Lenny's PodcastHow to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,199 words- 0:00 – 4:25
Donna’s background
- DLDonna Lichaw
(instrumental music) When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mess, and it's uncomfortable. And even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers. It's hard to know what you're really great at.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How does somebody identify their superpowers, their strengths?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Pull your superpowers out of your stories from your past, your present, and then eventually figure out how to apply them and transpose them to your future.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The person story, this is central to becoming a better leader.
- DLDonna Lichaw
The most effective stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. They may or may not be true, our brain doesn't know the difference. Once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to be that hero.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(instrumental music) Today my guest is Donna Lichow. Donna is an executive coach, speaker, and bestselling author. She helps founders, CEOs, and executive teams level up their leadership skills and scale their impact while staying true to their mission, their purpose, and themselves. Donna has worked with leaders at companies like Google, Disney, Twitter, Microsoft, and Adobe, and she's also the author of the book The Leader's Journey, which is what we spent our time on. In our conversation, we talk about why the story that we tell ourselves has so much impact on our success and failure, why knowing your superpowers and also your kryptonite is so important to your career, and how to identify these two things, how to reframe your feelings of imposter syndrome and actually use it as an advantage, how to identify your life goals even if you have no idea what they might be. Plus a ton of examples from her coaching practice of people unlocking their career using her frameworks, and how they went about doing this, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Donna Lichow after a short word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by OneSchema, the embeddable CSV importer for SaaS. Customers always seem to want to give you their data in the messiest possible CSV file, and building a spreadsheet importer becomes a never-ending sink for your engineering and support resources. You keep adding features to your spreadsheet importer, but customers keep running into issues. Six months later, you're fixing yet another date conversion edge case bug. Most tools aren't built for handling messy data, but OneSchema is. Companies like Scale AI and Pave are using OneSchema to make it fast and easy to launch delightful spreadsheet import experiences, from embeddable CSV import to importing CSVs from an SFTP folder on a recurring basis. Spreadsheet import is such an awful experience in so many products. Customers get frustrated by useless messages like, "Error on line 53," and never end up getting started with your product. OneSchema intelligently corrects messy data so that your customers don't have to spend hours in Excel just to get started with your product. For listeners of this podcast, OneSchema's offering a $1,000 discount. Learn more at oneschema.co/lenny. Let me tell you about a product called Sendbird, the all-in-one communications API platform designed for both web and mobile apps. In a world saturated with multi-channel communication, product teams are discovering the effectiveness of in-app communication. With Sendbird, businesses can elevate their in-app experience with decluttered and branded communication featuring AI-powered chatbots, one-way messages, chat, video calls, and livestream capabilities, all tailored for commerce, marketing, and top-tier support. Forward-thinking companies such as Hinge, Patreon, Yahoo, Accolade, and more use Sendbird to build in-app communication experiences that drive engagement, conversion, and retention. In-app communication has the highest conversion, highest engagement, and highest satisfaction of any communication channel. And when it comes to investing in this channel, trust Sendbird to take your in-app communication experience to the next level. Start today with Sendbird's free plan, and as a listener of Lenny's podcast, you'll get an additional two months of unlimited usage and access to all premium features, including creating your very own generative AI chatbot. Visit sendbird.com/lenny to begin your free journey. That's sendbird.com/lenny. (instrumental music)
- 4:25 – 8:38
Donna’s origin story and transition to coaching
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Donna, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Thanks, Lenny. It's exciting to be here.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So we connected through a former colleague of mine who could not stop raving about how much value she got from working with you. Also, you have a new book out, right here, that I have, The Leader's Journey, and so I thought it would be awesome to bring you on and share your wisdom with a wider audience.
- DLDonna Lichaw
I love the podcast. My clients love your, your stuff-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh, I've heard that.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... and newsletter, everything, so very excited to be here.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Amazing, and congrats on the book, by the way.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Thank you.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You actually were a product manager in a previous life. You were also a designer in a previous life. These days, you're an executive coach. Just briefly, I'm curious what pulled you from product management, design, and the things you did before this life into executive coaching? And maybe another way to ask this question is, what's, what's your origin story? And this is a little foreshadowing to the stuff we're gonna be talking about later.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Actually, it's funny. Like all origin stories, there were actually multiple episodes, multiple moments that, that led me to an epiphany. But the, the biggest aha moment was when I was working several years ago, almost, almost a decade ago at this point, with an executive team in Silicon Valley, and we were, uh, at a, a leadership retreat. And we were supposed to... At the time, I was facilitating a program on effective product leadership, how to be a great product leader, product executive. And the biggest thing that...... companies wanted at the time and teams wanted was their teams to be better storytellers, and it's still something we hear today, which is, you know, to be a great product leader or leader in general in any industry is be a, how to be a great storyteller. And so, at the time I was teaching and facilitating storytelling workshops and exploring that with, with teams, and it was a few people on this team specifically who I so appreciate their, their honesty and candor here, which is what this giant tech company is known for, very blunt people working there. (laughs) And they pulled me aside halfway through the, the offsite and they were just like, "Honestly, storytelling's not gonna fix our problems. This is silly." And what they were able to tell me is that their, their leaders wanted them to be more effective by having greater influence. And, you know, these are terms that we throw around all the time, uh, be more influential and, and be a better leader, whatever that means. And what was happening on the ground with these executives was that they were all fighting. So, you know, I'd hear, "Oh, the head of engineering is such a jerk," or, "This person won't listen to me," or, "My team is demotivated and I get it, but they need to step up and work more." And there was just a lot of conflict going, uh, on here and there that storytelling wouldn't fix. Like, when that happens, and I talk about this in the book abo- uh, a bunch, no one wants to hear your stories. Y- you have to actually be able to connect with people and to work with people and, and feel good as a leader in order to really step up and lead. You know, I didn't have an answer for this team at the time, and I, I left this offsite just honestly feeling terrible and not knowing what to do about it except telling them, "I think you gotta go work with a coach, because this is, (laughs) this is beyond my pay grade." But when I left that day, I, I just couldn't stop thinking about this team, because I, I had a hunch that stories were still a part of something, but not what they needed. Telling stories was, was not the answer. And so, I ended up spending what now is, uh, the next decade figuring out, all right, how do you become an effective leader? And of course, 'cause I, I can't do anything lightly, once I went down that path I ended up switching up my entire business. (laughs) And, and now that's all I do is help people be better, more effective, confident leaders who really make the impact that they wanna make.
- 8:38 – 11:36
The power of storytelling in leadership
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, along those same lines, what's interesting is you actually found that this idea of storytelling was actually much more effective in your coaching practice. Instead of helping them figure out the story of their product, it's the story of the person, and so kind of transitioning into the meat of your approach to coaching. I think you call it, uh, story-driven leadership. Essentially, your finding is that, uh, story and the person's story is extremely important and powerful in helping them level up as a leader, and also seeing them as, uh, as the hero of their story. So, I guess just with that foundation, could you just talk about why that is so powerful, the idea of figuring out your own story and why you need to be the hero of your own story, and just what all this means?
