Helping Leaders Get Feedback & Grow Faster with Claire @ KnowYourTeam.com - Escape Velocity Show #20
Episode Stats
Words per minute
191.14075
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Toxicity
3
sentences flagged
Hate speech
2
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with my friend Claire to talk about where she grew up, how she got her start in tech, and how she started her company, Know Your Team. Claire talks about how she went from a small town to a big city, and why she decided to move her family to San Francisco.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
When I was starting out, I always felt like the way you be successful is you model the patterns
00:00:10.860
for what success for other people have been. That is the surest way to get there.
00:00:16.740
And I think it works for a lot of people. But what I think I've come to realize is if you have a
00:00:22.920
different picture of what that success is, or if you want to help people in a different way,
00:00:29.320
is your own personal picture of what that could be.
00:01:10.380
Whenever people are like, yeah, where are you from?
00:01:21.640
and then just very recently moved to San Francisco.
00:01:33.420
That's really cool, and that's where your family lives.
00:01:38.740
So this is a funny story, a funny aside, I guess.
00:01:45.800
And he has a PhD in mechanical engineering and robotics
00:01:58.540
And so he started teaching himself all sorts of machine
00:02:02.140
And now he's the director of AI at this company
00:02:06.860
packed up all their stuff, moved to an apartment
00:02:10.360
in San Francisco, sold their house on the lake.
00:02:15.100
And no, and they were just like, oh, here we are.
00:02:18.960
I mean, obviously, later in life, that's so cool.
00:02:21.160
Like, just, it's, I don't know if it's a weird thing to say that you're proud of your parents, but I'm proud of them.
00:02:27.740
I mean, I'm inspired just, like, it's just so cool to know that, like, they, like, reset.
00:02:34.540
Like, whatever dream you have, whatever you want to build, just to do it, age is not what.
00:02:40.000
And it's cool that your brother's at Google, and you're going to be there.
00:02:46.360
I was really reluctant, though, I'm not going to lie, to move out there.
00:02:55.080
especially by sort of your typical tech industry
00:03:01.060
that it was kind of spun out from 37 Signals AKA Basecamp,
00:03:05.320
so Jason and DHH, who a lot of my audience are familiar with.
00:03:10.860
And your background, first time we've got to meet,
00:03:37.940
No, we build software that helps managers avoid
00:03:41.160
So we provide educational content, online tools
00:03:46.400
to get feedback from your team, to build trust.
00:03:50.060
with over 1,000 managers from all over the world.
00:03:53.820
Yeah, I mean, everyone from managers who are at Dropbox,
00:03:59.960
And we work with over 15,000 people in over 25 countries.
00:04:06.060
And yeah, we've been profitable since month one, not day one.
00:04:13.160
But definitely month one, we've been running it
00:04:14.800
for the past five years, and actually very recently,
00:04:23.340
Yeah, we accepted a half million dollars from IndieVC,
00:04:30.140
it's a fund that is focused on supporting companies
00:04:33.640
that want to be profitable and build long-lasting businesses.
00:04:38.120
And yeah, Bryce Roberts, yeah, of OATV and Tim O'Reilly.
00:04:41.460
And so, yeah, we're honored to get to partner with them.
00:04:43.600
And the story of how you know the guys at 37Signal is like.
00:05:02.460
That's where I discovered really my love for entrepreneurship.
00:05:05.520
I took an entrepreneurship class there and was like, whoa, you can make money solving problems for people?
00:05:24.460
of both art, design, and emotion, and communication,
00:05:35.640
see things more systemically and really seek out truth
00:05:44.120
So it's always been this collision of worlds for me.
00:05:47.180
But I, yeah, while I was there, I was like, oh, whoa,
00:06:02.940
I mean, there's almost too many in some ways, right?
00:06:19.780
Actually, they invested in us after I left the company,
00:06:22.020
but it explains a little bit of my connection to them,
00:06:29.300
is I then left the Starter League because I wasn't really
00:06:36.700
Yes, to the Starter League, which is different.
00:06:54.720
No, but I mean, if you're running a monthly event
00:07:04.540
But no, it ended up being an extremely successful company.
00:07:07.000
I mean, we taught thousands and thousands of people
00:07:13.060
But I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do long term.
00:07:17.500
At the time, people were like, I don't understand
00:07:20.980
Who's going to pay $10,000 to learn how to code?
00:07:35.420
And I just wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do for,
00:07:39.320
Yeah, is that the problem you want to spend your time on?
00:07:41.740
Exactly, exactly, and really, really go deep on.
00:07:44.360
And so I ended up working at another early stage startup.
00:07:58.340
And the reason I hated my job was because I had a terrible boss.
