Ben Horowitz: belief

Transcript context

…What is the advice you share with founders? Because as you said, it's very hard to do this, just what helps them actually get better at this? Is it just Ben being by their side telling them this is how it is? Is there anything else you can share? No, no. I would say this is one where I can't really coach you to be good at this. I can point it out so that you recognize that you were slow or whatever. But it's kind of like I always liken when I talk to them, it's like football. You can have a really fast great athlete, but if they don't trust their eyes, if they don't run to the ball when they see it, if they think, "Oh, maybe that was a fake," then they're that step slower and then they'll never be as good. And CEOs are like that. If you don't trust what you see and you don't run at it, then you're just not going to be good. And it's hard to get CEOs not to hesitate. But look, the thing that does help is they look at it and I look at it and I confirm, "No, that is as it appears." And sometimes they're afraid of the conversation. So that one I can help with. So A CEO might be afraid, like they want to do something but they don't know how to say it. They don't know how to have the conversation with the employee so I can walk them through that. I had an instance where the CEO said, "Hey, I need your help, Ben. My CTO, he's an asshole." And I was like, "Okay, great." I said, "But you're not going to fire him because I know he's a good CTO, or are you asking me should you fire him?" He said, "No, no, I don't want to fire him." And I was like, "So you're asking me what to do? You don't know how have that conversation with him about being an without him quitting. That's what you're saying?" And he goes, "Yeah, that's the problem." And so I go, "Well, why is he an asshole?" And he says, "Well, he's an asshole because the other day he made a very junior young woman in our finance organization cry." And I was like, "Yeah, I got you." I said, "Look, this is what I would say to him. I'd say I just sit them down and I would say, 'Look, you're a really good director of engineering because you do a great job at managing the team, get the products out, all that. But you're not really a CTO because to be a CTO, you have to be effective with other parts of the organization. You can't just be effective only with engineering. And making somebody cry, she's never going to do anything you want. You lost all effectiveness with all of finance by doing that. And so if you want to get good at that, I'll help you. I'll work with you on it, but if you don't, I'm going to have to hire a CTO at some point because obviously I need that.'" And then he was like, "Oh, okay, I can have that conversation. I can't have the conversation that, 'Hey, you're an asshole,' because I don't want them to quit, but I can have the conversation that's more specific." And a lot of getting people not to hesitate is just getting them over that. And so often, and I would say early in a CEO's career, a lot of it is just not knowing how to have the conversation. There's also I imagine an element of I just want to be liked. I don't want people to hate me. You have this great line that you want to be liked and respected in the long run, not the short run.…

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