highly highly highly personal and non-fiction and that is a working with me document so I want to ask about questions that you might answer in a working with me document you could explain what a working with me document is and there are a number that come to mind that I
have in front of me here but perhaps you could just give a little bit of context on what a working with me document is and how it is helpful a working with me document is basically trying to write your own user manual and I don't think you have to be a people manager but I've come to believe it's a best practice if
you are going to be managing people to do your best to write a user manual to working with you the idea came to me actually I was moderating a panel at Google Google had then evolved to a point where I was trying to celebrate management so we done this great manager award and I was the moderator interviewing the great managers that
we'd selected across several teams in front of this big room of people at Google and I asked them you know you ask what are some practices that you think have really benefited you as a manager and one of the panelists said well I copied this thing that URS and this is ur hul who's a long many many decades at
Google I think he's only retiring like now who worked in infrastructure and building the servers and the like a lot of what really makes your Google results come very quickly you can than hor and then at Google Cloud a lot of work but he wrote a user manual and this person described described it and then they
went on to say they wrote one and they shared it with their team and their team's response and I was like I should write one like here I am moderating this great manager panel I haven't done this so like any good learner I go back and I sort of like bang out this document I mean this is the thing that's the most interesting to me in this maybe
anti-growth mindset but this was probably I don't know 2009 2008 whatever it was like many years ago I bang out this document and I call it the unauthorized guide because I don't work for me so I invited comment I said for those who actually have had me as a manager like please tell me how on base I am or not and then I gave it actually
I at the time had this really amazing woman who had been a manager in my organization and then she went on maternity leave and came back and asked to be my assistant she said I want to change sort of I think I could be kind of a chief of staff to you and she was very talented and we got very close and she worked for me for like at least half
my career Google and I was like ma read this am I anywhere near like am I on base here you know was actually uh she's Irish which is a theme somehow in my life like I I really bond with the Irish and she said well I feel like at the end you know you don't even acknowledge that you like good CRA and CRA which I'm saying wrong in Irish is like sort of
kind of fun joke humor yeah she's like you know your meetings she said I've never been in a meeting with you where we didn't laugh at least once that's the kind of thing by the way that you don't know cuz you're never not in a meeting with you right and so I was like oh that was super helpful but I feel embarrassed
that I'm like I said am I saying I'm funny she's like no you like a good laugh it's true I'm not particularly that funny but I really enjoy humor anyway so we added a section at the end but she said no I think this is pretty good I think you should send it to the team and see what they think but what's amazing Tim is that document has not
changed markedly huh since 2009 or whenever it was since like 2009 it has not changed very much and we can decide how we feel about that but I think it's a great exercise in self-awareness it's a great exercise in also sort of thinking about okay when I have to make a decision so to your point what kind of
content is there some of it's very tactical it's like how do I like what communication channels work best for me so how to use our oneon-one versus send me a slack versus a text versus call me in today's world you know that like I literally have people that I work with actually I think you know I work with Patrick and John Collison the stripe
co-founders of course they contact me on every channel how is it that you're texting me whatsapping me calling me slacking me rarely emailing me actually emailing is probably like the least interesting channel to them so you give guidance like what are the best channels like how to use our 101 but also things
like how do I tend to make decisions so if you're coming to me for a decision here's what you can expect if it's this kind of decision how long will I need what kind of data might I like like I have a section in my doc which is I tend to be intuitive so I've taken a lot of different personality assessments and I
actually don't really spike in a lot of areas but I Spike as highly intuitive meaning you come to me with something I intuitively have an opinion I'm like oh I think this is going to be the right thing to do or I think I say I'm intuitive and then I write dot dot dot don't worry but data driven so I'll tell you my intuition and then I'll say to
you bring me data so we either can validate it or you tell me your intuition but let's get some data so I don't just get out there and start operating without any basis but I think that you're trying to reflect that but I think it's important to reflect that like for example in my first version one thing that did change when my team
readit was I said I'm not a m by the way every manager is like I'm not a micromanager it's like a common everyone's like well don't worry I'm not a micromanager unfortunately a lot of us are and I said I'm not a micromanager I will delegate I will trust you but if I'm concerned you're going to know and I'll get more involved right and so I
thought I was being pretty honest like when I do get involved we should have a conversation because it means I'm having an issue with trust which means I'm not sure I'm happy with the product so this guy who worked for me he said I'm not sure that you're accurate about this and I said well are you saying I'm a
micromanager and he said well there was this one thing and he named this project that I had delegated to him and he's like then you proceeded to show up in every meeting read every document be in the spreadsheet and that was to me felt pretty micromanaging I was like yeah I bet it did feel that way I said I did that because that project was the first
time it was like a sales compensation scheme I was like that's the first time I'd ever built one and I was really like wanting to learn and he said well you never told me that so as far as he was concerned I showed up in every damn thing this poor guy had scheduled and he's supposed to be leading and he's supposed to make a recommendation to me
and I'm like reading all the same stuff participating I mean I was was looking back I'm really embarrassed I was like I can't believe I didn't tell you because I had full confidence in this he was probably by the way better position than I was to build this thing and I was counting on him but then I went and
undermined him and so that's why by the way the working with me document is also helpful is cuz if you have relationships with people you work with they will tell you yeah you think you act this way but you really don't so then I had to add a section about sometimes when it feels like I'm micromanaging you it's because
I'm trying to learn the first time I've ever done a thing you are going to see me Hyper involved but what we should do is establish that ahead of time and if I don't please call me on it anyway the point is yeah the working with me document became something I just shared today with anyone who starts to work with me closely and what happens in high
growth environments like Google and stripe is like your team changes a lot there's new people people's managers change it's hard you don't love that but like I've had people come to me and say you're my fourth manager in a year so what are you trying to do you're trying to create a shortcut because there's anxiety when we first work with someone
well should I call you if I have some kind of crisis when you're at night and slack looks like you're available should I slack you stuff or should I wait till the next morning or like you're looking for guidance you're looking to read the person I'm like just tell them tell them how to work with you and then that
reduces the anxiety and I ideally they write their own manual and then you've both sort of shortcut some of the get to know you stuff so you can just jump right into working together this is something I wanted to explore because jumping I suppose to something you explore at some length in your book
which I definitely recommend people check out I underlined this a couple of times for myself because I still feel like I have room to improve here and that is Strive to make implicit structures and beliefs EXP licit make the implicit explicit and that shows up in so many different ways it can manifest in so many different ways and I
want to stick with the working with me document for a minute this first came to my attention because I had Dustin and moskovitz on the podcast from Facebook Fame and then certainly ofana and he shared his working with me document and I've since seen a few versions of this but I wanted to get your t on what might be worth adding to this list of
questions here are a few what do I want to be involved in when do I want to hear from you one you already mentioned what are my preferred communication modes what makes me impatient are there other questions that you have found helpful to address or topic areas worth including having seen these letters having crafted
your own working with me document my working with me document was published in elad Gill's book high growth handbook and went like a little bit viral like viral for Claire not for Tim Ferris but like still I was like shocked at how many people that I've never met had like seen it and I also got some criticisms
on the interwebs that was like very egotistical in some way it was sort of like here's how you make me happy which I was like okay that's like a totally fair criticism and not the intention by the way I'm like pretty highly empathe I'm like I'm trying to reduce anxiety and help people feel comfortable being honest with me whatever but I get it
it's it seems very self-absorbed so one of the things that I'm reacting to is like the question I guess if I were going to phrase it as a question it would be how do I help you make great decisions or how do you like to make decisions you know but I think in my document I just sort of have headers like decisionmaking because I'm not
that's why Ur called it user manual which is a very Tech like an engineer is going to be like I'm going to write a user manual to me and I just called it working with me there's a section on what types of information do you like to see because that's different than how do I want to be communicated with and it's different than when should I get in
touch with you which is like yeah if there's a crisis get in touch with me but there's something in mine where I talk about the fact that if like someone on your team is having a major life event I'd like to know about it I'd like to send them a note I'd like to say I'm sorry or celebrate their child or you
know I think what types of information do you like to have I also get really explicit about things like email protocols mean different things to people especially in different Generations I'm sure you've seen this but I used to work with someone who would send FYI and really really feel strongly that you need to process that information and