00:08:02.600
So this is actually very much the inspiration for me,
00:08:05.720
even to this day, of why I feel like the problem of helping
00:08:21.700
Because it affected my happiness as an employee at the time
00:08:29.420
But it's like, people don't quit companies, they quit bosses.
00:08:34.500
whether it's Gallup or other polls that have seen that.
00:08:37.880
But I had started learning in organizational change
00:08:43.380
And do you think his boss was, did he know he was bad?
00:08:50.900
He's like one of those people who is a wonderful person.
00:08:59.840
and how he wants to invest in you and paints his picture.
00:09:18.900
And so I was like, wow, he has absolutely no idea.
00:09:28.040
So can you imagine the magnitude of this problem and unawareness for leaders who are running even, you know, 20-person teams or companies, let alone 60 or 600 or 6,000?
00:09:38.360
So I just was like, I'm going to make this my life's work.
00:09:41.260
I'm going to start a company to help leaders become better.
00:09:44.360
And, I mean, by the way, I mean, it's just, it's like hilarious when I think about this because I was like 23 at the time.
00:09:50.700
But just felt like, I don't know what this company is going to be.
00:09:57.560
I just, that's it. This is, this is, this is like what I feel like I'm meant to do. And so I took
00:10:02.620
some time off to do a bunch of research and develop a methodology. And once I sort of had
00:10:07.060
a hint of that, I thought, okay, I'll, you know, a way for me to learn whether or not this methodology
00:10:11.820
is true around how do you create an open and honest environment for leaders to actually get
00:10:16.920
that feedback so they understand whether or not they're a good leader and then what they should
00:10:20.000
be doing better. I felt like I had to test it. So I started a consulting practice working with CEOs
00:10:26.220
And so here's where we get back to the Basecamp connection.
00:10:34.160
So yeah, so I got connected to, or reconnected, rather,
00:10:42.160
would assume they've got their stuff figured out.
00:10:48.520
Because I know that they grew really fast at one point.
00:10:56.240
So this is after the office, but it was more about size than it was about pace of growth.
00:11:01.580
It was Jason, the CEO, felt like, hmm, we're 40 people, we're spread all over the world,
00:11:06.540
and this is the first time in running the company for almost 15 years that I just feel like I'm losing touch.
00:11:18.320
He's like, I feel like I'm a stranger in my own company in some ways.
00:11:25.600
I told him what I was working on and he was like, whoa, whoa, Claire, Claire, this is my biggest problem as a CEO right now.
00:11:33.740
I don't I don't want to be a founder who just sort of lets go of the reins and just everything falls off the rails eventually.
00:11:40.580
It's like I would like some intentionality behind how I'm interacting with folks and helping them feel like it's an environment for them to do their best work.
00:11:55.000
They actually ended up validating a lot of the methodology
00:11:57.580
that I'd been developing, which today is actually
00:12:04.060
is they actually changed some stuff in the company,
00:12:12.740
It's not just the pretty slide deck, hopefully.
00:12:15.180
And then the other interesting part of our conversation
00:12:19.720
was he was like, Claire, this is also highly ironic.
00:12:25.300
We happen to be building this software product on the side.
00:12:32.120
And it's a tool that helps CEOs like me get feedback.
00:12:37.700
And did they build this because Jason was in that problem
00:12:46.260
And it was kind of like this fun thing of like,
00:12:48.760
question yeah he's like i don't even know if we're gonna like open it up to the public or like i
00:12:53.460
don't i don't know what's gonna be like actually originally what it was it was more of sort of an
00:12:57.140
employee crm more than anything and less of a feedback tool and actually after a lot of
00:13:02.740
conversation with him it sort of started to move in that direction but anyway we went on our separate
00:13:07.540
paths and they started building out what was then called know your company i was actually building
00:13:12.020
my own software product at the time myself and i took like a job as a part-time hostess at a
00:13:17.400
a restaurant working nights and weekends to pay myself.
00:13:26.240
And I'm just like, is this the whole thing going to work?
00:13:29.040
That classic story of just trying to build the thing.
00:13:34.260
And I'm getting to this point where I'm like, oh, man.
00:13:53.100
I have a bunch of, I have like 10 potential clients
00:14:06.880
And it was right around that time, so this is the end of,
00:14:11.800
Jason reached back out to me and he said, Claire,
00:14:15.120
I have this crazy idea I want to talk to you about.
00:14:17.460
And we sat down, and he proposed that they take Know Your
00:14:22.540
Company, at the time, which they actually had then.
00:14:25.160
By then, it started selling it, actually, as a product.
00:14:34.580
And he was like, we have this product, and it's making money.
00:14:42.440
And I'm actually trying to get rid of these other products.
00:14:44.560
I was when he was trying to, I think he had high rise.
00:14:47.660
Exactly. It was when he was truly trying to go all in on Basecamp.
00:14:51.660
And he's like, I don't know what to do with it, but I have this thought.
