Carole has been in the business of helping leaders grow for over 35 years. Before she co-founded and became the Head of Programs of Leaders in Tech, she taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) for 17 years, where she served as the Faculty Director of the Interpersonal Dynamics for High Performance Executives Program and Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows program. Carole is well known for teaching the Interpersonal Dynamics course that most call the "Touchy Feely Class" (the most popular elective course at the GSB for over 45 years). Today NFX General Partner James Currier and Carole sit down and discuss a range of topics centered around startup Founders, relationships, her time teaching at Stanford, and her new book called 'Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues' with David Bradford. In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional by cultivating authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty, while being willing to ask for and offer help, share a commitment to growth, and deal productively with conflict. "That's why so many founders in the Valley are so exhausted because they're carrying everything. And somehow they've got this idea that unless they come to somebody and say, "Hey, I could use some help here," they're going to appear weak. That's just broken."
James Currier:
Carole Robin, it is just a pleasure to have you here. You and I have known each other for four or five years, and you are in the center and a central force in this high-impact Leaders in Tech helping people think through interpersonal skills and startups and technology. You've been at Stanford and we want to dig into your background today, and I'm so glad to have you on the show.
Carole Robin:
Thank you. I'm just so pleased to be on it and honored. Thank you.
James Currier:
You have, for many years, taught along with David Bradford, a course known as Touchy Feely at the GSB that was originally called Interpersonal Dynamic. It is the most popular course that the school has ever seen and it's had a dramatic impact on almost everyone who's gone through it. Everyone that I know from the GSB said it was their favorite course. There's so much to learn there. It's not a coincidence that everyone says the same thing. So I would love to dig in today about you and find out about how you came to be doing this and whatnot. We at NFX feel like a lot of insightful leaders learned their core operating principles actually in childhood. Could you tell us a little bit about yours? Is that okay?
Carole Robin: Sure.
James Currier:
Where'd you grow up? What happened?
Carole Robin:
I grew up in Mexico City. I didn't speak English until I was 10. My mother was born and raised in Mexico. She went to the overseas, Chicago, which is where she met my dad and I was born in Chicago. When I was six months old they went back to Mexico and I essentially grew up there until I went away to college. I think the most formative aspect of that for me that's relevant to our conversation here today is that, A, my dad was a businessman and I was kind of the boy he never had. He had two daughters. I was his oldest. So I was kind of the son he never had. He ran a big business. I grew up around the dinner table listening to him talk about all of his business challenges, and I always found myself drawn and fascinated by that.
Carole Robin:
The other thing that I remember vividly is one of those high school projects where you're supposed to think about a career that you want to have and write it up. I had no idea where to even start and somehow the words physical therapist sounded appealing to me. I had no idea what it even meant. So I said to my dad, "I'm thinking of doing my report on physical therapy." He said, "Why would you want to be that? You could be so much more, you could run a company." That was the first time that I, "Oh, even though I'm a girl, I can do what you do. That was kind of my first moment of that."
Carole Robin:
And perhaps the other useful thing to point out is that when I was a junior in high school, I ran for president of the student council and I ran against my then on again, off again boyfriend. When I won, he
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quickly became my permanently off again boyfriend. But an interesting thing happened when I came home and I remember my mom was home and she said, "What happened?" I said, "I won." She looked at me and she said, "Gosh, it's too bad you weren't born a boy." I mean, I don't fault her because I know that for women of her generation in particular, what she was thinking was, "Wow, you've got so much potential. What a shame that you were born the wrong gender."
James Currier:
And you'll be unable to reach your potential.
Carole Robin:
I on the other hand, perhaps being the feisty person that I am, thought, "Who the hell cares that I'm a girl?" That was kind of a harbinger of things to come. I ended up becoming the first woman ever hired into a non-clinical job in the industrial automation division of a very large Fortune 50 company. I think there was something about the way I was raised, the message from my dad being you can do anything, and the pushback to my mother, don't tell me what I can and can't do, that together served me pretty well.
James Currier:
Amazing. How did you then wind up at Stanford?
Carole Robin:
Oh, that's a very circuitous answer.
James Currier:
When did you get to Stanford?
Carole Robin:
I arrived at Stanford in 2000. My first quarter teaching was in 2002. However, I've had probably six careers depending on how we count, so I'm not a career academic. My first career was in sales and marketing in industrial automation based on that first company I went to work for. That's where I kind of developed my business chops. Eventually I spent 10 years in that field and eventually I ran a $50 million, 13 Western state region. Back in those days, that was a lot of money. And then my husband and I got married. And before we got married, we'd made a deal that we both wanted the opportunity to be full- time caregiver to our kids and a full-time wage earner supporting our family. And so, part of that deal was we were going to have to take turns instead of both trying to do both together, which is what most of our friends were doing.
