Lenny Rachitsky: commitment

Transcript context

…No, it doesn't change at all. There is one point I didn't include, which I'll include now, is there's helping the person be their agent, but there's also allowing the person, whenever I have a difficult conversation, I start it off, "Hey, this is going to be a difficult conversation. I want you to take a few seconds and prepare yourself. You are not going to enjoy this." What I found is that the way the amygdala gets triggered is often because of surprise. So, if you give someone just a few seconds to mentally prepare, then the amygdala often doesn't get triggered nearly as hard because if they're aware that they're going to go into fear, they're going to go into anger, they're going to go into sadness, then they can see it coming and they go, oh, that's what it is. But if they don't see it coming, just a surprise and all of a sudden it grips their whole brain and now they're in it and they don't even know they're in it. That's the first thing I do. This is going to be a difficult conversation. Are you ready? Then I share the news. I'm letting you go, here's why. Then second, I deliver the message. The third thing is now they're feeling emotions, strong ones. Even though I warned them, they're still feeling them. Now you want them to be able to release those emotions, and so I say to them, "My guess is you're feeling a lot of anger right now, fear, sadness. Is that true? And if so, would you be willing to share with me what you're feeling and what you're thinking?" Sometimes they don't answer, but many times they do and they share with me and they let it out. That's important to allow them to let it out. Then I make them feel heard and I actively listen. That makes them realize that I'm not trying to run away from the pain that they're feeling. I'm not trying to leave them alone with it. I sit with them as they have it and then I try to help them get through it. That's something else I wanted to chat about is the feeling heard lesson that you have for people. I'd love to just get your advice on just how to help people feel heard. It's like, oh yeah, I know that's important. I want people to feel heard. I will listen and it'll go great. But you have some very tactical advice on how to actually make people feel heard. Yeah, there's sort of a few different levels of it. One way to make people feel heard is, let's assume you're talking to them because there's another way, there's an even more surface way is verbal. Sometimes what I do is I ask, if I'm in a group of people, and there's a question or a problem that we're trying to solve, instead of going around the room and hearing people's verbal opinions, which takes forever, I ask everyone at the same time to take five minutes to write down their solution. Then we all drop it in a doc and then I just read it. When I read it I say, "Thank you, Lenny." And that makes you know that I at least read it, so that's a little bit of feeling heard. Second, if I want to make you feel more heard, I ask you to say it verbally and then I repeat it back to you. "Lenny, I think what I heard you say is... Is that right?" And you're like, "Yes." Or you're like, "No, not quite a little bit different." Then if it's a little bit different, I repeat it again until you say, "Yes, that's it." Now you know that I understood you. Then there's a third way which is even deeper, which is especially if you're giving me feedback, you likely don't want to hurt my feelings. So what you're doing is you're giving me the feedback, but you're couching it, you're polishing it, you're rounding the edges, you're making it softer. It's not really what you're thinking, but it's what you're willing to say. If I want to make you really feel heard, I reflect back what I imagine are the thoughts in your head. If I think you're feeling anger, I sort of think to myself, well, what would anger feel like? I cause myself to feel that anger, then what are the thoughts that appear to me? I say something to you like, "Lenny, I think what I'm hearing you say is you're off and you're thinking, screw you, Matt. How dare you walk into the office and not even say hello to me? Is that close?" And you're like, "No, Matt." People either say one of two things, they say, "Yeah, that is it." Or they say "No, that's stronger than what I was thinking, but directionally that's right." What that really means is, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Almost always their thoughts are bigger than their words, but they really feel heard when I share their thoughts. Now, that's not the end of the process. I mean you actually have to then do something. Once you made them feel heard, you have to say, okay, well either I accept or don't accept this feedback and if I accept, here's what I'm going to do about it. If I don't accept, I need to explain to you why. Here's what's going on. You shared with me what's going on in your world, now let me share with you what's going on in my world. Hopefully, you can see why this thing that's going on in my world doesn't allow me to accept what it is that you shared, and hopefully now that you see what's going on in my world, your feedback changes and that's it. That's the whole process.…

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