like have a response whereas for me I'm like if you send me FYI that means no response that means for me anyway it means yeah like I can read it later and it's interesting but I don't need to respond and I'm like I can't believe this but I think I have back to I think you asked your guest a question of like
if you were going to have a billboard yeah I think the fight for me and my billboard would be is it make the implicit explicit or is it undermine the super structure from within I'm not sure but one of those one of those is my billboard but the first one I think I get the first one making the implicit explicit is so valuable by the way so
many a lot of people are like I love that your book is like so humanistic about people and how to care for I was like folks my book is about getting results I do appreciate other humans and I love working with them even though sometimes Patrick call and I would be like oh my gosh this is like the hardest problem and we'd go oh if there were no
humans involved it' be so much easier but point is I love humans and The Human Condition but I really am talking about how do you get results and how do you get results you get super clear and transparent about anything implicit you make it explicit and you're like clear like this is a process we're going to go
through it to get to this outcome and what is the outcome we want make it explicit I mean Tim you I think are the master of this what are we measuring why are we measuring it how will we know if we won and I would add to that and what process will we go through together to get there so that no one is guessing or
reading the tea leaves or wondering why another team is doing the same project put it all on the table so that we can get to the end faster and frankly more inclusively and why do I care about inclusion yes inclusion is a good thing for people to feel better and included but actually because if you've hired a bunch of smart people and yet they don't
feel included they will not share their opinion and the reason you hired them is because they're smart people who bring diverse opinions and if they won't say them then you're like not really benefiting from all that work hiring them because you want a better outcome this is all about results but I think it's a little windy to get there
sometimes yeah totally until you make it explicit I wanted to piggyback off of your Irish pattern in life and recommend a short film that I think won an Oscar I might be making that up but it won some slew of fancy Awards and I watched it last night called an Irish goodbye it's about 22 23 minutes long you can find it
on Vimeo I think you might be able to watch it on YouTube as well it is hilarious and profound and outstanding I think based on the little that I feel like I've sort of felt out with our fiction Love Fest I think you would really enjoy this it is is one of the better short films I've ever seen it's really good it's really really good so
an Irish goodby got what is it little big and Irish goodbye start with an Irish goodbye because then you'll be like wow Tim really recommends good stuff and then if you hate little big at least I'll have some Redemption preemptively yeah so it's like the Amo B before you try to chew on the fever dream and I and I'll say also I'd love a
good Irish goodbye I used to find it a little offensive but now I now I'm like gosh there's so real Beauty and just disappear oh I do that all the time I do it all the time yeah so email policies I had a request from Kevin Kelly recently who's been on the podcast and is a close friend I asked him if I could help him
with anything we're having a conversation he said well I do have one request and it's not for him it's because he gets asked about it so much he doesn't have any issues with the email but he's like I want you to ask every one of your guests about email policies SL rules systems anything that they have ended up using that they have
found helpful and I will say in advance my assumption is that almost well it's not my assumption I've also run into this even though this podcast has some of the top performing people in the world of every discipline imaginable they all claim to kind of suck at email they're behind and it's hard so I I understand that being that as it may see
it's a beautiful expression be that as it may be that as it may you are still going to have to answer this yeah are there any sort of email policies systems rules rules implicit things that you make explicit that you found helpful I actually worked on Gmail right after it launched at Google and like you should
think I would be like a power email organizer and I'm okay but I'm not great but one thing that just stuck out of my mind as you brought this up is I had a good friend who was a executive at Genentech and she rose up with Genentech as it got big and she got more and more responsibility and she told me about
this leadership training they put them in Tim honestly whenever I look at my inbox I think of this training where they gave them some 30 minutes some window they gave them an inbox and they were like you need to process all this and kind of do the right things right okay and so in this inbox of like hundred emails whatever they have 30
minutes you have to find there's like a massive legal issue there's an HR violation but it's like not in the headline of the subject of the email sounds like an anxiety dream like a bunch of bombs in these messages and you have to like open them skim them decide you have to come back to it right yeah and I kind of was like feeling like
Japanese game show I'm like would this be a show that people might want to watch and I think there is a sector of people who might find that like really interesting to watch so sometimes I look at my inbox and I'm like oh my gosh I have 30 minutes and I need to find all of the legal time bombs but one of the things that I think I'm very good at on
email is it's a set of people in my both professional and personal life like they get opened immediately and I'll open it and if it's by the way read FYI I'll read it later I really want to make sure I mean it's easy some of these people it's like easy it's like your kids by the way my kids are teenagers they never
email me so that's like easy but you know certainly if you're the COO of a company even if you're not the COO anymore if the founders of stripe emailed me directly I'm going to open the email pretty freaking quickly just to make sure like you know so it's sort of like your boss or but I do think that some some people have a methodology
which is either lifo or fifo last first out yeah and I think that that's tempting my husband does this a little bit it bothers me I'm like you have cues which is who is it from and is a group or is it in direct to you and use those cues to prioritize and so if you only have 30 minutes you know where to start that's one of the things and it is a
combination of the people and what's being sent to you directly so I think that like a number one rule I have that I'm pretty actually good at so there's certain people who feel I'm very responsive on email because I I am very responsive to them yeah I'm not maybe responsive to everyone as consistently the other is I have this is
it like more of a cheat but you're an investor I think right so I I've invested in some companies and a lot of them send these investor newsletters or investor updates and of course I'm because I do have some Gmail skills I label them I know there's a folder full of them and I have every intention Tim
that some that on Friday 2 hours I'm going to read those investor updates okay you know what that is not correct sometimes when I'm on an airplane and I'm trapped I like open and start reading them but like I am not reading them in a timely fashion and I'm sorry all the founders I've invested in I'm sorry I'm not reading your investor
updates in a timely fashion but what I've learned to do and this goes back to making the implicit explicit and also to another rule I have which is Strive to set expectations with people so now when I invest in a company I say to them I say look you may email me I'll give you my email I said I'll give you my cell
phone I'm quite good on text but please don't abuse it and if you want to Whatsapp me and not Tech whatever either of those is going to work and then I say to them I want you to know I really appreciate getting the investor updates I will not read them in a timely fashion I may not read them at all if you need something from me directly like you need
help me interview this person or I have a c you should get in touch with me directly not as like at the end of an investor email that says please help us hire more data scientists and cognitive load wise I'm like yeah I have been feeling so much guilt about not reading their by the way they spend so much time
on them and it's terrible sometimes but I no longer feel guilt I've told them you must contact me directly set expectations but this is actually a management lesson which is why not this goes back to the user manual or they working with CLA guide like why not tell people I have this habit of ignoring this kind of thing and if you need my
attention please you have my permission please use it please text me even I mean for these Founders they have my phone number I'm like if you need me you can call me but it's sort of a human lesson we learn over and over again which is where like dying inside that we're disappointing someone and I'm like no just renegotiate the terms of what
expectations they should have of you how else does this renegotiating show up this has become it's embarrassing to say but I'd say maybe in the last two years has become such a revelation for me in a sense because I always thought about negotiating as the thing you did in the beginning and I got I think pretty good
at that and at times though I would have who knows like maybe I had two glasses of wine or I had too little sleep or whatever and I would agree to these things and then later I'd look at my calendar and my blood pressure sure would go up you know 30 points because I felt trapped by these commitments that I
made when I was compromised or rushed or lazy fill in the blank and this renegotiating has become an invisible option made visible for me in the last two years could you talk a little bit more about how you have used that in your life personal or professional how that shows up like examples would be really helpful here so people can really
get a grasp on it I'm having like almost a physical reaction to relating to you about this calendar it's like your past self I used to say oh my gosh I just mailed myself a letter bomb so one is of course we all strive to improve which is do not make a decision in the moment about a time or a commitment of
resources or time without trying to project your future self but of course we all do because you're right we're rushed we're trying to be responsive we're trying to move through our inbox by the way because we've only got 30 minutes or we might fail the corporate training test or the Japanese TV show don't want to come in last yes so one
thing is trying to be better about projecting and I also had a friend who's like a very kind of spiritually in touch person and she said when you're something is requested of you she said you need to sometimes listen for the quiet no can you say that one more time so she said when something's requested of you a person I mean she's like sort
