Leading Humans and Future Projects

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Running a small business means every hire matters. a bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can change everything But finding great talent isn't easy Especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes and find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn buildilt hiring proro your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you So instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates and finding your next great hire. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business In fact, LinkedIn found that its users are twenty four percent less likely to need to reopen a role within twelve months compared to the leading competitor Join the two point seven million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedIn. com slash work life. terms and conditions apply This episode is sponsored by Rula When you're going through a difficult breakup or a tough time at work or just dealing with the anxiety and stress of everyday life The last thing you want to do is scour the internet for therapists who take your insurance A lot of online therapy won't accept insurance at all. whichich means taking care of your mental health requires paying out of pocket or signing up for a pricey monthly subscription But Rula does things differently We partner with over one hundred and twenty insurance plans, meaning the average cay is just fifteen dollars per session That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price point that actually makes sense With a network of thousands of therapists nationwide, Rula can help you find the right one for you based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements. Thousands of people are already using RulA to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance Visit rula dot com slash workklife to get started. That's rulA dot com slash worklife. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget This episode is sponsored by Range Rover Sport. Life moves fast and when the world around you feels like it's changing a mile a minute You need a vehicle that helps you rise to the challenge Dynamic by design, the Range Rover Sport combines ultimate luxury and unbridled agility for a powerful drive filled with the latest innovations to keep you and your vehicle connected. Elegant thirteen inch touchscreen lets you seamlessly navigate and control vehicle systems. And interior refinements like heated seating with a massage function, mean comfort and luxury for every journey. Every detail of the Range Rover sport has been engineered for Ipact, and its uncompromising design commands attention wherever it goes. With a variety of unique colors, interior finishes, accessories, and even wheel options, the ways to personalize your Range Rover sport are nearly unlimited When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it The Range Rver sport Exclusive offers available now, explore further at rangeroover. com Hey everyone, Molly here. Today we're sharing an episode of a podcast handpicked by the Teds staff that we think, as a work life listener, you'll love, and maybe even come away with a fresh idea and a totally new perspective. Enjoy, and head to the link in the description for more I'm Madup A Eola. This is Ted Business, a podcast from T In Today's show, we're bringing you something a little different. conversation recorded live at the Ten conference back in April with company and community buildilder Molly Graham Molly came onto the Ted scene back in twenty twenty four. When she gave a talk tellelling people to ditch the stairs and jump off a cliff Don't worry, it's a metaphor. Molly loves metaphors. And now she's back, this time as the new host of Ted's Work Life podcast She's taken the reins from longtime host Adam Grant, and honestly, I can't think of a better person for the job. After a long career of supporting leaders at some of the country's largest tech companies, Molly wants to use her vast experience to help more people feel less alone in their careers During our conversation, Molly shared some special tips on how to embrace change, especially during a time where all of our jobs are rapidly changing, whether we like it or not. But first, a quick break This episode is powered by AT and T Business If you're running your own business, you know that the Sunday scaries are real You're thinking about the invoices the client calls the inventory, the list that never actually ends And honestly, we usually don't think about our interternet or our phone service until it isn't working Sometimes, a simple glitch can feel like a total catastrophe feeling of powerlessness when your tech fails you is the worst It's a reminder that our connectivity isn't just a bill we pay. It's the backbone of everything we do AT andT business gets that They know that for a small business owner, good enough isn't good enough. You need reliability that stays in the background so you can stay in the lead. If you're tired of the friction points and just want a provider that understands the stakes, check out AT andT Business. powered by AT andT business, built to work Get AT and business at business. at. com This episode is brought to you by National Business Furniture You can find them at nbF. com What your workspace looks like says a lot about the way you work and can make a big difference when it comes to productivity The truth is our surroundings can impact how we think how we feel and who we become while we're in them Your workspace can affect engagement productivity and maybe even retention. That's why getting your workspace right matters. It's proof that you value your team. National Business Furniture believes that every business deserves furniture that lasts, service that cares, and a partner that gets it, all on a budget that works That's National Business Furniture's commitment to you Find the right furniture for you and your team at nbf. com and use the promo code pod ten to save ten percent NbF. com and experience the better way to buy office furniture This episode is sponsored by Range Rover Sport. Life moves fast and when the world around you feels like it's changing a mile a minute