THE LEAFLET

July 11 2024

delegate for trust, a good interview question, don’t be a genius

DELEGATE FOR TRUST

Leaders often overestimate how many successes they’ll need to see from their people before they can freely trust them to own things without a lot of oversight. My experience has been that they overestimate by 3x or more. Overestimating that much can stymie their first attempts. 

If you assume you’d need to see 10 successes, it’s likelier ~2-3 would do the job. 

You and your people both learn more if you give them meaningful stuff to own and give them feedback on how well they do it. You might be surprised how quickly you’re ready to hand certain things over altogether once you start. Starting is good, even if the point where they’ll be autonomous and you’ll be anxiety-free seems distant and hazy.

-Ben

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A GOOD INTERVIEW QUESTION

A colleague recently introduced me to this clever idea. If you’re interviewing someone for [role], it can be useful to ask them this hypothetical question:

“A good friend of yours is about to hire a [role] at their organization. They come and ask you how to know if they’ve gotten a good [role]. What do you tell them?”

This can reveal otherwise hidden priorities and values. It can gently push someone out of the tricky, game-theoretic position they rationally sit in for all questions that are about them and their past performance. This question is less obviously about looking good and more about articulating a line of thinking. You might get some signal that’s less noisy than the rest of the interview. 

-Eric

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DON’T BE A GENIUS

Looking like a genius might feel good but it doesn’t help your people as much as looking like a diligent student. Almost no one is a genius - the category is defined by its exceptionality. If you have power, tenure, or status greater than the folks around you, I’m betting most of those folks are going to assume that they aren’t the geniuses around here.

If your people think you get your results through the exercise of genius (or charisma, which is maybe something like “social genius”), they may set a too-low ceiling on their own growth. They’ll set the ceiling somewhere below whatever your observable level of performance is. They’ll assume they can’t be as good as you are, that they could do a lot of things but oh heavens, not that leader stuff / CEO stuff. You have to be a genius to do that. 

You can escape this by putting your own growth, learning, and useful mistakes on stage. Attribute ideas to others on the team who voice them (even if you also had the idea, or had it first, or had a sharper version of it).

You don’t have to be all cute and gestural with this, either. You can be so deeply earnest and un-cool as to directly tell your people “hey, i got to this outcome through learning, testing, and growth - not through talent. I’m telling you this because I want you to do those things, too. That’s how we win / achieve our mission / live our values / do the damn thing.”

-Eric

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COMPELLING QUOTES

Writer Edwidge Danticat on cemeteries:

I have always enjoyed cemeteries. Altars for the living as well as resting places for the dead, they are entryways, I think, to any town or city, the best places to become acquainted with the tastes of the inhabitants, both present and gone.

Journalist George Packer on ideology and principles:

Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.

Poet Ocean Vuong on rules:

Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places.

Keep going, keep growing,

Ben & Eric