Evidence receipt / recommendation
Published · transcript-backedMolly Graham: recommendation
4 Jan 2026 Lenny's Podcast The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale
“In plenty of cases it doesn't, but that's always where I would start because it so often is just a more fundamental problem that then would lead you to look at other things across the team. But yeah, I would say two-way dialogue, but re-clarifying roles and expectations, re-describing the elephant over and over and over again, is one of the hardest parts about being a leader because you feel like a broken record, right?”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Molly Graham
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- recommendation
- Recorded
- 4 Jan 2026
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…So what would you do there? Say you're a manager, you're having an issue with a team member, would you go and ask, "Hey, let's just make sure we're aligned on goals and roles." Is that how'd you approach it or is there a different approach? So a lot of times what I do is two-sided, right? So it's like, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing and tell me what's going on for you. Do you know X, Y, Z?" When I take over a team, when I'm doing my listening tour, part of what I'm asking is, "What do you think your job is? What number were you hired to drive?" Because what you'll find is often their picture is different than your picture. You think you've been clear, you described an elephant and they spat out a tiger and that coming back to like, "Okay, no, we're building an elephant. You're in charge of the trunk." Will, in some percentage of cases, actually make a huge difference to the person's work and time and performance. In plenty of cases it doesn't, but that's always where I would start because it so often is just a more fundamental problem that then would lead you to look at other things across the team. But yeah, I would say two-way dialogue, but re-clarifying roles and expectations, re-describing the elephant over and over and over again, is one of the hardest parts about being a leader because you feel like a broken record, right? You feel like an idiot. You're like, "I've said this 45 times." Turns out no one heard you the first 43 and you have to. You have to re-describe it in order for people to hear you and to re-understand their sort of role in what they're doing. I love how you reframed the way I approached it by starting with, "Here's what I'm seeing. What are you seeing? What do you think your role is? " The very non-violent communication oriented, which is a clear pattern on this podcast, just the power of that specific framework.…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.