Carole Robin:
And so I decided to step out first with the intent of always going back to sales and marketing in some kind of tech or industrial highly technical arena. And when I stepped out, we were at the same point in our careers. We were both junior executives on the rise in very big companies. What we did was we froze our standard of living and the deal we made was that I would get back in and he would leave when our youngest child was well established in elementary school. We would switch places and he would stay home and take them the rest of the way. That's essentially what we did except we got a little bit delayed because I always thought I'd go back to what I had done. I had been really successful, made a lot
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of money, had a lot of good contacts, but a funny thing happens when you stop long enough to look
around and notice there are all kinds of other things in the world.
Carole Robin:
And so while my kids were really little, it was certainly not time for me to go back to work but I decided to get involved in nonprofit community work. That's what I call my non-profit era. I ended up on a couple of boards. Through that I discovered leadership development. I joined Leadership Palo Alto, later became Leadership Midpeninsula, got very intrigued with the whole idea of leadership development and decided, you know what, maybe when I go back, maybe I'm not going back to sales and marketing. Kind of been there, done that, bought that t-shirt, I think I'm going to try something different.
Carole Robin:
But then I decided, well, maybe I shouldn't be messing with people's lives unless I have a little bit more education. So while the kids were still little, I went back to get a Master's in Organization Development. Then I decided that wasn't going to be enough, so I got a PhD in Human and Organization Systems. One of the members of my committee knew David Bradford at Stanford. However, I did not go straight from my PhD to Stanford. I spent, I don't remember how many years, six or seven years, in consulting, ended up joining a firm, traveled all over the world.
Carole Robin:
So then Andy and I finally made our switch after I finished my PhD. I went to work for a consulting firm, I bought in as a partner, I traveled all over the world. I was involved in big change efforts as well as leadership development, executive team building. And then one of the members of my committee said, "Hey, you know what, they're teaching this really interesting course over at Stanford and I think you'd be great at it. They need another person. So you should go meet David Bradford, one of the members of my dissertation committee." I said, "Oh, okay. That sounds like fun."
Carole Robin:
I went over to meet David Bradford and that was it in 2000, actually it was in 1998 because when I first met David, which was the year that I finished my PhD, but in 1998, and I learned about this course, and I went through the training program for facilitators of Touchy Feely. And then two years later, David called me and said, "Hey, we're bursting here. We really need somebody else to help teach the class. Would you be interested?" And at that point they were teaching four sections of 36 students. They were very oversubscribed. They really needed someone else. I, of course, was traveling all over the world. By then Andy and I had made the switch and I was a partner in this consulting firm, but I decided I could take one quarter a year and not travel and teach at Stanford. It was good for the firm.
Carole Robin:
And so I did that for three years. And then in 2005, the school came to me and asked me if I would consider a full-time appointment. And also I wanted to get off the road for some personal reasons. Even though we were committed to the switch, it turned out to be a whole lot more challenging than, "Okay, over to you, dear."
James Currier:
Meaning interpersonally between the two of you.
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Yeah. What happened was, here we had been so thoughtful and had planned this to the T in terms of freezing our standard of living, making sure that I wouldn't have to earn what he was living. But we'd missed some of the most fundamental things like he quit on a Friday and on Monday I took off on a flight to New Zealand. You don't even change over executive assistants without some overlap. So we had some interesting times and then one of our kids ran into some health problems. Fortunately, it's just fine now, but that made it even more complicated. I would be calling home from all parts of the world: Chile, Australia, New Zealand, New York. I just wanted to get off the road.
Carole Robin:
Right about that time the school said, "Hey, would you consider a full-time appointment?" And originally I thought I was only going to do a full-time appointment until things kind of settled down at home. But then I totally fell in love being with my students and my partners bought me out. Then I stayed at the GSB until 2017. And during that time, we went from four sections of 36 students to 14 sections of 36 students. I sort of became known as the queen of Touchy Feely, which is what the students call the course. It's called Interpersonal Dynamics, but all the students call it Touchy Feely. And I think honestly the reason for that was because I had been in business. I'd had all these different roles in business and it was easier for me to connect the dots for my students.
James Currier:
With real world examples and how you felt. Few weeks ago we had Kevin Kelly on the podcast and he talked about how the most generative, the most creative people tend to have these meandering paths in their career. So I'm really not surprised to find out how meandering yours was.
Carole Robin:
In fact, at my first dissertation committee, I sat my committee down and I said, "Okay, let's just be very clear here. I am not getting a PhD because I ever intend to teach. So don't make me do all that stupid stuff that academia has given Carole Robin."
