Nikhyl Singhal: belief

Transcript context

…This is a good segue to talking about the third bucket, which is kind of later career CPOs. That's the segue in my mind there. Something that I've heard you talk about is that a lot of really senior leaders have real development areas, but they're hiding behind these superpowers that they have. Plus, people don't like to give real feedback to senior people. So I'd love to hear just what you're seeing there and how maybe people can work through that and what we can learn about that issue that you've noticed. This came from my notes as I was talking to a therapist on this. They talked about the shadows of superpowers. And I thought it was an incredibly powerful phrase that everyone focuses on your superpowers, but no one ever thinks about what shadows they create. Shadows of superpowers to me is the story of a lot of executives. There's an adage that's thrown around, which is, what gets you there isn't what got you here. It's sort of the tools that have made you successful today, you need to almost rebuild or relearn to get to the next phase. And I think both of these sort of speak to the same point, that oftentimes people have a great superpower. They go into a performance review, person says, "You're getting some feedback from your peers that you struggle in collaboration." And the manager even sometimes is puzzled, but the individual will say, "Are you kidding me? My last five performance reviews told me that I was one of the best collaborators in the company. How in the world is that possible?" And then what you realize is that, "Well, you're collaborating as long as people agreed with your point of view. Now as a leader, we're asking you to be opinionated, and because you just think you're an amazing collaborator using the exact same tool set. And it turns out that when you're dealing with senior people, that may not even be in your function, they may not be product, they may not be tech, they recoil, but you're moving so fast because it's your superpower. You would never think that this needs to be rebuilt." Sometimes it could be more extreme. Great collaborators sometimes are very reticent to present their own opinions because they're so good at assimilating others. Or people that are amazing at growth struggle to be innovative. People that are world-class storytellers struggle to get in the details. People that are very taste maker, they are always the first to have point of view. They don't necessarily introduce change particularly often. You're strong politically, but your decisions are unprincipled. You're a structured thinker, but blue-sky innovations are very tough. You're an amazing listener, but you're very weak to be decisive. I can go on forever. And what I would say to you is, sometimes even in a 30-minute conversation, walking into the room, just knowing what I know about the person, I can unlock their development area faster than anyone ever before, simply because my secret is, I'll bet you, because of this person's world-class here, these are the three things they're going to hit. And they don't even realize it because it's their identity. This is what got me here. If you make me work on that, you will make me change my superpower. And I'm like, "That's why you're stuck. That's why your career is plateauing." And then they get sad and then they take a long time to process, and then the work actually begins and then they solve and they go. Almost everyone, once they have the name and the face, they're able to solve. they get sad and then they take a long time to process, and then the work actually begins and then they solve and they go. Almost everyone, once they have the name and the face, they're able to solve. But facing the name is hard when it's sitting in the shadows of superpowers.…

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