Rachel Lockett: Why you, not your manager, own your career

Lenny Rachitsky 0:00 When clients come to you, what is the biggest gap they have that is keeping them from being successful as leaders?

Rachel Lockett 0:06 Most leaders, especially technical leaders, assume they have to have all the answers. People have climbed the ladder because they've been dependable, reliable, the smartest person in the room. But great leaders know that when you try to advise and have the answer all the time, you're not actually equipping your team to go solve the hard problems. You're training your team to come to you with all of the hard problems.

Lenny Rachitsky 0:27 Difficult conversations are difficult. How do we help people make them less difficult?

Rachel Lockett 0:32 We operate in tech like we're supposed to give all of ourselves, all of our time, all of our energy to this endeavor, and it's purely logical. That's not at all true. It's completely emotional. Professionals have feelings. People, when they wanna have a conflict, they come in ready to prove their point. There's a misguided view that the goal is to convince the other person that what they're doing is wrong. Actually, the goal of any conflict is to create mutual understanding.

Lenny Rachitsky 0:57 Talk about what you've learned about helping leaders in tech avoid burnout.

Rachel Lockett 1:01 When people are in their gifts and their strengths, they have more energy. We all have more energy when we're operating from the things we naturally are good at. It's no one else's job to help you live in your gifts. What I notice in big companies is people are often annoyed or frustrated with their management for not making their job more interesting. No, your manager's job is to help you perform in the job you were hired to do. It's your job to navigate your career.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:26 The power of this is this makes your life so much better.

Rachel Lockett 1:28 Lenny, let's try it. So I want you to tell me a challenge, something that you're struggling with.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:33 The main thing I struggle with these days is just... Today, my guest is Rachel Lockett, an executive coach and former long-time HR leader at Pinterest and at Stripe. She works with CEOs and founders and leaders at tech companies on both ways that they are emotional and positive, intelligence, resilience, and courage, and what they do, setting vision and strategy, prioritizing and building trusted and accountable teams. She's someone I've heard a lot about over the years from other podcast guests, and this conversation is powerful. It's jam-packed with advice and tips and frameworks that'll make you a better leader and also a better person. We even do a couple of live coaching sessions to demonstrate some of Rachel's approaches. And as you'll see, I had a number of epiphanies during this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a ton of incredible products, including Dev and Lovable, Replit, Bolt, Innit, and Linear, Superhuman, Descript, Whisperflow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, ChatPR, DeMob, and, and Stripe Atlas. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Rachel Lockett after a short word from our sponsors. 1.3%, it's a small number, but in the right context, it's a powerful one. Stripe processed just over $1.4 trillion last year. That figure works out to be about 1.3% of global GDP. It's a lot, but it's also just 1.3%. Stripe handles the massive scale and complexity of many of the world's fastest-growing enterprises, including 78% of the Forbes AI50 and more than half of the Fortune 100. There's a reason I've had more leaders from Stripe on this podcast than any other company. They know how to build great products that scale and that people love. Stripe is also a lot more than just payments. They've also got a category-leading billing solution and a highly optimized checkout experience built specifically to increase your checkout conversion. Enterprises like Atlassian, Figma, and Urban use Stripe to create fully branded and customized checkout pages with access to more than 125 global payment methods. Join the ranks of industry leaders like Salesforce, OpenAI, and Pepsi that are using Stripe to grow faster and grow GDP. Learn how Stripe can help your business grow at stripe.com. My podcast guest tonight love talking about craft and taste, and agency and product market fit. You know what we don't love talking about? SOC 2. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way with industry-leading AI, automation, and continuous monitoring. Whether you're a startup tackling your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster so that you can win bigger deals sooner. The result? According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slashed over $500,000 a year and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional. Vanta makes it automatic. Get $1,000 off at vanta.com/lenny.

Lenny Rachitsky 4:59 Rachel, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

Rachel Lockett 5:03 Thank you so much for having me, Lenny. I am honored to be here.

Lenny Rachitsky 5:06 I'm honored to have you here. Uh, I was gonna start with a s- a different question, but we were chatting ahead of this conversation, and I, I always like to ask guests, "What do you want people to get out of this conversation?" And I loved your answer, so I- I just want you to share this. Let me just ask you, what are you hoping people get out of the conversation we're about to have?

Rachel Lockett 5:23 Genuinely, I hope that your listeners take away that the human side of business building is incredibly fun and impactful, and that it, it's easy to do. They can do it with simple tools. So I'm hopeful that through this conversation, heads of product, heads of engineering, founders walk away feeling more empowered and more motivated to attune to the people around them.

Lenny Rachitsky 5:47 So what I'm hearing is just, if you're struggling with, uh, the human side of building a product, building a team, building a company, there are answers. You can do it.

Rachel Lockett 5:56 Yes, exactly. It is achievable, and it's actually most natural.

Lenny Rachitsky 6:00 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 6:00 Leaders want to care about the people they work with.They want to empower those around them, but sometimes the busyness of our world gets in the way, and the urgency of the litany of things to do distracts you from the people in front of you. And actually, if you really understand the talent around you, and you create an environment where they can be successful, your business will thrive.

Lenny Rachitsky 6:22 I think the hardest part of this for people is just, uh, there's like the knowing this can be helped with, the other is just being vulnerable enough to seek help and to take this on 'cause it's so hard. Just like, "Oh, sh- maybe I'm not a great manager. What... that's... I don't... that doesn't feel good."

Rachel Lockett 6:37 Yeah, that- that's true. I mean, it's vulnerable to seek help, but I think your audience I know to be incredibly committed to growth. I hear of people who come on your podcast and they've spent decades focused on self-improvement. And I actually want to tell you a story about one of my clients who loves your podcast.

Lenny Rachitsky 6:57 Ooh.

Rachel Lockett 6:57 And I was talking to him last week. He's a client I've seen for 10 years.

Lenny Rachitsky 7:02 Nice.

Rachel Lockett 7:03 And he's a person who exemplifies a commitment to personal growth. I started working with him when he was a frontline engineering manager at Coinbase, and we talked about who he is, what his strengths are, and his bigger picture why. And he talked about this dream of creating a global movement one day. He was really focused on building community, and he thought the path for creating possibility in the world around him was creating a strong community around him, and he continually worked on his leadership capacity. And over the 10 years, at some point, he created a tattoo on his arm that's a sun with a redwood grove around it that reminded him of his core strengths and his purpose. And today, guess what he's doing, Lenny?

Lenny Rachitsky 7:59 Killing it.

Rachel Lockett 8:00 He's-

Lenny Rachitsky 8:00 He's-

Rachel Lockett 8:00 ... not only killing it-

Lenny Rachitsky 8:01 He has this vision.

Rachel Lockett 8:02 ... but he's running a community, a global community for Coinbase called Base and the Base App.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:07 Mm. Oh, wow.

Rachel Lockett 8:08 It's the largest Ethereum L2 in the world, and it's a community of creators and developers and he's in- having a great time. Like he's having more fun than ever. And so, I think for the people who are committed to excellence and impact, recognizing that if they lean into their gifts and they get back into their purpose, they can have more fun while having an impact on the world.

Lenny Rachitsky 8:33 This story reminds me just why I love these sorts of conversations because the sort of stuff we're gonna be talking about, and we'll get into it right after this final preamble, is stuff that's usually locked away in these very small rooms, uh, or only accessible to folks with a bunch of money. You know, this is stuff people pay tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars for over the course of their career, and I just love the idea of sharing all this with everyone to help them all learn from the stuff that you've learned from all these people you've worked with. So, I'm really excited to be digging into stuff.

Lenny Rachitsky 9:00 The first thing I wanna dive into, I actually asked you, when clients come to you, what is the thing, what is the biggest gap they have that is keeping them from being successful as leaders? And you told me it's essentially knowing when to coach versus knowing when to just tell people what to do and learning to coach. Talk about what you see there, why this is so important, and how you help people develop this skill.

Rachel Lockett 9:24 I think that most leaders, especially technical leaders, assume they have to have all the answers. People have climbed the ladder in whatever realm they're in because they've been dependable, reliable, the smartest person in the room. But when you're leading a quickly scaling company, you quickly have less context than the people you're around, and the way you were operating before doesn't work because you don't have the ability to wrap your arms around every problem in a deep way. So, I've seen leaders at every phase, from frontline managers up to running an 8,000 person company, struggle with knowing, when do I have to have the answer? And when I don't have the answer, what options do I have? But great leaders know that when you try to advise and have the answer all the time, you're not actually equipping your team to go solve the hard problems. You're training your team to come to you with all of the hard problems. And coaching is a different way. It's an alternative path that unlocks brilliance in your team and is way more motivating for the people around you. So, coaching is actually a learnable skill, obviously, 'cause there's tons of coaches around Silicon Valley, but you don't have to coach in the same way that an executive coaches. You can shift your energy into curiosity when someone brings you a hard problem to solve and create space to get curious and help them solve their own problem. So obviously, sometimes advising is the right path. If there's an urgent issue, the person coming to you doesn't have the skill they need, that's a time to advise and help. But leaders over-rotate, assuming the people that they've hired who are experts in their domain need them to solve the problem. So, I think it's useful for your listeners to actually know that coaching's an alternative and I can help them learn some basic skills around this.

