Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedDavid DeSanto: belief
14 Apr 2024 Lenny's Podcast The GitLab way: Kindness, transparency, and short toes | David DeSanto (CPO)
“What I learned early in my career is that tension, especially very high, very tension driven conversations can really kill productivity, kill morale. And that I found that if I can deflate that a little bit and re-add some, I don't want to say humanity to the conversation, but really disarm the topic, that people are able to move forward.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- David DeSanto
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 14 Apr 2024
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…Makes sense. Okay. Going a totally different direction, Hila also said that you're a leader with a great sense of humor and you often use your humor to navigate very high stakes conversations and executive negotiations. And I think a lot of people would love to have the skill. Do you have any advice or lessons other than just being David and being who you are, I guess any lessons for leveraging the skill, building the skill, how you apply it? I'll take the compliment from Hila. What I learned early in my career is that tension, especially very high, very tension driven conversations can really kill productivity, kill morale. And that I found that if I can deflate that a little bit and re-add some, I don't want to say humanity to the conversation, but really disarm the topic, that people are able to move forward. And I think that's what she's talking about. I will say that it probably is partially David being David to a degree. Maybe I'm the class clown experience of my elementary and high school experience and harnessing it for good now. But I think people can also do that. And leaders who have seen me do that, like Hila have learned that there's ways to do that if you can read the room and the nuance and know whether or not it's okay to try to add a little bit of levity, but I consider it a value part of my tool belt now, like a tool in my tool belt and I'm glad she appreciates it. Not every joke lands, which I'm sure you're not surprised by that, right? But yeah, I think it's been good to help keep people moving forward. Love it. David, is there anything else you wanted to share or touch on or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?…
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