Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
课代表立正的官方Podcast
深度访谈，有用干货，亲身验证的「真本事」
Superlinear Academy创始人，Maven Top AI Instructor
前Statsig布道师（OpenAI收购），腾讯副总监，Meta，Amazon；康奈尔经济学博士
社区：Superlinear.Academy
课程：ai-builders.com
个人：lizheng.ai
we believe no matter what sport you're
looking at we believe that the coach
makes a big difference you have to have
a good coach to have a winning team so a
good manager the closest analogy is to a
good coach of a sports team that's
actually interesting because sports
teams have general managers and the many
manager consider them as the general
manager instead of as the coach so why
did you choose the coach instead of the
manager manager it's a good question who
is more famous for almost any sports
team we talk about the coach not the
general manager many most people can
name the coach of their favorite Club
whether it's soccer or American football
or ice hockey or baseball they can name
the coach Only the strongest fans can
name the general manager usually if I
kind of break down the role of a manager
they actually have this dual rule they
have the responsibility of selecting
people like assemble the team do
performance reviews it's the performance
part the leveling up people's
performance making them more productive
making the team a better game is the
coaching part you're correct that in
business we combine the roles that are
split in sports often we combine them
not always that normally the types of
companies that normally split the roles
are the consulting firms consulting
firms usually have one set of people who
do the hiring and the personnel
management more what what you're calling
the sports general manager role and then
they have the project manager who is
more the coach to try to win in a
particular engagement to deliver an
engagement yeah that's actually that
puzzled me because a lot of effective
coaches are not the great players but
naturally intuitively people would think
the best players would be the best coach
because they understand the game the the
most and they have the best skills then
why is this discrepancy the two roles
aren't the same though but it turn turns
out having the most skill at kicking a
ball or or whatever doesn't make you
good at the soft skills of creating a
team aligning a team of course there's
an overlap and it helps to be able to
tell people kick the ball like this or
here was my training regimen but it
isn't enough some ability you have to
understand the game but then coupled
with those other skills that either
nature or or development gave you in
terms of how to build a team and how to
influence and so on is what makes the
package of a winning coach and I think
that's also true of a manager yeah like
Messi no matter how good he is at
coaching he cannot make everyone messy
it's about the team work it's about
assembling the team it's not about
applying particular skills for each
individual right so when we come back
why is there not more training for
managers you've realized in our
discussion how complicated being a good
manager is I think companies take a look
at that they say oh that's really big
probably if we invest in this person
before they get good at it they'll go
take a better job somewhere else so when
companies hire managers what do
companies seek like I know on resume how
many people you managed before your PR
schope is an important signal but uh if
you in interview want to evaluate if
this person is an effective manager how
would you do that we can ask what they
should do and also what they actually do
so very common questions you would ask a
manager would be about how they make
decisions so when they're under pressure
or when there's a hard decision that the
manager is often a decision maker Amazon
used this type of question that was
phrased tell me about a time because the
idea was that what people have done is a
better indicator of what they will do
than what they say they might do if you
asked them well how would you handle
this hypothetical situation they make
things up whereas if you ask them what
they did do a few different questions
that were very common in our leadership
in interviews was tell me about a time
where you had to make a decision without
all the data you wanted and what we're
trying to get at here is how do you
handle time pressure and judgment how
have you handled it another Super common
question is about Personnel issues tell
me about a time where you had someone
who is struggling to perform how did you
handle that what we're really trying to
see in that case is a fairly basic thing
which is are you willing to engage with
the interpersonal conflict of telling
telling someone their work isn't what it
needs to be because some managers avoid
that they are afraid of the conflict and
so may also ask uh tell us about a time
where you disagree deeply with a peer
how did you resolve a peer conflict
another question for better for worse is
tell me about a time where you had
extreme date pressure and more work than
you thought you could get done by a date
because this is common right managers
feel overloaded and so how do they
handle being overloaded or feeling over
loaded those are a few of the things
when you're asking what do companies
look for the thing is I don't know is
those capture you know you'd like to ask
them questions like tell me how you've
developed your skills as a manager or
tell me what is your process for
teaching yourself management but those
questions don't get asked because they
don't feel very tangible other than the
fact I like your answer it's hard to
evaluate what is a good answer that's
the problem is our soft skills and
everything soft it's very hard to
evaluate but I'm also curious what is a
good answer to the last question like
how do you handle a day with a lot of