Lenny Rachitsky 11:31 Okay. I'd love to learn those skills. What this makes me think about is there's this famous Harvard Business Review piece, I don't know, it's like 30 years ago maybe, about the monkey on the back. You know this piece? Where it's bas-

Rachel Lockett 11:42 Say more. I think I do.

Lenny Rachitsky 11:42 Okay. So... Okay. We'll link to it. It's this idea that, uh, as a leader, people always just coming to you, trying to give you their monkey that's sitting on their back. And they're like, "Hey, this monkey's causing me all this problem. I don't know what to do about this monkey. Here you go. You take it and feed it and help it figure out what it needs." And the role of a leader is to keep the monkey on the back of the person and help them figure out how to solve the problem, exactly what you're describing.

Rachel Lockett 12:03 Yeah. That's a great analogy. I love that. I think leaders make things up when they don't have answers sometimes.

Lenny Rachitsky 12:10 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 12:11 ... a, a person comes to you with a problem and you just want to help. But the best way to help is actually doing something that most leaders don't do well. It's attuning to what is the context, what does this person need, what are they blocked on? And ask them those questions so that they can solve their own problem.

Lenny Rachitsky 12:31 So we're gonna ... Let's talk about how to get better at this. But first of all, when you said, uh, when is it actually smart to just tell them what to do, you said it's when they don't have the skills to do it. Is there any other kind of heuristics of, like, "Okay, just tell them what to do in these cases"?

Rachel Lockett 12:43 Yeah. It's an urgent issue and you actually have an answer that you want to drive. So don't coach and make it a game. Like, you want your person on your team to guess what's in your mind. That's a not a good time to coach. You, you have something you absolutely want them to do. You know the right answer. You want them to be motivated to go do it. Advise them. Help them see the path.

Rachel Lockett 13:09 But most leaders over-index on that o- that solution. So I want to share. Maybe, Lenny, I can teach you two skills that I think-

Lenny Rachitsky 13:18 Hmm.

Rachel Lockett 13:18 ... are the basics of-

Lenny Rachitsky 13:20 Let's do it.

Rachel Lockett 13:20 ... leader coaching-

Lenny Rachitsky 13:21 I love that.

Rachel Lockett 13:21 ... that you can use in your own life tonight with your wife. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 13:24 Of course. She's gonna love this. Okay.

Rachel Lockett 13:26 Or anyone you operate with.

Lenny Rachitsky 13:27 Let's do it.

Rachel Lockett 13:27 And hopefully your listeners can use them too.

Lenny Rachitsky 13:30 Let's do it.

Rachel Lockett 13:31 Okay. So the first skill is active listening. And Lenny, you're probably a good listener 'cause this is what you do for a living, is you listen to the people who come on your podcast. But I don't know if you've seen Fight Club. There's a quote, "Most people aren't listening, they're just waiting for their turn to talk."

Lenny Rachitsky 13:49 Hmm. Absolutely.

Rachel Lockett 13:49 This is rampant in tech. And great leaders flip that script and tune in. They're the kinds of leaders who walk into a room and they can see the elephants, they can name them, they can ask the hard questions to get people collaborating. So there's actually three levels to listening. So the first level of listening, level one, is internal. Let's say you're talking to me about a problem. I'm thinking about the implications of that problem on me. I'm completely distracted with my own inner dialogue. That's level one. Most people go through their world rushed and in level one. Level two listening is focused. So you're talking to me, and I can repeat back what you're saying. So I am listening to the words you're describing, and that's typically what happens in a good one-on-one. We're problem-solving together. I'm focused on your words. Level three lessening, listening is global listening. So that's when I'm hearing beneath the words. I'm hearing what you're communicating, not just what you're saying. I see your body language, I notice your tone of voice, I know the context around what you're talking about, and I can reflect back more insight about what's happening than you're aware of because I'm understanding everything you're communicating. So dropping into level three listening is what great leaders do when they're influencing, when they're selling, when they're pitching a vision, and definitely when they're coaching. So do you want to try it?

Lenny Rachitsky 15:22 Let's do it.

Rachel Lockett 15:24 (laughs) Okay. How about this? I'll demonstrate some level three listening. I'm gonna ask you a question.

Lenny Rachitsky 15:30 Okay. Uh-oh.

Rachel Lockett 15:32 You told me earlier you're a father.

Lenny Rachitsky 15:34 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 15:35 What is it like to be a dad?

Lenny Rachitsky 15:38 Wow. What it is like to be a dad? Uh, it's, uh, amazing. It's, like, the most amazing thing I've ever done, uh, in many ways. I love it so much. It's also quite challenging at times, dealing with setting boundaries and knowing when to just let him do the things he's really excited about or just saying no and just letting him cry for a while. That, that's something I've been dealing with recently. But it's, it's like everything people tell you it is in so m- in, in basically in every way, except, uh, the joy is so much higher, so much higher than you hear from other people, because people always talk about all the, all the downsides, all the pain and challenges.

Rachel Lockett 16:15 Yeah. And I see you (clears throat) when you talk about being a father, initially I saw you really squirm in your chair, like, whoa, this is a big question. (laughs) And, you know, you looked up and down and kind of avoided my eye contact at first. Because my sense is you love being a dad and it's so challenging, it's so tiring. And I'm hearing both of that in your answer, like the high joy and the discomfort in having to sleep train and having to disappoint and navigating challenging behavior.

Lenny Rachitsky 16:50 Hmm. Uh, nailed it. That was very nice to hear. Uh, (laughs) clearly you listened to everything I said, and, uh, and that was a really good example of active listening.

Rachel Lockett 16:58 What, what does it feel like to be seen that way?

Lenny Rachitsky 17:02 It feels really nice. It feels really nice to be, to be heard. And, and it's not just like you're repeating back my words. It's here's what I got out of, like, kind of the level below what you're saying and the, the gist and the bigger picture.

Rachel Lockett 17:14 Yeah. There's some emotional connection when-

Lenny Rachitsky 17:16 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 17:16 ... you listen actively.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:17 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 17:18 And that took, you know, less than a minute.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:20 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 17:20 So what I want to invite listeners to understand is that active listening doesn't mean you're setting up an hour coaching session with every person on your team. No one has time for that. But even in the time you're already spending, just focusing on the other person in a way that is novel and really gives them their f- your full attention so you can see their feelings under what they're saying goes a long way to motivating your team and helping them understand what's actually happening under the surface in this situation.

Lenny Rachitsky 17:49 And there's ... I think there's just so much power in just, in different words repeating back what they said. That's, uh, almost implied in what you're describing. Like, it sounds like so ... I don't know, like a trick that they'll see through. But knowing that you're listening to me and you're gonna sh- show me active listening, it still feels really nice to just hear back what I said. There's a lot of-

Rachel Lockett 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 18:08 ... power in that and it's subtle.

Rachel Lockett 18:10 Yeah. Beautiful. Create ... Yeah. There's, there's an element of synthesizing what I'm hearing verbally, that's the focus listening part, and then mirroring back the emotions that I'm noticing.

Lenny Rachitsky 18:18 Mm-hmm. The emotions.

Rachel Lockett 18:19 And even things that I'm guessing-And I can say, "Is that right?" And you can say, "No, actually I'm not conflicted about the challenges of being a dad. I just am so joyful. And then now I understand where you're coming from and so do you."

Lenny Rachitsky 18:32 Hmm. Awesome. Okay. So this is a core skill of coaching, is active listening.

Rachel Lockett 18:37 Yes. So that's-

Lenny Rachitsky 18:38 Okay.

Rachel Lockett 18:38 ... listening. Second skill, powerful questions.

Lenny Rachitsky 18:41 Hmm.

Rachel Lockett 18:42 So asking powerful questions means I'm curious about what's really going on and there's not one right answer. So a powerful question helps you gain insight and it takes you to a new solution set you didn't have before, but it's not me leading the witness. I'm not trying to guide you to a specific answer. That wouldn't be a powerful question. So something that I like to in- equip leaders with is four kinds of questions that you can ask to unlock insight. So the first kind is, um, I use a GROW model. So the GROW model just is four different categories of kinds of powerful questions. So the G in GROW is goal. So what does success look like? What's the outcome that you wanna have? Any question that's around defining the best case scenario. The R in the GROW model is about your current reality. Where are you stuck? What are your current challenges? What have you tried? The O is about your options. So let's expand the opportunities that you can understand of the choices you have in front of you. What are the various paths you could take? And the W in the GROW model is the way forward. What are you gonna do next? So this sounds simple, and it is simple if you take the time and space to listen carefully and ask any of these questions. The people on your team will appreciate the space and time to unlock an option that they didn't think of before and walk away with a concrete next step.

Lenny Rachitsky 20:21 Okay. So just to reflect back what you're saying. So this is... Someone comes to you with a monkey on their back, "Here's a problem I'm trying to solve. Uh, this problem, this person on my team is having... is just, like, uh, not doing something right or this feature isn't working." Something like that. You're... So first of all, it's listen, be very, uh, be very active in your listening, reflect back what you're hearing, their emotions.

Rachel Lockett 20:43 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 20:44 And then ask them questions around, "What does success look like for this? What is the goal you're... What is the goal?"

