Ebi Atawodi: belief

Transcript context

…Speaking of Airbnb. Yeah. Owner, not a renter. How would you act if this house was yours versus when you rent, right? And so it's that buck stops with you, kind of mentality. Then there's this other one that I really think about which is, there's an informed captain. And so, I'm in too many conversations where I'm like, "Who is on the hook for this decision? Who cares if this decision is made?" It's not like six people with consensus. Who is the person? And I'm very big on people on count [inaudible 01:21:14]. A lot of people are like, "Well, but there are five of us." And I'm like, "No, no, no. There's one person who owns this decision and that's the person that we're going to empower to get all the context, get all the input, to make the decision." Right? And it's like the rapid model where you end up with the decider. And then, I think one for me, and this is just something I'm very passionate about, I'm a Black woman. I think a lot about how I show up in the workspace. And for me, something that's so crucial is I say vulnerability is your strength, right? And so we're all human. We're all fantastically flawed in many ways. And so I really, really fundamentally believe in this whole, who's the human behind the role and how's that human doing? And I don't optimize for being liked to be very... And it sounds very harsh. I do not believe in being liked. That's Ebi. I believe in being loved, right? And that's a very, very different thing. And when I said this once in a meeting, people were like... Yes. Right? But it took me a while and reading a lot of books to come to a definition of love, and love is the choice to extend yourself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. Right? It's very big and lofty and whatever, but you're literally extending yourself for somebody else or yourself, self-love. Right? And that's love. And when you're extending yourself, you're not nice. It's not always nice or like. It's sometimes is having hard conversations. It's knowing that, "Oh, there's a human. " Matilde, my engineering partner or Brian, my engineering partner, whoever those are, they know I care about them. So when the feedback is coming like raw, they know that it's in their best interest because I've shown them enough times that I genuinely care about the person behind the role. I feel like that brings the most powerful thing a team has. You'll see teams just tactically, they'll write a PRD, they'll send the PRD outside to the world, right? To the other partners and I'm like, "Have you spoken to the other PMs on your team? Have they read it? Because actually, it might help you write a better PRD." And so in my team now, we have our email distro. Gmail allows you to do the plus thing, plus PRD, and just ship your PRD, even when it's getting date. And people will just help you shape it because we all care about each other. ave our email distro. Gmail allows you to do the plus thing, plus PRD, and just ship your PRD, even when it's getting date. And people will just help you shape it because we all care about each other. So it's a very, I know fuzzy and whatnot, but I do really believe in this thing of, if we get back to the core of humanity and there's a human behind the role and they have goals and aspirations, and if you care and love them, the rest of it will follow.…

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