Rachel Lockett: preference

Transcript context

…80%. That's the aspiration. You're always going to have 20% of things you don't love doing. There's just the logistics of getting into the zone that you need to be in. But I really try to push people to think aspirationally, that if you're 80% of the time in your gifts, how much energy you have to give to the world. It's so much more inspiring. So I want to tell you why I'm passionate about this topic because it actually is how I ended up as an Executive Coach. So 10 years ago, I was working at a small company called Remind, and I was running the UX Research team. And the CEO asked me to move into the Product Manager role for the Core Product team. And I was excited for the opportunity. I had non-technical background, but I thought, "Hey, all these strategists are up there creating the roadmap. I can do that. I know exactly what our users need." So I was excited for this. I came into the team, there was I think 12 senior engineers, very opinionated, very skeptical, this non-technical PM, but we worked together. And what I did was I listened. I learned what do our users need? What does this team need? What's working and not working? And with- What does this team need? What's working and not working? And within a month, this team was working well together. They were reviewing each other's code base. They were really disagreeing in a healthy way in our team meetings. They felt more connected to users. And I felt like, "Okay, this rhythm is working." But what I was also doing as I was at home stressing in the middle of the night about the new user experience, I couldn't decide which of the designs to go with. I was always over leveraging our data scientists, and I found myself swirling on decisions that didn't need to have so much stress involved. And one day I went for a walk with my colleague Zach Abrams, and he was a great product manager and he was listening to me ask all these questions about how to sell the vision of what this product would look like in the future. And he said, "Rachel, you're a zone of genius or your gift is not being a product strategist, but I've watched you over the last few months, and you have gotten the team more motivated than I ever could, and you've influenced the entire executive team behind your ideas, and that's impressive. You're a people person." And at first I was offended. What? You think I don't have the ability to be a great product leader? And yet I sat with what he said, and I knew he was right. Both my parents are therapists. I never wanted to be a therapist. Here I am. I'm basically a work therapist. I love entrepreneurial energy, I love big vision, but I'm a people person. And I left that, and I realized I love what my coach does. I got trained as a coach. I went into HR leadership. And Zach, who was a gifted product strategist, went on to lead product at Coinbase and BREX and most recently Bridge, which was acquired by Stripe, and he's still my client. I went into HR leadership. And Zach, who was a gifted product strategist, went on to lead product at Coinbase and BREX and most recently Bridge, which was acquired by Stripe, and he's still my client. And we've watched our journeys over the last decade, and we've both been honing our gifts. Life is more fun when you're in your gifts, and you have more inspiration and capacity to offer the world. So I just want to share that story because it's helpful to be honest with the people you care about when they seem energized and when they seem depleted because sometimes it's a wakeup call for people to really think about what is their spark and to protect it and to feed it.…

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