Rachel Lockett 20:49 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 20:49 "What does success look like for the thing you're trying to do here? What does-"

Rachel Lockett 20:51 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 20:51 "... success look like?" Two is just what's today's reality. What's happening today? Then options. Here's options that you think exist. So this is you asking them, "What are the options?"

Rachel Lockett 21:00 Yeah. What are your paths forward? What could you do next?

Lenny Rachitsky 21:03 What could you do next? And then, and then you... Like, I... You know, this is, is organic, so it's not just like one, two, three, four, I imagine-

Rachel Lockett 21:10 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 21:10 ... but the next... The final step is just, okay, what's the way forward? What do you... What do you wanna do?

Rachel Lockett 21:14 That's exactly right. And you don't have to do it in this order. These are just four kinds of questions.

Lenny Rachitsky 21:18 I see.

Rachel Lockett 21:18 So you might come and someone's super clear about their outcome. You know that. You don't need to spend any time asking them questions about that.

Lenny Rachitsky 21:25 Hmm.

Rachel Lockett 21:25 Maybe you just wanna really dig in on where are they stuck. And once they start talking about their reality and where they're stuck, then they realize, "Oh, I'm stuck because my cross-functional partner is blocking me and I don't have any relationship with them. I need to go meet with them actually and just have a breakthrough conversation, tell them where I'm stuck." So sometimes talking this out loud, just creating that space for them is gonna help them tremendously.

Lenny Rachitsky 21:48 And there's kind of an implication here that the person often knows the answer or can come to the answer and they just need a little bit of nudge to get there.

Rachel Lockett 21:56 Yeah. This is definitely... You wanna coach when you think the person you're talking to has the right context and can solve their own problem. That's a premise of coaching. You wouldn't coach if someone needs your guidance and comes to you and says, "Hey, I'm trying to take my company public. You took your company public. Can you tell me exactly the steps you took to get there?" Not a good time to coach.

Lenny Rachitsky 22:19 Wh- there's kind of, like... This begs the question, what if they just come to a terrible conclusion and you're just like, "Mm..." Uh, advice on when to actually just, like, "What about this instead?"

Rachel Lockett 22:30 Yeah. Okay. I think that's great. So if you have a really strong negative, uh, reaction to what they're sharing, of course, it's not... It doesn't behoove anyone to hide that. I think you get curious. "Hey, help me understand how you came to that conclusion, because here's my reaction to that." So you're honest, but you're also curious. So coaching in a manager or a leader context is not the same as in an executive coaching conversation. You're managing this person. You're responsible for their outcomes. You're not setting up an hour-long coaching session. You're just using coaching as an additional tool in your toolkit from advising and you're creating more space, maybe 15% more space in your one-on-ones, in your meetings for open-ended questions.

Lenny Rachitsky 23:13 I love this phrase, "Help me understand." One of my managers used to be really good at this. Just, like, you could tell he's like-

Rachel Lockett 23:18 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 23:18 ... "Help me understand, uh, this part of your, your thinking."

Rachel Lockett 23:22 Yeah. And the other thing that does when you're curious and you don't just shut down someone's idea, is you're helping them think. You're not helping them realize they're gonna screw it up unless they come to you for advice. You're helping equip them with the right questions to ask and the right skepticism to have. And so it's always useful to be in conversation when someone who reports to you has a different worldview than you do. There's some reason they came up with this great idea that you think is a terrible idea, and actually that's where the learning happens.

Lenny Rachitsky 23:56 And you may actually be wrong and you may realize, "Okay. They actually have the better solution. I get it now."

Rachel Lockett 24:01 Yeah. This actually happens to me all the time in talent conversations 'cause I have a background in being an HR business partner and I'm working with CEOs and they're thinking about building their leadership team and I want everyone to have a very rigorous stance on their talent, because if you have an A+ squad, you're gonna do great things in the world. And sometimes they come up with an idea to performance manage someone who's clearly not working in the role, but think, "Oh, maybe I'll wait six months and then we'll have a conversation."I have a strong point of view. I'm not gonna let that slide. But I'm gonna say, "Help me understand why that is a good idea," and I'm gonna press on that, and if they don't come to an idea that I'm aligned with, I'm gonna share openly my perspective while still empowering them to solve their own problem.

Lenny Rachitsky 24:49 To close the loop on this piece of advice, is there an example you could share to make this super concrete for folks?

Rachel Lockett 24:55 Well, I'm gonna give you an example of a client, I'm gonna call him Jeff, who runs an AI company, and he was essentially playing the role of the head of product also. And he had a growing number of engineers and designers, and his customer base was growing rapidly, and he started to feel completely overwhelmed. So, he came to me and we started coaching together, and soon he realized that he was the blocker on every decision, every business decision, every product decision, and he was resenting it. He wanted his team to take more ownership. But with some coaching, he realized he was training his team to come to him with every decision because he had always operated that way. So, he decided to create squads and have small pods of engineers, product leaders, and designers focused on subsets of the team. Very normal as you have a small startup scaling. But he didn't have an engineering manager and a product leader for every one of them, so this was a little bit earlier than he was equipped for because he did it out of necessity, and he also realized he needed to create some behavior change for h- the way he was interacting with that, like, tech lead on each project so that they would take more ownership. So, he really invested in this idea of "I'm gonna start to set the system up so we have a product review every two weeks." They each have clear KPIs they're driving to that we co-design, and for this next quarter, I'm shifting from the role of deciding on everything to coaching. I'm gonna really ask good questions in our check-ins. I'm gonna align to the KPIs, ask how things are going, ask where they're stuck, and I just had a session with him last week. It's amazing to see him because he's so much more energized. He said the squads are moving so much faster. The teams feel more empowered and motivated, and he has time to pick his head up and plan for 2026 and spend his time and his gifts, which are product vision and strategy. So, that's more of a global example of what it, m- what results from you... from leaders shifting from the mode of solving every problem to coaching.

Lenny Rachitsky 27:19 That's such a, a great example of just the power of this is this makes your life so much better because other people can start picking up the slack and not come to you for everything, and it's like, listen better, ask a few powerful questions, and so much improves, so much-

Rachel Lockett 27:35 Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky 27:35 ... changes. Everyone

Lenny Rachitsky 27:36 around you gets better.

Rachel Lockett 27:36 Hey, let's try it. Lenny, let's try it. So-

Lenny Rachitsky 27:38 Oh, yeah, let's try it.

Rachel Lockett 27:38 ... I want you to tell me a, um, a, a challenge. It could be a personal challenge, a professional challenge, just bottom line something that you're struggling with.

Lenny Rachitsky 27:50 Hmm. Whoa. The main thing I struggle with these days is just, uh, endless work. I feel like this newsletter, I started this newsletter six, seven years ago at this point, and originally it was like, "I'm just gonna build this chill newsletter, do this on the side, just kinda chill out for a while," and now it's just like, it just grows. I couldn't help but make it more awesome and, and bigger and have this podcast now and other stuff I got going on. So, it's always this. So, I'm in a world now where it's just this, the way I think about it is the Indiana Jones boulder is constantly in my back rearview mirror just coming at me because I need to get a newsletter post out, get podcast episodes out, do all the things associated with that. I'm also just in the middle of, like, I have this large Slack community, a Twitter, and LinkedIn, so I'm just constantly being barraged with, like, small little asks and things and all these little things that never... It's hard to just ignore and say no to. So, so what I struggle with is just, uh, endless work. I joke that, uh, be careful working for yourself if your boss is a workaholic.

Rachel Lockett 28:51 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 28:52 And that's what I do.

Rachel Lockett 28:53 I totally relate to that. Okay.

Lenny Rachitsky 28:54 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 28:54 So, I'm hearing, um, noise, barrage of, of needs and just constant requests of you online, in your work life. There's always something that you need to be doing, and you've designed it that way yourself.

Lenny Rachitsky 29:10 (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 29:10 So, you're kind of aware of "I had this one intention of a path to freedom, insight." I imagine the newsletter was, like, a fun passion project-

Lenny Rachitsky 29:21 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 29:21 ... and you couldn't help but make it this all-consuming full-time job.

Lenny Rachitsky 29:26 That's right. Let me just add, it's like, in so many ways, the most awesome thing I could ever imagine doing also and extremely fulfilling-

Rachel Lockett 29:33 Right.

Lenny Rachitsky 29:33 ... and I couldn't think of anything better I'd rather be doing.

Rachel Lockett 29:36 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 29:36 So, I think that's an important element.

Rachel Lockett 29:37 Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky 29:38 But still, it's this Indiana Jones boulder constantly chasing me.

Rachel Lockett 29:41 Yeah. I can feel the gratitude and the resonance with what you get to do every day, and yet I hear you questioning, "Why does it have to feel like I'm fighting for my life while I'm doing this thing I love?"

Lenny Rachitsky 29:56 That's one way to put it, yeah. (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 29:58 (laughs) I mean-

Lenny Rachitsky 29:58 This boulder's squishing me.

Rachel Lockett 29:59 ... Indiana Jones boulder is coming for you.

Lenny Rachitsky 30:01 Oh, man.

Rachel Lockett 30:02 That's a fight or flight instinct-

Lenny Rachitsky 30:03 That's true.

Rachel Lockett 30:03 ... we all have.

Lenny Rachitsky 30:04 That's true.

