Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:46:55 · Becky Kennedy
[00:46:55] S1: Well, boundaries are something I will do when they require my kid to do nothing, we want to try. Look, we have to get in the car and whatever I try. I try a game, I try a song. And then again, the intention matters. The reason I'm going to carry my kid to the car is actually, I don't want to let myself then be late and then yell at my kid and be frustrated. I'm doing it because I like my kid, and I'm on the same team as them. So then I might say, "Look. It looks like it's hard for you to get to the car. I don't really want to do this, but I don't know. I'm going to turn around, I'm going to take a deep breath. And if by the time I turn around, you're still here, I'm going to pick you up. I'm going to carry you to the car. And even if you're crying and kicking and screaming, I'm still going to do that, sweetie. I know sometimes it's hard to leave the house. We do have to leave. Here comes my deep breath." Now, what's really important, I don't want to understate, is I think somewhere in us we think, "I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to be rewarded by my kid for my good parenting. I'm going to turn around and you're going to be like, 'I'm ready now, Dad.'" That might happen in some households, but it actually won't reliably happen until you've actually set boundaries over and over, where it's not about taking advantage of you. They're just trying to learn the rules of the game. And so then I would pick up my kid. And by the way, depending on your kid's temperament, two out of the three of my kids would scream and cry. And then we tell ourselves, "Oh, I'm not a good parent. I messed that up." No. Again, a pilot is going to make a decision in certain key moments, not based on consensus. Let's say I'm flying to LA, and it's really turbulent, and the pilot says they have to make an emergency landing, and everyone's complaining, and they're like, "What? It can't be that big of a deal. I don't know if that's a light. I have a big meeting in LA." Can you imagine if the pilot was like, "Oh, Becky and Lenny are really upset about this. You know what, guys? Forget it. Forget it. Forget the emergency landing." What? Even if we were upset, we feel deeply, deeply safe that our leader is doing something they believe is right with the information they have available.
00:48:58 · Becky Kennedy, Lenny Rachitsky
So even if I'm complaining when I get off the plane in Kansas, wherever I'm landing midway, I also in the back of my head am so grateful. And so I just want parents to know, when you set a true boundary, especially if it's new, your kid will tantrum and protest. But if you actually see that as a sign that you're successfully setting a boundary, instead of as a sign you did something wrong, your relationship with a tantrum changes. You're almost oddly sickly grateful for a sign that you set a boundary. And you're like, "Oh, this is actually..." I always say to myself, "This is going according to plan." And it makes the moment so much easier. [00:49:33] S0: This advice you give about being the leader is really important, and I could see how it connects deeply, too, in the work environment. I'm curious just if there's more advice there. So the idea that I've been hearing is just, people want you to be their leader, both as a kid and in the work environment. They don't want you to be like, "Okay, what does everyone think? Let's vote." Talk about just the insight there.
00:49:51 · Becky Kennedy
[00:49:51] S1: Yeah. First of all, I think a lot of things, two things are true. There's definitely a time for consensus. There's a time for getting 100%. That's a really important part of leadership, too. But inherently, you're in a position of leadership because you have experience other people don't have, you have insight, you have judgment. You might just very literally have access to company information and data that other people don't have. You're not all working from the same set of information. So, there's definitely a time for consensus building, but at least in parenting, I think we've over corrected. I need to collect more data from the working world if we've over corrected. I think it feels really good for people to hear some version of, "I took in everything you said, your voices matter, and I want to share a decision I've made with all the information I have. It might not make sense to all of you at the time. You can come talk to me separately. And I have conviction that this is the next thing we're going to experiment with," whatever the decision is." I said this word earlier, and it's another word I say that maybe other people don't say. I'm always drawn to people I can locate. That's the word. I can locate you. I know what you feel. I know your POV. I personally love people I can locate even if I really disagree with them more than being around people who seem to mirror what I'm saying. I've actually learned a lot in a working environment that's what I need because I have a lot of strong ideas. So I love people who push back and have a POV. And I think especially at work when there's so much going on, it could be so stressful, having a leader you can locate, which means I have a POV to be able to say, "This might not be what you want. I believe this is the best decision, and I believe we're a strong enough team to work toward that." I think that's very, very holding, not all the time, but in more situations than we might realize.
00:51:47 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:51:47] S0: So the advice here is, even if it may not feel like your kid wants you to just tell them what to do or your team wants to have opinions and have a big say, in reality, the human brain seeks somebody to lead them.
00:52:01 · Becky Kennedy
[00:52:01] S1: I think that's exactly right. And I think we can all think back on our life. And again, you rarely say thank you to these people, but if you think back on really hard moments, or I don't know, if I was out of control at some party, and I don't know, I was being mean to people, I was saying awful things. Who knows? Maybe someone's drunk. An act of love in that moment would be, at least if it was me and my husband, picking me up and carrying me out, kind of like, "I'm not going to let you self-destruct." And if I was like, "No, I'm fine," I might even look back later and think, "Why did you let me make that decision?" I'll share a story, because some of this comes from it. I think about this teenager I was working with in private practice and she came to me, I'm just doing a first session, "Okay, tell me what to bring you here." She's like, "Well, you can see on my arms, I'm cutting." I was like, "Okay, keep going." And I was like, "Well, how long have you been doing that? " She goes, "Two years." And I said, "You just said I'm the first therapist you've ever seen. So what's gone on in the last two years?" She was so snarky. And she goes, "Oh, wow. My parents tried me to send me to a therapist two years ago, but I said to them, "Oh, so you think I'm the messed up one in the family, and you can send me. I'm just going to lie the whole time and waste your money." My heart always races when I think about this moment. It's so visceral still. And something in me, I don't know, I was on my game that day. I was like, "Becky, just be quiet. Don't say anything." And I don't know, 10, 15 seconds later, everything changed for her. She looked down, and then she looked up, and she just goes, "Can you believe they let me make that decision?" She felt so betrayed and so not taken care of. And it just made me realize, at our worst moments, first of all, at our worst moments we speak, I think, our fears, not our wishes, Number One. And at our worst moments, we're not a good place to make good decisions for ourselves. And we don't want to be punished, but sometimes it is an act of love.
00:54:00 · Becky Kennedy
And I tell this to people very explicitly when they're like, "I know my teenager needs to go to therapy, but they're refusing." And I'll give them an exact script, "Here's what you're going to say." And it's some version of, "Look, I am going to drive you every Thursday to therapy. Whatever you do in the room, whether you lie, whether you're silent, that's not on me. But my Number One job is making decisions that I think are good for you even if you're not happy. That's how much I care about you. And this is one of those times." Every parent who told me they'd done that, their kids on some level, they're like, "I needed that." And I think the equivalent in the workplace is, there are moments when things are really turbulent, when people are, they're saying different things because they're anxious, and they're looking for a leader to kind of say, "Hey, I've heard this all. Here's what I'm doing." You might even say, "I'm not going to lie to you. Do I have complete conviction that this is right? No. But I've put it all together, and this is what we're going with, and I feel good about this direction. We'll reassess in a month. Let's go do this, team." And I think everyone is waiting in certain moments for someone to show up that way.