You need a vehicle that helps you rise to the challenge Dynamic by design, the Range Rover Sport combines ultimate luxury and unbridled agility for a powerful drive filled with the latest innovations to keep you and your vehicle connected. Elegant thirteen inch touchscreen lets you seamlessly navigate and control vehicle systems. And interior refinements like heated seating with a massage function, mean comfort and luxury for every journey. Every detail of the Range Rover Sort has been engineered for Ipact, and its uncompromising design commands attention wherever it goes. With a variety of unique colors, interior finishes, accessories, and even wheel options, the ways to personalize your Range Rover sport are nearly unlimited When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it The Range Rver sport Exclusive offers available now, explore further at rangerover. com And now, my conversation with Molly Graham Molly Graham, it is so nice to have you on the TED Business podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I am delighted to be able to spend time with you today and you're not new to TED in twenty twenty four, you did give a TED talk. I did. And you told folks in that talk that they shouldn't take the stairs Can you tell our listeners what you told them? The stairs is my sort of metaphor. I live in metaphors for kind of I think what we think careers are supposed to feel like, orr maybe it's like what our parents told us. Careers are supposed to feel like, where you're supposed to show up in college and know what you want to do That major is supposed to lead you to your first job And then you get another job And you get promoted and promoted and promoted forever The best part about this stairs is safety and security. It feels like you know what you need to do to get ahead The worst part of the stairs is that it's like a weird video game that you can get stuck inside of for years The stairs will make you feel like you're self worth is tied to your title or your last performance rating or your next promotion And I would say that like I followed that path for a little while and then At some point someone offered me a crazy opportunity and actually drew on a whiteboard for me what he called cliff jump. He was like, you can stay on the stairs. It's boring over there. But why don't you jump off a cliff? Most people do not stay stuck on the stairs out of necessity S stay there. out of fear The trick is to learn to tell the difference between the kind of fear that says, I'm scared I might run out of money which you should actually listen to. And the kind of fear that says, I'm scared, I might fail which you should take as a giant green flashing light T jump. Cliff jumps teach you what you are capable of in spite of fear. He was like, you know, cliff jumps are They're also terrible. He' like you're gonna to fall. You're gonna fall for a while. They do take you down and backwards and you sort of feel like maybe it was a mistake. But then there comes a moment when you're like hit the bottom and start to climb out. and this sort of Climbing out can take you places that the stairs don't even go to. That's the thing about jumping off cliffs. It doesn't just take you a couple flights up onn the stairs. It's like a weird elevator that takes you to a whole new place Cliff jumps teach you who you are and what you are capable of in ways that the stairs can never After saying that, what did you hear from folks? It's been so fun because I think one of my favorite things to do in the world is to help people feel sane in the middle of change. And I think a lot of what I talked about in my TEed talk was like what it feels like when you take a risk., whichich is first of all, the fear that comes before the jump and how you navigate that. And then all of the emotions that come as you jump and as you're falling and you just feel like an idiot all the time and you often are like, you know, did I make a mistake? Should I go back And I think talking about those feelings, talking about the fact that even if you have those feelings, it doesn't mean it was a mistake. R And that there will be a moment And it often takes longer than you think it should. like takes six to nine months to feel that moment of competence, but there will be a moment of competence that will help you realize, oh, this is why and this is how much I've learned. So all of that is to say that I think describing that experience for people, like so many of the emails that I've gotten from folks have just said, thank you for helping me understand what I was going through or helping me understand what I went through Or helping me make a decision that I was scared of, but realize what it's going feel like and that it will probably be worth it on the other side. That is so important for everyone to realize. It is. I mean, I'm obviously like a huge advocate for taking risks and getting better at taking risks. And I feel like the world around us is changing so fast and sometimes it feels like it's faster and faster I guess I kind of feel like this used to feel like a choice. Do you know what I mean? It used to feel like the stairs were an option and you could you had this linear path you could stay in one company or one function for ten, fifteen, twenty years. And I think one of the things that I am really seeing with AI, particularly and to some extent also just the chaos of the last five years and all the layoffs and everything change doesn't quite feel so optional anymore and risk feels like it's everywhere and it might be that you choose to jump off the cliff and it might be sometimes that you get pushed off.ight. But I feel like it's more important than ever to know what it's going to feel like and know how you can kind of make the best of it. That's so and I study stress. so jumping off that cliff is stressful. Being on that other side is stressful. And so how do we actually embrace that in a way that will help us thrive? How do you think you embraced that stress? Wait, I also want to know your answer to that question. For me. I have learned over many, many cliff jumps big and small. to love it. I now know that there's a certain type of fear that when I feel it ye. I have to do the thing I'm