00:14:53.920
He's like, what if we actually spun it out to be its own separate company?
00:15:05.220
You don't get any team or anything, but you'll get the customers.
00:15:11.940
like how did this just materialize in my life i like yeah just i mean i was 24 like i was like
00:15:19.820
this is stupid but what's neat about jason is if you watch the arc of of his career he i mean his
0.70
00:15:25.340
the the deal with david is similar right where they're like hey let's build this thing and why
0.99
00:15:30.000
don't we become partners and you know he's done this with high rise and a bunch of other yep it's
00:15:34.460
just it's just really neat because he you know i think a lot of founders sometimes feel like what
00:15:51.200
I mean, I think I've learned so much from both him and David.
00:15:59.360
is he has an incredible ability to know what he wants
00:16:05.480
while at the same time being open to the fact that.
00:16:08.260
That could look like a lot of different things.
00:16:32.060
So he was even willing to give an incentive for upside.
00:16:36.100
And for them, it was just because he knew what he wanted,
00:16:39.920
this new company thing is just like, ugh, we don't really
00:16:44.020
But we don't want it to go away, and maybe it'd be cool.
00:16:46.360
And Claire, you seem a lot more aligned and interested in it
00:16:52.360
And for me, it's like opportunity of a lifetime.
00:16:59.080
So it was literally just almost like a giant question
00:17:07.100
that help you understand what's going on in the team.
00:17:16.980
Public within the, no, there's no anonymity whatsoever.
00:17:20.480
OK, so you write it and people know you wrote it.
00:17:25.740
are called social questions that are around things
00:17:36.620
And then a rotating question around, what are you working on?
00:17:40.100
So the idea being that the three biggest things
00:17:42.620
that most people don't know about in their company
00:17:54.960
But I think, I mean, full credit to Jason, intuitively,
00:17:58.040
it was just the problems, the three biggest questions
00:18:04.480
And so the product has evolved significantly since then.
00:18:07.500
Because originally, it was called Know Your Company.
00:18:12.900
And yeah, the product was focused specifically, actually,
00:18:20.420
So it was CEOs of small companies, anywhere from 20
00:18:29.280
And even the pricing model was really different.
00:18:33.600
where it was a one-time pricing per person for life.
00:18:37.240
So it was actually $100 per person for life, not per seat.
00:18:49.180
So the idea is that as the company grows, it's $100, right?
00:18:54.540
because what it allowed us to do is actually collect
00:18:57.240
sort of the lifetime value of a customer upfront, right?
00:18:59.520
And so we were able to become profitable insanely quickly
00:19:03.420
Otherwise, we would have had to wait like 19 months
00:19:08.860
So it was really interesting from that standpoint.
00:19:17.840
So because you are asking someone to pay upfront, right,
00:19:25.780
means that the energy that the person is going to put behind getting people on board, getting
00:19:29.800
them to use it, know your company was very much a program than it was just a feedback
00:19:35.340
So we actually saw higher engagement, wonderful customer success, actually because of the
00:19:42.020
So we stuck with that pricing model and with that very specific customer segment for a
00:19:50.860
So for the first about year and a half, the way we sold the product is the only way you could even see it.
00:19:58.960
There were no screenshots of the product online for like over a year.
00:20:02.880
And the only way that you could even try the product was you had to schedule a WebEx demo with me for 30 minutes.
00:20:11.720
So I did in the first almost two years over 500 demos and calls with CEOs about the product.
00:20:26.960
So a lot of the writing and the speaking that I did.
00:20:30.060
So another thing that we focused on in the first two years
00:20:32.680
is I did just a ton of speaking, so much more than I do now.
00:20:40.540
And the reason behind that is when we're just starting out,
00:20:50.860
Well, what's the expertise if we don't know who Claire is?
00:20:55.040
So speaking was a wonderful way to establish credibility.
00:20:59.780
and understand what the real pains that people were feeling.
00:21:04.300
And then because we knew that we had a really very
00:21:10.520
where we knew exactly where the CEOs were going to be.
00:21:20.340
Because you see some founders, they're always speaking.
00:21:22.780
It's like, when do you actually get any work done?
00:21:27.600
Like, did you just get better at choosing the ones
00:21:29.600
where you knew you had a high percentage of potential clients?
00:21:32.640
Well, I think the first thing is to define for oneself
00:21:44.360
So in the beginning, for me, it wasn't necessarily
00:21:50.980
And so it was about audience size, it was about shares,
00:21:55.000
it was about, we did a lot of sponsorships and partnerships
00:21:58.620
and then over time we could see how that translated
00:22:04.200
I think the way that I thought about it then was
00:22:12.600
what's the likelihood that I'm actually going to have
00:22:15.760
a real conversation with someone who can buy our product?