pressure and the more
work a good answer that will get you a
job anyway is one that combines
communication prioritization and
creativity if I were answering that
question I would be sure to mention that
I always keep everyone informed I'm
facing date pressure I can't do
everything here's what I'm doing to do
as much as possible here's what's above
and below the line so that no one is
surprised so the first thing I'm showing
is I'm a good manager because I don't
surprise people the second thing I'm
going to say is the only answer to not
being able to do everything is
prioritization here's my way of
prioritizing correctly like of getting
the priorities right and then my third
answer which is going to get me hired at
most places is explaining somehow how
because I'm able to show that I'm smart
and creative I magically get more done
than expected so I'm going to tell some
story relevant to the situation about
how I overachieve and and that story
varies but what people want to hear of
course when they ask this impossible
question is they want to hear that
you're like a realistic person but that
somehow you still provide magic as
opposed to just saying well when I'm
overloaded I just only do part of the
work and I try and do the most important
work they want to hear that somehow
you're very creative at at expanding the
envelope there are legitimate answers to
that we know for example Le a highly
motivated team that's excited about
their work will get more done than a
team that is not excited or is
disengaged and so I would tell a story
of maybe how in the past I had gotten a
team really excited so that the team
voluntarily without me really pressuring
them worked harder or worked smarter to
get things done I would talk about that
coaching element the the mystical I got
my team of not Superstars play so well
to together that they beat the team of
superstars that were not playing well
together we all know the story of the
team with no stars but that somehow
plays well together can sometimes beat
the team that has a Messi but the rest
of the team is not supporting a Messi so
let's go back to if fact managers and
today's topic is let's then the next
question is when you were as a manager
director of VP you work with many
managers for a long time how would you
characterize a good manager versus a not
so effective manager their team is their
engine in the end the manager isn't
doing work and in fact if the manager is
spending a lot of time say trying to be
a Hands-On engineer Hands-On data
scientist they're often neglecting their
team I'm not against people being
Hands-On but they have to have it in the
right priority and so for me are they
hiring the right people are they being
careful there are they growing Their
Stars the the strongest performers on
the team are they recognizing them and
giving them more challenging them at the
same time every team has a distribution
of talent for your people who are
struggling not even necessarily
struggling who just aren't your
strongest are you working with them to
try to improve them I coached one person
who had a very large team and this is
common it's just this person is an
example this person had a team of let's
say a thousand and this person loved to
work with their stars and of course if
you pick the best 10 people out of a
thousand at a good company they're going
to be amazing and so they really love
working with those people and I asked
them I said what are you doing for the
bottom half of your team because the
bottom half of your team is 500 people
yes maybe in that 500 there's a few that
that aren't ever going to do well and
the best thing to do is let them go but
you're not going to let go 500 people
and also on a team your size those 500
people are costing your company at a
tech company like $200 million a year
and so I was prompting this leader what
are you doing to make the bottom half
better because they're a $200 million
asset and what you've told me in your
leadership is you're basically ignoring
them so when I think about a good leader
they have to lead their whole team
that's one element of management the
second element of management I really
think about is your peer relationships
how are you getting things done for your
team because you need usually have
dependencies on other people and other
people have dependencies on you a
manager really becomes a negotiator
they're busy negotiating schedules and
loaning resources and commitments and
you build this and I'll build that and
this is in scope and this isn't out of
scope the two pieces there are
communication and influence the
communication piece is being clear with
your manager maybe me and with others
where are we and what are we blocked on
and what is red and what is green second
piece is being influential can you get
other people to change what they're
doing can you work with another team and
get them to prioritize something you
need for example the last part I think
is a really good manager the good
leaders are also creative or inventive
they're seeing things that could be
better and they're inventing they might
be inventing new techn ology they might
be inventing a new business approach
they might be inventing a new way to
organize but somehow they are changing
the playing field to to use our Sports
analogy again in this case they are
seeing a way to play the game
differently in order to have an
advantage yeah I read a book called The
E myth Revisited and they have the
technician uh entrepreneur and managers
in their definition the managers focus
on process focusing on how to make the
machine run technicians are focusing on
solving the problem entrepreneurs focus
on seeing the Gap seeing the future and
have the vision they constantly want to
event I can see why that manager or that
leader who manage a thousand people