Rachel Lockett 30:05 Okay.

Lenny Rachitsky 30:06 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 30:06 So, thank you for being vulnerable enough to share that with your listeners and with me. I wanna ask you, what would dream state look like? So, let's say in six months, you're still running this beautiful business that you've created, and you feel differently. What is happening?

Lenny Rachitsky 30:33 What I imagine is the same thing mostly, just much more free time.... some more time to experiment and play with other things, and at the same time the newsletter continues to be awesome and high-quality, the podcast continues to be awesome and high-quality. So it's continuing to put out the same high-quality stuff, just more free time, less, uh, the boulders may be smaller.

Rachel Lockett 30:56 Yeah. Okay. So what does free time enable for you? When you think about ... I, I hear your comm- deep commitment to quality products-

Lenny Rachitsky 31:05 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 31:06 ... and quality output, but this longing to feel a little bit more playful or flexible with those parts that are essential to you.

Lenny Rachitsky 31:17 Very practically, it's time to play around with, you know, AI tools, just like explore and just kind of tinker versus like, "Okay, all the time I have, I need to focus on the newsletter and make it better for next week. Oh, it's coming out. Here's things I gotta do. Oh, this podcast-"

Rachel Lockett 31:30 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 31:30 "... gotta prep for that, gotta edit this thing."

Rachel Lockett 31:32 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 31:32 So it's just time to tinker and explore and, and just like ... Yeah, that kinda thing, that kinda stuff.

Rachel Lockett 31:37 That makes sense. And what's important about exploring and tinkering to you?

Lenny Rachitsky 31:42 Because in the work I do, I need to stay ahead on where things are going. I can't just, you know, sit around and pontificate from a cloud. I need to really understand how things work, what's wor- what's working, what's not, what's real, what's not.

Rachel Lockett 31:53 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 31:54 So being on the ground as much as I can with what's actually going on versus just, you know, putting out content.

Rachel Lockett 31:59 That makes sense. Your voice is moving really fast. You're, I, I kind of hear you feeling behind, even in the way you're describing what you're doing.

Lenny Rachitsky 32:06 (laughs) Hmm. Could be-

Rachel Lockett 32:09 And what's-

Lenny Rachitsky 32:09 ... active listening.

Rachel Lockett 32:10 What's interesting to me is when you're talking about exploring and tinkering. When you first said it, you said it s- in kind of a spacious way, like, "It's fun to explore and tinker."

Lenny Rachitsky 32:21 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 32:21 "You're deeply naturally curious. You find new insights." But then I also heard you say, "And it's a way to stay ahead. I have to do it in order to feel like I'm informed."

Lenny Rachitsky 32:34 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 32:34 So what do you make of that difference?

Lenny Rachitsky 32:37 Yeah. Uh, yeah, those are two, (laughs) two sides of the coin. I, there's like another element of ... I guess let me answer that question. I think-

Rachel Lockett 32:44 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 32:44 ... I think those are both true. I don't know. Uh, 'cause it's actually, like the reason I got into this is 'cause it was so fun and so interesting just like, "Here's what's happening, here's what the future, here's-"

Rachel Lockett 32:54 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 32:54 "... advice, here's ways to improve in the work that you do." So, there's still, like I still love it.

Rachel Lockett 32:59 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 32:59 It's just I have less time to do that part and more it's just like the machine of the treadmill of content, content, content.

Rachel Lockett 33:05 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:05 There's also just like spending more ... Like I didn't even mention this, but just spending more time with my son and my wife, you know? That would be really great just to have more freedom-

Rachel Lockett 33:12 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:12 ... to go, go do stuff, which we have a lot of that, but more is great.

Rachel Lockett 33:16 That makes sense.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:17 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 33:17 Okay, so the, the goal that I hear is not so dramatically different from today. It's that you hold onto this high-quality output, but you have space for exploring and tinkering and for spending quality time with the people you love most.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:33 Yes. The one way I'm thinking about as you reflect that back is like 25% more free time while-

Rachel Lockett 33:40 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:40 ... everything else continues to be awesome. And the challenge I run into is I sometimes get that extra time, and then I fill it with more projects and opportunities.

Rachel Lockett 33:49 Yeah. There's that-

Lenny Rachitsky 33:50 That's the problem right there.

Rachel Lockett 33:50 ... like inertia of moving fast, taking advantage of the moment that's coming.

Lenny Rachitsky 33:54 Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Lockett 33:54 So that's a perfect shift into, um, what are your current ways of operating that get in the way of having that 25% of free time?

Lenny Rachitsky 34:03 It's just like agreeing to more things, just like, "Oh, look, I'm kind of free right now. Oh, okay, let's do this, uh, let's do this talk here."

Rachel Lockett 34:09 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 34:09 "Let's agree to this thing here." It's, so it's just once I feel freedom, I'm like, "Oh, okay, I could do that other thing," and so I commit to more stuff.

Rachel Lockett 34:18 Yeah. And how is that commitment to saying yes to things that come at you serving you?

Lenny Rachitsky 34:24 Not great.

Rachel Lockett 34:26 Well, it's serving you in some ways, like what bene- it, you're doing it for a reason. What is it-

Lenny Rachitsky 34:31 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 34:31 ... what benefit does it have to you?

Lenny Rachitsky 34:33 Well, it depends on the thing, you know? Like I actually have a rule of never doing a talk or going on another podcast or going to events really because I find I never really get much out of it, and it distracts me from the stuff I should, could be doing. So, I've set up a, a lot of policies of just turning down things that, uh, don't serve me. But, um, I still crumble (laughs) and say yes to stuff.

Rachel Lockett 34:56 Yeah, that's smart.

Lenny Rachitsky 34:57 So, yeah. So, to your point, there's, you know, there's value here and there when I take on more work, but, and then I end up overworked again.

Rachel Lockett 35:04 Yeah. I'm hearing there's just a pattern. It's like a reflexive pattern of-

Lenny Rachitsky 35:08 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 35:08 ... even though you set a rule for yourself to say no to certain things, and you seem proud of that boundary, you naturally break it, or you fall into filling it with other things.

Lenny Rachitsky 35:16 That's right, exactly.

Rachel Lockett 35:18 Okay. So you're stuck in this kind of addiction to doing more and signing up for more,-

Lenny Rachitsky 35:22 (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 35:23 ... which is so normal in our world, and probably most listeners-

Lenny Rachitsky 35:25 Yes.

Rachel Lockett 35:25 ... can relate to that.

Lenny Rachitsky 35:26 Hmm.

Rachel Lockett 35:27 That's kind of the soup we swim in. So we have to be conscious of where, wh- what inputs we have around us.

Lenny Rachitsky 35:32 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 35:34 So, let's explore your various options that you have in front of you. One that you mentioned already you tried was to comm- like make a list of the things you don't want to be doing anymore, like things you want to say no to, and really committing to that and sticking to that.

Lenny Rachitsky 35:51 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 35:51 What are the other kinds of things you could do to help you prioritize and create that sacred 25% of extra time for yourself?

Lenny Rachitsky 36:00 Hmm. Something I've already done, which hasn't kicked in fully yet but that I'm really excited about is I reduced the cadence of my newsletter and podcast-

Rachel Lockett 36:09 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 36:10 ... which in theory should be a massive change. But the podcast hasn't, the cadence of the podcast hasn't shifted down yet. It'll happen next year. The newsletter cadences, I basically changed my promise to readers. Instead of you will receive a newsletter every week, now it's two to four times a month depending on what's going on-

Rachel Lockett 36:28 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 36:28 ... which, uh, felt huge. The problem is I still like ... Every week I'm like, "Oh, and I can write about this thing. Oh, every week, there, oh, there's-"

Rachel Lockett 36:35 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 36:35 "... nothing's happening. I gotta put this out." So I'm almost not taking advantage of that opportunity. Uh, so something I could do is actually not publish every week.Another is just bring on some more help, which is difficult, 'cause I've got a lot of good help. And there's only so many things other people can do for me, that isn't writing an awesome newsletter and recording conversations like this.

Rachel Lockett 36:56 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 36:57 Um, but I'm always thinking about, and I should think deeper about, where can people take more load off my plate.

Rachel Lockett 37:03 Yeah. I love that insight. If you, um, what I'm hearing is do less in certain areas, and think about your team and really expanding the capacity of your team, and be rigorous about the things you can hand off. You may have limiting beliefs around the things you need to do versus-

Lenny Rachitsky 37:20 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 37:20 ... the people on your team.

Lenny Rachitsky 37:21 I might. I might. And then your point I loved, which was just, um, say, uh, improve my policies of what I say no to that don't serve me.

Rachel Lockett 37:29 Yeah. What are the things you could be saying yes to if you said no to more things?

Lenny Rachitsky 37:34 Just f- playing around with stuff.

Rachel Lockett 37:36 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 37:36 Just space to explore and tinker and just sit around and, and think versus just go, go, go, go, go.

Rachel Lockett 37:43 Yeah. And I hear, I just see you feel so light and excited-

Lenny Rachitsky 37:46 (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 37:46 ... in that. Like you almost are giddy when you think about that spaciousness.

Lenny Rachitsky 37:50 That'd be so nice.

