Julie Zhuo: belief

Transcript context

…This is amazing advice. Very tactical. Okay. Is there anything else? So we've talked about a bunch of timeless pieces of manager wisdom, things that people need to hear, especially as new managers. Is there anything else that you think is really important that you think people are just not fully grokking for being great managers? I think the idea of win-win, I think about that all the time in my mind. And I go back to because I think that often we have this story in our heads that sometimes things are adversarial. As a manager, I'm trying to get people to be more productive. So I'm trying to get them to do a thing that maybe they don't want to do. I'm going to try and get them to work harder or I'm going to somehow put more pressure on them. If you start thinking like that, that's not a win-win. way to be thinking, right? That's like you saying my getting better outcomes has to come at the expense of somebody else losing something. And I think if you start thinking like that, it's very difficult to come up with a strategy or to truly be successful. But if you say, look, actually, my job is to figure out how to create win-wins. So I actually don't want, I don't want somebody over the long run to feel like what I've done is just create a ton of pressure for them. And now they're super burnt out and they're quick because that's not good for our team. That's not good for me. That's not good for our long-term relationship. How do we find, like, how do we find the solution that can be win-win? And I think if you think like that, a lot of things get easier. So for example, with new managers, I think this is true for me too. The first time I had to tell someone that, they shouldn't be a part of this team was extremely fraught for me. And the main reason was because I'm putting myself in their shoes and I'm imagining that this is truly horrible and I've just done a huge disservice to this person. And that's like the most awful thing. But there's another way to look at it, which is, hey, if this person's on the team, they probably want to be successful. They want to do great work. They want to be valued. They want to grow their career. If this is not the place for them because it doesn't align with their true interests and the things that are going to help them be successful, it's just not the thing that they either want to do or can do at this point. It doesn't do anything. that person any good for me to somehow could try to continue to make it it's actually going to be miserable like i'm going back to like prolonging that misery state and so sometimes a win-win thing is to just say look it's not working and i know i i respect and value you so much that i know you want to do something that you can be proud of and you can grow in and that's going to be really valued and right here what we got this isn't it That's like a win-win way of looking at the situation, not a like, you know, oh, my firing them is just definitely going to be a horrible, you know, I'm not trying to say it's not going to be hard. Obviously, it's hard, but it's in the mentality and the mental model, I think, makes all the difference because it's going to be different in the way that I convey it to them. It's going to be different in why this actually in the grander scheme of things may be great. I think, makes all the difference because it's going to be different in the way that I convey it to them. It's going to be different in why this actually in the grander scheme of things may be great. And it's going to... reduce this adversarial feeling where they're now going to see me as like an enemy or somebody with all this power who's making you know uh choices that impact them and they feel powerless it has to be a collaboration and i think if it's not win-win if i could be wrong i would say i don't think it's right the person could actually say no you're wrong and that would actually be great information because then maybe we can go back and we can find a way to make it win-win…

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