Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:29:34 · Becky Kennedy
And so, when a kid hits, they look also and kids will say things like, "I don't care what you say." They're out of control. Maybe they're in a situation where, I don't know, they could be tired, but also they're angry that a sibling has a toy and they don't have skills to manage anger, they're jealous that someone is playing with something and they can't manage the jealousy. And when you look at bad behavior through the lens of feelings that overpower skills, you start to think like a coach. It always has struck me with kids, that we don't punish them into learning how to swim, which I know sounds funny. But if you paid for swim lessons and the person said, You know what? I'm just not going to put up with this. It's this inappropriate behavior. By the way, your kid has to learn to swim if they're going to function in life. So, send them to their room and tell them to come back when they learn how to swim. It's absurd, it's obviously laughable. I think swimming is very important, but an even more important life skill is learning how to manage your emotions. It is. And nobody learns new skills by being sent to their room, nobody learns new skills by adding shame. All that does is increase the gap between feelings and skills. It's just totally counterproductive. The answer is, we have to set boundaries. We have to be the people setting boundaries around out of control behavior. But then we actually have to teach our kids the skills they were missing, which levels up the skills. And that's how not only you change behavior short term, but you actually change behavior massively long term.
00:31:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Becky Kennedy
[00:31:08] S0: I'm actually in the middle of starting potty training with our kid and I'm taking this little online course and they call it potty learning, not potty training, for exactly that reason. You're not training them to do a thing. They don't know how to do it, so you just teach them, like you're teaching them the alphabet, just teach them all little steps and what they need to learn. [00:31:24] S1: You're not doing our potty learning course? Lenny, I'm going to talk to you after. [00:31:30] S0: Oh, I didn't know you had one. Okay. [00:31:31] S1: Our marketing message isn't getting out there. [00:31:33] S0: I'm switching immediately. Well, how do people find it? Goodinside.com? [00:31:39] S1: It's actually one of the things I feel very strongly about putting out for free. Because, I think potty stuff is one of the early lessons around body autonomy and skills. And the quickest way we kind of mess it up as parents is kind of trying to take over the process. And it could be so stressful. And I actually told my team while ago is, I just think this should be a service. So, if you Google Good Inside potty, you can have it for zero dollars. [00:32:05] S0: Oh, it's actually free already. [00:32:07] S1: Yes, it's free. [00:32:08] S0: I'm switching immediately. [00:32:09] S1: Yes. [00:32:09] S0: Is there a corollary to adult work environments in potty learning? [00:32:15] S1: Yeah. There is, there always is. [00:32:15] S0: Do tell.
00:32:17 · Becky Kennedy
[00:32:17] S1: Well, okay. So, let's think about what the potty stuff is about for kids. When our kids are younger, they control two things in their entire life. What goes into their body and what comes out of their body? That's all. No, obviously, hopefully we let them pick their clothes here and there, but thematically... By the way, and they shouldn't be in charge of a ton more categories because they're two, right? But it's why those two areas can become so heated for families because we get so stressed. And when kids, especially if you don't have a people pleaser, okay? When kids even smell, my parent is stepping into one of the only two domains that are mine, holy moly, will they do nutty things to push you back. And so, what's the general lesson, the human lesson is, what is it like for someone to have not that many areas of life that they're in control of? Number one, just think about that. Think about the first 10 minutes of your kids' day. We wake them up. We tell them what the weather is. We tell them, No, you can't wear that. We tell them what's for breakfast. We tell them their shirt's on the wrong way. If my husband woke me up that way, I would be in a bad mood the rest of the day. Okay? And I'd probably be looking for a million different areas to just grasp control of as a way of screaming to the world like, I am my own person. Right? And so, if we think about that in the workplace, well, first of all, temperamentally, there are a subset of people, I call these the resilient rebels. They present as strong-willed, defiant kids, whose... I think we all walk around with the core fear that we end up acting out. Their core fear is the loss of control. They are very, very attuned to people kind of stepping into their domain, and if they smell it, they resist. Well, we have those as adults too. It's tricky to collaborate with them. And again, we need to have an expectation, but we might see that as, why do I ask someone to switch a meeting time? And it feels like I took a knife to their heart, the way they react, right? Well, that theme might be coming up and maybe we can go one level deeper and say, Is this someone who in general... I'm making this up, but, oh, someone got promoted before they did on their team, they just had a change in manager, they just had their vacation denied, whatever it was. Oh, is that actually what we're talking about?
