Claire Hughes Johnson: belief

Transcript context

…You have this framework, I think you call it being explorer, not a lecturer. Is that what you just described? Is that how you describe it? It is. And to me, what I just talked about was more of a meeting or a conversation scenario, but I think that this... I'm glad you brought that up. I think this is actually a very fundamental management framework of mine, which is in a one-to-one interaction, your job as the manager... First of all, too many people think your job as the manager is to be the expert and tell people what to do. No, actually, your job is to enable people to be their very damn best on your team. And you have to create an environment and a context and provide them information, and then you need to provide them a form of coaching. Now, again, I think people start think coaching is lecturing, like let me coach you how to make this Excel model. And sometimes they do. Sometimes someone comes to you and says, "Can you exactly show me how to do this thing?" Fine. But most of management is actually exploring with someone. It is being curious. It is saying, "I have seen this pattern of your work. Have you seen this pattern? Is there something..." I have a whole other framework which is about hypothesis based coaching. I think intuition as a word gets kind of a bad rap, and I kind of get why, look, especially if you work with a lot of engineers, which I do. It's not particularly always data driven, but guess what a scientific hypothesis is? It's a well-informed piece of intuition. And I think too many managers wait until they have a million pieces of data to make an observation to someone about an area for improvement. Instead, I would say take some data, form a hypothesis, and then explore it with the person. Because if you're well intended, which I think any good manager is, I'm bringing up this thing because I'm trying to help you see it and tell me if it's true so that we can both help make it more effective, better. One very light example could be, "I felt like in that meeting... How did you feel that presentation went?" And the person sort of says, "It's fine. I think I got through the material." You say, "Yeah, I felt like you were maybe a little bit nervous. I'm just exploring. Were you..." And by the way, the person could say, "Oh, no, no. No, no, no, no." And then you could back off, or you could say, "Oh, well, maybe it was just me, but I noticed some physical. Your leg was shaking a little bit, your voice, you were kind of repeating yourself." And they're going like, "What?" And you're all you're doing is holding up a mirror... And you have to own it. You have to say, "My experience of you in that meeting was that you seemed nervous to me. Maybe you were not, but actually maybe this is just a physical coaching thing." Have you ever had that? I have a few people on my teams who do this weird thing. This is pre virtual world, but when they're sort of getting it uncomfortable in a meeting, they put back their chair up off the table, sort of exit the circle. And that is a very physically big statement. And they had no idea, Lenny. They had no idea. getting it uncomfortable in a meeting, they put back their chair up off the table, sort of exit the circle. And that is a very physically big statement. And they had no idea, Lenny. They had no idea. I'm just watching the meeting, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you're like four feet from the rest of the group because you do not like this topic. And what I need to explore with you is how do you vocalize that instead of physically exiting the room or exiting the circle? These are just examples. Sorry, I could keep going. But I really think that that attitude of exploration and mutual sort of collaborative, let's discover some things about you... And by the way, it can be mutual. They can go right back at you and say, "Well, I observe this." Great. Great. I've interviewed a lot of people for the book, different leaders and managers from lots of different fields, but one of them was Reid Hoffman, who's a more typical. But Reid, we were talking about the other operating principle, which is management versus leadership. And Reid was pretty honest. He's like, "Look, I'm more of a leader. I'm not a manager." He's like, "I'm not a great manager." And then he told me the story. He's like, he had in his first company that he was building, he had a guy that he'd hired who was more operational. And Reid was sort of making an observation to him about something they should do, and the guy goes to him, "Reid, I wouldn't hire you to manage McDonald's." And Reid was like, "Okay, good. So tell me what we need to do so we can fix this thing." But what actually Reid's operating principle, interestingly when unearthed that whole thing, was that he prides... It's very important to him to create an environment of open feedback. He said, what I love about that story, yeah, it's funny and embarrassing, but actually that guy was comfortable saying to me, "I wouldn't trust you to manage a McDonald." And I think that actually I found inspiring because I don't think everybody who founded a company or who's managing someone has created an environment with how much trust in it, right? And that's how Reid thinks he gets a lot of stuff done, is people just come right back at him with the feedback.…

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