- DLDonna Lichaw
We all as humans wanna be the, the hero of our own story. It's how we live our lives, it's how we make choices, it's how we understand the world around us, and it's how we communicate, uh, to, to the, back to the world. With leadership, it's, i- i- it's much the same, which is we have a mission that we want to accomplish. No matter how big or small, it's something. We're driven to do something. If you're a leader or you wanna be a leader, you have to be taking yourself and you have to be taking people somewhere. We also have obstacles, so that's a part of any great story. There are challenges. It shouldn't be easy. It shouldn't be so hard that's a, uh, that you fail. That's a tragedy. But there are challenges and it makes life more exciting. You don't do it alone, so it's rare that a story just has a single individual. It happens, but that's not most of life. And there are other elements that I ended up uncovering when I looked deeper into what makes the most effective leaders effective, and the biggest thing is stories that we tell people, i- it's like the tip of the iceberg. And, and if anything, it even doesn't matter. I've worked with a lot of folks who their teams say, "Stop it with the storytelling. Stop talking at us." And they don't want any of that. But the most effective stories are the ones that we experience as we live life, and that we tell ourselves as well, because we have the ability by saying things like, "Oh, I'll never succeed," or, "Oh, she'll never go for it," or, "He's such a jerk," or whatever the stories are. These are all stories, and they may or may not be true. They're usually not true, but our brain doesn't know the difference. Where our brain, it's like the most powerful ability our brain has is to understand and see stories everywhere. And so, once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to, to be that, that hero in, in your life. And even as I say it out loud, it sounds so cheesy, but it's true. This is neuroscience and psychology. Like, we just wanna be the heroes, and that's what our focus is.
- 11:36 – 14:49
Becoming the hero of your own story
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, I wanna delve deeper into that, in that idea there. So, people listening to this might feel like, "Okay, cool. Let me think about the story of my life. This sounds like a fun thing I could do."
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
But I think your point is this is central to becoming a better leader, figuring out the story of you and kind of that changing your perspective on yourself and giving you more, like, unblocking you, I think is a, is, uh, is a big part of it. Could you just talk about more just, like, the power and why this is so important? 'Cause it not just like, "Cool, I'll sit around and think about, oh, here's my story. I was born here. I did this thing." Why, why is this so important to do?
- DLDonna Lichaw
I- i- it's... And i- it's a little antithetical in a way, because it sort of, um...It goes against what a lot of us believe, especially if we have, I'll say, product backgrounds or just business backgrounds or, or tech backgrounds, or anything where we built things for people. For years, we've had this idea that we build companies in a user-centered way, where, all right, build for the customer first and all else will follow. And there's some truth to that on the one hand, and I used to think leadership was the same, which is, "Well, it's not about you as a leader, it's about who are you bringing along on your journey and how do they need to be heroes? So, how do you enable everyone you work with and everyone you want to follow you to join you and feel amazing with it?" That's the kind of user-centered approach, where it's not about you, it's about who you're bringing with you and the impact you wanna make. But what I learned is that it's actually, it doesn't work that way, and you need to flip that, which is when you start with you first at the center of the equation, and then I'm gonna do, um, uh, you know, everything for me is a diagram, so I'm thinking of concentric circles. You start with you, and th- this isn't also, uh, Ken Blanchard has a, a great model for this, where you start with you, so the inner, inner circle, then you are able to lead yourself, then you can lead others. It extends to one-on-one relationships. Then once you've got that, you're able to lead groups, teams, and then outward towards the business. When you figure that out and you come from the inside out, it's much, much more powerful, because it's not selfish like I would've thought years ago, but it's purposeful. You as human, we, we all are, are driven by a mission, by purpose, by a reason for what we do, and when we're able to have that power us, it then empowers us to connect with others so that we can bring it to life. And especially in a business context, but this is the case in, in anything, uh, communities and family, but especially in business. So, it has to start with you. You gotta, y- you need fuel from somewhere, and it, and it, if it comes from without, it's like a, an eggshell that's just ready to crack. It's, it's not sustainable if it comes from outside.
- 14:49 – 21:19
Changing your story
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Can you give an example of someone you worked with that changed their story, and what impact it had on their career to make this even more real?
- DLDonna Lichaw
I can think of a CEO I worked with a few years ago who, on the outside, was so put together. He was the CEO of a billion-dollar company, successful, raised money like no one's business, was able to get people excited about what he was building, join him, and when we started working together, he had recently hired an executive team, members of an executive team that were just superstars. Silicon Valley and just incredible, and they were so excited to work with him. He was so excited to work with them as well, but on the inside, the story he kept telling himself was, "He's too nice." "Nobody listens to him," was another story. "People don't take me seriously," was another story, and then there were what I call horror stories, this is not a scientific term by any means but horror stories that he told himself were things like, "We're never gonna make it." Or, "They're never gonna listen to me." Or, "I'll never learn to be a real CEO." And the problem with stories like that is they end up taking over your identity, they shadow and cloud your every day and, and actions you take, and interactions you have with people, and when you focus on them so much, they very well will become true. So, that's, that's, um, one example. I could tell you li- li- little more, more about that-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... what, what we did about it, so I-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna ask, and then-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... I'd love to, and then yeah, so if you could share what you did to help shift his story and then also just, how do people do this for themselves?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Perfect. So, in, um, in this case, and this is, this is like, everyone I work with, and this is absolutely something that everyone listening and, and, and everyone in the audience can absolutely do, is take a data-driven approach to the stories that you tell yourself. So, for example, you know, the story, "I, I, I'm too nice." You know, it could be true, it could not be true. How did we get down to the bottom of that? In this case, what we did is I went out there and talked to his team, and this is something you can do for yourself as well. If you're extremely busy, you can have someone else do it for you. And I found out how people actually experienced him and his leadership, and I didn't hear, "He's too nice." I heard, "He is so heartfelt and so caring." And that's a really cool thing. I mean, how rare is, is that for, you know, to hear about a, a CEO, especially a founder. Oftentimes you hear the opposite, which is, is not really true. Usually when founders are not nice people, there are insecurities at play. But in this case, yeah, he, people were like, "We lo- you know, we love him. He's wonderful. That's why he recruited us." And-So great. All right. Um, validated and a little debunked. Really nice but not too nice. That was not a problem for anyone. So then we hear things like, okay, you know, one story he told himself was like, "People don't take me seriously, they don't listen to me. What's- what's going on? I- I need to command respect and- and they need to just do what I say." And I hear this all the time, so I'm using this one example, but this could be anyone, (laughs) everyone that I've worked with. And what we heard from people instead was... It's not that they weren't listening to him, but when you're hiring super senior whip smart executives to work for you, they don't wanna be told what to do. They want to have a grand vision that they're excited about, they want maybe some goals to latch onto and- and help possibly with a strategy to get there, although probably they- they can... They got the strategy all on their own and they want to then show you how they can help you and the business meet your goals and align towards that vision so that you can build the company that you wanna build. So that story, no one listens to me, it- it was the wrong story to be telling. What the actual story was is that people wanted him out of their business and wanted to feel empowered doing their C-level and ex- (laughs) super senior executive level work. But we don't want him to be absent because when he does that, it doesn't work and it's very frustrating when he just disappears for two weeks. So we need him involved but want him to give us problems to solve, give us a vision, give us problems to solve and let us do it for you. And so they were able to write a better ending of that story together. He, you know, it was exactly like user research of any kind or customer discovery, which is you find out what could be possible from your customers and then you can... Uh, ideally, you co-create a better ending together. If you're building products or services, that's how you do it. If you're a leader, you do it by showing up and helping others do what they need to do in a way that feels good for you and that aligns with how you wanna be doing things. And so this is one example, but I find using real research and data and actually talking to people is most effective. There are other ways to take best guesses and I'll use the product metaphor again, which is, you know, you can try things and experiment and then see how it- it works and not talk to your users, but you should probably talk to your customers. In other words, your colleagues and everyone who works for you and really find out what is the true story and what is possible.