afraid of. There is still stress. There is still all these emotions. That never goes away. no matter how many times you do it, you can give Ted talks about it and you're still gonna to feel it. I just realized that a lot of these emotions that come with change and stress, like they were never going to go away. so I had to make friends with them. I grew up on the Muppets Yeah, so I manifested them into this little monster And I gave him a name. So my monster's name is Bob. And I always tell people that I work with, you can name your monster whatever you want. The main thing is to realize you have one. and that it's your little traveling companion And they're just going to be like good monster days and bad monster days. You reminded me of a phrase I once heard, an acronym for fear. False evidence appearing real. Oh, I've heard that one before. That's so. So it sounds like what you were able to say, okay, I'm feeling this Is it false? It probably is. And, you know, I need to just not Let it dominate. Yeah, not listen. Well, that's actually the purpose of this monster. When I'm having like a bad day, I can now say that's Bob, not me. And's back. Bob's back. Yeah. Exactly Bob's back. Bob's having a bad day. Do you know what I? I see but Yeah, it's like a bad Bob day and you know, I even call them sometimes like monster attack. I think there's something about externalizing it that allows you to like depersonalize it. whereere you're just like, that's the monster not me. Yeah. And it depowers it too. And part of what My point is and that I've learned is like It's all normal. You can'tot have these emotions. The choice is what you do with them. Yes. And they should not drive your actions. And that's when we're all our worst selves, right? When we let the little monsters send the emails or make the decisions for us. Right. One of the things I talk about in stress is that we need to acknowledge it, we need to welcome it, and then we need to use it. Yeah. And so a lot of what you're talking about is about acknowledging it. It's gonna be there. Bob exists because it's sometimes a sign to me about something that I need to pay attention to or that I care about. And then okay, if Bob's back, how can I use what I already know about Bob and my experience to take me to the next level? Yeah. So how do you use it? you can use it by saying, okay, this stress that I have right now can I change? What can I do differently? It is a signal telling me something. so Maybe I need to shift my mindset about what's going on. or maybe I need to change something in my environment right now. or maybe I need to phone a friend. Yeah. So that's how you use what you're experiencing, the emotions, the feelings, the bodily responses, because that's another aspect of. Okay, canan I tell you one of my other roules? Oh yes, you can what you think of it. So I first developed this understanding of these waves of emotions when I was working at Facebook and I felt like I was literally sort of being forced into a different job every three weeks because the company was changing so fast and this project that I was working on was like changing so fast and growing so fast. And so I had all these just waves of emotions rolling through. know Sometimes it's excitement and joy and all that, but sometimes it's just insecurity, exhaustion, territorialness all that People always tell you to sleep on it, you know what I mean? R I said that in my TED Talk, I was like, lot of them don't go away in twenty four hours. You go to bed. you wake up the next morning, you're like, Bob's like, I still want to send that angry email. Yes. I did find if I gave it two weeks. ninety percent of those emotional reactions passed through And it let me find the signal and the noise. It let me find the thing that was real. Give me some research on it. That is one of the ideas behind meditation What you're doing in those two weeks is you're being present with everything that is coming up Yeah. And if you're present with everything that is coming up, then it's not crowding you out and you're not denying it, you're not pushing it away. You're just there with it. And I think the research shows that when you're actually there with it, then they' parts of your emotion center of your brain, the amygdala, that light up differently. I think that's right. And I also love your point about signals. too your point. the emotions are trying to tell you something and you can listen to them and you can observe them and you can take the information. But the point is to just not let them Control you control. Yeah Eactly. Yeah, not be reactive. Right. Your two weeks allows you to be proactive. reactive. Yeah, you know. And your talk resonates with me a lot because I'm on Sabbatical right now and having a really unique experience. I've had to embrace my inner professional idiot, which you talk about. I've had to do it. I can tell you that this is one of my greatest strengths I am comfortable sounding like a moron. I am great at sitting in rooms with brilliant people asking very dumb questions But what that actually means is that I have become an extraordinary learner The first meaningful jump I ever took was leaving HR at Facebook. and somebody asked me if I wanted to build a mobile phone And I actually didn't mention that detail in the talk, but it was such a dramatic change. I was like, why are you talking to me? Like I don't know anything about mobile. I know nothing about hardware. This friend said to me, you've proven that you're good at running these big company wide projects in HR. Why don't you go see like if it's transferable, whyy don't you go see how actually good you are? And it was such a good challenged u til twenty five or twenty six year old me. I was like, ooh, yeah, I'm gonna go see. And so I took this job and started on this project and I spent six to nine months feeling just like a complete moron. And I was sitting in rooms with all these amazing engineers and I was like, excuse me, what is a CPU or like what is? What does that word mean or what does that acronym mean And at first it was just me in my head being like, I think I'm the only idiot in this room that has no idea what is going on. And then I taught myself to just kind