of like sometimes your reaction is wow yes right you've had this I mean hey Tim Ferris asked me to be on his podcast I was like yes emphatically that is something I want to do that is easy My Future Self is very happy to be my past and future selves are very happy to be here but often we get a request you you have this
experience and you're looking at it and she says listen for the quiet no because we often feel like we have to say yes and her trick is and I know this wasn't the question you asked me which I will answer but her trick is really closely related I'm so interested in this yeah I think they are do not respond immediately because we often feel I mean
if you're someone who's Prides yourself on being decisive and responsive and empathetic as I do I feel like well they asked me to be on this panel at this important conference or whatever and I'm like I've learned that my response in fact should be when do you need to know whether or not I can be on this panel or
I'll even say I need two weeks to get back to you about what I can be on this panel because if I don't give myself some space I will do yes instead of the quiet no because I didn't give myself time to really think about is this my priority should I spend my time oh my gosh I have to fly to the city like you have to really think so I think when you
are renegotiating so I'm proud of you that you found this as a skill and by the way I have the same problem I had a delayed travel earlier this week and I was looking at my next day and I was thinking well I am going to get home but going to get home at like now 2: in the morning and then I looked at and I was
like I should not even be doing that stuff I was like why did I even agree to go into Boston and have lunch with this person and then talk to this other person and so I was like I am going to renegotiate those commitments I don't even have to say that I was delayed so it's a good skill but what I look for is a pattern a pattern of why am I
renegotiating this stuff it means I'm not making the right decision in the first place so I listen for the quiet no but if I find myself renegotiating it is often about yeah commitments I've made commitments especially of time my mom was a very talented apparently mathematician in college and my mom went to Harvard well Radcliffe then but you
know I think it was pretty rare for a woman to be like a star in the math department super rare and she decided to go get her PhD in history and to major in history and I said why did you switch why did you make the switch and she said I realized that there is a tradeoff that most people find themselves making
between money and time and she said I knew that if I prioritized math it would likely lead to a more lucrative career by the way my mom was like out there she was going to work and she did and she was going to have kids and work but she was like it would lead to a more lucrative career but I would not have time so I decided to become she became
an academic she got her PhD she became a professor and why because professors have more control over their time and they have the Summers off and they have time to think and write and that's what she knew she wanted which by the way is pretty aware for like a 19 or 20y old to realize you're going to trade money in
time I think it's Peter teal who says like people don't value their time highly enough they just like don't get every hour is costing you something and I've taken me so long to come to this point where I'm like oh my gosh I just threw away and said sure I'll meet with you to give you advice about that thing and I'm like like oh so I've become less
responsive on email because I am trying to stop myself from mortgaging my time you may or may not have had the same experience but all right here's an example you're looking for concrete I have a woman who I highly value personally in my life she's a founder and she asked me to be on her board by the way to stop myself from saying yes
to stuff I make rules I made a rule I was like no more boards I also have a rule about travel right now I'm like my daughter's going to college soon No More Travel unless it meets these criteria because I want to be home of course she doesn't want to hang out with me but I want to hang out with her what are the
criteria to set of curiosity could be just a few examples really important to stripe I still actually work part-time for stripe and they get bids on my time and if stripe said the most important thing you can do for stripe is go to this happened to me recently go to Helsinki to slush to this conference I was like fine I will do it I will go to
Helsinki for stripe and by the way I had a great time and I met a great number of Founders and it was actually a blast so is it important to stripe is it a personal connection that is Meaningful to me that is asking of My Time treasure talents my criteria is not to say yes default but it is to number one is there
a way I could do it that is less friction as in am I flying to California anyway therefore I can do that commitment if I bundle it so can I control when it is is and if I can control when it is and it's a personal connection that's meaningful to me I will make it happen but it will not happen quickly but if it's not something
I can control where and when it is then I have a subset of criteria of like but I often will say like could this thing maybe it's a conference can I do this next year and get back to you later so I can actually think for a minute a lot of it is buying time but I have these rules about things because it stops me so I
said to her I Saidi have made a commitment to myself that I will not join another board and she because she's a talented founder she's persistent and she said why don't you just come and be an observer why don't you just come to I know I know come to the board meeting and then she told me why she really needed help in this particular moment
and there was a situation where having someone who was sort of a friendly who was neutral in the room was going to be valuable so I said okay I will come but I will not like I really want to set your expectations right back I was like I am not this is not going to reel me in I'm not going to join the board and I
did go and she actually convinced someone else and the two of us went and we actually I think helped her through a particular Moment by being sort of board participants but then she said I'd like you to come to every you know of course every board meeting and I said I don't think I can commit to that but I can try
when it's virtual and if it's in person I'm pretty sure I won't but you can invite me and I went to a couple I did pretty well and then I started to look at my calendar and I was like I can't do this I can't even take 3 4 hours and so I needed need to renegotiate it there's a quote that I have in my book that that people find I think the most compelling
line in the book and I keep having to remind them it is not my line yeah I know this problem where I'm like no no no no don't attribute it to me that was Mark Twain or whatever exactly exactly the line is from Ron hiitz or Marty Linsky these are the Adaptive leadership guys who do the balcony and the dance floor analogy and
it is leadership is disappointing people at a rate that they can absorb yeah I had that line underlined it's very catchy cuz it really makes you think and it's kind of dark too yeah what does that mean in like concrete terms yeah and then I'm not going to let go of the renegotiating so I'm going to come back to that I want to ask you about phrasing
and wording that you use but let's talk about leadership and disappointing disappoint people well I think one of the ways that leaders disappoint people is their time you don't have unlimited time you're the CEO of a company there's no way you're going to be at all the things or do all the things but the key
is how you create enough leadership buyin that people understand and also you get a little bit of forgiveness when you're the CEO I think but leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can absorb to me is about you know management is very knowable it's like how do I get from point A to point B what people do I need what's the scope
how are we going to measure it here's the project plan here's the Milestones here's the talents I need and now I'm going to deploy and delegate and I think leadership is very unknowable because it is essentially having a vision an idea a goal that you haven't even fully understood yourself right often yeah it's like we're going
to climb this mountain that no one has ever climbed before by the way and you have to be really convincing to build followership you're painting a picture of the top of that mountain man and it is awesome and the climb is going to be like really challenging but really rewarding and you are going to get on that Journey
with those people and you are going to be wrong about a lot of what you just said right no actually it wasn't as easy up the South face as we thought it was yes we did actually need special equipment I mean come on you don't even know how you're going to get up there the analogy that's more concrete that I use is I came into stripe and look it's
a product that has people's money and you need to have good support experiences when something is wrong with any kind of payment I'm expecting money I'm trying to take money I'm moving money there's a high expectation and Patrick is like we need to build 247 Global support we had really good Ambitions and by the way I want to be
clear one of the things that stripe has as a value is to be users first it is always our most important operating principle it is actually deeply in the culture of the company so much so Tim that when the support team would get behind the entirey would stop and answer support emails and so this was becoming an existential
problem because we had to do engineering work and other work to build the company but we were like ending up on Fridays before the weekend because you want to get back to people quickly answering support tickets by the way you hit product Market fit you get traction this is a super normal problem but it is not great because the product like is
people's money it's a quality problem but it's a problem nonetheless and so Patrick is like look we need to have this 24/7 and I had to get up as a leader and say I will build this and I had built similar things for Google so I wasn't like completely describing a mountain I'd never seen but I certainly didn't join Google when it was only like
160 people with 21 support people and I was like we are now going to do a set of things to solve this and it took me a few years and it's not perfect and involved hiring very talented people I don't get credit for what we built but I still look back on that and I say I can't believe I declared that I would
get it done and I didn't have a plan cuz I'm more of a manager I'm more of like I need to have a clear plan on how I'm going to get this done and instead I was like yep we're going to have it Public Announcement and I mean Patrick kind of pushed me there but I was like this is uncomfortable and I'll tell you I did
disappoint did I deliver it by the end of that year oh no Tim I did not deliver it by the end of that first year like let's not kid ourselves I disappointed but I did figure figure out a way to do it and I think people followed me they kept following me they kept believing we were going to do it which is some combination of me being authentic I
think me being honest about where we were me having a plan eventually me demonstrating that it mattered whatever so I think that's what it means is like you will not live up to everything you said all the expectations of you with your time with your ideas we're all humans we're not perfect and we're not fortune tellers I