- 21:19 – 25:41
Understanding and shifting others’ stories
- LRLenny Rachitsky
There's always stories that people believe about themselves. And to your point, many of them are not true when you actually look at the data, you talk to your customers, AKA your colleagues. I imagine many are actually true or-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
...there are feedback you get that is like, you are not clear enough about stuff. Like, there's things that you actually hear from other people. Does this approach help there as well or is there a different tactic for something's actually okay? You are actually too nice, it's not just a story in your head.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Absolutely. There are times when the stories that we tell ourselves are true and when we go out and find out what's possible, it is something that we're doing that needs to change or isn't working. And so one example is, and this comes up sometimes as well, one executive who I worked with once kept getting this feedback that she was too quiet and when we went out and got feedback, it was true. People were like, "She needs to speak up more." (laughs) And this is becoming a problem because she was so quiet that her team thought she was not interested in them and she would just sit back in meetings, not say anything and they were like, "God, she sucks." Like, "This is the, you know, (laughs) worst boss ever. I don't even wanna be at this meeting and why is she here? Why am I here?" And it re- really was detrimental to them all working together and then she was frustrated 'cause she was always wondering, "Well, why are they not performing? They're not stepping up," and so it- it was frustrating all along and it was true. She, as far as they saw it, her not speaking up was the problem but when we got down to the bottom of what was really going on for her in not speaking up at these meetings is she was just listening. Her processing style was she had to listen and then maybe a few hours later she- she'd have thoughts and so even though the team said, "We- we do want her to participate," what they really needed to know was, it didn't have to do with speaking or not speaking, what they really needed from her was to know that she was listening to them and that she actually heard them and was gonna do something about it and that she wasn't... She was quiet in these meetings, she was not checked out. And so simple solution for that, you know, she could start trying to yell more and talk over people and be obnoxious but nobody wants that either and so she just started communicating with them more about, "Hey, this is... This is my style. I'm a little- little slower. I often need, you know, a couple hours to really process things. I'm here and I want you to know that." And the irony of...... establishing those lines of communication with your team when they're not getting what they need is that, you often end up doing the thing that you've been trying to do but failing to do anyway. Because she ended up talking more with her team, just in communicating with them about her style, and then they started communicating their styles with her and with each other. And this is something that, it's not in the book but, uh, um, you might have heard of this idea of, like, a personal OS that a lot of us like to have, which is, "Hey, these are my work styles, this is how I process, this is how I do things, these are great ways to work with me, and here's how I'd love to work with you." And they ended up doing a lot of that and it worked, it worked out really well. But, but it was true, she was not speaking up and it was, it was having a detrimental effect, but the answer was not talking more, it actually was listening more and just having a better relationship with people.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's an awesome example. By the way, on the work, the personal OS and another term for that I've heard is README, like your own personal README file. Um...
- DLDonna Lichaw
Oh, I like that too.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, isn't that great? So, it sounds like there's kind of these two buckets, there's probably more buckets, but one is a story of yourself that is not true that you can disprove by looking at data and talking to people. And then there's, like, some, almost a story people have about you that they don't quite get what's going on, and then you could change their story by communicating, "Here's what I'm really doing. I'm actually just listening and I'm actually really deeply paying attention."
- 25:41 – 31:28
Imposter syndrome
- LRLenny Rachitsky
If we pick an example, say, imposter syndrome, which comes up a lot on this podcast, where people feel like, "I am an imposter in this role. Nobody knows how bad I... Like, I have no idea what I'm doing. It's all gonna crumble if I mess up." So, say someone has that in their head, like, "I, everyone can tell I am an imposter and it'll all crumble," how would you recommend someone va- vet this, this is real or not? To understand, "Is this a story in my head or is this real, and what do people actually think?" Like, do you go talk to people? How do you recommend people go about that?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Certain stories we tell ourselves are actually quite functional and do not necessarily need to be rewritten. So, imposter syndrome, for an example, if you're going around saying, "I feel like I'm an, a, an imposter. I can't believe I'm doing this," you can try to fake it till you make it. You can try to... I always think of Stu- I'm totally dating myself here, but Stuart Smalley in, uh, Saturday Night Live in the '80s and '90s. He would look in a mirror and do these affirmations and say, you know, "I'm smart and I'm..." whatever. (laughs) And like, dog-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
"I'm good enough, I'm strong enough, and gosh darn it, people li- like me or love me."
- DLDonna Lichaw
There you go. So it's like you, you could do that and it's kind of all very mechanical and these are, there's ways to sort of prop yourself up, but what if you took a counterintuitive approach and looked at that story, "I'm an imposter," and instead asked, "Okay, that's a good story. How is that serving you?" Because when we default to these behaviors, imposter syndrome is something everyone has at one point or another. When we default to these behaviors of, "Oh God, I'm an imposter, okay," over and over and over again, I know it doesn't feel good, but we default to that because it's, it's serving us in a, in one way. Otherwise, it wouldn't become a habit. And, you know, I always think of habits as a, um, an itch. So if you have an itch and you scratch it, you feel better. So, there's a reason why we scratch itches. It feels better. If you do it too much, it hurts. And something like that, telling detrimental stories have that impact. But when you can intercept them at just the right time and say, "Okay, what if that is true? How does it serve me to constantly say I'm an imposter whenever anything gets hard?" Well, there are so, you know, one co-founder I worked with a while back, she did this whenever she, things got too hard and then she was convinced, and, and founders have this a lot, uh, "I, who am I to be running this company? And what am I doing here? And oh my God, I can't be doing this." But when we looked at how that habit of calling herself an imposter served her, what she realized is that every time it kicked in, she worked harder, and it just meant she was hitting some kind of a growth edge. So when she would jump into action, she would learn something new. She would read 20 books, she would go out, take a class, she would listen to podcasts, and, and on and on, and, and she would get better at this new thing. It was fun for her, and then she would feel less like an imposter over time. So, it was a very functional thing for her. The problem is when she did that too much, and this is the case I work with a lot of women who this is the case for, she often did way too much work. And so she took on emotional labor for other people. She did 10 times as much work as she needed to do, like actual work as, uh, you know, in her role she was playing COO and CFO and C, you know, EO, and it's just like she didn't need to be doing all of that. And so, on a spectrum of it's actually helpful, give yourself a pat on the back for jumping into imposter, uh, zone every time things get hard, to the other side of the spectrum, which is okay but when it's too much, you burn out...... you're doing way too much work for other people, you're falling into these unfortunate conventional gender roles that, doing extra work you don't need to. So you wanna find a happy medium. But I, I think the, the, the trick is to, with imposter syndrome, to not deny it, to embrace it as much as you can, but not embrace it so much that it ends up holding you back. So yes, functional, even things that we think are bad for us are actually good.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that advice. It's so much easier to just like, "Okay, yep, it's true, maybe I, I am an imposter, but here's how we can maybe help me while I feel this." And it, this actually reminds me of another coach who did a guest post in my newsletter a long time ago, and her advice is like, "Yeah, you probably are an imposter. You're in a role you've never done before, and that's pretty normal, and that's okay, and here's how you should approach it."