of pull people's sleeves after the meeting and say, hi, sorry if this is a dumb question, but like ye ye. what did that mean or I didn't understand that? And part of what I learned when I would tuckg people's sleeves is that they loved teaching me that they were happy to answer the question. They didn't think it was dumb. I mean, for them in a lot of cases, it let them feel like an expert. And the other side of that is that most dumb questions are not actually doneumb. That's so true. And the beginner's eyes and the beginner's mindset often are actually just like the most valuable resource because even if you walk into an organization Having those beginners eyes, like you see things that everybody else just takes for granted. So many people are afraid of sounding dumb that the world is littered with important questions that never got asked Questions like, can you define that word for me? Why are we doing this Why are we having this meeting? Embracing being a professional idiot often actually makes you the most valuable person in the room. At my last company that I ran, we had a thirty day presentation for all new hires. It started with all new executive hires and then we started doing it for every single new person. We just said, Tell us what you're seeing, tellell us what seems strange, tellell us what you expected. tellell us what you're plan to do you know, give us like a little bit of your roadmap, but a lot of it was just about hearing what they were seeing so that we can learn from them. We have to remember we are our harshest critics. Yeah. And so you're sitting there like, I think this is a dumb question. I. And then everyone's like, no, this is a good question. Oh my God. so. Often I tell like more junior people starting off in their jobs or whatever You had a question and someone senior or someone else asked it That is a reminder that your questions matter and you need to ask them and raise your hand. one hundred percent. And actually, I think at Facebook, Cheryl Sandberg was actually very good at that. She used to get really mad at any of us, but definitely at me when we made ourselves small. Yeah. She was always like, ask the fucking question. Yeah, you know? Ask it. Hello. just ask it. What are you afraid of? This is going back to the fear. What are you afraid of? I don't think I've ever left a meeting and said, can you believe that person asked such a dumb question? Yeah, totally This episode is brought to you by Framer A new website or landing page can quickly turn into a chain of requests and handoffs If your team wants a site that looks handcrafted but is still fast to ship Framer is built for that Framer is the pro website platform trusted by companies like Miro and Perplexity. What sets Framer apart is that AI agents work directly inside the canvas the same place where the real site is designed, managed and published Agents help draft pages, manage content and optimize SEO. So your team can review, refine, and publish all without leaving the tool Agents bring the speed and scale and your team brings the taste, judgment, and final call on what goes live Learn how you can get more out of your sight from a framer specialist orr get started building for free today at framer d. com slash work life. for thirty percent off a Framer proro annual plan That's framer d. com slash work life thirty percent off Tamer d. com slash work life Rules and restrictions may apply. This episode is sponsored by Range Rover Sport. Life moves fast and when the world around you feels like it's changing a mile a minute, you need a vehicle that helps you rise to the challenge. Dynamic by design, the Range Rover Sport combines ultimate luxury and unbridled agility for a powerful drive filled with the latest innovations to keep you and your vehicle connected Elegant thirteen inch touchscreen lets you seamlessly navigate and control vehicle systems. And interior refinements like heated seating with a massage function mean comfort and luxury for every journey Every detail of the Range Rover Sort has been engineered for Ipact, and its uncompromising design commands attention wherever it goes. With a variety of unique colors, interior finishes, accessories, and even wheel options, the ways to personalize your Range Rover sport are nearly unlimited When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it The Range Rver sport Exclusive offers available now, explore further at rangerover. com With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One caafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs Even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. in a good way What's in your wallet Terms apply. see capital one d. com slash bank, Capital onene NA member FDIC What are some of the lessons you've learned about what it takes to scale a company and be effective? startarted my career in tech at Google Google was really quite big at the time, I think maybe ten thousand employees or something. but my department that I joined, which was communications was twenty people when I joined it and nine months later, it was one hundred and twenty five So five X growth in a really short period of time.ow. And one of my many lessons from scale is that the rate matters more than the number. Going from one to five can feel as crazy as going the rate that I went through. It is just that percentage growth that really dictates the experience of it for people. One of the things that I really saw was When you're going through that level of scale, and then I saw it again and again and again at Facebook in the time that I was there was fear like what we were talking about, there's so much changing and so much happening that people get scared and the instinct when you're scared is to hold on to what you know Yeah. The instinct when you're scared is to control. Yeah right. And so in a lot of these cases, particularly when you've been early at a company, you built an identity. You're like, I am the person that does X. And the truth is that if you don't evolve, right? If you stay trying to hold on to that thing that you're known for that, thing that you're good at, the whole company is growing and changing around you, right So if you hold on and you stay attached, to one