so this ties into the renegotiating actually pretty well because there are many different species of renegotiating one was you gave an example very early on in the conversation when Lucy was getting thrown under the bus the dog ate my homework situation and then we segue from that to the player versus victim and the player
would say you know what you're right I committed to get this to you by 5:00 p.m. I didn't and because this emergency popped up and I da da da I didn't let you know should let you know how about 5:00 p.m. tomorrow or whatever the example was renegotiation so in this particular example when it becomes clear to you that by whatever deadline had
been agreed you were not going to be able to deliver what you were going to hope to deliver what does that conversation look like I mean it's not exactly semiotics but I know you like language and I know you consume a lot of language so what is the language that you use to have that conversation whether it's verbal or in email
I think you made the connection and then you didn't finish making the connection but it is so easy to sound like a victim when you are facing this kind of a situation and if you're someone who prides themselves on being a player on taking ownership and you've made this commitment and you're like oh my gosh there's no way I'm either coming to that
meeting or delivering 24/7 Global support in 6 months and so what does it look like I think what it looks like the first thing I did that was probably the smartest thing I did when I joined stripe was I listened and I did my first 90 days and I talked to everybody and I heard sort of here's priorities here's what
people need here's what need my attention and then I sat down with Patrick and I said I'm hearing these four things one of them was the support thing by the way that really need my attention and I am going to rank them and then I want you to see my ranking and I want to agree on my level of priority I said because I can't make
meaningful progress on four things at once I can maybe keep and I actually predicted in that moment I said because we had to build sales we had to build recruiting we had some internal operational stuff that needed to be fixed and then we had this support smoldering fire and I said I think I actually need to build sales and
recruiting ahead of fixing support but I predict support is going to implode within the next six months and at that point you were coo is that right I was coo yeah I was actually hired as chief of business operations and then I became we just swap titles with someone else but it's a long story but yes I was basically coo and remember we're users
first this was a painful because we were also not getting back to sales leads though Tim I was like you know I just want I'm also here to build some Revenue like I'm here to build go to market and I'm here to deliver some revenue for this company and I'm like we have this other thing where we're not getting back
to our prospects and so it was a very Sophie's Choice kind of moment honestly oh and then we couldn't hire people to build the company so we couldn't get back to sales seads this is normal by the way this happens and especially for people like me coming into that kind of opportunity but what I loved about that conversation was Patrick was one first
of all supportive he was like great this is good for us to talk out now and then he had to admit he's like I can't believe I'm doing this but I agree you're not going to fix support in the first six months we made an agreement and then by the way Tim four months in complete explosion and I was thinking in my head
thank goodness this goes back to expectation setting I'm like thank goodness I said out loud that I thought I was going to explode and then I mean by the way still terrible I was still sad I was like oh my gosh I had to go then put it at the top of the priority list basically but I had at least four months to build some other things point
is one is try to set the priorities align on them and set expectations ahead of time even if you haven't done that you're going to reach a moment where you're like there's no way we're getting to the top of this mountain and so what you try to do is not come up and make a bunch of excuses so what I I think I did
in the those moments we had written public goals in the company we' had plans and I just want to be clear none of the plans this is where when you're working with Founders maybe this is a side what do you call them side quests this is a little bit of a side quest love side quest when you're working with Founders people describe this reality
Distortion experience which often is more that they have a version of reality and they're like no no no we can ship the iPhone in 5 minutes or whatever you know and like everyone's like yes Steve yes we can right there's another version of reality Distortion I find which is you can fix that thing in five minutes
it's now a joke between Patrick and I because he'll be like yeah we could just like code that up and I say in five minutes you know yeah it's not five minutes so we had a consistent conflict where I would say to him no that mountain is not going to be climbed by the end of this year I never actually said I was going to build that thing by
the end of the year and he refused to hear it he was like no it really needs to be the goal this actually needs to be the goal be that as it may CLA yeah be that as it may CLA I'm making it your goal and I was like okay under duress I am going to like take this goal and try to put some language in it I mean I'm going to get a red right
whatever on your I mean that doesn't feel good this is the other thing it's beneficial to walk into a situation like that after some amount of Career Success so that you have some amount of self-actualization so I was like luckily my whole identity is not tied up in this goal because I would have been destroyed
I would have really lost confidence by the way a lot of leaders you hire into a startup environment end up losing confidence just because you're getting pummeled totally pummeled and like you need to sort of be like no no no I have identity outside of the success of this moment but I was like all right I'm going to publicly get up in front of the
company and have failed on this goal but we disagree we agreed to disagree that this is possible what's also though is I was like I think he really believed it was possible and he's very smart and of course then I'm going home I'm like driving home at night I'm like has he ever built anything like this no why am
I even listening to him but they they reality distort you into thinking yes it's completely possible like I don't know how I got fooled but what I did sort of commit to myself is like I have to make meaningful progress so what are some of the milestones we can point to so what you do is you go in and you say well I was not convinced this was the
right goal but I agreed to it here the mil stones that I'm glad we hit so you kind of don't forget to point out you made progress I think sometimes people get defense they're like I don't want to be defensive but you have to be like look it's like nothing happened and then you try to be data driven and what I
think because this is where the context matters Stripes Founders and Stripes culture is very learning oriented very very more so than almost maybe any startup I've come across yes at an early stage too yes so think about the cultural context you're in what what did we learn what did we not know and what did we learn trying to get there on this
goal what did I learn by the way some of them are mistakes I made and so try to be humble stripe is also very humble culture say here's some things I thought I knew by the way I thought I did know I was like we were going to Outsource certain things that I thought was going to be easier than it was and that is
true and here's what I learned here's what I thought here's what the truth was here's what I learned here's now what we're going to do differently and by the way everyone's nodding in the room because they're like cool cool we had a plan tried it I mean they're Engineers they know it like did not work the way we thought it was going to work we're
going to try this other thing so you basically do a retro postmortem whatever you want to call it sort of publicly in front of everyone in the language they like speaking so the language stripe likees speaking is learning I made mistakes what am I doing differently what do I see next how are we going to get there now you know what I mean like
it's I'm confident but humbled by this experience and I've learned a lot and here's some data that shows we have made some progress cuz that also people want to make sure like are we actually know what we're doing so that's what you do and I think depends on your context and inste of what language do you speak so
that is a big example and that is I think a very effective way to as a player offer a Mula in a way yeah yeah at that point then and this may be if this is going to require a dissertation then tell me and I can rejig but how did you decide to scope the thing and then make a counter offer effectively or was that even your decision to make I don't
know in terms of like okay we've learned these things these were some assumptions and then leading into the kind of now what I won't do the dissertation version Tim but I will tell you one bind I found myself in consistently that I'm sure you have also is it's a talent bind which is I can only do so many things at once
individually me alone and I did feel like a victim I'm going to be honest cuz I had been trying to hire someone I had hired someone they hadn't worked out partly my fault partly not my fault and I'm in a meeting this happened so many times but I'm talking to Patrick and I'm like look we know so and so it didn't
work out here's what happened with that we now have face a choice which is you have Claire as a resource me alone am I going to go lead support directly like am I going to go start building this thing with all my most of my time and what is the opportunity cost of that what is the tradeoff of me not leading sales by the way at that moment which I
was also leading and this is where I fell into a trap CU I had like a few too many needing to clone myself problems and this happens when you're growing quickly but it's still I got into an egregious case of needing cloning then we're having a renegotiation conversation not even a reasonable case of needing cloning egregious no it was
egregious it was egregious there was one point where I mean I think it's important that people especially because they seem to think I have some like storied career I'm like there was a moment where I had taken a former colleague from Google who I was admittedly I'll be honest was trying to recruit to stripe out for a coffee
you're just going to be a board Observer just come once yeah right exactly exactly and and he says to me he used to actually work for me and he knew how much I pride myself on good management practices and he asked me how many direct reports do you have and I told him and he almost like I had to peel him off the ground he's like I can't believe
you let that happen to you he was like what happened to the Clare Johnson that I know I'm like I know I'm so sorry like I had so many direct reports how many directs it was a crime I think I think the peak I want to say the peak to you was 23 but it might have been 27 and I just like lost control of I I really
