Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I think in that conversation what's important is also saying, "I believe you can do all these things and I'm doing this to support you." Or, "I'm sharing this feedback because I believe in you." Also saying that I'm here as support, as you are building that out, let me know what I can do to support you. We can jam on it together if it's helpful. Basically, I guess boil it down to one, restating your intention and why you are having that conversation to sharing that you are there to support them and offering your own help as well. Those I think are the things that go along well. And I think the third thing is as you give someone feedback, it should never sound like finger pointing or criticizing. It's really just, "Hey, this is what I observed, this is the impact that it had and here is a different way." And so keeping the feedback really about the work itself and the specific things that you think can be improved. I know you're also a big fan of developing talent internally versus hiring experts from the outside and it's always this decision I think as a leader and as a company. How much do you invest in developing people knowing they can leave anytime, knowing that that's going to take all this time and work? What have you found from and just learned about the advantages maybe of spending time in developing people and helping them progress and just why is that something you find really important? I'll start with the why behind developing people. For me personally, it comes from like I'm personally passionate about it just because I feel that a lot of folks invested in me personally when I started out in the working world, I actually struggled quite a lot. I think making the transition from school where it's really clear what success looks like, you're just studying, getting good grades. To work where things are much more ambiguous was a really big transition for me and I really benefited from so many mentors that invested in me that I kept in touch with over the years that have also just helped me with my careers. Two that really stand out are from Dropbox, Oliver Jay who goes by OJ and GC Lionetti. So it really has come from a very personal place for me. Secondly, I think it's just makes a lot of sense as you're scaling a company that as you are growing, it just is a smoother transition that the folks on your team can grow with you. People will build institutional knowledge and people talk a lot about founder intuition and that intuition that founders just have. I actually think that extends to early employees too, that have built a ton of context on the user on how to get things done at the company. So the more that you develop talent within the company, the smoother transition is versus bringing someone from the outside where there's just a lot of different factors and there's risk there. And so it really comes from a personal place, but also it makes a lot of sense from just like de-risking the situation as you're scaling.…

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