Rachel Lockett 37:51 And I just wanna name, reflect back to you how special that is and how much more creative you could be in your work when you have that space and time-

Lenny Rachitsky 38:00 Mm-hmm. Love it.

Rachel Lockett 38:01 ... and your bucket's full with care.

Lenny Rachitsky 38:03 I feel that. I feel that.

Rachel Lockett 38:04 Yeah. So, what's one thing you could do in the next two weeks that would help you get closer to the kind of spaciousness you want to create?

Lenny Rachitsky 38:14 I love that we're, uh, like, as we go through this, I'm like s- thinking, uh, about this GROW framework and I love how you're executing it (laughs) like I see it in action. It's so good.

Rachel Lockett 38:21 Yeah, I'm trying to do very simple coaching right now just doing this.

Lenny Rachitsky 38:24 Yeah, yeah. No, this is great.

Rachel Lockett 38:25 So that it's really easy to follow for your listener.

Lenny Rachitsky 38:28 Yeah. Yeah. This is great. Uh, okay. So what's one thing I could do in the next couple weeks to help you move forward on this? I think one is at least skip a, a week or two of the newsletter and just actually stick to that plan. So, but it's tough 'cause the next two weeks I got already planned. I gotta write, I gotta write a gift guide. That's my... (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 38:48 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 38:48 Okay. So the week after I'll take a break. Okay, cool. So, two weeks from the recording of this, I won't publish a newsletter, and then I'm gonna revisit my policies on what I say yes and no to.

Rachel Lockett 38:58 Mm. I love that. Think about everything you're saying yes to and what are things you want to say yes to that you could trade it with. So really consider that, um, it's a trade-off every time you say yes to something. The more resonant you are with the end state and what's possible for you, the easier it is to be disciplined in the near term.

Lenny Rachitsky 39:20 Yeah. I love just that element of, "Here's what you will get out of this." It's not just, no, no, no, no. It's like, yes to this other thing you really-

Rachel Lockett 39:26 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 39:26 ... really wanna do.

Rachel Lockett 39:27 Exactly. Yeah. Say it like a resonant, full-bodied yes to the things that are in your life-

Lenny Rachitsky 39:31 Hell, yes.

Rachel Lockett 39:32 ... that you really want. Yeah. Hell, yes, with an exclamation. Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky 39:35 Awesome.

Rachel Lockett 39:35 Okay. Well, thank you, Lenny, for, um, letting me just demonstrate what powerful questions are. And the reason I wanted to do that with you is, you know, you brought an example that's actually pretty big. It's an emotional thing. It's a cultural norm. It's a way of being that we've all learned to, to be through growing up in and operating in tech especially. So even with that kind of topic, using a simple GROW model can be useful, but people are coming at your listeners with topics that are very complicated, technical, uh, urgent, but the same kinds of questions unlock new opportunity when it's about how to build technical infrastructure or how to, uh, you know, influence the executive team or how to ship the go-to-market strategy. So, I just want a name that's very transferrable.

Lenny Rachitsky 40:29 Hmm. Ah, I love that I got, (laughs) great advice in this conversation already. How...

Rachel Lockett 40:35 Good.

Lenny Rachitsky 40:35 What a great ROI for me, at least. (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 40:37 (laughs) What did it feel like to be coached on your own podcast?

Lenny Rachitsky 40:39 It was, it was, it was, uh, unusual. I'm just like, "Wait, I gotta get back to asking you questions." That's where my minds at. (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 40:45 Okay. All right. All right. We can flip it. We can flip it.

Lenny Rachitsky 40:47 (laughs) Sure.

Rachel Lockett 40:47 I, I do want to name that, um, typically when you're coached versus told what to do, you're more bought in. So if I told you, "You know, Lenny, I've heard all kinds of leaders come to me talking about being too busy. Here's what you should do. Write a list of all the things you're doing, write the things you're gonna delegate, you know, cut out 25, 5% of the things on your calendar." I could have given you a laundry list of things that I thought you should do without much context, but you're the expert on your own context and actually what resonates, and you're much more likely to do it if you came up with it.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:21 I, I was gonna mention that earlier. That is so incredibly true. Like, no one wants to... Like, unless you ask for advice, very few people are like, "Please tell me what to do."

Rachel Lockett 41:30 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:30 "Just tell me. I really love you. Just unsolicited advice." Like, that doesn't go well.

Rachel Lockett 41:35 Yeah. And great leaders often say, "Do you want advice or do you want some space-"

Lenny Rachitsky 41:39 Right.

Rachel Lockett 41:39 "... to think about it? Like can I, you know, can I help you think it through or would you like me to tell you-"

Lenny Rachitsky 41:43 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 41:43 "... what I would do?"

Lenny Rachitsky 41:44 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 41:44 And both are fine in certain situations.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:46 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 41:46 So asking is useful too.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:48 Yeah. Okay. That was a, that's such an important element of this that I, we should have mentioned and that's, uh, I'm glad you did.

Rachel Lockett 41:55 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:55 Okay. So I'm gonna go back to asking you questions.

Rachel Lockett 41:58 Great.

Lenny Rachitsky 41:59 This is a good segue to something I wanted to spend a little time on, which is burnout.

Rachel Lockett 42:03 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 42:04 We, you know, what I'm talking about is stuff that often leads to burnout. I'm definitely not burnt out, but you know, this is a, a common problem in tech where people feel depleted and just go too hard and then they... Well, so many people I've worked with just left tech. I had a colleague at Airbnb, he went, he's like a park ranger now at (laughs) in the woods. And that's how far tech-

Rachel Lockett 42:26 That's peaceful.

Lenny Rachitsky 42:26 So peaceful and so wonderful. But I think that's just people go so hard sometimes and then just get burnt out and never wanna do-

Rachel Lockett 42:32 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 42:32 ... anything like this again.

Rachel Lockett 42:33 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 42:33 I know that you've spent a lot of time on this with founders and you have a really, uh, helpful approach. So just talk about h- what you've learned about helping leaders in tech avoid burnout and feel energized and excited about their work for a long time.

Rachel Lockett 42:47 Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm glad you brought it up. It's a huge problem. I remember when I was coaching top talent at Stripe.Patrick Collison is really committed to retaining top talent, and I created a program with my team for the top 50 executives in the tech side of the house. And we looked at their engagement scores, we did coaching circles, and it was so f- sad to see how exhausted that group of incredibly creative and committed leaders was in that moment. And it's so common that people who start with incredible inspiration and incredible capacity start to feel like they've been pushing, and pushing, and pushing for years. They're parenting, they're leading, crazy things are happening to the business, and they just can't muster the same kind of motivation they once had. And I see this with my clients all the time. So I've also witnessed people who are still inspired and continually energetic and seem to have some secret well of, you know, some diesel battery, or I guess I should say a Tesla battery, that helps them through really hard challenges and they're still having a good time. And so my... what I make of that is that when people are in their gifts and their strengths firmly most of the time, they have more energy. We all have more energy when we're operating from the things we naturally are good at, and the things we innately love doing. So I try to help my leaders see that they can, they can design their lives so they're spending 80% of their time in their gifts. That seems really ambitious because you're stuck within a context that requires a lot of you, especially when you're a executive at a huge company. But, I also interact with founders who started a company with great inspiration, an entrepreneurial vision, and their job has obviously changed every six months. Once you fundraise, once you grow a team, um, and sometimes especially technical founders will start solving a technical problem they're absolutely obsessed with, they spend three years doing it, the product ships and then they're stuck managing a board and a team and they don't even realize they're doing a completely different job than the one that played to their strengths. So one tool I like to give is for people to actually take two weeks and every night reflect on what's the five... what are the five things today that gave me the most energy? And what are the five things that depleted my energy the most? If you do that for two weeks and you look at patterns, you can tell what are the natural gifts that I'm living in, and what are the things that I'm stuck doing that are exhausting and they're just slowly... it's like a slow leak in your gas tank that over time shows up in your daily amount of energy.

Lenny Rachitsky 45:52 I so believe this advice is so effective. This is the way I actually approached when I left my job. I very actively did this. I paid attention every day what gave me energy and what sapped my energy, and let me just do more of the thing that gave me energy and more... less of the thing that saps me. I want to talk about just, like, you know, there's only so much you can change, but I want to talk about that.

Rachel Lockett 46:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:15 And that... and so initially I was like, "Maybe I'll become an advisor and consultant kind of person." I actually found that super depleting for me-

Rachel Lockett 46:22 Hmm. Interesting.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:22 ... doing these calls and talking to people, 'cause it's like service level, you know, here are some things I would do.

Rachel Lockett 46:28 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:28 And it was just so unexciting and energizing. But writing was really energizing, which I never expected and-

Rachel Lockett 46:34 I love that.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:35 And that's what I did, and I just followed that pull. And-

Rachel Lockett 46:38 And it sounds like maybe you need a refresh, Lenny.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:40 (laughs) Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 46:43 Like, you know, there's always more attuning you can do to your gifts. Like, you're in this amazing... you've clearly been successful for a reason. You're in your strengths and you're paying attention to what brings you energy.

Lenny Rachitsky 46:53 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 46:53 We can always do that more throughout our life. I think it's a process of continually kind of tuning in-

Lenny Rachitsky 46:59 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 46:59 ... to where your spark is and protecting that spark, feeding it.