don't Tim I didn't want to go lot of one-on I didn't want to go here it's so many one-on ones and of course I do actually make one-on ones happen so point is I got schooled by my former direct report for violating my own rules in the need for but the point is the negotiation turns from we're negotiating you getting this massive
goal done to what's the cost of me getting that goal done for the other priorities and then you're making a joint decision by the way the outcome of that negotiation could have been let's not build out sales any fur let's not keep internationalizing let's not open new markets let's wait on those other things because we decided you should
just go and be the directly the head of support honestly that was not where the conversation went it was like okay what creative ideas do we have to somehow do both because we're reality distorting that's fine but actually you know you got to push yourself and so I think in that exact moment if I'm remembering the
scenario we talked about some talented people I had hired some people into the org who we were like could we lean on them could we put some newer leaders managers into the de end and get them to take on more of this plan and in the end that was part of the solution which is let's take some risks with some people we have give them more than they
probably are ready for and see if they can swim which I'm not always a fan of because I have seen people not make it out of the pool by the way a lot of young companies find themselves in that situation and if you have great hiring which we did I'm proud to say that actually that's where opportunities and Magic can happen for people like I'm G
to get to build out the global support orc but anyway so we ended up sort of compromising but we weren't going to trade off my other responsibilities and that became a more important discussion about how do I deploy anyone who's the CEO has got to be thinking well who are my most important resources and how am I
deploying them against the most important priorities so take the negotiation up to that level would be my advice that's a great macro renegotiation example and we're not going to stay on this forever but I want to to spend a little little little more time on it when you're renegotiating the next day so we're
moving down to the micro here what language do you use like you have a meeting booked you got a lunch booked in Boston you got this you got that and the other thing when you reach out to these folks what do you say I think you want to again be a player not a victim and you got to take responsibility so I think there is a version of saying I
don't love if it's the next day that's rough yeah it could be the next week do right it's just broadly speaking I do actually tend to look at my calendar at least a week ahead and sort of start renegotiating because I don't like to be the one who's like the morning of or the day before but I think you sort of own
it whether this is an email it's probably an email it might be a text and you say first of all I am very sorry I know we had time tomorrow on the calendar I am staring at a list of priorities and I've realized you're saying something that doesn't hopefully make them feel diminished I mean I often will tell them there's this thing I am
on this board in the middle of a transaction and I have to be on a phone call for four hours tomorrow and unfortunately I think I need some time to prep I need some time to prep and I booked our lunch and it's not realistic I'm not going to be able to be present at that lunch it's not great I try to give like I'm probably over context
people but I think it makes you more human it's like look I did this thing I'm sorry what if you don't have like a house fire a point to to what if you just look at it and you're like ah you're like you're not important I mean but you get it like you're like why did I agree to why did I mail myself the
letter bomb yeah the ghost to Christmas Past is coming to scratch my door and I'm realizing I don't want to moderate this panel and Tuscaloosa no offense to Tusa but you get the idea because I've got all this other stuff going on and I just don't want to spend the energy yeah what do you do in a case like that so again I try not to be the day before
sure no let's say you look out and you're like okay this thing is in two weeks I'm not doing this thing yeah so my instinct is always to offer context and be a little bit vulnerable which maybe is not expected I think you also know there's a I think women will get judged more for certain things and in particular like not being
conscientious is the thing that gets a little more beaten into you is my feeling as a woman and so you have to also watch out for creating some reputational issue that I think maybe not everyone has to watch out for so maybe some of my instinct to offer more information is to like try to avoid that hit but I've been
saying to people recently actually that I have reworked my personal priorities and the demands of my time are higher than I've actually seen in my professional life which is true and I have realized that I cannot do a good job of some of the commitments I've made and unfortunately I can't travel and be on this panel and be effective for you
and this is where I feel sometimes I'm a little weak I'll try to offer I mean I try to think do I know anyone locally who could do this I'll be like I think I have an idea if you want an idea on someone who could Sub in like I'll try to find some solution for them if I'm really leaving them in a Lurch right
because I don't love that but I kind of am just honest of like I can't do this well and I think you want someone at their best it's not going to be my best yeah that's good language that's really good language I'm not going to drag us back into the swamp of selling literature but it's good language that's that's good word smithing right right
and I think you're showing look I looked at priorities I realized and also you're showing context which is this is true statement I'm like I have more demands on my time than I've ever had in my life and I'm learning to cope with it and I'm learning that I can't perform at the level I'd like to perform and I don't
want you to suffer for that you want to show respect for people they want a good panel they want your best you know you're saying like please just you have to trust me I'm not going to be great and they'll be disappointed one thing that I do think I think Cheryl is an example of this there people I've come to respect there the people who protect
their time like demons right the other people I've come to respect are the people who are like very comfortable just saying no like you know what no I'm sorry I can't do that my hope for myself my future self is I am not in the situation where I'm doing that renegotiation again it goes back to being honest taking time before you make
the commitment just saying no but it's also with Investments like like a lot of Founders will be like or even nonprofits they come and they're like I want to tell you about our organization and you're like oh that organization sounds amazing but then do you want to waste an hour of your time and their time learning about it when you realize I
don't have time to commit a lot to this organization what they would rather have is one no it's not on my list of causes that I support or by the way two I will give you x amount of money you never have to meet with me I don't actually have time but sounds good here's some money goodbye and they'll say well can
you make that commitment for multiple years in a row maybe maybe not but I think getting faster at like there's a pattern here which is you want my money and my time am I willing to give any money or time yes no if I'm willing to get a little bit just tell them and get out don't have a dog and pony show about it or Investments I just don't really
invest in a lot of B Toc I'll just write back and say this is not for me I don't really do B Toc good luck yeah and they're like thank you because they didn't waste their time sending you a deck sending you you know yeah they're not chasing the Glen Gary needs forever and so you think you're being an empath
by saying oh let me hear your story this is my trap my personal trap is I think I'm being an empath giving them 30 minutes let me hear your story and in fact the empathic thing to do is to say I'm going to do a probability assessment the chance that I'm going to invest slake a donation are sub 5% no no for you no for me and you don't have to
think about it ever again you don't have to email me tomorrow and ask me again right like they're going to keep coming back back yeah yeah absolutely I love that so glad I asked and a great answer also very useful useful answer what are some other rules we are going to back the car into the garage of self-awareness because a lot
of this pulls at the Hem of self-awareness from a bunch of different directions but you mentioned that there are certain rules you have because your kid is going off to college and therefore X Y and Z what are some of the other r rules that you have for yourself around what you will or will not do well I have a rule this is more of just a
self-awareness I do get intuitive and I do jump to sort of judgments conclusions Solutions quickly so I have a rule that like especially if I'm in a position of leadership and I'm in a meeting and there's other people instead of stating my opinion I have to ask a question because if you're the senior person and
you state your opinion like the whole thing is over yeah right yes Steve we can ship it in five minutes uh-huh exactly here's an iPhone so that's a rule could you give an example of what that would because you could also ask a question in a way that makes it clear it's your strong opinion right so what might that look like so what it
looks like is they're kind of looking to you you know I think we need to X and you're like looking at you and you say I have a thought I do I'll share it but actually I'm interested in what you all think we should do mhm got it you know like I want to learn from your thought before I share mine you know and that's
by the way the benefit of seniority is you can be like no I'm not going to like I appreciate and refuse to answer your question I'm not going to perform right now I will perform later because I actually want you to participate I'm often now in a position of sort of coaching leaders and because I'm more of an operator not a professional coach I
have the same problem I'll be like oh my God this is obvious like here's what you're going to do and then I think no no no no no no so I'll say to them all right give me the bones of the situation and then I'll start to tell them what I think and I'm like no and I'll say you know what and I totally commentate I'm
like a sports color commentator I'm like I was about to jump in and tell you exactly what I would do if I were you and they're at the edge of their seat because that's what they came for like that's what they want and I say we're not going to learn from that what I want you to do is tell me your instinct what is it you think you're doing next and I
don't even say give me the whole answer I'm like what would you do next cuz it's often a situation there's an executive they think is underperforming there's a team off the rails whatever I'm like what what are you going to do next then I get them talking and then I sort of get out from them and I'll tell you Tim