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. Especially in tech where half of the roles we have are all made up. You're probably the first person ever to have your role anyway, whether you founded the company or you're, you're doing something else at your company. So yeah, it's a great thing. Embrace it.
- 31:28 – 36:41
Exploring different types of kryptonite
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So the takeaway advice there is essentially ask yourself, "Okay, this may be how I feel. How is it helping me?" And don't try to push it down and convince yourself that you're not necessarily an imposter, but how is this feeling helping you?
- DLDonna Lichaw
How is it serving you? It's what, um, I have a whole chapter on kryptonite in, in the book, which is, it's, it's what I call kryptonite, and I use superhero metaphors pretty, pretty heavily in, in the book 'cause I'm, I guess, a grown child and I like comics and superhero stories, but, and so are my clients, so I think 'cause I work in tech, I get to do (laughs) I get to do this. But I, it, it's, um, I liken it to kryptonite, which is what the things that we think harm us, actually when we look at how they serve us, they can serve a function. Like kryptonite for Superman, it's how, um, uh, people are able to operate on him. They use a little kryptonite so they can get in there and do some surgery and then get out, so it, it serves a function, but it's, um, you know, when it's too much, that can be detrimental. So yeah. How does it serve you? This is a question that it's so important and so, so powerful.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are some examples of other types of kryptonite that you find leaders have, and how do you find that it ends up maybe serving them and being useful?
- DLDonna Lichaw
They are the kinds that you should avoid and can avoid. So for example, um, scheduling things is my kryptonite, but I do meetings for a living and I love being in meetings, strangely. And so a sche- not scheduling is not an option, but there are ways around it. So I automate everything and some people hire assistants and there are ways to do it. So that's the kind that you're better off avoiding. There's nothing, there's nothing that serves me about having to schedule things or my inability to schedule things properly. How is that serving me? You know what? I don't care, doesn't matter. So just the kind that you need to avoid. Or you know, you could say, um, toxic people or people who just don't add anything to your life, you know, there are kinds of just like, all right, done, moving on. But then there are the kinds that it's usually on the inner kryptonite side where you can look at, "Okay, well how does, how does this serve me?" And so sort of wide swath of people example is dyslexia. So I work with a lot of founders, CEOs and, and senior executives who are dyslexic. Very, very, very common, especially for CEOs. You could say, well, that's kryptonite, you know, having to read things or do things with text and, and, and it can feel like that to a lot of people. Yet when you look at the science of something like dyslexia, it's not so much an impairment, it just means that your brain is operating in a different level, in a different way than most people. Same thing with ADHD and, and you could extend it to autism and, and ton of other things as well, but when you're dyslexic, you're thinking spatially, you're thinking big, you're thinking visually. You're not... You know, so yes, you mix up letters or you're struggling with big blocks of text. That's fine. If you're like founding a company, you know, you're not in documents all day long anyway probably, so that ability to think big and spatially and visually is probably how you created your company in the first place or how, you know, if you work at a large corporation, how you, you catapulted into executive leadership that way because you're a visionary and you do all these things. So I think kryptonite, the inner kind of kryptonite, that's how I like to think of it, which is you think it makes you weak, but when you can look at how you, it serves you, it's often not the case. So it could be something that is, you know, often classified as a disorder like dyslexia, ADHD, and it could be quirks like the one earlier, "I'm, I'm too quiet." Um, well, no, she was just a really good listener. She just didn't realize that she had a poker face on when she was listening and no one knew she was listening. So everything, it, you just look at how it serves you, so it's the kind you need to avoid, the kind of kryptonite that you need to really look at and embrace. And once you embrace it, just like with the superheroes, it becomes ideally something that's useful in small doses like Superman or it could be something more like Hulk, which is, you know, you could say his kryptonite is his anger, but that's also his superpower and he can't...... get rid of it. Or if he does, he becomes Mark Ruffalo, being really boring, uh, like in the- (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- DLDonna Lichaw
... latest Avenger movies and he's all meditating.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Just moving around.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Uh, yeah. I don't know what the point of that is. So yeah, that's how I see kryptonite. It's actually a really, really amazing, amazing tool that we can all leverage.
- 36:41 – 43:53
Identifying and leveraging strengths
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The flip side of kryptonite is super power, and I definitely want to spend time here. So I'm a big believer in this, you are too, of just how important it is to lean into your strengths and identify what you're better at than most people and use that as your way of getting ahead, versus trying to, say, just remove these kryptonites, uh, slash things you're not good at. For me, it was really a big deal. I actually worked with a coach while I was working, and this was one of the biggest, uh, step changes for me, is just realizing, "I will never be amazing at X, Y, Z, but I- turns out I'm really good at these things. And so let me just use those things to achieve the things I'm trying to do." As one example, I am never gonna be an amazing public speaker. I hate that stuff. Even though I do this podcast, it's not my strength.
- DLDonna Lichaw
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And it turns out, I much prefer writing and sitting there and thinking, and that's what led to this newsletter. I started doing the thing that was pulling me and was easier for me, and ends up being really successful, because that's another way of achieving the same thing, it turns out. So here's the question. Why is it so important to think about your superpowers? How do you identify your superpowers, and just how do you think about this area?