focus on the top 10 people because the
top 10 people can help him or her do the
last two job he can get a lot of benefit
by working with Innovative top
performers you're absolutely right the
attraction is obvious the problem is you
have 500 people it's a huge number and a
huge cost you either need to use that
asset so the normal sort of best answer
here it's a recursive answer to use a
programming analogy as a leader at that
level you have to train and develop
people who report to you but also part
of training and developing them is
making sure they are training and
developing their managers and then those
managers are training and develop so you
have to recurse down make sure as best
you can of course Fidelity gets lost as
you get further away like this recursion
isn't like a computer that's perfect
there's there's a Fidelity loss at each
level but you're trying to set up a
recursive structure so that the manager
at the bottom still has all these goals
and is working on improving their team
and being Innovative and driving results
just like you are this is very hard to
do you go up your way of influencing
goes from conduction to conviction to
radiation this kind of physical metaphor
like that and it it is true although
there are some ways around that mass
communication channels I used to send my
team a weekly email to my whole team
even when I had many hundreds of people
I sent some email to them every Sunday
night sharing my perspective as a leader
um some people have told me those even
10 years later they remember those
emails Mass communication allows you to
get around one-onone and flatten the
structure of course if we look at Jensen
Wong at Nvidia he talks a lot about the
virtue of a flat structure and he's an
extremist in terms of a flat reporting
structure but even in a higher artical
reporting structure you can have
flattened communication because someone
at the front line can email me and I can
email my largest team was 800 people I
can email all 800 at once
or I can if I have something that only
applies to 300 of them I can email all
300 at once so there is some ability to
get around the
radiation I want to hear a story or an
example of how you can convince someone
that how you can influence someone to
realize uh their ideas are stupid
without telling them in terms of a story
Amazon bought twit and I went to Twitch
to work for their CEO imit shear and my
initial job
we called being his spirit guide but
what it meant was my job was to tell him
how Amazon worked so that he could
understand Amazon and I had zero
Authority no one in twitch reported to
me and I reported to emit so I had no
authority to tell him anything but I
would see things that I knew weren't
going to work within Amazon and I
developed this phrase which was could I
share how I've seen this done elsewhere
and why I would ask that is first if I
was say talking to his leadership team
and I said can I share how I've seen
this done elsewhere number one I could
say could I share how we do this at
Amazon but that would already raise
their their threat warning of like oh
he's about to tell us what we have to do
for Amazon so I didn't want to use the
Amazon word the second thing though was
no one except a complete jerk will ever
look at you and say no you can't share
anything like just get out so so they
kind of had to say yes but then once
they said yes they kind of had to at
least listen didn't mean they had to do
what I want it but it gave me a chance
to say well I don't know enough about
twitch yet but here's what our concerns
are here's here's the constraints and
why here's how it worked remember this
person you're trying to influence is a
smart person who's had success as a high
performer and they want to keep having
that so they want to be right they want
their idea to be good and if you can
expose them to information without
threatening them without raising their
defenses their natural desire to want to
succeed will make them take that
information if it truly helps them and
so the way you Influence People is you
avoid threatening them and you gain over
time in particular you have to play the
long game you're trying to gain two
thoughts in their mind one Ethan is
always out for my good he's always
trying to help me two Ethan often says
smart things you don't have to be
perfect nor but you they have to believe
when Ethan talks he's trying to help me
and when Ethan talks he's usually pretty
smart and at that point if you start
saying things that they're like oh
that's a good point I didn't think about
whatever taxes or the cost of the
technology stack or the security
implication then they'll be like oh I
haven't thought about that how would you
solve it or and they're very open at
that point because you've moved them
what you want to do is switch the
conversation from oppositional to
collaborative and I want to help the
audience summarize what I just heard
because the twitch story is so great and
you started with the collaboration like
yeah like when you frame it as a
conflict you try to convince you kind of
shut down the door of collaboration and
collaboration is kind of the key of
making effective influence you need to
accept that you can be wrong and the
other person can be right in order to
that's the start of collaboration and in
a particular situation you are in a very
difficult situation because no Capital
No Authority you are supposed to
represent you know acquire your
reporting to the CEO so you started with
respecting his agency and the agency of
other other senior leaders and uh
because they recognize the respect and
uh so they welcome your information and
uh by playing the long game of providing
useful information you slowly establish
kind of f SE at the table that is
correct that is very much correct