00:34:34 · Becky Kennedy, Lenny Rachitsky
And it's manifesting as this difficulty changing meaning time, but actually there's other themes of control and independence at play. [00:34:42] S0: As maybe a lesson here is, clarifying, here's what you own on this team, on this project, here's things that you're going to drive, here's where I'm going to be really involved. Is that maybe a takeaway? [00:34:53] S1: I think that is definitely a takeaway. I also just love naming your intention, that's always really helpful. Hey, I want to look over this project together, because I want to get ahead of some things and I think that's actually going to help you do the most independent work. That's why I want to go through it in such detail. When you name the intention very, very clearly for someone, they're much more likely to interpret your behavior through the intention you just named, because your intention isn't to control them or make them feel small. But if that's also something they have a predilection for, it's even more important for those people to do the naming of the intention up front. [00:35:30] S0: And there's also just a whole micromanaging, I don't know, element to this. So, this is why people in part hate micromanagement. Like, I want to be in control of something, why get out of this? [00:35:39] S1: Yeah, which is a dance. Exactly.
00:35:39 · Becky Kennedy, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:35:39] S1: Yeah, which is a dance. Exactly. [00:35:41] S0: Yeah. Okay. Something else that you teach, that I find really helpful, is this idea of sturdy, becoming a sturdy parent, learning to be sturdy. That feels very related to being a good leader, just like learning how to deal with challenges. Talk about that from the kids' context and then how it might be useful in work.
00:35:59 · Becky Kennedy
[00:35:59] S1: Yeah, I think that's the essence of what Good Inside does. We help parents become sturdy leaders, so they can raise sturdy, confident kids. And when I started this, I'd use that word a lot. People would say to me, I've never heard anyone use that word. I know what it means. But I think about language too, and I like language that helps me conjure up an image or a feeling. It takes it out of my brain and I think the word sturdy, if you picture someone in your life, even if you haven't thought about them, who's the sturdy person I know? I bet you can kind of locate them, you see them, and there's a feeling you have around them. And I think the best leaders we have are sturdy. And so, I'll start it with a metaphor, because I actually think that brings it to life. And I think this is as true in parenting and in the workplace. So, picture being a passenger on a flight. It's really turbulent and you start screaming and everyone starts screaming, okay? So, everyone's panicked in the flight and then you hear the announcement from the pilot and I think there's three types of announcements you can have. The third one's going to be the sturdy one, the first two, not as much. So the first one is some version of, What are you freaking out about? Stop screaming. You're making this flight awful for everyone and you're distracting me and stop making a big deal out of nothing. And that's kind of when we say those words to a kid, Stop freaking out. You're ruining this for everyone. But the truth is, if you think about yourself on a flight and the pilot says that, you don't feel calmer. Number one, you're worried they don't notice the turbulence. Number two, you're a little disturbed that it just takes your screaming to make the pilot kind of lose it at you, right? And that actually makes you feel less safe. And so, that's like in a meeting where people, I don't know, voice something that doesn't feel good and the leader essentially is like, Stop complaining. That's not sturdy. The second version is also not sturdy. And I think we've a little bit, at least in parenting, over corrected to this, which is a pilot saying like, I hear you screaming. You know what? I'm opening the cockpit door. Does anyone want to fly the plane because your screaming is make me anxious and I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe one of you want to do it.