- DLDonna Lichaw
You know, on, on the one hand, there are so many studies that show that when we play to our strengths, we're much more effective than when we try to fix what's broken. It's a waste of energy to fix what's broken, for the most part. But when you can amplify your strengths and figure out how to use them productively so that you can fulfill your purpose, meet your goals, do what you need to do in life and bring others along with you, it's just that, it's, you're, you're s- you have such a bigger impact that way. I'm gonna, um, give you an example. And it's funny that we're, we're here talking about this, because so a while back, I remember we first met over email. I was thinking of resurrecting my newsletter and I hate writing. And I've written two books. I hate writing. (laughs) And but more than hating writing, I hate email. Like I hate sending emails, reading emails. I really struggle with it. And but yet, I have this newsletter that people love, (laughs) and, and, um, people have been begging me to send more of over the years. And at the time I was like, "Uh, maybe I'll, you know, dust it off." And I remember emailing you about this and asking if we could have a call, 'cause I had questions about newsletters. And your answer was, "No, no, no, no, no. Uh, no, no calls." Uh-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It wasn't- I don't know if it was that. (laughs) I don't know if it was that. (laughs)
- DLDonna Lichaw
(laughs) Something like that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It was just like, "I prefer to- I p- prefer to avoid calls whenever I can."
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes. There you go. So, "Prefer to-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... avoid calls whenever I can." It was very polite, right? But it was like, you know-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. Yeah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... um, "Happy to answer any questions you have. Can you-"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yep.
- DLDonna Lichaw
"... shoot me an email?" And I think... I don't remember if this was my answer, but, you know, my, I think my answer to me was, "Nope, no emails."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
"I cannot shoo" (laughs) Like, "I can't, I can't give you my questions written."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
"Uh, maybe if I can record them for you, I'll think about it." And, um, and I think in the end, uh, the irony is I ended up resurrecting the email, uh, wi- email list a while later.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
And, and now I do send occ- occasional newsletters that, that I actually like writing and people enjoy. But, you know, I knew, "Okay, I'm not gonna ... It'll take me like five hours to write down my questions for you over email." And I knew that was not right for me. You knew, you know, uh, having a meeting was not right for you. That was fine. That was great, because in the end, it was easier for me to write an entire book than to write that email to you. It probably was faster (laughs) to write my book than (laughs) it would've been to write the email to you. And in the end, here we are having, having that first conversation, which is really fun, but it's in a way that feels good to both of us. Play to your strengths and, and good things happen. It's not worth it trying to like, I, I could get better at writing emails, but you know what? Not worth my time. And you could have more meetings and not worth your time either.
- NANarrator
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- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there an example you can think of, of someone that you work with, where identifying their strength and then leaning into that made a big impact on them?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Gosh, I see this all the time, especially see this with founder CEOs because there's this very heavy misconception that when-You are again, catapulted into some kind of senior leadership position that you're supposed to be a- a certain way. And you're supposed to be loud and opinionated and controlling and- and tell people what to do. But I've worked with some amazing CEOs who are just incredible listeners instead. And it's the same thing, which is they embrace what works for them, and they don't try to be what they're supposed to be. Well, they have to learn that. And, um, you know, I think of, uh, Bob Iger is an example from- from Disney. He's, um... I haven't met him. I know people who've met him, and I just always hear, "Such a sweet person, so nice, and such a great listener." So like, you can control the world and do it in- in your way. And so yeah, I see this all the time. Any- any of your strengths, they operate again on that continuum with kryptonite. But if you can figure out how to leverage them and really be comfortable with them, cool things happen. Cool things happen.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The big unlock for me was realizing that you can achieve all the same things using different strengths. Like, you can be an amazing CEO being very loud, charismatic, visionary. You could also be a great CEO being very quiet and thoughtful and deliberative and working in small teams versus like, "Hey everyone, welcome, listen to what I have to say."
- DLDonna Lichaw
Exactly.
- 43:53 – 56:39
Identifying superpowers
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, so how does somebody identify their superpowers, their strengths? I know there's some tests they could take. Very tactically, what do you recommend people do? What do you send them to, to figure out, "Here's what I'm really good at"?
- DLDonna Lichaw
There- there are tests out there. I have personally not found them as helpful, but some people love them. And so if you've ever taken a StrengthsFinder test or there's a, um, VIA Character Strengths test I think it's called, those are the two most popular. And you can, you know, just take a multiple choice quiz and it'll tell you what your top five strengths or characteristics are. And, um, I don't find it useful because if I just get a list of things, I will never remember what the list is, and it also has no- no context for me. And so what I do and what I find works better for my clients as well is to pull your superpowers out of your stories from your- your past and your present, and then eventually figure out how to a- apply them and transpose them to your future. But if you look at your peak experiences from- from life, from work, but especially from- from life, because even if you're- you wanna be a better leader in a work context, there's a difference between work and life. It's- it's- it's very blurry. So it's better- you're better off not- not separating them. But if you look at your- your peak experiences from your past, so I would go back to when you were a kid, what's something you did when you were a kid, like a project you worked on or something you were a part of that completely, totally lit you up and that you were so excited about? And I would then look at something from your more recent past, like what's a project or something you worked on in the last maybe 10 years that you- just jazzed you up and you- you were just so excited to do? And then I would also look at just how did you get into your line of work, the thing that you're doing now? What's that meandering path? And when you can look at these three stories as moments in time, and you can kind of lay them on- on top of one another, what you see at key moments is your superpowers popping through, and they're the things that em- empower you to make an impact. They are the things that do make an impact. And so an example I'll give you is one of, uh... God, another executive I worked with while ago, she kept being told, uh, in those dreaded 360 reviews at her company, they were obsessed with... It was another big- big tech company, they were obsessed with superpowers at this company. And so she would get these 360 reviews from her t- team telling her what her superpowers were. And so they kept saying, "Attention to detail." (laughs) And she was like, "What on earth? I hate details." (laughs) Like, "That's my kryptonite. I cannot deal with details." Yet they kept telling her, "Wow, you're so great. You have this attention to detail." And then they kept giving her more detail-oriented stuff to do. And she's like, "I'm in- I wanna be... I should be doing strategy and high level stuff. What is happening here?" And so, you know, with- with her, when we, you know... And she could say, "My strength is strategy," and I hear that all the time. "I'm a strategist." Like, that's not a- what is that? It doesn't even mean anything. That's not a superpower. Like, may as well say, I don't know, it just- that's- that means nothing. But when we looked at her past and her stories, what we were able to pull out is that she was really great at connecting- connecting things together, connecting themes, connecting pieces, trends, and connecting people, connecting ideas together, and then connecting people to ideas. That's when she was happiest, and that's when she was most effective. And so eventually that being a- a connector, it was her superpower, one of her superpowers. It also became part of her identity. And over time, she was able to shed that whole the, you know, great attention to detail thing as she just started em- embracing that ability to connect, and it- it made her much more effective at her job in the end. So yeah, look to your past and you can pull out key moments and see what your superpowers are.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
We'll link to these tests that you recommended just for people...... to explore. I took a couple of them and they were actually really useful to me. So I think it's, if nothing else, it's a good little context to have while you do this other exercise. And I don't know if I got this right, but one is, think about peak experiences in your life-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... including, like, childhood or, like, mostly adult life do you recommend?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. I would go back as far as you can, definitely childhood.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Childhood.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And peak meaning, like, like amazing, like, happy experiences? Is that what you look for?