00:22:17.940
Because if I know that if I talk to them, we'll close them.
00:22:24.260
So if you can get on stage, you can kind of see a bunch of potential future conversations.
00:22:28.240
And what's interesting about that, too, is it doesn't necessarily mean even a big conference, right?
00:22:34.820
So what we actually ended up doing and what was a really fruitful partnership was I spoke at a series of small, intimate, exclusive, CEO-only sort of roundtable events or three-day conferences.
00:22:51.360
There's a wonderful agency-focused speaker series event called Owner Camp where you have to be an agency owner and you do three or four days, right?
00:23:06.000
So we did a lot of things like that that ended up being wonderfully, you know, mutually beneficial for everybody.
00:23:12.320
And then here's here's the thing, though, Dan, like this stuff doesn't scale.
00:23:20.840
And what we started realizing is obviously once you get to a certain point, you want to you want to get things out there a little bit more.
00:23:28.180
And we started noticing a lot of really interesting signs that pointed that we needed to start trying something different and transitioning the business in a way.
00:23:40.340
Actually, a beautiful analogy that David, DHH, the other co-founder of Basecamp, he actually shared with me when we were talking this over during a board meeting is he said, comedians, Claire, when they get their start, you know, they go to the clubs and they hone their lines and they try different jokes and, you know, and they get to talk with your audience a little bit more intimately and you play the clubs for years, right?
00:24:07.660
And then you get to a certain point where you feel like you really know what your lines are.
00:24:10.440
It's like, then you take your show to HBO, right?
00:24:13.560
So there's a point in time, right, when you're ready to sort of go mass market.
00:24:18.340
So this is probably about two or three years ago where we're like, yeah, no, it's time.
00:24:26.740
I mean, you can imagine from each of those conversations, the amount of precision we were able to get about language and jobs to be done
00:24:33.860
and really understanding the mindset of what exactly are leaders who are struggling to get
00:24:39.660
a hold of what their teams are thinking and feeling, what are they facing? And so once we
00:24:44.060
got that, we said, all right, let's switch this up, right? So we opened it up to be self-sign
00:24:50.060
up. And then I transitioned to doing a lot more writing, which is much more scalable and mass.
00:24:54.920
I mean, but to an extent, some people would argue, well, Claire, that's not very scalable
00:24:57.600
either because we don't outsource any of our writing. I mean, we have hundreds and thousands
00:25:02.940
of people who visit our blog and read our stuff.
00:25:05.400
I mean, a hit post will easily get half a million views
00:25:18.160
We don't hire people to do it, and there's no ghostwriter.
00:25:23.260
And so to an extent, too, it's like at some point,
00:25:44.020
But then we started noticing something really interesting
00:25:50.620
Which is we saw sort of really insane traffic growth.
00:26:13.640
OK, well, it's great, but our sales are not 10x.
00:26:21.580
One part of the equation is not fitting with the narrative.
00:26:27.400
Like, at first we were like, is this a fluke in the data?
00:26:39.780
And what we realized is that the people who are reading our blog
00:26:45.400
posts and visiting our marketing site were managers.
00:26:55.540
These were actually new managers, in particular,
00:26:58.420
who were like starved for content about how do I run my first
00:27:10.640
I have to run my first staff meeting next week.
00:27:14.480
And we started doing some research and realizing,
00:27:17.500
actually, the resources, let alone tools that are out there.
00:27:22.880
just like there's when you think about how we learn anything in life right it's like oh there's a path
00:27:33.200
right and you have like a sort of like a foundation of knowledge and you practice it and there's like
00:27:38.960
sort of experts you can go to or i call them frustration flows yeah there's a path to get
00:27:44.640
better and leadership is this one area where no one's really figured it out yeah like if you you
00:27:51.920
You hire a new manager, and you're like, OK, cool.
00:28:04.220
It's like asking someone to learn how to ride a bike
00:28:09.600
So you're like, oh, OK, well, you can go to business school.
00:28:19.460
Do the workshop, or you talk to the executive coach.
00:28:23.520
And then again, you have to go apply the things.
00:28:25.980
And there's this gap of hearing and taking in what someone's
00:28:40.560
And could it be a combination of content, online tools,
00:28:45.460
So we decided, hmm, as we look at what Know Your Company is,
00:28:51.980
that most startups have, which is we have an audience,
00:28:58.240
Our product right now is for CEOs and it's for feedback,
00:29:06.380
and I got to find people who are going to like it.
00:29:09.060
So we're like, well, I guess we got to get a new product.
00:29:36.080
We changed the company name from Know Your Company, Know Your Team.
