Grit
#128 Former COO & Corporate Officer at Stripe, Claire Hughes Johnson: Scaling People
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Self-awareness is crucial for managers to succeed by understanding work style preferences, habits, and blind spots.
- Recording an audiobook is physically and mentally demanding, requiring dedication and effort for completion.
- A new book by the speaker offers segmented management advice as a reference tool for specific challenges.
- Continuous self-awareness through tools like personality tests, seeking feedback, and maintaining work-life balance is essential.
Deep dives
The Power of Self-Awareness in Leadership
Being self-aware is crucial for success as a manager and leader. Understanding one's work style preferences, habits, and tendencies including behaviors under stress are key. Recognizing and communicating these patterns to others can help in receiving constructive feedback to improve performance and avoid blind spots.
Effort and Exhaustion in Recording an Audiobook
Recording an audiobook can be physically and mentally demanding. It took the speaker 35 to 40 hours to record the audiobook, doing only two hours a day due to voice strain. This experience highlights the dedication and effort required to complete such a project.
Concept of a Reference Book for Managers
The speaker discusses a new book focused on providing management advice based on specific challenges. Unlike a traditional cover-to-cover read, this book segmented like a reference tool allows readers to find advice on specific issues by referencing subsections in a structured manner.
Challenges of Building Self-Awareness and Receiving Feedback
Building self-awareness is a continuous process that involves using tools like personality tests to understand one's behaviors, attitudes, and preferences. The speaker emphasizes the importance of seeking feedback and being open to constructive criticism, noting that effective leaders actively solicit feedback and handle it with humility and a learning mindset.
Balancing Different Work Personal Priorities
The podcast highlighted the importance of balancing work and personal priorities, focusing on protecting and knowing one's priorities. This discussion stemmed from the speaker's personal experience of setting clear boundaries between work and family life, emphasizing the significance of declaring and safeguarding what is essential. The example of a pivotal family event coinciding with a significant work opportunity underscored the concept of making choices aligned with personal priorities, even in ambitious career phases.
Cultural Impact of Removing Titles in a Startup Environment
The impact of not having explicit titles within a company, such as Stripe, was also explored. The decision to maintain a flat hierarchy and remove formal titles was discussed as a cultural and practical choice aimed at fostering a collaborative environment. The speaker highlighted the challenges and benefits of this approach, referring to the transparency and options it allows for future organizational growth, while also acknowledging the complexities that can arise from the lack of clear hierarchical differentiation.
Grit and Success in the Face of Challenges
The concept of grit was emphasized as essential for achieving success amidst challenges and setbacks. Drawing on insights from psychology and personal experiences, the discussion delved into how resilience, ambition, and perseverance contribute to navigating difficult situations. The speaker underscored the value of grit in overcoming obstacles, staying committed to long-term goals, and withstanding the pressures and uncertainties of the journey towards personal and professional success.
Guest: Claire Hughes Johnson, author of Scaling People and Corporate Officer at Stripe
Former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson’s new book, Scaling People, is not your typical business book: Informed by her experience scaling one of the most valuable private companies in the world, it’s a tactical reference manual, “almost like a textbook,” aimed at helping managers wrestling with a variety of problems. And one of the big uniting themes is that, to solve anything, they’re going to have to look inwards. “Leadership does not start with the other people in the room,” she says. “It starts with you ... if you don’t know yourself, you are not gonna be very successful, because you have to understand your work style preferences, your habits, your blind spots.”
In this episode, Claire and Joubin discuss in-demand books, Google pre-IPO, headcount as a proxy for success, paranoid mentality, self-driving cars, honoring commitments, the illusion of time, customer insights, “act like a founder,” asking for feedback, prioritizing and saying no, “steady Eddies,” imposter syndrome, fruit on the counter, layering titles, and making time for family.
In this episode, we cover:
- Who should read Claire’s new book, Scaling People, and how she expects them to read it (00:57)
- The challenges of building Stripe in its early days: “It was just consumed by it” (04:51)
- Why she left Google to become Stripe’s COO, and what she did for them as the business was starting to take off (12:34)
- How Stripe hired the best people — including Claire — and how they could have done it even better (17:25)
- Leadership starts with self-awareness (26:05)
- Honest criticism that rocks your world, and taking feedback well (29:43)
- The “unauthorized guide” to working with Claire (36:18)
- Getting hired at Google by Sheryl Sandberg, and why Claire didn’t follow her to Facebook (40:26)
- “Pushers and pullers,” a framework for working with top talent (46:43)
- What entrepreneurs can learn from Condoleezza Rice about impact, passion, and ability (58:33)
- Putting your (imperfect) expertise out into the world (01:02:03)
- Implementing Stripe’s first performance feedback process, and why it still doesn’t “do” titles (01:07:06)
- Having a life outside of work, and the “clarifying moment” of a surprise birthday party (01:15:26)
Links:
- Buy Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building
- Connect with Claire
- Connect with Joubin
- Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
- This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
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