- DLDonna Lichaw
(clicks tongue) It doesn't have to be happy or sad, it's just it... you were at your best. It, it lit you up.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
And so, um, for example, like when... I mean, I have a few, but, you know... Well, no, let me a- s- enough about me so other people can hear, hear this in action. What is, um... When was a time when you were a, a, a younger or a kid or any time in the past when you were just at your best, really, really lit up doing something that just fueled you?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
To me, I guess I think of, not necessarily an exis- specific example, but just, like, accomplishing things always gets me energized. Like, "I did this. I did this hard thing." Like selling my startup, that was a peak experience. There we go.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Mm... Selling...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
There's one.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Selling your startup?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Okay.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And starting the startup.
- DLDonna Lichaw
And starting, starting the startup. What, what compelled you to start the startup?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I always had this goal of "I want to start a company," which is a terrible reason to start a company-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... but I had a goal, I wanted to start a company. So I had set this goal, "In two years, I'm gonna leave this job and start a company." And two years later, that's exactly what I did.
- DLDonna Lichaw
What was it about starting a company that made that something that you were so interested in doing?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, I think is the core of it. Like, I just wanna... I keep reading about startups, all these people are doing interesting things. I want to just see if I can pull this off.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Okay. So you wanted to just see if you could pull it off?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. And I also felt like I had the skills to do this compared to other folks that were starting companies and trying to... They're handed a startup.
- DLDonna Lichaw
So you wanted to do it 'cause you wanted to see if you could do it-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- 56:39 – 1:01:52
Running experiments
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I imagine many people listening to this are feeling like, like, "I wish I could not be in these dumb meetings that I'm in all the time and these stupid reviews," and like, there's a lot of stuff you have no control over that also are very energy-sapping. What advice would you give to people thinking that?
- DLDonna Lichaw
W- well, okay, let me qualify this with just, this is why I'm not a career coach, by the way. Like I don't help people figure, navigate, um, how to change jobs or leave jobs because I think if you're (laughs) spending most of your time in your day doing things that are sapping your energy and you hate your, things you're doing in your job, maybe you're not in the right, (laughs) in the right job. So, um, I don't know, if I was a career coach, I would just tell everyone, "Oh yeah, quit your job. I don't know what you're doing there." (laughs) But, um, but there's, there's a lot of truth to that which is if there are things that you can con- control energy wise, great. Manage your energy, not your time. If there's really nothing you could do about it and it's the context and it's the situation, ch- y- then your next best thing is trying to figure out how to change the context or the situation. So, but I'm pretty ruthless there, I think.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
For sure.
- DLDonna Lichaw
This is what I still bring from product management. I'm ruthless (laughs) when it comes to, you know, prioritizing things.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love it. This is prioritization.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah, there you go.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That- this reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote that I love of his advice is just, "If you wake up every morning and you're feeling dread for the thing you're doing, it's okay to wake up sometimes and feeling that and feel like, 'Ugh, what a, I'm not excited about this day,' but if it keeps happening over and over and over and over, that's a sign that maybe you should make a change."
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. I, I think there, I mean, there's something, there's something there, and, um, actually I mean, to, you know, bring this back to kryptonite, if it's something little like let's say Zoom fatigue, for example. It's, I know it became, um, definitely a topic, eh, when the pandemic hit a, a bunch of years ago but I, I've been working remotely for, God, years, years, and, um, even pre-pandemic, and I, I'm in meetings all day long. I love it. I love working with my clients. I c- we can't always, the- and they're all over the world, so we can't always travel to, to be with them. We do sometimes, they can't always travel to be with me, but, you know, the video's the next best thing but it also, it can be exhausting. And so, you know, does that mean I'm not just never gonna have video calls ever? No, because I love what I, what I do. And so I've discovered little, you know, little hacks for that one which is, like, don't schedule too many meetings a day. Great. Um, do lots of (laughs) active stuff in between, uh, gym, walks, whatever try to get in-person social time, no meeting days, and then, um, and for during meetings I've got, right here I've got one of my, my squishies. There's a, um, neurological thing with Zoom where it, um, you know, we're just getting stim- stimuli from through our eyes, but we, um, and through our, our brains but we're not getting like physical stimuli the same I, I would be getting if we were in a room together hanging out. Even having to just be on the other side of the room and we're chatting, it would be a very different physical experience that would close that circuitry for me and leave me more satisfied as opposed to on Zoom I'm all like, my brain's like on the lookout for something. And so I, and a lot of my clients do this too, use fidgets help ground me when, uh, I'm on Zoom calls, and it's like, "Okay, great." So there's things you can manage but, yes, like that Steve Jobs quote, you know, idea is like if you... God, if you really don't like and, and are getting energy sucked from most of what you're doing and it's constant, you got to change your situation.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I really like that tip. That's very practical, and buy something that you can play with with your hands. I use this pen actually, is what I'm playing with usually with this podcast.
- DLDonna Lichaw
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I need something squishy maybe. Uh...
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. Oh, there's...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
If there's anything you recommend-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... let's link to it in the show notes.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Oh my God. I know, I know. I, um, one of my superpowers that's actually my kryptonite, but if, um, if I'm humorous about it, I'll call it su- a superpower, is, um, starting things that I don't finish. And so, I have, um, I think I have a picture of it somewhere on my website, a superhero supply kit that I prototyped a while back that has, um, all these different types of fidgets, and chocolate, and like, all these things to get you through your, your meetings. And there are, um, like pointy fidgets that give you energy in the morning, and then there are squishy ones for the afternoon. (laughs) And I've done way too much research. I should send you one at some point. I have, um, a few boxes prototyped, and, um, I never ended up doing anything with them. So I just send them to clients sometimes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I'll take it.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Good. (laughs) I'll put that on my list of things I-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Things you want finished.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... need to do, which is also my kryptonite. (laughs)
- 1:01:52 – 1:12:41
Using product frameworks for personal growth
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. So there's just a couple more things I wanted to touch on, and then I'll let you go. One is, you have this interesting approach of using product frameworks that people know in their day-to-day of building product to translate that to personal growth advice. And so in your book, you use this, like, the design thinking double diamond framework for helping people think about their own life and career. Is there a couple you could share of, that people can maybe think about and use of just like, here's something you know in product, here's how you can actually use this in your life and your career?