00:29:38.180
We changed the billing system because we also thought, no,
00:29:41.240
if you're a new manager, it doesn't make any sense
00:30:17.840
is just the fact that the way that we are helping people
00:30:44.960
light of april's talk we just saw here at business software um so the thing that most tools do is
00:30:52.600
what most tools are good at which is they give you features so they say use this for your one-on-one
00:30:58.120
meetings use this for setting your goals use this for feedback what they don't do is they don't give
00:31:03.140
you the methodology so that's the difference is we actually give you content we give you expert
00:31:09.260
opinion advice recommendations show up in the tool yes it's in the tool so in context exactly
00:31:14.940
in context. And this isn't just like, oh, Claire's experienced consultant. No, this is actually based
00:31:21.000
off all the data we've collected over the past five years with other 15,000 people. We run actually
00:31:25.760
studies on specific subject areas. So for example, for one-on-one meetings, we actually have a guide
00:31:31.160
in Know Your Team that you can read that's data pulled from over 2,000 people that'll tell you
00:31:36.160
that the most common frequency for people for running one-on-ones is actually weekly,
00:31:51.500
find having one-on-one meetings to be very effective.
00:31:56.820
see that effectiveness is about 16 percentage points less,
00:32:00.240
meaning there's a huge gap between how effective an employee
00:32:04.020
versus their manager thinks one-on-ones are, right?
00:32:11.580
unless you give people reason, context to do so.
00:32:16.220
And so if these tools in Office 5 or 15.5, which are excellent,
00:32:27.680
create good habits, become better, and not just turn on a tool
00:32:32.380
and they have to force themselves every week to do it,
00:32:36.540
Rather than actually understanding how this is valuable,
00:32:39.620
a way to integrate it into their day-to-day process,
00:32:52.720
The majority of managers don't prepare for their one-on-one
00:33:04.200
And would you argue that that meeting is probably
00:33:17.100
It's definitely the highest leverage in-person time
00:33:26.920
Andy Grove wrote about it in I put out with management.
00:33:29.680
Jason Lemkin said he would fire managers that didn't do it.
00:33:35.660
One-on-ones are non-negotiables, especially in my world,
00:33:43.220
So the product started off as a really neat way
00:33:47.120
to know your team at scale, the context of their world, their
00:33:59.000
having that entire ecosystem to become a better manager.
00:34:02.360
So we have these educational guides that are all online.
00:34:15.180
So what are the most effective ways to build trust?
00:34:18.000
How do you integrate that into your one-on-one meetings?
00:34:27.280
Quarterly off-sites or team off-sites or anything like that?
00:34:33.260
on creating context, setting direction in a team.
00:34:38.860
And actually, the one that we're about to release
00:34:41.760
for customers tomorrow is on managing remote teams.
00:34:55.520
a foundation of knowledge and context to understand
00:34:58.800
What are things that different companies and different teams
00:35:02.100
Because a huge problem with most leadership content
00:35:04.040
that you look up, because there's no shortage of it,
00:35:21.980
or someone's own personal experience, like Ray Dalio
00:35:26.120
And it's like that worked great for them and for Bridgewater
00:35:28.560
Like, when I read principles, I was like, yeah, that works when you have an industry where you can back test every hypothesis.
00:35:33.780
I mean, I don't know another industry that's got that ability.
00:35:37.640
Right. And it's always helpful to have those data points.
00:35:40.540
But what makes leadership effective is actually understanding context.
00:35:44.700
It's being able to see the broad range of what potential actions you could take and decisions you could make.
00:35:51.360
and then being able to pick which ones and tailor that to exactly that specific person in the specific situation in the specific context.
00:35:58.740
That's what that's what the best leaders are able to do is to filter that very quickly and to have a range, a broad range of that,
00:36:06.000
that like knowledge bank of potential situations and outcomes.
00:36:09.340
So that's what we try to give managers in a way that's not overwhelming, in a way that's really curated and backed by data.
00:36:16.760
So that's that's what you get with the guides. Right.
00:36:18.820
And then the second step is, well, it's nice to learn stuff, but this is the problem with books, right?
00:36:28.180
But if you want to do something after you read the book, it's quite a bit of energy, right?
00:36:32.560
So we have these online tools, these software tools that we've built where you can apply what you've learned.
00:36:36.700
So, for example, you read the building trust guide, and then you can turn on our icebreaker tool,
00:36:42.000
which automatically helps onboard a new employee, asks five fun questions, helps to build trust.
00:36:46.580
And because you've read the building guide or building trust guide, you understand, oh, this is actually helping to build effective trust, right?
00:36:54.840
And effective trust is, you know, different than cognitive trust because it's all about creating social bond.
00:37:00.640
And, oh, the social bond is important because it's going to have people create, you know, greater loyalty.
00:37:04.480
You know, we understand that that's going to help, you know, retention.
00:37:07.180
It's not just like, oh, I'm turning on this, you know, asking just like fun questions because it's fun.
