Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…To me, complaints are great inspiration. To me, I love radical candor, for example, where I try to go a step further than radical candor is to not just say, "Hey, here's my feedback. Just wanted you to know." But to say, "And I want something. I would like to see an outcome." And so I think that to me it's all about the effective framing that the complaint is probably not going to be an effective way to do it, but it can be great inspiration to say, "Gosh, that complaining means I'm frustrated. What am I frustrated about? Let me envision that better future. Let me think about what's an effective way to actually move towards that. What's an effective way to communicate that desire that's actually likely to get me towards a yes?" And so when we actually embrace that sort of frustration, annoying, complaining thing and follow that thread down and think about how to be effective that way, we can actually get something really compelling and useful, but it requires actually embracing that part of ourselves that sometimes we're a little bit ashamed of like, "Oh, I don't like that whiny part of myself. I'm just going to push that one down versus actually taking what it has to say as important data." That's a really good point. I think that's actually another blocker for a lot of people is just, "I don't want to be a complaining person. I just want to be like, let's do this. I'm in, let's go. I don't want to be seen as a squeaky wheel." Is there anything you say there about as a resistance point for people? Well, I'm a big fan of internal family systems, which is this sort of psychotherapy technique that really talks about parts and the sort of parts of ourselves and the ways in which they don't always agree with each other. Part of why I love this approach is, A, because we already use this language. We say, "Part of me thinks this, a part of me thinks that." And really when I talk about how to work through resistance, really it's about embracing and validating all of our parts. Because often we're really comfortable with one part of ourselves that we think is, "Oh, this part is virtuous and good and great, and this part is whiny and bad, and not great, and I don't respect that part of me as much." So really to sort of ask effectively, we generally need to embrace all these parts and really bring in all the information they're bringing in because if we ignore the part that's really scared to ask, well, then we're going to stay stuck. Versus if we come in and say, "Hey, buddy, why are you scared? You seem terrified. What's going on? Oh, well man, you think your whole professional reputation has staked on this and you're an imposter and they're going to find out, and then you'll never work again? Well, of course you'd be scared. That makes a ton of sense." And by embracing that, instead of ignoring that and being ashamed of that, that is often how we soften those fears and say, "I know that's scary, but we also know that's not really true. You're not an imposter, right? You're an experienced professional."…

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