Evan LaPointe: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, that's a really good way of visualizing. And then here's the surprise ending. The last piece of every relationship that you have is appeal. Appeal is how your brain interprets the shared experiences you have with other people. Whether or not you look forward to being around that person, whether or not you like their style, the feel of what shared experiences really are. And if you think about, let's pick on Shreyas one last time. What is his ability and utility? Off the charts. To what extent can he be trusted? Trust three, off the charts. Will he ever damage somebody? I mean, not to my knowledge. He may have some really dark past that we don't know about, but as far as I've seen, not a lot of damage in his wake. And then thirdly, what kind of experience is he? He's an extraordinarily positive experience. So he naturally accumulates great relationship after great relationship after great relationship. And again, if you're that great engineer with a ton of ability, now let's flip the middle dimension. And we trust you a lot, but you're a horrible experience. Are you coming to our offsite? Are you in this meeting? No, you're gone. We don't want you there. You're like a hurricane. So biologically speaking, the biggest bug in our programming as we transfer this to the business context is what makes the most sense in business is the most, if it's a meritocracy, the best people with the best knowledge that we can trust should be in the room and we will fight it with every fiber of our being if they're a terrible experience. And that's a bummer. And what's funny is you can flip it. We all either have friends or know people who have friends that you cannot trust, they have no ability to speak of, but they're a super awesome experience. What a great friend. So how is it that we get this thing completely flipped? And I think that's the thing. As you parse that list, as anybody listening parses that list, it's critical to ask what kind of experience am I? That is where to start? Not how good am I at my job? How much do I know? How critical am I to this process? But am I a miserable experience? And if the answer is yes, don't worry too much about the other pieces yet, you got to fix that first. And to this point of the profile, as you parse the profile, you'll find things like obviously not a pleasant experience, like being really impolite, obviously not a pleasant experience, being super overbearing and assertive, obviously not a pleasant experience, being hyper low in openness and enacting out of that and telling everybody they're overcomplicating everything all the time. Not a great experience for people who are actually well-intentioned trying to get it right. So there's concrete things that you can do with this knowledge in mind. This last piece makes me think about why some of the most effective PMs are the PMs that bring a lot of energy and positivity to the team and just get people excited, which is such a soft skill, but such a powerful thing you can do for your team because people kind of look to you to lead them. I had a PM I was working with in every meeting, he is like, "This is going to be awesome." He just comes right in every meeting, "Oh, who's ready to make some decisions," and it really changes everything. And so this is amazing advice. So basically if you want better relationships, which will make you a better influencer, start with what kind of experience am I, when people work with me, ask me for stuff, ask me questions, and you shared a bunch of specific things you can do. Something I always tell people is just try to smile, just look happy. That makes a big difference.…

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