most of the I mean there's a reason these people are leaders most of the time they're like 80% of the way they are they're just not confident in their Instinct and so my job is not to tell them what to do or how to do it it is to build their confidence in their Instinct and then yeah we can brainstorm the last 20% and I I mean it's just like this is
a total digression but good pedagogy right like how do people learn people do not learn by being told answers we all know this but yet we get some amount of experience in our life and we think I'm going to go tell some people some answers no what you're going to do if you're a good leader good teacher is you're going to lead them through
learning with you and they are going to get to the answer and you are going to celebrate them doing that but I cannot tell you how many times I myself have to create a rule to shut my own mouth because I love helping people luckily I don't think it's the know-it-all version of this I think it's the I can help you
oh my God I see how to help you and I just want to tell them the answer and I got to zip it zip it so one rule is like yeah I make a travel rule another rule I make is as I already told you which is don't say yes immediately it has to be very rare for me to say yes immediately and as a pleaser that's very hard to be
like no I'm sorry I have to get back to you next week how often do you say I have to get back to you next week versus I'm not sure can you get back to me next week versus in other words like where does the ball fall in whose Court good feedback for me Tim and I take it thank you no I think that is actually a really good tactic that I don't do enough of is
to say I think this is unlikely that I'm going to be able to do this I'm willing to consider it but what I'd like you to do is go look at your other options and if you're you know not finding something feel free to get back to me by the end of the month and I will consider it but it's you know like basically
telegraphing like I kind of want to try to help you but I can't you got to go to your plan B I'm not going to be your keynote speaker and that's a great feedback I think that's a good maybe even it's just if you find yourself doing that you should be asking yourself why is it just not a no it's a no yeah it's a no for me it's a no Tim right but
maybe it's a way to trial yourself and real realizing oh this is a no those are the training wheels yeah I like your idea which is like put the ball in their court maybe again it's back to some donation request or something like this is not for me now feel free to get in touch in the future a lot of those people might just not ever and I mean
sorry for them because they're not persistent but is that being a player is that being a player enough I don't know yeah hitting the snooze button can lead to like a delayed 24 car pile up later in my experience right good analogy I was with a friend of mine about this cuz I'm fascinated by rules for folks who
handle a lot of inbound of any type and his rule for the charitable stuff specifically like ah here's my go fundme or this or this he's like well look he's done very very well professionally and he's like okay look if it's a friend and it's basically any cause that's not going to entail reputational risk if it's like ah my buddy's doing a climbing
kilano for prostate cancer and he's has to GoFundMe they'll basically give 5K to anything sight on scene because the universe of possible acquaintances or friends who's going to come to them with that is pretty limited but the rule is like 5K that's it that's our Rule and then for anything large it's just like
we focus on this and this and this and outside of that we are not involved that's it yeah no I think that is so powerful that would be another rule is like for something that's a major commitment of my time or my resources someone said to me it's time measure tent talent but there's another one that's like testimony ooh okay so time
Treasures treasure Capital talent and testimony and testimony is interesting right because you could Tim care about something that you can't give time to and you could say if you need a quote from me again now we're like in this weird rarified air where someone might want a quote from probably not me but I
I think that that's another thing you can do but the thing that for any of those categories you need some criteria yeah which is like you know some people it's about climate if it's not related to climate and working on the climate crisis it's a no and I think those people actually make more friends than I
probably make because I'm like I'm not sure that sounds so important just to ask uh clarifying question on one time I get that seems pretty straightforward hours minutes treasure it's like Financial Resources things of that type testimony okay like endorsing something or some version of that by the way version of that might be be like can I
introduce you to someone endorse you you know like yeah totally what is talent I mean I understand the word but I think of talent as if they're utilizing your talent wouldn't that kind of fall into the time bucket or is it a separate thing you know I had a similar question because this was a friend of mine who
was like facilitating this workshop with people trying to think about what their criteria were for like what what am I going to spend my time on I think that the version of it is you say to someone I agree with you like I can't really deploy my particular Talent without putting some time in but the example was say you are very good at some specific
thing and the thing takes you less than 30 minutes they're like all right I don't want you to join my board but can you read this press release and tell me is it good or not I think it's like you know what I can't give you my time I can't join a board I can't commit to a regular meeting it's almost what I say
to some of the founders I work with I'm like don't expect me to read the news newsletter and try to volunteer for all the things you need but if you think my particular Talent is going to be useful and here's what it often looks like Tim is they send me profiles of people they're thinking of hiring and I give them a five minute CLA assessment and so
that is my time but I don't get on the phone I'm just like here's the questions usually how it comes back because I'm all about questions is here's the three to five questions I'd have about this background if I'm you and I'm hiring for this role why did they move around five times why did they stop doing that job I would
just give them interview questions and then I would back away so you're right it takes me a minute you probably have a version of that I've heard people like text you with very specific which supplement should I take or which you know should I intermit and fast prob can like you could probably like text back this one no this one you know that's
probably still time and you probably should count how much time it is but it's a way to it's compressed because of the expertise right you already know the answer you have the talent you don't have to go do extra work and you can answer quickly quick add-on because I realize you you've done so much hiring and develop so much talent I'm so
curious how you spot bad apples or elicit negative feedback or infer negative feedback when in the US it is so incredibly difficult to get honest negative feedback from anyone because they're so concerned about liability you're talking about like referen hiring yes references exactly the non-dissertation answer is one people
have trouble giving hard Fe people have trouble asking this question which is I think a question you just ask which is like is this someone in the top 20% of people you've ever worked with and then they say yes you say top 10 and then if they say yes oh so is it top five because what happens is when people are
asked for a very specific quantifiable ranking of something they don't like lying and so what I think happens is we're not comfortable asking for ranking questions sometimes about humans and I don't love them actually in most contexts but in this case I'm like I'm going to pin you down on how good this person really is and how they handle and
you could go just to top five but I think that's the short answer I think the other answer is you say to someone you put them again in the role of you say look I'm going to be their manager you are their manager what's the thing I could do that's most important to help them that's a good question and people will say some very revealing things
because all of a sudden they're back being the manager of the person and they're like well I'll tell them to really be more truthful when things are off the rails you're like what yeah and then you'll sort of get going you'll like tell me a situation where you had to use use that advice like what you know anyway so
those are two one very specific pin them down and one a little more tricky so good oh Deft very very elegant all right as promised the garage of self wearen I think that is the very strained analogy that I used and tell me if this ties in and I'm curious what good answers to this question might be but I do want to
talk about self- awareness so we can go into it however you would like because it's sort of the foundational layer for everything that is built upon it or it seems that way to me yeah that's my hypothesis yeah so actually I was going to ask you about the question when have you see me do my best and worst work but we can come back to that we can come
back to that I'm going to bookmark that maybe we'll get to it maybe we won't but how should people think about self-awareness and I'm just going to share something that I found in the course of doing homework and you can certainly fact check this but I thought it was quite thought-provoking this is from CNBC and I think it was an interview
with so this is you know if you're not self-aware how would you know that's a hell of a question it's kind of like you the tree falling in the forest no one to hear it kind of question here are some telltale signs you consistently get feedback that you disagree with this doesn't mean the feedback is correct but
it does mean how others perceive you differs from how you perceive yourself interesting I added the interesting you often feel frustrated and annoyed because you don't agree with your team's direction or decisions you feel drained at the end of a workday and can't pinpoint why you can't describe what kinds of work you do and don't enjoy
doing so that's setting the table or maybe just peing people's curiosity how would you suggest people think about self-awareness why is this important in the worlds in which you operate I spent a lot of time thinking about how do you get results through through people through teams like I'm not actually the one building the
product so I got to do it through kind of Brute Force human brain power and human time and I think that most people who think that way start with the individuals you're managing or the team or the organization and my argument is where you started this section of the garage is it's the foundation is self-awareness is actually has to start
with you you're not going to get great results from the people around you until you understand yourself and I mean I think there's some obvious reasons why which is like look I alone can't move the mountain I need you and I need to compliment myself how am I going to complement myself with other capabilities and skills if I don't
understand what I'm bringing to the table by the way a lot of people think they're the director in every scene no you're not you're often an extra and just knowing that will make you more effective so that's a side piece of advice for you but a lot of self-awareness building to me a lot of these workstyle assessments you can take
