Deb Liu: evaluation

Transcript context

…That is such a good point, I have never thought of it that way, and it's so true, and I'm not great at that. I'm much better when I can think about it and come back to someone with an answer, and that is not fair. Such a good point. Your answer about communication being the most important thing to work on, that's exactly my answer to that exact question always. I'm curious if you have any advice for how to get better at communication. What have you found helps people most other than just doing it again and again and again? Well, so I was extremely introverted as I said. When I was growing up. I grew up in a small town in the South. I was extremely quiet because people would say, "Go back to where you came from." They would make fun of me and my sister and my family. We just had a lot of things happen, and again, it was a very different time and I hope things are changing, and I just realized if I just stay silent, maybe no one would notice me. If no one notice me, they won't say anything and so I just learned that silence was my protection. Then I realized when I got went to college and I studied engineering, you're doing problem sets. You do labs, and it's very easy. You never have to talk. There's no class participation grade, so it's great. And then I went into consulting and I sucked at the client part of client service. I was a pretty good analyst. I understood how to do the analysis. I was pretty good at strategy, but I was terrible at the client part. And they would say, "You need to hang out with the client." I'm like, "Why? I do really good work. " And I realized that so much is not just, if a great strategy falls in the forest and no one knew about it, it doesn't even matter, right? And so I learned that I was failing at the part that was the most important part of consulting, wasn't just getting to the answer, but it was making sure you could convince people of the answer. And I really struggled with that. And so when I got to business school, 30, 50% of the grade was class participation. I was terrified because I had never really spoken in class, I'd never raised my hand. I actually taught myself how to speak up by actually having tally marks how many times I spoke, and then I started rating how good the comments were. And it was a practice. I practiced it like a language, and it was a skill. I think that is really important for somebody in the workplace today. Join Toastmasters, I've seen a lot of success where people are very comfortable. Joining Toastmasters and then being forced to do it, having a group of people around you, encouraging you and teaching you, that's really incredible. Another thing is really joining circles. Having a safe place to speak up lets you try out different things, and then you'll get more comfortable in speaking in groups, and it'll give you more confidence for the next conversation. And then I would say this, which is actually try what I did it in business school. Go to a meeting, and try a strategy where you really show up, and the strategy is I'm going to show up and this is how, and this is the thing I'm going to do differently and try it out then get feedback. I remember that we did a two-day product review, a marathon, went through every product that we had, and it was a couple dozen. And at one point, one of the leaders hadn't said anything in two days. I wasn't even sure she'd come, and her manager came to me, she's a lead of one of our functional areas. Her manager came to me and said, "How is so-and-so doing?" ers hadn't said anything in two days. I wasn't even sure she'd come, and her manager came to me, she's a lead of one of our functional areas. Her manager came to me and said, "How is so-and-so doing?" I said, "We had a two-day off site, I don't think she said anything." I went to her and actually spoke to her about this. And I said, "You are an incredible leader. Your pulse scores are great. Your team speaks so highly of you, but we were together with everybody and you didn't say a single thing." And she said, "Oh, you're right." But she goes, "I didn't feel like it was my place." And I said, "But then every single person from your function feels like it's not their place now because you're their leader." And so when I've said it that way, she said, "You're right," and she started working on it. She wouldn't do it for her, but I think she did it for them, and to have a motivation, a reason, and then start working on it. And just like any product, have a roadmap, have measurements, really understand whether you're making progress.…

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