00:37:13.640
It's like, no, it's again, it's like creating that pathway for someone to actually change their behavior over a long term.
00:37:19.680
Right. So there's that. There's the one on ones tool that people can use.
00:37:23.600
And then based off the guide, they understand how to use it better.
00:37:26.300
We have stuff on culture questions to ask to get feedback, heartbeat questions.
00:37:30.940
So people are on the same page. So you don't have to do a weekly staff meeting.
00:37:35.840
You know, if you're remote, you can just use our heartbeat feature and, you know, a bunch of other stuff.
00:37:39.740
but just to give you something to actually then apply what you've learned.
00:37:44.260
And then what you have access to is we have our online community.
00:37:49.000
And you can actually sign up for it independent of KYT.
00:37:54.360
But what's really nice is if you do subscribe to know your team.
00:37:59.560
It's all a part of all the research we've done to just help you stay more accountable.
00:38:04.200
So you have thousands of managers who you can talk to and have threads about.
00:38:19.720
It's all of a sudden, they're like, somebody said this.
00:38:26.160
You mentioned the great managers have this knowledge bank.
00:38:35.500
a great leader, manager, has based on your guys' research?
00:38:41.920
Funny, three is the number, actually, which is funny.
00:38:47.720
in our methodologies, there are three things we found
00:38:51.820
And so the first is around trust and building trust.
00:38:59.380
And trust, people get really confused sometimes what
00:39:03.040
Like, a lot of times, people equate trust with likability.
00:39:08.080
Trust is your intention matching your behavior.
00:39:18.500
So for example, some people might assume, oh, building trust
00:39:22.620
like quarterly offsites and asking about people's hobbies
00:39:27.280
and being transparent with company information.
00:39:30.760
That seems like those things would build trust.
00:39:32.980
And actually, all of those things rank lowest in terms of building trust.
00:39:37.860
And the things that rank highest are showing vulnerability as a leader, admitting your mistakes, and following through on the stuff that you say.
00:39:46.520
It's all about doing what you say you're going to do.
00:39:58.260
So anywho, building trust, that's the first thing.
00:40:00.020
second is honesty and communicating honestly so the idea being that if the
00:40:07.500
reason teams exist is to get something done that you couldn't get done alone as
00:40:12.440
an individual the only way that progress is made is if the communication that's
00:40:16.700
happening is is true to what is actually happening so that's why feedback so
00:40:22.020
important that's why having one-on-one meetings is so important is to get
00:40:25.300
You're saying sometimes the communication is actually filtered or decorated a certain way.
00:40:34.940
So that's all around not even just giving feedback, but even the way you receive feedback tempers and sets the tone for how people in your team communicate.
00:40:47.780
For example, if someone gives you feedback that's like, I don't know, something you don't want to hear.
00:40:52.980
you know you're just like i just really don't want to hear that like i know that but i don't
00:40:56.140
want to hear that yeah and you just like you know did you see my body language like ah you get
00:41:00.460
defensive or you don't say anything or you don't follow up slow yeah you're like okay great cool
00:41:04.960
you know you can only imagine what that response that you just did does for the likelihood that
00:41:12.340
that person is ever going to share a similar piece of feedback to you again like people wonder why
00:41:16.180
echo chambers happen or people wonder why oh how did that person not speak up as i wonder what
00:41:20.860
happened the first time someone spoke up maybe they got yelled at maybe they got fired maybe
00:41:24.580
you know nothing happened so there's no incentive to change so we don't even think about like there's
00:41:28.780
so much around just response exactly and i'm actually giving a workshop on this on on wednesday
00:41:33.660
here about the culture of feedback that actually it's this interesting virtuous cycle around how
00:41:39.020
you ask for feedback receive act on feedback and give feedback that sets the tone for how likely
00:41:45.080
people are to say the truth and so that's that's a huge part of uh what a leader has to be very
00:41:53.860
intentional about is creating those channels of communication making an honesty right so that's
00:41:58.700
number two and then number three is context so people need to know why they're doing stuff and
00:42:05.780
where they're going and what they're doing that's right it's it seems obvious um but it's
00:42:15.240
it's so hard to do in practice because as leaders it's so we're just assuming people it's in here
00:42:20.460
yeah it's in here we've been doing it we've been telling you i told you last quarter i just said
00:42:25.260
it yesterday like isn't it obvious um and it's amazing how many times we have leaders come to
00:42:33.980
us who say, yeah, my team has no idea what we're working on, or my company has no idea,
00:42:38.420
like people may be in this group does, but they don't understand how it rolls up to the
00:42:44.820
It's vision, which is a big part that a lot of leaders miss.
00:42:49.160
So understanding the picture of the better place that you're trying to create.
00:42:54.240
So what does it look like when we've been successful?