- DLDonna Lichaw
I trained with Gestalt coaches and therapists when, um, I moved into coaching. Gestalt psychology and Gestalt therapy, the idea is that... Well, it's a lot of what, what I talk about, and especially in the book, this idea of th- when you want to create real, lasting, powerful change, you don't do it by forcing change to happen. You instead doing, do it by embracing what is and what's working, and then figuring out how to leverage that. And so it works for individual therapy, it works for, for coaching. It also works more broadly for organizational change and, and giant transformational d- development projects, um, or initiatives, or any, any kind of change. But one of the theoretical underpinnings there is when you do understand what's working and you start to get an idea of what's possible, or something that you want to go try or do or create or make happen, you don't just go and change everything or do it all at once. You take one tiny step and run a little experiment to get data. And so, the way I work and the way I, I learned to work, at least through Gestalt coaching and Gestalt therapy, was you don't leave a session with me without having tried a little experiment first. So the analogy there is, um, you know, we would call it an in-the-room experiment versus then get out of the building and do an experiments. And if, um, you subscribe to, I guess I'm gonna call it lean methodology, although I feel like these names change all the time, and oh, that's so 10 years ago, and it... I don't care what anything's called. But the idea of experimenting and getting data, and then using what you learn to make informed decisions on how to change things, and then how to build things, and how to make things even more successful. It works for the digital products that we build, it works for the businesses that we build, and it works for ourselves. And I ideally do it for all the above. And so, anything you think is true or you want to do, it's a hypothesis until you test it, and you go out, get data, and then you can do a bigger version, bigger version, bigger version. So it works with human psychology and all the things we want to create and learn in life, uh, uh, just as well as with products.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there an example of one of those little experiments you ran in a session?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Bring us back to the example of that one executive from earlier, to keep continuity here, who thought she was too quiet, and her team was complaining about her... And actually, the irony, often when people come to me with things that they're, um, embarrassed by, like, on the outside, she was, like, actually quite loud. (laughs) Like, as a, as a person, she was really loud and brash and all these things. It's just that in terms of her team, they didn't like how quiet she was in, in meetings, uh, b- especially that dissonance there was confusing to them, 'cause she was so loud and boisterous and energetic. But using, uh, that as an example, I remember when we first realized that the reason why she was so quiet in meetings is 'cause she was spending a lot of time doing deep listening. She started to chill out a little bit about it and, and stop beating herself up as much, and, and started realizing, "Oh, that's a, that's a good thing. Why am I so insecure and like, you know, getting so angry at myself for doing this all the time? That's good." So she started to chill out a little bit, but then the idea of her... A bigger experiment was, "In the n- your next meeting later this afternoon, see what it feels like to sit there and just listen for an hour. Just see what it feels like, and then see what you make of it, and then we'll figure out what to do about it. But just see what it feels like to listen and be in awe of, wow, I'm really listening." (laughs) And so that had been like a-... you know, sort of get out of the building e- experiment. But the idea of doing that petrified her, 'cause she's like, "I can't sit for a whole hour." Just like, being like, "Yeah," patting myself on the back, "I'm a good listener, I'm a good listener, look at me." Or like, not even good or bad but, "Wow, I'm really listening." That's all I ever want from people, just this like radical appreciation, this awe of, wow, I'm doing this. Everything changes when you figure that out. But we decided to run a little experiment because that was just, you know, why waste a whole hour of her life when we could just do something in 30 seconds in, in, in the room right, right now? And so we tried a little, little role play of like, all right, what would it be like to just sit here for 30 seconds? And I, I talked (laughs) about I don't know what, and just listened to me, we're having a meeting, what does it feel like for 30 seconds to do that? And we did that, and her answer was, "That was terrifying." (laughs) You know? Like, "That was god-awful." Like, "Oh my God, I have to do that for a whole hour?" And eventually over time, it got, it got easier. It was very uncomfortable. I mean, this is where I'll bring up the whole superhero analogy again, that in superhero stories when, when superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they don't just say, "Oh, thanks for this gift," and then run and save the world. They are r- every superhero has a really hard time accepting, "Oh, this is my gift? Hell no." (laughs) Or, "Wait, what do I do with this?" And they wreak havoc and they make a mess and it's uncomfortable and even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers often then, 'cause he doesn't like being super. And so it's hard to know what you're really, really great at, but when you can run little experiments that get bigger and bigger over time and really learn how to, whether it's embracing your superpowers or anything, let's say there's something you want to try, something scary or like look at me with my superhero supply kit, and I was like-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Ah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... "Oh, I really want to build a gift box. Let me prototype that." Okay, fine. Five years later have I done anything with it? No, but I built it, I saw what it's like, it felt good, and then as I got bigger with my experiment of thinking about, hmm, how can I mass-produce this? Hmm, where would I sell it? Hmm, what about taxes? Oh, God. (laughs) And you know, not for me, and that's fine, so I give them away as gifts. But, um, whether it's a product or you or your business, small experiments, get data, go bigger, adjust, iterate, all of it, you will accomplish incredible things.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And I think the- a lot of the power there is you feel like, wow, there's something new here I didn't expect, and this is, like, a new interesting learning, um, let me see where else this can go.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes. And I think the biggest difference that was- took me a long time for me to learn is that as opposed to product development, you're going- you're, you're testing things not just how are- how is it working and what are the numbers? Well, even with product, I mean, we're not just looking at nu- you know, not just looking at numbers all the time, but you're- when you're experimenting with yourself and with the people you work with and with your teams and with your companies, it's, um, yeah, you run it through three filters. So- and this is not my term but I'll say head, heart, hands is what I like to think of. Which is head, okay, how is this going? What are my thoughts? You know, you might think yeah, okay, I'm tr- I'm listening, that's fine. Okay, next. Emotionally how is this going in your heart? Wow, I'm terrified. (laughs) This feels awful. Or hmm, this isn't so bad. Or whatever it is. And, uh, or it might be, no, that's fine. I hear that a lot, "Oh, that's- that was fine," but then how does it feel in your body? Our bodies are ultimately where we store all of our- w- where we take in our stimuli and, and then store all of our experiences and our body also tells us what next action we should take, and if you run an experiment and scan your body and it's like, "Yeah, that felt fine." And then how do you feel in your body? "Oh, numb." (laughs) Well, that will tell you something. Or I hear this all the time, or how do you feel? "Um, my hands are on fire." Um, or I was working with one, one client yesterday and I think she said something like, "That, that was fine," and her whole face turned bright red. And, and then after a minute, you know, we were able to just say, like, okay, what's going f- fine versus your face turned bright red, what happened there? And then she realized, oh, I'm burning up. (laughs) This is not okay. So, um, yeah, run it through head, heart, hands. Life is like product thinking and it's also not; we have to go deeper and, and more broad with our experiences and then we'll learn the most and be able to make the most informed amazing decisions and, um, so cheesy but you, you live a, live a good life and make an impact and be a great leader and do all the things you want to do that way.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Beautiful. The, um, point you just made about how much of our thinking is driven by our body, we just had a whole episode on this a few episodes ago with Johnny Miller where we talk about the nervous system and how most of our neurons go up to our brain versus down from the brain, and our body's telling our brain what we're feeling, so there's a lot more. If you want to explore that as a listener, that's a great episode, we'll link to it in the show notes.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Okay, good, good.
