Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…It shows up for the people who report to me, is one part example setting. So if I don't do it, why would they do it? I treat that very seriously that we should all be held to the same standards. And as a second thing, I give feedback when it's not up to the standard. So I think one of the things I've observed especially with people on my teams is that the expectations aren't always clear and you can't assume that they're clear if you don't share them. When something's not meeting expectations or really showing up as excellence, I think it's a combination of both giving the feedback on that and being direct about it and being specific about what would it take to get this to the bar that I am expecting or to show up in the way that I'm expecting. And then the third and probably most important thing is help them fill that gap. So that would mean... Let's take an example. It certainly has happened frequently in many jobs. A document is okay, it's not great, it's not going to be easy for people to follow, it's not as crisp as it could be. There's things that would strengthen it. I can both give the feedback on that to make sure like, yes, it's going to take another round of iteration, yes, we're going to have to work another week on this and not be done with it, but pushing people to get there, and then jumping into the document and helping. So I feel very strongly about, and that's kind of what I mean by setting an example of like, "Let's work on this together," and then through that, help people uplevel themselves so the next time around they know the expectations and they've had help getting there in the past. So that's probably happened a thousand times in my career where I jump in with both feet because something needs to be better and I think the teams are better for it afterwards, or I hope they are. I think that's such a good framework just to kind of mirror back what you said, "Set expectations that the bar is going to be really high and here's what I'm expecting from you." Give them very specific feedback on where the gap is and then help them fill that gap. I think a lot of people may feel this and hear this and they're like, "Oh man, I don't want a manager that's like this high of an expectation person and it just feels really stressful. " But I've had these managers and I feel like that's when I've learned the most and leveled up the most, is having someone that had really high expectations and then helped me understand, "Here's where you're not doing as well as you can. I know you can do better. Go back and work on this." I know that sounds annoying, but I think in practice it ends up helping you most in your career. I imagine you've seen a similar result. I think so. I mean you'd have to ask some of the people on my team. So I might look at it differently that they look at it.…

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