Lenny Rachitsky 47:04 Hmm. I love that insight. That just blew my mind. (laughs) So very tactically, the way you would do this is, uh, for two weeks every night is the idea, look at... reflect back on that day and write down five things that give you energy, five things that sap you of energy.

Rachel Lockett 47:19 Yeah. There's so many different activities you could use, so that's one. Um, I like a activity of actually asking five to 10 people in your life with a very simple email, "When I walk in the room, what shows up? What are my strengths? What are the gifts?" If you really don't know them and you haven't spent a lot of time in this realm, that's also an opportunity of actually asking the people who know you best what your core gifts are and when, when do you have the most inspiration? You can also look through your calendar and note themes. Okay, over the last month, what are all the things I look at on my calendar that I'm excited to do? What are the things I dread? Okay, why do I dread those things? What do those things have in common? So there's various ways you can get to kind of what is your zone of genius, but what my invitation is to take that really seriously. It actually takes risk-taking, it takes intention to design your life around your gifts.

Lenny Rachitsky 48:14 Is there any advice for actually doing this? Say someone just like, "Yeah, I just gotta do this," but, you know, most people don't actually do this. I- is there like a buddy you can nominate just help you do this? Is it like if you-

Rachel Lockett 48:25 Hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 48:25 ... if you have any EA that can maybe help you with this, is there anything you've seen-

Rachel Lockett 48:28 That's a good question.

Lenny Rachitsky 48:28 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 48:28 Yeah, I love your ideas.

Lenny Rachitsky 48:30 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 48:30 I think that the people around you need to be on board and know what are your gifts. So for example, when I was an HR business partner, my boss bought into this and I explained to her, "Hey, I started at Stripe because I actually know I'm gonna be a coach. I'm not gonna be head of HR, but I love working with leaders so I'm gonna, you know, do all the compensation strategy and all of the org design and I'm gonna help product and engineering leaders. But, what I have in the back of my mind is I'm honing my coaching skills."And so when this opportunity to work on top talent, um, retention came about, it was much... Uh, very aligned in, in the realm of coaching and L&D background that I had. So, she put me on that. So, it's useful to name it to the people around you. What are your gifts? What are your interests? Um, what skills are you really excited to hone? So that they are, uh, in a contract with you to help you and really apply your gifts to the business' needs. So, that's one thing. When you're a founder or CEO, when, when you have the autonomy to consider what are the role scopes around me, then you can really hire around it. So, I have some CEOs that I work with who are incredible visionaries, great strategists, really good at, you know, managing the board, hiring, et cetera, terrible at managing their team. They hate it. So, they hire a COO and they work in partnership. They have one person who's really internally focused. They get to be externally focused. That works well. It's a symbiotic relationship. If you're honest about your strengths and your weaknesses, then you can start to manage around them.

Lenny Rachitsky 49:58 This episode is brought to you by Persona, the verified identity platform helping organizations onboard users, fight fraud, and build trust. We talk a lot in this podcast about the amazing advances in AI, but this can be a double-edged sword. For every wow moment, there are fraudsters using the same tech to wreak havoc, laundering money, taking over employee identities and impersonating businesses. Persona helps combat these threats with automated user, business, and employee verification. Whether you're looking to catch candidate fraud, meet age restrictions, or keep your platform safe, Persona helps you verify users in a way that's tailored to your specific needs. Best of all, Persona makes it easy to know who you're dealing with without adding friction for good users. This is why leading platforms like Etsy, LinkedIn, Square, and Lyft trust Persona to secure their platform. Persona is also offering my listeners 500 free services per month for one full year. Just head to withpersona.com/lenny to get started. That's withpersona.com/lenny. Thanks again to Persona for sponsoring

Lenny Rachitsky 51:03 this episode. It's really nice to know what you want to do and understand where your dream life looks like. You also have a job. You have a manager. You got things to do. You got responsibilities. So, I guess first of all is you have seen people that are not founders actually make a change to do the things, to spend more time on their gifts to actually not just be, like... Like, there is, uh... You have agency to move in a direction you-

Rachel Lockett 51:27 Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky 51:27 That'll make you happier-

Rachel Lockett 51:28 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 51:28 ... is kind of an implied piece of this.

Rachel Lockett 51:30 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think sometimes people hire a chief of staff to help them and complement them. Um, sometimes people design their team with strengths and gifts that they don't have. So, it's really... There... You can get creative once you really understand, "Oh. These things give me a ton of energy and these things are exhausting, but I still need to fill this need for the business. What are all the ways I can do it?"

Lenny Rachitsky 51:52 And telling your manager, I think, is a- is such a simple and important part of this.

Rachel Lockett 51:57 Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky 51:57 Telling them, "Here's where I want to go. Here's the things I want to get better at. Here's the things that give me energy. Can we just try to make as much of my role that?"

Rachel Lockett 52:04 Yeah, especially if you're executing well.

Lenny Rachitsky 52:06 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 52:06 People want to retain you. They want to know what's going to keep you here for the next five years. And typically, they think that move, that means moving up the ladder, but maybe it doesn't for you. I think it does take the courage to mo- move horizontally sometimes-

Lenny Rachitsky 52:20 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 52:20 ... to get into your strengths. And that, I mean, I've moved horizontally a number of times and I love what I do. I feel like I'm in my natural gifts. But it took me a few risks and, and some uncomfortable jobs that didn't feel like they were worthy of my experience in order to get there.

Lenny Rachitsky 52:38 What's, like, a good percentage of your work life that should be in gifts and things that energize you versus, "Okay, I actually gotta do some stupid stuff"?

Rachel Lockett 52:46 So, my litmus test is 80%. That's the goal.

Lenny Rachitsky 52:48 80%.

Rachel Lockett 52:48 That's the aspiration. You're always gonna have 20% of things you don't love doing. There's just the logistics of getting into the zone that you need to be in. But I really try to push people to think aspirationally that if you're 80% of the time in your gifts, how much energy you have to give to the world. It's so much more inspiring.

Rachel Lockett 53:09 So, I want to tell you why I'm passionate about this topic because it actually is how I ended up as an executive coach. So, uh, 10 years ago, I was working at a small company called Remind and I was running the UX research team. And the CEO asked me to move in to the product manager role for the core product team. And I was excited for the opportunity. I had nontechnical background, but I thought, "Hey, all these strategists are up there creating the roadmap. I can do that. I know exactly what our users need." So, I was excited for this. I, you know, came into the team. There was, I think, 12 senior engineers, very opinionated, um, very skeptical of this non-technical PM, but we worked together and what I did was I listened. I learned what do our users need? What does this team need? What's working and not working? And within a month, this team was working well together. They were, you know, reviewing each other's code base. They were really disagreeing in a healthy way in our team meetings. They felt more connected to users. And I felt like, okay, this rhythm's working. But what I was also doing is I was at home stressing in the middle of the night about the new user experience. I couldn't decide which of the designs to go with. I was always over-leveraging our data scientists and I found myself swirling on decisions that didn't need to have so much stress involved. And one day, I went for a walk with my colleague, Zach Abrams, and he was a great product manager. And he was listening to me ask all these questions about how to sell the vision of what this, uh, what this product would look like in the future, and he said, "Rachel..."... your zone of genius or your gift is not being a product strategist. But I've watched you over the last few months, and you have gotten the team more motivated than I ever could, and you've influenced the entire executive team behind your ideas, and that's impressive. You're a people person. And at first, I was offended. What? You think I don't have the ability to be a great product leader? And yet, I- I sat with what he said and I knew he was right. Both my parents are therapists. I never wanted to be a therapist. Here I am, I'm basically a work therapist. I love entrepreneurial energy, I love big vision, but I'm a hu- I'm- I'm a people person. And I left that and I realized I love what my coach does, I got trained as a coach, I went into HR leadership. And Zach, who was a gifted product strategist, went on to lead product at Coinbase and Brex and most recently Bridge, which was acquired by Stripe, and he's still my client. And we've watched our journeys over the last decade, and we've both been honing our gifts. And it's, life is more fun when you're in your gifts and you have more inspiration and capacity to offer the world. So, I just want to share that story because it's helpful to be honest with the people you care about when they seem energized and when they seem depleted, 'cause sometimes it's a wake-up call for people to really think about what is their spark and to protect it and to feed it.

Lenny Rachitsky 56:35 I love that story because I think most people when they hear this advice and this kind of topic of, okay, I- I- I'm feeling depleted, I'm feeling burnt out, I feel like most people jump to, "Okay, but I can't actually do anything about it. I have a job, I got responsibilities." What- what I'm getting from this is, there's actually, the most important step is jump to figure out what you actually should be doing, what gives you energy, what your gifts are. It feels like that's the biggest gap for people, because once you know that, there are ways to do that. Talk to your manager, "Hey, uh, here's some of my, like, may not be possible today, but here's where I want to be going, here's what I want to be spending time on." I love your point you made, though, about you actually have to be doing well for your manager to listen to you. You can't just be, like, sucking and then like, "Oh, but I want to work on strategy."

Rachel Lockett 57:19 Yeah. Well, the, it's- it's no one else's job to help you live in your gifts. And what I notice in big companies is people are often annoyed or frustrated with their management for not making their job more interesting. It's like, no, your manager's job is to help you perform in the job you were hired to do.

