Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Well, and on that note, when I approach these conversations, I always try to think of them as, even if I don't agree with the feedback, if I don't agree with the decision, what is the insight that I'm missing? How am I wrong about this? In ways like, what would be true for this other person to be right? And I'll go through that thought exercise and I might not get to the other side and agree with it. I might still think I'm right or whatever. But oftentimes it forcing myself to think that way forces me to think about how this other person thinks it. And if I do that enough, I will be like, "Oh, this makes sense. I think this makes sense if. I think this makes sense if, and oh, maybe this other thing is true." And I think when I hear the people, the people who are like, "I don't know what's going on with this company," I think they do the opposite. I think they look for reasons to disagree and they look for holes to poke in, "Well, this decision doesn't make any sense because I came up with something that might be wrong about it." And I think that's another thing, by the way, in terms of just sort of helping your team have the emotional maturity to exist and thrive in an organization is helping them think that way, helping them understand you have a point of view. Your point of view is important, but on some level, you do kind of have to have respect for these other points of view and have the humility to think that maybe they're onto something that you're not onto. And it's amazing how much you can learn into it without having to have all the facts just by doing that. If you're like, "Well, this person's behavior makes sense in a situation where X, Y, and Z is happening," oftentimes you'll find that X, Y and Z is happening. I'm glad you went there. I wanted to actually follow this thread, which is kind of a different direction, but I think a lot of people are always struggling with this as a leader. When your leader disagree, it does say something that you completely disagree with, but you still need to represent that as, "Here's the thing we're doing." But you don't want to be like, "Oh, just because Nick said so." Because you lose power as a leader. Is there something you've learned about how to do that well when your leader tells you to do something you disagree with and you still need to get your team to do it. First, I do try to go through the what if I'm wrong exercise. I think a lot of people just sort of expect that if you ask somebody a open-ended question like, "Why are we doing this?" You're going to get a straightforward answer. And oftentimes the answer is not straightforward for various reasons. Maybe there's confidentiality reasons, maybe there's just somebody is acting on a hunch, but that hunch is informed by years or decades of reps of developing judgment, and they're probably really onto something. And it's not just this kind of arbitrary gut feeling. But whatever it is, I really try to get to the bottom of, let me really make sure that I have done my best to understand this person's point of view. And I have some sort of tools for doing that, which I can also talk about. But if I've done that, and I still disagree, I'm relatively candid about that, but candid in a way where it's still respectful. I think what you want to avoid is a situation where as a manager you're like, "Ah, I have no control. This sucks. This decision is so stupid, but that's a job, so we have to do it." Obviously that's not going to set your team up for success or make anybody happy about it, but you do hear that, you do see that happening. And so I think what I try to do in those situations is separate out my opinion from it, from the, " Well, what is the insight that makes it make sense to this person" and explain their rationale. Even if I'm comfortable saying, "I don't necessarily think this isn't how I would do it," or "I don't even really agree with how they're thinking about it, but from their point of view, from their perspective, their professional experience, whatever it is, I could see how this makes sense. And they might be right. I don't think they're right, but they might be. Let's find out. We're not going to find out if we are all squabbling about whether this is a good idea the whole time. The only way we're going to find out is if we give it the best shot that we have and try to do it. And if we're wrong, that happens sometimes and we try again."…

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