are just trying to help you figure out your defaults like right's my default setting a lot of them are asking you you know are you more introverted or extroverted so you're talking about I guess for maybe lack of a better descriptor almost like personality typing T like my Briggs dis enag I mean there's Discovery insights there's the
Hogan assessment like whatever there's that's like 170 questions like there's a all these different there's the Big Five personality test there's a lot of strength finder it goes on and on strength finder good one like there's so many to me they all boil down to on one axis let's call it the horizontal axis
you've got are you more introverted or extroverted and the litmus test is sort of introverts think to talk and extroverts talk to think so where do you fall in that Continuum and then the other thing is the vertical axis which is are you more task oriented or people oriented which by the way doesn't mean you can't get a task done and my litmus
test for this is like if someone comes to you with like a massive problem in some organization is the first thing you think of the first task that has to get done or oh my God the people and it's just what do you lead with for me I'll be like oh my gosh someone's getting fired which is sort of a task and a
person answer but you're you're kind of anyway but but I would say sorry I'm being very negative today but I would say it sort of boils down then and then you think okay what quadrant am I in am I a more extroverted task oriented type person or extroverted people by the way a lot of extroverted people oriented people are excellent at sales makes
sense they default is I love getting stuff done talking to you like that's yay be a and then you've got your introverted task oriented people where do a lot of those people work Tim do you think introverted task oriented people engineering programming engineering Finance Finance I'm going to give me a spreadsheet and I will rule the world I
do not you know need to talk to you to finish this model right like in fact you often do and I know that and so that's the other thing is you have to be really careful not to stereotype with any of this and not to generalize but I think it helps any human Frameworks are useful for reason which is I am comfortable
sort of saying okay where can I place myself in these quadrants and then what does that mean my default setting is and by the way the people around me have different default settings one of my big this is such a dumb tactical lesson but I'm one of those people where if I trust who I'm meeting with I don't need the
agenda ahead of time I'll be like let's meet and then at the very beginning of the meeting bang out the agenda make sure we know we're going to get done I still like to run it well but I'm kind of loose with the prep I have people who have worked for me who are like frozen if they're like I don't have time to think ahead of this meeting what we're
going to talk about and I'm thinking there's something wrong with them I'm like well come on we trust each other we've worked together we're just going to spitball about this they're like no I had to learn that there are humans in the world who if they don't have time to think before a meeting will not be
effective in the meeting and will be uncomfortable cuz my water is really different than that really different but you if you're trying to create an environment that's conducive to different styles different defaults you got to be aware of your own and then realize and I have to operate aware of others because I want that meeting to be
really effective and I've got to email you know Richard the day before and tell them we're going to spitball ideas for this new marketing campaign that's what it all boils down to it's really cultivating awareness but starting at home in the sense start at home and then start to map the other people guinea pig
is always in the cage right next to you do in that case right it's just easier to some case a little easier to study coming back to the personality test for a second were these not sure if that's the right way to categorize them Myers brig's disc any work style assessments work style assessments if you could only choose one or two that have been most
helpful to you personally what would you choose I would say there's one that's called I think if you just Google it's insights discovery which is sort of to me more effective than Myers Briggs Myers Briggs has a lot of interpretive work you have to do on your results like understand what sensing is understand
what the decision-making process of a sensing judger or whatever insights Maps you more and they have some shading and colors but it's sort of like more straightforward that is one I'm a fan of the other is more of a simple one but Patrick cison obviously who I've worked with I think I brought him around he felt like these things are like
horoscopes he's like they're just going to give you a report and it's going to sound like a plausible prediction of you and I said I get it I get the skepticism and I really do by the way for anyone and actually I think there's value in getting a horoscope how does it actually make me feel like do I agree with it or
not what am I really like it actually is part of a process in my opinion yeah as a prompt like a roar shock prompt it's a prompt and how you react to it is interesting right like you're like I really yes I am finding love this year you know you know or am I not but but so point is he then did some research and there is the big Big Five personality
test is very simple it's available for free online as far as I can tell or I've seen and it's just these five factors like neuroticism agreeableness conscientiousness there's one that's sort of entrepreneurial comfort with ambiguity like whatever and you can tell a lot from well one the research supports that they're pretty indicative
of certain human behaviors you and I have had a lot of conversations in this discussion about things like saying yes too easily but if you're like very high agreeableness and very high conscientiousness guess what you're going to end up committing to too much stuff yeah for sure and so when I'm saying oh I'm jealous of those people
who protect their time you know what they're pretty comfortable being disagreeable they're pretty comfortable being like no or frankly canceling at the last minute saying sorry I don't have time today for you and if they're not very conscientious they're like I don't even feel bad but by the way no judgment a lot of Founders are really
good about being like look I'm doing the most important thing that I got to be doing today and I'm the operator I'm like oh but we made a bunch of commitments and we made a plan and we got to stick to the plan right and that meeting of those Styles is very powerful that's why you want a diverse team but
anyway I I would say those two yeah Patrick is endlessly fascinating he's been on the show it's probably a couple years ago but boy oh boy does that man readed he really he is a voracious consumer of knowledge he is he puts the rest of us to shame you know what though Tim he's never I bet he's never seen John Wick so we have that we have that going
for us we do one zero Ferris cin put wick on the scoreboard yeah we were actually in a meeting and he said something about Greg papovich and two of us looked at each other we like do you really know who Greg bovich is it was like amazing because also is not super up on sports popular culture you know we all have our
strengths papovich also incredible somebody I would love to have on the show at some point oh yeah absolutely yeah well that's why he knew so going to the kind of black belts of no I'm wondering if there are people who stand out outside of the cison as people who are sort of Paragons of no people who are really good at saying no or
defending their time where you're like wow that person's really good at like keeping their on the one Puck that matters anybody come to mind well I mentioned you I think Cheryl's very good at getting back being very accessible and fast and sort of decisive like no efficient she's very efficient and and sometimes that efficiency is a no right
I mean my version of it is someone who I think is least doing it carefully with others others like feelings like I I think that I don't love the person who has an assistant for example who cancels everything no there's a model here Tim you've seen it where they agree to everything and then they have a clean
crew they a cleanup crew Like the Wolf from Pulp Fiction they send it out to like do the Dirty Work yeah yeah yeah I think what's happening is I'm doing left-hand column filtering names of people right now in my mind where I'm like nope can't mention them because I think they actually have a cleanup crew they use the cleanup crew they use the
cleanup crew like like there aren't that many who seem I mean I think you have some good I think it's in 4-Hour Work Week you have some good models of push people on not just being busy but being productive there's some engineering leaders I worked with at Google who I thought was very bold but of course
makes sense they would look at what were we planning in a meeting and they'd be like I don't need to be here or this meeting doesn't seem important you know and to me those are Paragons of no though because it was very open very direct very honest it was like I see what you're trying to do with this one hour and I am not giving you my
hour why can't more people just call it you know yeah uncomfortable there's a finance guy that I'm on a board with and he'll be like what are we trying to accomplish in this and how long do we need and like he'll set his I'm here for that objective and I'm only here for this long and I admire it because he's like don't be chatting away about other
stuff I want to be productive not I want to hear about your fishing trip right nowly exactly so just because you mentioned the board why no more boards just the thinking behind it I think there are different motivations for being on boards I don't know if you are serve on boards and no i' I basically from the beginning I have a
number of friends who have policies that they won't join any more boards and I took that as a indicator and so I've only done advising I've never been on boards yeah so I would say there's a sector of the world that feels it is a service and I do think it's a valuable service by the way I serve on some boards with some people who are like
Jedi Master board members and I'm like wow you are serving these companies cuz you are like awesome at govern and proxy statements politics and you like get it you know but I think there's a service motivation there's a motivation that has to do with maybe a personal like CEO really trusts you you want to help them like that's mostly
what happens with me I'm like I want to be there for that person but it is a big commitment and if you're someone who's realized that time is your most precious resource which is my mom realized somehow when she was 19 but I did not boards can Stomp all over your calendar they can just say you know what all day
Friday someone just made an acquisition offer and you're like goodbye you realize like you think you're controlling your time because they don't meet that often but no no no no so really what I've decided is I need to like go on a board diet and then rebuild I'm not going to say no ever like I'm never doing it again but I've realized