Rachel Lockett 57:36 It's your job to navigate your career. So over the arc of your career, how do you match your gifts with the world's needs?

Lenny Rachitsky 57:44 Mm-hmm.

Rachel Lockett 57:44 And if it's that, if the world right now is your company, how do you understand the needs enough so that you can apply your strengths to those needs?

Lenny Rachitsky 57:54 This reminds me, there's a couple guests I've had on the podcast who did this. They're both founders, so it's, you know, this is specific to founders, but Rahul Vohra at Superhuman, he realized he's just not, uh, he's not like the best, uh, executor in the, uh, operations person, so he hired a president-

Rachel Lockett 58:09 Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 58:09 ... that took all that off his plate. And then, uh, Dharmesh, co-founder of HubSpot, he knew from the beginning he didn't want to manage people, so he made a rule with his co-founder, "I will never have reports."

Rachel Lockett 58:19 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 58:19 And he's the CTO, I believe, and has zero reports, has no one-on-ones.

Rachel Lockett 58:23 Yeah. And I think that it's a beautiful thing to recognize that, but then to actually address the needs of those reports also. I think often people know, "Ugh, I don't want to have any one-on-ones," but just not having anyone manage those people is not gonna be healthy for your company. So you have to both take your strengths seriously and actively manage around

Rachel Lockett 58:44 your weaknesses.

Lenny Rachitsky 58:44 Is there any maybe last piece of advice on this topic of helping people get to a place where they're feeling much less depleted and just more energized at work?

Rachel Lockett 58:52 I would start small. You don't have to leave your job and redesign your life. You can stop going to the optional things that are exhausting. You can leave space between the things that are depleting that you have to go to to go outside and go on a 30-minute walk and re- you know, refuel your tank. Start with tomorrow, what are the three things you're gonna do to, like, plug up that gas leak and re-energize your spark? It might even be you love to read, and you're gonna start reading 30 minutes before you go to sleep every night. It doesn't have to be a dramatic life change, but recognize that only you know what is resonant and what is depleting, and it's your job to take that seriously if you want to show up purposeful and impactful in the world.

Lenny Rachitsky 59:41 I love that advice. I've actually started reading before bed, uh, for 30 minutes, and that's been so joyful, like a physical book with a little night light.

Rachel Lockett 59:48 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 59:48 (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 59:48 I agree. I love, I love a physical book. I have a Kindle, I got all the things, but a physical book-

Lenny Rachitsky 59:53 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 59:53 ... on the couch is the best.

Lenny Rachitsky 59:55 Yeah. It's just the night light is key 'cause, you know-

Rachel Lockett 59:57 Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky 59:57 ... at nighttime, it's like (laughs) need a light. Okay.

Rachel Lockett 1:00:00 Especially now.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:01 So, we've been talking mostly, right, so far about kind of individual improvement, how to figure out what you should be working on, just, uh, helping co- learning to coach, things like that. I want to kind of take us up a little, a level above and talk about team skills, how people get better at working with other people. Something that you're, uh, in many ways known for is helping co-founders build better relationships. And in my experience, this is one of the most challenging parts of starting a company is the co-founder relationship. You, a lot of people don't realize what they're getting into. You're basically getting married to this person in like-

Rachel Lockett 1:00:35 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:35 ... a very high stress situation and you sometimes don't know much about 'em.

Rachel Lockett 1:00:38 Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:39 And then you not working well together is just a huge issue because that-

Rachel Lockett 1:00:43 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:43 ... all trickles down and everyone sees it and- and, you know, when co-founders leave, it's really bad for everyone.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:00:49 So let me just ask you this. What have you found most helpful in helping co-founders build great relationships, stay happy and productive?

Rachel Lockett 1:00:56 Yeah. Thanks for asking this. I love working with co-founders because I think your core values as a person come out.... when they interact with someone else's core values. Conflict, healthy conflict or otherwise, is actually where your core values come out. So it's fascinating to watch people try to do something incredibly hard in the context of someone else's vision, someone else's strengths and weaknesses, and navigate that together. So there's so much energy in the co-founder dynamic for me and for co-founders themselves. It's actually something that people don't feel comfortable going to their board about or talking to that many people about 'cause it's a private matter. It's almost like in a marriage, you go see a couple's therapist, but you don't tell all your friends that you can't stand your partner, but it keeps you up at night. So it's a really tender important relationship, and there aren't enough supports for co-founders to navigate it. It's very normal. In fact, I know you probably know this stat, 65% of startups fail because of co-founder conflict. And co-founders are in a moment where they're trying to build the future for their business, but also trying to build their own livelihood, so there's so much at stake to get along with your co-founder. And I think the- the core, at- at its core, what you need in a healthy relationship is, one, self-awareness. What do I bring into this dynamic and how am I being experienced by the other person? What does this other person bring into the dy- dynamic and how am I reacting to that? So the first is just collective awareness about what is our dynamic. I like to use the Enneagram for this, um, but there's all kinds of tools, self-awareness tools that you can use to give a common language to what is my thing and what is your thing? A very classic one has to do with roles. CTOs tend to be skeptics. They're- they love facts. They seek knowledge. They want depth of awareness and understanding, and they also like to be self-sufficient. This is a total generalization, but I've seen this pattern over and over again. The CEO is the person who had to sell the vision. They're a person who loves big picture vision strategy. They often are great at influencing others. They love to sell ahead of the pr- the reality of what the company's actually built. This creates an inherent tension between blind optimism and skepticism, and it's a dance that these two roles play together. So the first part is knowing the dance you're in, so you're not just stepping on each other's toes blindly. The second step is actually being conscious about the commitment you're making to your relationship. So in a marriage, for example, people... You know, I- I- I talk about co-founder vows (laughs) and recommitments and renewals because in a marriage, you get married and a lot of the times people build a family and then they think, "Oh, the relationship will just continue 'cause we're around each other all the time. We're doing this thing together." But just like couples need a date night, co-founders need time and space to connect with each other, to come together and say, "How's this working for you? Are we still aligned on our vision and our strategy? How are we working together? What am I doing that's pissing you off? What are the things that have gone unsaid and that we need to talk about?" But if you're just in the hustle and bustle of running and scaling your startup, you don't make time for that conversation. So I think it's incredibly important for co-founders to make space for their relationship, whether that's a dinner every other week, whether that's going out to lunch regularly, whether that's, um, just touching base business wise, but having an in-person quarterly check-in, that space is critical for the health of a co-founder relationship.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:04:49 On that second piece, the vows idea is such a good idea. Is that something you actually recommend? Like, here's what I vow to do-

Rachel Lockett 1:04:55 Yeah, here's what I commit to do.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:04:57 ... and like go through that exercise?

Rachel Lockett 1:04:57 So I have, um... R- recently, I actually wrote an article with First Round, and we created a document to help co-founders think about what to integrate into their check-in. So we put out weekly check-in, monthly check-in, and annual, and just questions to sit down and ask each other. Active listening skills will come in handy in those conversations, but it's about taking space out of hustling and running the business to think about the business from a kind of, uh, rather... I- I like to say instead of being on the dance floor, you need time on the balcony to look down at what's happening. How are we doing? Is this still working for both of us? And the vows are really about how are we gonna be together? How are we gonna show up? Like, what's our culture that we're creating? Even if you don't wanna go through a c- whole culture exercise early on in building your company, you should have some sense of how you wanna show up for each other. How are we gonna make decisions? How are we gonna deal with conflict? These are things you can go to int- go into intentionally and design with your co-founder.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:06:03 Awesome. We're gonna link to that post. The first step, uh, Enneagram sounds like that's what you recommend, and this is basically a personality profile that, uh, a lot of people love.

Rachel Lockett 1:06:12 I really like the Enneagram. I think you can also simply tell each other, "Here are my strengths, here's what I see as my weaknesses, and what do you think? Give me some feedback. Do you agree?" And you can do that with each other without any personality assessment if you wanna just be scrappy and have an open, connected conversation about the... You can even say, "What are the gifts I bring and the weaknesses I have and how will I cover those? How will I lean into my gifts, how will I cover my weaknesses, and how will you?" And then I think it's worthwhile having a conversation about what are the gaps neither of us cover that we're likely gonna need as we build this business?

Lenny Rachitsky 1:06:50 What do you recommend people do when they s- or just like, our relationship isn't working great. It's like there's a lot of tension. All this advice we've been talk- talking about is like, "At the beginning, here's things you can do to set things up for success. Understand what you're good at, what you're bringing to the table."... Consciously commit to, "Here's what I'm gonna do, here's what you're gonna do," have these dinners or lunches. I love this metaphor of going out on the balcony and just reflecting on w- how it's going. So, that's all really great. What if you're just already in it and just like, "Mm, this is really annoying. I don't like this person that much," or, "So much tension constantly." What- what are a couple things they can do this week, next week?

