Hilary Gridley: belief

Transcript context

…Or reward looping each other. "Here's your reward." No, exactly. But no, people see that, and people respond to it. I think another example is something that I think about a lot, and is relevant to our conversation about, just how you build teams that can do hard things, is how you encourage people to take care of themselves outside of work. And it's something that I'm always trying to model for my team, and make it really visible the ways that I'm doing this, and sort of having my hobbies, and my other various things. And as a result, I also try to reward, have these reward loops, when I see people on my team doing the same thing. Because I think people, bosses often inadvertently create reward loops for, "Oh, this person, they had to stay up till two o'clock to get it done, but they got it done." When you create those reward loops, that's the behavior that people start mimicking. And so, I try to do the opposite. I try to find ways that I really am impressed with my team, and the ways that they take care of themselves outside of work, because I think that makes them better at their jobs, frankly, and just happier humans. So there's a PM on my team, Emily, who teaches at Handlebar. She's a fitness instructor in her spare time. And so, whenever we have a long meeting, I'll be like, "Oh, Emily, why don't you lead stretches, to get the energy level in the room up? Just nothing serious, just for a minute, before we start the meeting." And it's kind of fun. Everyone has a laugh about it, "Emily's doing her thing," and I'll be like, "Everyone, come check out Emily at Handlebar in Charlestown this Saturday, 10 a.m." And by the way, you all out there in the podcast world should do that if you're in the Boston area, she's great. Shout-out to Emily. But it's things like that. It's just finding these small ways to, because people are already laughing, people are already smiling, we're doing this silly thing, everyone's in a good mood, and I'm like, "Boom, perfect time to give someone a shout-out, and make them feel like a million bucks for doing something, that in many cases, they might think, 'Oh, am I allowed to have this other job outside work? Is this okay?'" And so yeah, you got to proactively build those reward loops. I love the reward loop of Emily getting this shout-out right now. This is so meta.…

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