00:43:00.500
And leaders a lot of times don't spend a lot of time communicating that very clearly.
00:43:04.600
And vision is extremely important for motivation.
00:43:09.200
And the way I frame it even is like a picture of a better place.
00:43:11.720
Because it's very much a literal illustration, right?
00:43:16.300
It's not this abstract, like, oh, it's more innovative.
00:43:21.520
Vision is not, oh, we should be more innovative.
00:43:24.300
Vision is like a literal description of people's interactions and how their lives are different.
00:43:31.920
A vision is a thing that gets a lot of times overlooked.
00:43:37.020
We often don't share the progress that's being made.
00:43:51.820
And you might think it's money or titles or et cetera.
00:43:55.280
and the number one the number one thing that motivates employees on a day-to-day basis is
00:44:00.880
actually making meaningful progress on work progress number one thing so if you're looking
00:44:06.520
for a sustainable people want to win yeah well they just want to know that like this like we're
00:44:11.320
human beings like that we matter like like on the most fundamental existential level like we look up
00:44:19.240
at the stars and we're like what is this all for like oh does anyone care like that's progress just
00:44:24.400
making some sort of meaningful progress and even on a personal level like when i reflect on my own
0.98
00:44:29.320
day of oh was today good or not yeah you know you always feel like you have a shit day when you just
0.72
00:44:34.340
feel like you didn't make any point at anything yeah like i did emails i worked but i can't point
00:44:39.200
at anything but did anything happen right so progress is a big part of it uh decisions being
00:44:43.260
shared that helps create context and then institutional knowledge understanding why
00:44:46.820
things have happened in the past um so so that's those are the three the three sort of buckets of
00:44:53.680
sort of functional skills yeah uh what i would say is a the the foundational understanding that
00:45:02.720
often gets missed um sort of that supports those three things is a lot of leaders don't know
00:45:10.560
the purpose of leadership like why what is a manager like what are you supposed to do what's
00:45:20.600
answer and well so this is interesting it's very hotly debated because the concept of leadership
00:45:27.160
was probably introduced by like aristotle okay there's a very long history of leadership and
00:45:32.380
if you look back and you reflect on the history of leadership the number of definitions that have
00:45:38.120
been attempted at leadership right for as many um uh for as many attempts that there have been like
00:45:44.300
that's the the number of definitions like literally there's so many scholars have not
00:45:49.980
agree like academics who have studied this like have literally not agreed on a singular definition
00:45:54.720
they debate it all the time it's so interesting right exactly oh sorry um so you kind of have to
00:46:03.280
do some filtering of being like all right if no one's agreed then you but you got to pick something
00:46:06.460
because how can you get good at something if you don't define what it is uh and so what what has
00:46:12.720
been just based off all the research that i've done to be sort of the best definition of good
00:46:18.200
leadership is the ability to create an environment for people to do their best work right and the
00:46:25.400
key word being environment right so it's not frame it so it's not about influence actually
00:46:31.420
it's not about setting tasks it's not about goals like you didn't hear the word um like power even
00:46:38.980
um it's all about creating an environment and the reason that's so important is because when you
00:46:47.320
actually look at all the academics who've studied motivation and how people make progress in teams
00:46:55.320
and the science of teams people you actually you can't get someone to ever really do something
00:47:01.500
like you can't ever control another person so if the whole function of a team is to get is to be
00:47:07.520
able to do something you wouldn't have been able to do on your own and the leader's the person to
00:47:23.380
and the thing that's gonna give you the greatest likelihood
00:47:39.780
yourself to act on those things in a sustainable way so as a manager as a leader as a manager and
00:47:46.980
as a leader gives you a kind of um some rails to think about like how should my activities look if
00:47:51.840
my job is to create environment does that really create environment exactly and it's and and the
00:47:56.420
reason it's so important as well as to have that sort of foundation too is when you become a manager
00:48:04.600
or a leader, it's a very confusing process because your definition of success just is
00:48:12.180
completely different than what it ever looked like when you were an individual contributor.
00:48:15.320
So if you're an employee, you are rewarded for solving problems. You are rewarded for being on
00:48:23.040
time, if not early. You are rewarded for having the answers. You are rewarded for being just on
00:48:31.820
top of everything, right? That's what you are. Exactly. Being everywhere, right? Popping your
00:48:37.240
hand up and you got the answers, you're doing it. Yeah. Put, you know, rolling your sleeves up.
00:48:41.760
And what's so interesting is when you're a leader, right? Actually, if you are doing your job well,
00:48:50.420
you're not doing that. You should be asking all questions and be having no answers. You should
00:48:57.120
not be busy, you should be having an open schedule in order
00:49:00.300
to help other people think through problems for themselves.