Rachel Lockett 1:07:26 Co-founders typically come to me either in this early phase where they're- they wanna intentionally build something great and they wanna set it up for success. More often, co-founders come when they're really frustrated with one another, they feel the tension is palpable, they can't stand it anymore, but they're still really deeply committed to the business, so they don't see an out and they knew that at some point they really loved this co-founder, so they see a possibility of recovering and that's why they wanna go get a coach. I'm gonna give you an example of, uh, this PR duo running a fierce business, scaling really fast, and at one point when they started you had the visionary who was great at selling business, um, they were both incredible with PR and the partner was incredible operationally. So, as the business scaled, one took on a lot more business development and the other took on all the internal things, but was exhausted by all this people management and all of the, um, elements of kind of running a scaled team that she didn't expect to have to do. And when they came, I think both of them weren't sure, "Can we figure this out? Do we wanna just sell this thing? Do we wanna keep going?" And I think someone said, "End it or send it," was what one co- co-founder said to me. You know, they're coming at this- this- this decision point and what I saw them do is, one, they named current state really well. They were both able to share. We- we did use a 360, so they got feedback from their teams and then shared it with one another, but they were able to be open and vulnerable in what was working and what wasn't working. Not immediately, but over time. And they realized they used to love being partners in this work, but as they began to lead different teams, they grew very distant from one another. They were living on opposite sides of the country and actually just coming together and realizing what each other was missing and how lonely it is to lead this scaling company without each other's support and how they actually needed the counterbalance to their strengths and didn't have it was a important start to their healing. And over our coaching, they turned back towards each other and they created more of a rhythm of how they would get together without me involved, and they s- they ended coaching after our arc feeling renewed and really recommitted. They made some changes on their leadership team to fill their gaps. They also started, I think, meeting once a week virtually, and they started a cadence of getting together in person quarterly. And I don't mean to say that just that time means you're gonna heal. Sometimes coming together and really grappling... I had one last week where we all came together, we had a great full day in-person discussion about how they were making, uh, this co-founder duo, how they were making decisions, and after that conversation, it was really clear that- that one of the co-founders was unhappy and- and didn't appreciate the other one and was not gonna change and realized he was a big part of the problem and I think is gonna leave the business. But that's still success because it's clarity. You're not muddling in the dark, frustrated, unconscious about the interpersonal dynamics you're in. You're making a choice based on your strengths and what the business needs and this relationship dynamic that you're in, to either be in it or to lovingly step out of it.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:11:16 I love how similar this is to just a marriage. All the stuff you're like, this is the same sort of thing you'd do. It really adds up.

Rachel Lockett 1:11:21 Totally. I mean, a marriage, you're building a life with a partner.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:11:24 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 1:11:24 So, the only difference is a marriage is rooted in sexual attraction and love, and that's not the case always in the co-founder dynamic. But I have- I have worked with couples who are also co-founders. But there should be some element of love for your co-founder.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:11:41 Yeah.

Rachel Lockett 1:11:41 In fact, I think that when you work closely with colleagues and you really are able to see their gifts and enable them, you can't help but love them.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:11:51 Hmm. That's a big statement. The other takeaway here is that... Just get coaching. It feels like that's the solution if things are just not working great. Like, there's only so far you can get just talking.

Rachel Lockett 1:12:01 It- it takes an evolved facilitator, like one of the co-founders being able to hold space for both their frustration and their empathy in a dynamic that is challenging. So, outside support is useful. Sometimes it's actually a team member, it's an HR leader, it's the GC who happens to have great people skills. You don't always need a coach, but you need space to be vulnerable, open, and curious. So, if you can create that on your own, that's great. I think it's definitely possible.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:12:35 Outside of the co-founder relationship, do you have any just tactical tips for people to improve their interpersonal s- interpersonal skills with just team members, anyone they work with, just people that may struggle? Like, "Man, I have a hard time with this person. I just have a hard time with a lot of people."

Rachel Lockett 1:12:50 First of all, people, when they wanna have a conflict or they wanna engage in something that's not working, they come in armored and ready to prove their point. (laughs) It's natural. You've been thinking about this for, separating over whether you should mention it, you finally get to the point of engaging.And often, there's a misguided view that the goal is to convince the other person that what they're doing is wrong. Actually, the goal of any conflict is to create mutual understanding. So when I go in to have a conversation with, let's say, my husband, who's not doing his share of the parenting, my goal is to help him understand what I'm struggling with so that he can empathize, see clearly what's happening, and perhaps meet my needs in some way. But it's not for me to prove to him how little he's doing in the house, 'cause he might have a totally different story about what's happening. So I'm gonna give you a framework that I like, many of my clients use. It's from, uh, Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication. It's a book and a framework. So it's four steps. The first step is observations. So my job is to note what is happening factually. For example, I noticed that in the last three sprint planning meetings, you didn't show me what you were... You didn't invite me to those conversations or share with me the roadmap. That's an observation, it's a fact. I could take a picture of it and no one would argue with it. The next step is feelings. So I'm gonna express my feelings without blame. So I felt anxious not knowing what was on the roadmap for the week. I felt confused about whether that meeting happened or not because I wasn't included. So this is me sharing my feelings so the other party can empathize and understand what I'm going through without being defensive. The third step is needs. What are my universal human needs related to this topic? We all have needs. This is not requiring anything of the other person, just helping them understand my needs that are not met. So I have a need for clarity. I have a need for collaboration. I have a need for connection, whatever that is. And lastly, the step is to make a request. Now in this model, the request is an olive branch to help the other person meet you and see you. It shouldn't be something that's impossible to do. It should be actually something quite small and easy to achieve for the other person to feel successful in connecting to you and understanding you. So in this case, I might make a request, "I'd like to ask you next time you have a sprint planning meeting to include me as optional or to send me the roadmap afterwards that you align on." Now, the other person doesn't have to meet my request. They might make a counterproposal, but the most important thing of this model and this conversation is that the other person understands what I'm going through and they don't feel reactive so that we can have a mutual conversation about what's going on.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:16:12 Wow. This point about how when you're trying to com- when you're trying to convince someone of something when something is going wrong, this point that your goal is not to convince them, that your goal is to have mutual understanding, that just blew my mind.

Rachel Lockett 1:16:28 (laughs) It's

Narrator 1:16:28 It's a shift.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:16:28 And I think it's, it's gonna change my life.

Rachel Lockett 1:16:30 (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 1:16:31 Wow.

Rachel Lockett 1:16:32 Lenny, try this with your wife tonight. NVC is a powerful tool, and actually, it's very akin to most models that are about connection. Um, the Stanford Business School course that has a t- it's called Touchy Feely that everybody loves.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:16:47 Yeah, we've had, we've had Carol on the podcast.

Rachel Lockett 1:16:49 Great. Yeah. So Carol Robbins created this movement, right? There's LIT. A lot of founders go to her model that's for founders.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:16:55 Leaders in Tech, yep.

Rachel Lockett 1:16:56 And this is all about... They talk about a net, that you can talk about your feelings and your reaction, but as soon as you cross the net to blaming someone else or making an assumption, they're gonna have a defensive response. But you can be incredibly bold and brave if you stay on your side of the net. So this model helps you do that because it's really about sharing your emotions and your needs and making a request without blame.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:17:21 Yeah. So what I was gonna say as you were going through this framework is it's all m- it's here's me. Here's what I saw, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I need, and then here... Now that you have that context, here's something I'm asking for versus you did this and you're feeling this and you thought this.

Rachel Lockett 1:17:37 Exactly. It also acknowledges that professionals have feelings. I think that we operate in tech like we're supposed to give all of ourselves, all of our time, all of our energy to this endeavor, and it's purely logical. That's not at all true. It's completely emotional. And if we ignore our feelings, they will bubble up and we will be unconsciously acting from them.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:18:01 And there's kind of this implicit power here that if the person cares about you and loves you or values your relationship, knowing that this makes them feel bad will make them want change. It's not like you need to tell them, "Change this thing." It's, "Oh, I didn't realize this made you upset or that you have this need."

Rachel Lockett 1:18:18 It's-

Lenny Rachitsky 1:18:18 "And now that I know that, okay, now I see why this is important to you."

Rachel Lockett 1:18:22 That's exactly right. And sometimes the other person will, will hear that and have a n- a different story or different perspective, right? So they might say, "Okay, I can honor that request," or, "I hear that request and I hear your feelings, but let me explain what happened for me. And one way you could do that is... Are you open to hearing that?" So they're able to share their side too. You don't have to just agree with the person's request. As long as you're setting this tone, the other person's more likely to contribute in a way that achieves mutual understanding 'cause they're gonna share... Once you're vulnerable, they're gonna share their vulnerability.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:19:00 Let me, uh, remind folks of the framework. I'm gonna try using this. I wish it was a handy acronym, OFFNER.

Rachel Lockett 1:19:06 I know. (laughs)

Lenny Rachitsky 1:19:07 OFFNER. So the framework is share what you've observed, just the facts of what is happening. Just simply, here's, I saw you,... didn't close the fridge fully.

Rachel Lockett 1:19:16 Mm-hmm.

Lenny Rachitsky 1:19:17 Your feelings of how that made you feel, the needs that, your core human need that, uh, drives that feeling, I imagine. And then the request you have of the person.

Rachel Lockett 1:19:28 Yes. And I want to make one note I forgot to say, which is feelings are emotions. So sometimes people say things like, "I feel like you're being a jerk."

Lenny Rachitsky 1:19:39 (laughs)

Rachel Lockett 1:19:39 That's not a feeling obviously. An, uh, a feeling is a sensation in your body that results in an emotion. So naming a feeling