- 1:12:41 – 1:15:27
Identifying subconscious goals
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. Let me ask you a question that my colleague suggested. She gave me a few suggestions to ask you and I imagine this is what worked for her in you two working together. So question she had is how is- how as an executive coach do you help-... identify/bring out goals or wishes that people have in their subconscious but are unable to realize or articulate?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Start with the ending. Come up with how you want things to turn out and then work your, work your way back. And start as far out as you want. It could be, you know, decades from now, it could be five years from now, it could be three years from now, it could be a year from now, it could be a quarter from now. You could do all the above and really imagine. Close your eyes, imagine you're there, engage all your senses. What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you s- who, what do you see? Who do you see? What do you feel emotionally, physically? And what are you doing? What have you accomplished? What's amazing? And then if you've got something exciting, go back to the beginning and then figure out, imagine how you got there and just write that journey out and think of it as, if you think of it as an experimental roadmap, then start thinking, all right. What's the first thing I want to, need to learn to know if this is right? Work your way towards that and onwards. If you do that and you really, you're like, "I have no vision," which I remember is what happened in this case, you sit with it for longer. You can't write that journey if you don't have that ending. And so you sit with it for as long as you need until you get it and then you create it. And again, it sounds so cheesy in a way, and I'm... You know, and I don't, it's not like I'm subscribing to this, like, anything you want in life, you just say it and accomplish it. I know life doesn't exist like that, but dream it, see it, and then start taking steps to get there. What you end up creating will very likely be very different than you ever imagined, but this is what's going to f- fuel you. We're hu- human. We're visual creatures. And so, yeah. That, this is... And I have, uh, the whole mission section of the book and I have lots of, uh, choo- choose your own adventure options for troubleshooting and, and t- the pitfalls to look out for. But, um, yeah. That's my long-winded answer. En-envision it, then figure out how you might have made it happen and go make it happen.
- 1:15:27 – 1:16:44
Envisioning impact
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I was gonna say, this is a great tease for, uh, a part of your book we didn't get to too much, so a good reason to go buy the book. Um...
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Something I was gonna say as you were talking is I... With this coach I worked with once, sh- we did this exercise and I was like, "Okay, in five years or maybe 10 years, I'm not working anymore. Here's what I'm doing, I'm living here, family." She's like, "Everyone in tech is like, in five years, they're not working anymore."
- DLDonna Lichaw
(laughs) Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
They're just like done, they're retired. Just everybody's in that... That's their future, which is not obviously realistic-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... but it's hilarious.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. I remember year- years ago, 10 years ago, I was like, "10 years from now, I'm definitely not working in tech. Definitely not working in tech." And then here we are. But it's funny how things end up, but what matters is that you're clear on the impact that you want to make and how you make it. Who knows what'll end up being the case, but... And that you're doing it true to yourself.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And impact is another chapter in your book, which we-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... also didn't get to. So there's a lot of content-
- DLDonna Lichaw
So many teasers. Yes, go buy the book.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... so many teasers. Donna, is there anything you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
- DLDonna Lichaw
No, no. This has been so... It's, it's been so delightful chatting with you. No, nothing else.
- 1:16:44 – 1:25:14
Lightning round
- DLDonna Lichaw
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
- DLDonna Lichaw
I'm ready.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
First question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Here's a funny thing, is I used to have all these different books for different topic... I'm gonna give you the worst answer, but it's true. All these different books for different topics, and similar to when I was working in product, all these different books and whatever, and then eventually I realized, "I need to write the book that I really want to recommend." And so I did that with my last book, The User's Journey, which is all about product development. And I sound so conceited, but I really believe it, I now recommend my book the most. (laughs) And it combines all my favorite ideas, philosophies, books out there, and uh, you can check out the bibliography to see all the 30, 50 books that you can read otherwise. But, um, man, I sound like such a jerk.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
No, I get this 'cause this is... Well, my newsletter was originally is like, I will just do my best to define an answer to this question I get often and put it together and make it really good so that I can send people, "Here's my best answer to this question." But every time I do that, they're like, "Oh, brother, just like"-
- DLDonna Lichaw
(laughs) Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
"... sending your own blog post to me. Like, just tell me what, what an answer." Like, but I've written the best version of it here. I, this is gonna answer everything you're looking for. So-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Exactly.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... I go through the same, the same pain. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed?
- DLDonna Lichaw
A show I've been watching recently, and I feel funny saying this 'cause the, the fourth season was on recently and it was... I didn't enjoy it as much, but the first few seasons were so much fun, was, um, For All Mankind on Apple TV. Have, have you seen it? The...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yeah. (laughs) Um, it was so much fun. It was all like, what if the, um, the space industry was like in an alternate reality and the last few decades were different than what they were? So that was very fun, and uh, if y- um, you know, for work stuff, you could always... A lot of my clients love watching Ted Lasso for, um, you know, all the leadership stuff, and it's just a sweet show. But, um, yeah. For All Mankind is recent, that's really fun.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Next question, do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask? Usually this is meant for people interviewing candidates, but is there anything that comes to mind when asked this question?
- DLDonna Lichaw
The question I always ask when I'm interviewing clients, 'cause if, if we don't, if I'm not excited about what you're, you're doing, we're not gonna work together and, and, um, if I... Yeah, I want to know what that is. And so imagine it's a few years out and you've had the best however long, year or three years of, of your life. What would you be telling me? And I like to add a twist to that which is from, uh, Benjamin Zander in a book called The Art of Possibility where he, with his students, he used to say, "Give yourself an A. If you could give yourself an A at the end of this semester, what, what would you be writing? Like write the ending." And so I love doing that with clients, just f- seeing what could be, what could be possible that we could create if we, if we worked together. Same thing with job candidates, although it's (laughs) reminding me, the, one of my first jobs I ever got out of college, uh, this is in the early dot-com days, I remember my then, who became my boss, he asked me that question when, uh, he was interviewing me, like how, where I saw myself in five years. And I remember at the time, my answer was, "Not here (laughs) , and hopefully making documentary films." And this is like a dot-com job, uh, but (laughs) like in hindsight, I can't believe I answered it that way. I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be doing something else in five years." And he loved it so much that he hired me, like, on the spot, (laughs) on the spot, and we're still, we're still friends many decades later. So, um, yeah, that's my favorite interview question all around.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
S- similar to a question people often use in product of just what is the ideal experience that could, what's the perfect version of what we're building and let's work backwards from that? Or what's like the 10X version?
- DLDonna Lichaw
Exactly. Or, um, you know, if you want to add to that, like if you could wave a magic wand, it's the-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- DLDonna Lichaw
... same, same kind of thing.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Amazing.
- DLDonna Lichaw
What could be possible? Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love the leveraging of product-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Always.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... thinking into coaching. I love it. Next question, do you have a favorite product that you recently discovered that you love? Maybe you already mentioned the squishy thing. Maybe something else comes to mind.
- DLDonna Lichaw
My fidgets. All my fidgets. I have so many, many different kinds. They're so much fun. I'm sure I have a better answer somewhere, but yeah, I would say my-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Well, if you can-
- DLDonna Lichaw
... my fidgets.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... if you can point us to your favorites in Linx, that would be awesome. I'm sure people are curious what you've-
- DLDonna Lichaw
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... discovered.
Episode duration: 1:27:02
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