00:49:03.620
And that definition of success is really hard to get to
00:49:14.940
that success equals you executing on the thing yourself
00:49:18.320
and getting the credit for it and being rewarded for that,
00:49:20.880
then you're not going to be successful as a manager.
00:49:23.000
And it's why that transition is so hard for so many
00:49:32.380
Like, it's not even like a, you know, some people are like,
00:49:37.920
or they just can't, they don't know how to run a meeting.
00:49:41.880
I know the book, One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey.
00:49:46.380
Because it's like, that's somebody else's monkey,
00:49:53.720
One of my favorite, I mentioned this to you earlier,
00:49:57.540
and I invite leaders who I look up to and respect.
00:50:00.140
And one of my favorite guests that I've had on the show
00:50:10.260
what's the biggest thing you wish you would have learned
00:50:13.560
And he said, I wish I would have learned to not be busy.
00:50:21.480
As an engineer, he probably is just always busy.
00:50:24.240
Yeah, it's like when you're busy, you feel like you're doing a good job.
00:50:33.120
We live in a society where we're sort of rewarded for that.
00:50:36.780
Yeah, and he was like, when you're busy, you actually can't do your job as a manager.
00:50:41.660
Because if your job is, and I'm inserting my own framework here, right, creating an environment,
00:50:46.240
you can't create that environment if you're the one answering support tickets or talking to the client or fixing bugs.
00:50:54.660
that you have someone who's thinking about leaving the company.
00:50:58.660
that someone actually disagrees with the strategy.
00:51:01.060
Like, you can't, like, the way the human brain even works
00:51:05.460
is we can't find salience and make sound decisions
00:51:13.060
I mean, being busy is great if you're executing, right?
00:51:19.400
As you kind of look at your journey last five, six years,
00:51:30.700
I don't know if anyone's asked me that question.
00:51:42.440
I think I needed to become more myself, which is,
00:51:45.900
and I don't know, it's like if I feel like if I ever rewatch
00:51:48.960
this back and be like oh god that sounded so cheesy can you retake that but I guess what I
00:51:55.240
mean by that is I I think I'll speak for myself when I was starting out I always felt like
00:52:05.000
the way you be successful is you model the patterns for what success for other people
00:52:13.520
have been that is the surest way to get there and I think it works for a lot of people but
00:52:20.260
what I think I've come to realize is if you have a different picture of what that success is or if
00:52:26.000
you want to help people in a different way then what you really just have to stay true to is your
00:52:30.460
own personal picture of what that could be and so i think the more that i lean into
00:52:44.060
my vision for how i want to help people the more that i listen to the like what people are actually
00:52:50.060
needing versus thinking oh i see this entrepreneur who's doing this or i see this company that's
00:52:55.660
doing this or this is a popular thing to do um sort of i mean the more kind of measurable success
00:53:02.520
we see whether that's customers or growth or you know hiring certain people or exposure etc
00:53:07.580
And I, yeah, I think it's convenient to feel like other people have it figured out.
00:53:28.580
out because it means that there's something like tangible that we can grasp and work towards
00:53:36.880
versus understanding that it's inside yeah it's inside like all the answers you kind of have you
00:53:44.680
already know like that's a lot more scary yeah then takes courage exactly that's a lot more scary and
00:53:52.440
it's a lot more frightening than like oh if only i do a b and c and i just gotta wait and i just
00:54:09.420
So I do a ton of writing, obviously, for Know Your Team.
00:54:19.220
And he talks about, and I remember this blowing my mind
00:54:35.720
And in many ways, and this is going to sound really weird,
00:54:42.380
And not in the sense of like, oh, it's this ego thing,
00:54:44.840
or I need my face on magazines, but just in the sense of like,
00:54:48.340
there are a lot of ways to make a living in this world.
00:54:50.500
There's a lot of ways to make an impact in this world.
00:54:52.840
The decision to do that by building something from scratch
00:54:56.200
taking an idea to to reality and doing it with software like this is a very intentional decision
00:55:00.120
and to to do that without sort of centering around the fact that like you have your own preferences
00:55:06.460
or ideas or opinions or way that you think you could help people like to not listen to that
00:55:10.620
would be almost doing a disservice to why you're even taking this journey to begin with because
00:55:14.340
if you want to make a bunch of money there's a lot of easier ways if you want to help a lot of
00:55:17.880
people there are other ways to do that too yeah um and i'm not trying to like put entrepreneurship
00:55:23.220
like on this pedestal just means like you're doing this because it's you like there's something about it.
00:55:30.540
You're doing it for you and not in a selfish sense, but just in a like, let's get real like this is a scary thing to be comfortable with.
00:55:37.620
And so I think the more that, yeah, I've listened to myself, the more I just try to be more of me.
00:55:43.380
You do you. Yeah. So awesome. Claire, thanks so much for coming on.
00:55:47.060
Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I appreciate it.