identity that was relevant in this one year or this one instance, you're sinking because everything around you is growing. So what was true for me at Facebook was the graph of how fast our business was growing felt to me like the graph, not only of how fast the company was changing but also of how fast my job was growing and changing and therefore how fast I needed to grow and change. I came up with this talk that I used to give folks that work called Giveayour Legos. And it was just like, I know you've built this beautiful house and you're really proud of it, and it's very shiny and new and maybe it's not quite done, but I need you to like hand them off. And I need you to give them to that new hire. We just hired and I need you to go work on this new thing. And yes, it's scary and yes it's hard and all the emotions that we've been talking about of the rule with scale is that you have to grow as fast as the company is growing. Yeah My goson will not like that. Every I give him LegOos. It's part of why I like the metaphor and why I think it probably resonated with people is like It's hard to share. It's hard to like half build something and then have somebody tell you, Hey, give it to that person and you're like, they're gonna to screw up my castle. Do you know what I mean? Or like what if they? it wrong or actually, what if that's the only fun part of the castle? Yeah, you know That's what I love. I love being in the details. Yeah Now you're telling me, I'm supposed to give details to somebody else. Yeah and not micromanage them. Yeah, exactly. That is so real. Often when I I give speeches on this concept of givew away your Legos now, and I'll often get asked like what's the best way to hand off your Legos to someone And I feel like people want me to say like, so first you hand them every single Lego and you explain to them exactly why you placed it, where you placed it. And then you hand them like an instruction manual and I'm like, no That's what you want to do. The answer is chuck the Legos at their face and run in the other direction and be like, let me know if you need help, bye. So I've done some work on gender differences in delegation. Yeah. interesteresting. And found that women are less likely to delegate than men. They associate delegation with more negative emotion M overburdening of your subordinate. And in one of the experiments, we gave men and women the opportunity to delegate to somebody and then coded their behavior had people watch the videos. and women did just what you said. They just like gave the thing to them and went away because they were like, this is so stressful or whatever. I just want to give it to you and run away, but they still ultimately didn't delegate as much as men But the reason I'm sharing this because I don't always like to just identify a gender difference. I like to talk about how to fix it. Yeah. And in this work, we found that when we remind women that delegation really does help your subordinate. That's when they were less anxious about it.. Man, that is so interesting. Yeah Because the g general stereotype that women are supposed to be communal and not agentic and dominant. and delegation is a little bit of both. You're giving someone something to do, so you're being agentic, but you're also growing them, then the theory is that women would be less likely to engage in it because of that genderal conflict. I have to tell you, it's so interesting in my experience I have not seen any gender difference. Like I genuinely see across the board people are very bad at it. And actually there's starting to be this very annoying backlash in the technology industry around micromanagement being a good thing? Oh no. Yeah. I wrote this article a bunch of years ago called Man of the What, Not the How. And it's essentially the point, which is like Um It's so tempting to hand somebody something and really be prescriptive about how to do it, right? to be like, here's how you run this event and here's how I've done it for ten years or five years or whatever. when actually all that matters is the what? Meing did they hit the goal And I got a bunch of feedback about it from folks saying like, I really think you're wrong. The how really matters. And when I dug into it, We actually agreed meaning Often the what has nuance. Often it's not just you have to hit the goal. It's that you also can't screw over this other number or there's like nuance in you hit the goal that should be part of the delegation, that should be part of the conversation around what good looks like. Yeah. Do you know what I do. And that's why I want to do more research on it because I think the delegation is one of the most important skills we need as a leader, but we don't have much knowledge about how to do it well. Yeah What is the baseline? What is a base rate? Maybe even just saying that women don't delegate as much maybe it that women are actually delegating the right amounten delegating too much or whatever. Yeah, I see a lot of founders. there' for a lot of men because most founders are men these days depressingly still. sort of create this environment where they say, yeah, go crush this project and then they come in at the last minute and rearrange all the furniture, which also is not delegation. No Now these insights from leadership, I'm assuming some of them have also come from the Glue Club. Tell us more about what made you decide to create this community for leaders and what the Glue Club is all about. Yeah, totally I had spent, you know fifteen or sixteen years building companies. and built this career around being a CEOO and basically helping brilliant leaders build organizations based on their vision. You have the vision, I' turn it into reality. And at some point I just realized that that wasn't my work anymore. that I had done it, I had learned so much, and I had run out of energy for it. And it really left me with this wait, okay, what do I want to do then moment? And I had to go on a little bit of a journey around what is it that I love doing and what is it that feeds me and what is the work that I feel like I'm meant to do now. And I realized that what I love doing is supporting the humans inside the companies. and even more so, actually