the bar has to be like extremely high I mean I'm on the board one of my favorite boards and I would do it forever I don't know if I'm adding that much value but is the Atlantic which is private so it's easier but the quality of the people involved we're doing the business brain stuff but there's also like you get to meet these
amazing writers and you get to be part of exchange of ideas about the future of democracy yes you know that's enriching me that's the other thing is making sure there's an exchange in the board of your learning you're getting enriched they're benefiting and I don't think it's easy to always get that balance right and so
you just have to be careful I think you just have to be and I I I think I just didn't realize the level of commitment not just time but sort of to do it well I mean it goes back to renegotiating so what I'm doing is I'm saying no more boards until I've renegotiated some of my current commitments and then we'll
see that's also a very powerful language right there categorically I'm saying no I have a policy of saying no to X until I've have a b and c that's right done deal and by the way people can't argue with that because they're like that does sound like a very San thing to do but I have a lot of appreciation more than I did before of folks who do this in
service governance matters right it matters for institutions not just companies and it should be done well but gosh it's a big commitment be careful with those big commitments folks they sneak up on you yeah anything that has multiple years attached to it yeah oh boy it's kind of like the the scope creep time evaporating version version
of the best business model of all time which is being a venture capitalist where you have these like stacked funds that's great if you're taking your 2 and 20 but if it's a commitment of your time over multiple years and then they start to stack and oh my God then you're like 27 snow layers deep in the Avalanche of
time requests that's right that's right and you got like a 10year horizon yeah I mean at minimum and that is like seems exciting at the beginning and then then you stack another 10 and another 10 and you're like wait a minute all of a sudden I'm like 65 years old and you know anyway I I think it's yes some
funds have closed and hopefully you've done well but you made commitments before those things happened to another set of them yeah totally so it's like a rolling Avalanche it is not the Avalanche is not ending do not say yes right away folks yeah especially to multi-year commitments that's probably the headline that and the toy is broken
I'm telling you that's your next book he I really think he could do well I I have to ask this cuz it's of acute interest for me personally also because it might help me individually but also with employees of mine managing High performers how do you get extraordinary output from extraordinary people without burning them out or letting them burn
themselves out if I was like what are the pantheon of management lessons so one of them is you got to manage different people differently another Pantheon lesson is spend disproportionate amount of time with your high performers because instead what we all do is get all of our time sucked by the folks who are struggling
and then we don't invest in the high performers and then they're either burning themselves out or finding a new opportunity because they're not realizing their High performers and benefiting or they know they are and they're not getting investment and they're like I'm going to go get investment somewhere else so number one
is how do you manage them is you make sure that they are a priority of yours even though they are perfectly good on their own which is the sort of d right like how do I help them in my book I steal I mean I don't steal I credit I Source a lot of Frameworks the book Skilling people tactics for management and Company building oh yes thank just
to throw it in there so there are a lot of QR codes you can scan and look at the sites where I reference a lot of materials and books conscious business Fred Kaufman's in there one framework I think I mean as far as I can tell I made up myself was a top talent framework which is again I try to like simplify
things but I think High performers fall into two categories and I call them pushers and pullers and so The Pusher is the one who's like give me more give me more they're often wanting to get more comp too but they're like I want recognition I want responsibility I want scope I want to move the needle I'm high impact they're very impatient with
themselves with other people they can be a little high friction for the team because they're like going for it grabbing it grabbing it but you know it's fun because you load them up and they're just like carrying the whole thing up the hill without you but they can be tough my main coaching often ends up with them is saying until I believe
that the people working with you love working with you I don't think you're succeeding they're like what what because they're all keeping score but they're keeping score in the sort of maybe early in his life Tim Ferris version I don't know oh no that's a fair assessment I mean I think I am a pusher as an entrepreneur for sure and
that I've learned how that can be a liability it can be a huge superpower and it can be a huge liability right and your job is to sort of like I say you know giving direct feedback is holding up a mirror and just being like here's the beauty of you and here's the liability part and if you can't show me that you can work on the liability part
I can't keep loading you up because in the case of The Pusher yeah they might burn themselves out but they actually like burn out the people around them so that's The Pusher so the puller it's funny this happened to me in a couple of conversations I've had is I'm usually being interviewed by someone who's like
The Pusher I'm the puller but anyway I'm the puller is um someone who no complaints you load them up and they're like yep yep I got it but they're not asking for it they're not grabbing it they're not pushing but they're highly competent they're very organized they're very consistent reliable and they have good judgment and you're like okay I
know that person won't screw that up I know that person will get the people to the party and that you know whatever it is and you just start loading them and they don't renegotiate they don't know how to say no and then they explode like they basically implode or expe that's what I've run into with past employees
yep and there's some like I went through a period of my own development where I was like I think of it as my martyr period where I literally I don't know who I thought I was martyring myself for like everyone else I like I would be doing all this stuff for my colleagues for my team and I was like no one
appreciates like I don't know and I eventually had a really good open conversation with a guy not my boss who worked with me and he's like did I ask you to take that on like you to start running that project or you run our planning process or like did someone ask you and I'm like well no no one was doing it so I'm doing it he was like H
and he's like and why do you feel like you have to do that I was martyring myself for nothing like I think Martyrs at least are celebrating like a god I was like sacrificing myself on the altar of someone didn't do the work so I'll do it it was very bad very bad and I was resenting the hell out of my colleagues
I'm like does I mean this happens in relationships I mean it's like the who's going to take out the garbage thing I designated myself the garbage collector for like a whole set of things partly because I thought it was that was part of my job but still it was not good not good anyway the polar will implode SL explode and you might not be able to
save them if it gets too far so your job with them is like look let's work on delegation skills let's work on saying no let's work on Boundary like look at me let's work on rules boundaries how do you not be the person carrying everything and doing three jobs and I think that once you know those two archetypes you can sort of look for the
signs of them and then you can think well what's their classic Development Area and then your job is to be all over them on that Development Area because they will collapse if you don't get them to see that part of their job like The Pusher especially part of your job is to stop creating friction for everyone and
like for me I really started to take exercise seriously when I decided it's part of my job to be like a better leader I need to get a certain amount of exercise and now I will make time for it and I think a lot of these types are like I'm going to do everything to win these pushers and you're like you know what part of winning is like avoiding a
peric victory voiding one where everyone wins but dies on the field right like that and and they're like oh well then how do I do that cuz it doesn't come naturally to them they're like how do I and then they'll say I don't want to work with low performers and this is the problem they're so good that I mean now
we're going deeper on this they're so good that you can't quite say back to them no those people are the same as you so instead you're like yeah okay we all have different strengths and weaknesses what I feel like you're doing is not even appreciating what anyone else is bringing to the table why do you think
that is and it's like they don't stay up all night like I do getting the thing done you're like no they don't and I actually don't think sometimes you should stay up all night getting the thing done but what do they do well and then you get them turn to think about assets you're like how can you use that asset to get the things done and they're
like hm but they really don't think that way because it's all in their own shoulders takes practice like so many things Claire this has been a fantastic conversation thank you so much I've had so much fun I've taken copious notes I'm going to be following up on a million side quests as we call them but important side quests I've taken notes
of phrasing that you've used all sorts of things so I am looking forward to actually digging into my homework I will not stay up all night for the record I'm trying to also Health First sort of foundational along with the awareness having the vehicle to do the things you want to do your book which I highly recommend to folks it's incredibly
tactical scaling people tactics for management and Company building tons of templates tons of Frameworks lots of specifics that you can apply immediately people can find you correct me if I'm getting this wrong but on Twitter at cugh Johnson we'll link to LinkedIn as well are there any other websites or
anything else that you'd like to point people to the strip press website you can find scaling people and you can find actually I did interviews with a bunch of leaders that there's digital only content which we can give you all the links to that but no thank you Tim this has been wide ranging as promised and stimulating and I've got some
recommendations I'm walking away with so thank you thank you so much Claire and for everybody listening we will link to everything in the show notes this will be encyclopedic and you can find that at tim. Blog podcast and you just search for Claire and this will pop right up and you'll find everything that we discussed
and until next time be a little bit Kinder than is necessary not only to others but also yourself and as always thanks for tuning in hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between 1
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