James Currier:
That's right. I'm going to go kick some ass. We often talk around here about how language is the heart of all things. I'm just curious, how did you feel when you heard Interpersonal Dynamics being called Touchy Feely? Were they calling it that before you got there or?
Carole Robin:
Oh yeah, they were already calling it that. I thought that the fact that the students had named it something that was theirs was what mattered, less than what they had named it. But the fact that it had reached the status of getting its own name that was made up by the students, I loved that. What's more, and over the years I've had to say it's a lot more about getting in touch with feelings than about touching, what I really appreciate about it is that the emphasis is on the soft skills. The name implies the soft skills that are at the core of its success. And in fact, I think the reason that thousands of alums for decades have called it the most transformational experience of their GSB time is precisely because they've learned that from a professional point of view, people do business with people.
Carole Robin:
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So until they learn how to get that part right, they're going to be limited in their professional success. But beyond that, they also come back and talk about how the course saved their marriage, how it helped them reconcile with their brother who they hadn't talked to for 10 years, how it has impacted the way in which they parent. So I think the course has had this huge transformational effect. Beyond what it has done for them as leaders, it's made them fuller whole people and therefore better leaders.
James Currier:
And if we're doing all this work to create in the world, that's one thing. If we're getting all this money, that's another thing. But if we don't actually have those relationships that are meaningful to us, then what's the point of it at all.
Carole Robin: Absolutely.
James Currier:
And that's the appeal, is that why it was oversubscribed so much?
Carole Robin:
Well, I think it was oversubscribed because what students discovered when they took the course, I mean, they got a bunch of really good skills and competencies, but they also discovered parts of themselves that they either had kept hidden, that they thought they had to keep hidden. When we get into why is this especially meaningful for startup founders, boy, how many startup founders spend their life figuring out how to spin their image, how to answer every question with we're crushing it. What these GSB MBAs discovered was that they had a presented image, a persona that was what they normally led with. And when they allowed themselves to be more known and seen, not only were they more compelling and appealing and influential, but they also were freer and happier and that that experience was so profound for them.
Carole Robin:
Of course it's a flywheel like any other flywheel. The more they talked about it as alumni, the more students who came. By the time I left, I don't know if this specific number is correct, but I was told that more than 50% of the students who applied to the GSB said they preferred to come to Stanford because of this course, even though they applied to other business schools. One of my students, she said to me, "I knew that if I went to another well-known business school that shall remain nameless, maybe I'd be a better manager. But if I came here, I'd be a better human being. And I believe that would make me a better leader."
James Currier:
I did go to HBS and they had a course called Lead, and Lead was mandatory. Everyone had to take it. It was basically Touchy Feely, but I don't know that it was as advanced as Touchy Feely, but it was the same genre of stuff. And at the end of the two years when my study group all got back together, we said, "Let's review and take notes on what we learned over two years." We all said, "What's the most important thing?" And everyone just said the same thing, which is lead.
Carole Robin:
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My husband went to Harvard too and he talks about how differently... You learned about it through case
methods, right?
James Currier:
Yeah. And by taking the Myers-Briggs tests and talking about the various other methods, it wasn't only case studies, but it was a full year long mandatory thing for every first year. And I'm surprised that Stanford doesn't make this mandatory.
Carole Robin:
Well, there's a really good reason. And that's because the course is designed to be very intense, emotionally intense. And that means it's not for everybody at a particular point in time. There's something about having people hold up a mirror to you and you looking straight at it and confronting some of your own limiting beliefs. It can be exhausting. If you're taking 20 units and you're starting up a new company and your mom has just been diagnosed with cancer, maybe this isn't the right class to take.
James Currier:
Yeah. Well, that would explain why the lead course at HBS is less intense but mandatory. It's interesting, I've seen a lot of transformational work for leaders: the Conscious Leadership Group or Landmark Forum or organizations that go into prisons to help people think about, and often this transformational work is given to people under the auspices of being a better founder or entrepreneur. It's as if if you held up a sign saying, hey, who wants to do transformational work, no one would show up. But if you say, hey, who wants to be a better leader, who wants to be a better change agent, who wants to transform the world for the better, a lot of people would show up. And within that, that interpersonal work gets done. And that's what you were doing for people.
Carole Robin:
One of the things I'll say to that is that I really credit in particular our former Dean, Garth Saloner, at Stanford, who said, "If what we're going to stand for is change lives, change organizations, change the world, then this is one of the keys."
James Currier:
He was willing to say that.
Carole Robin:
He was willing to say that, he had been a strategy prof before he became a Dean. He knew that this particular course and this particular methodology of learning about yourself was what differentiated the Stanford Business School from all of the business schools.
James Currier:
And it also makes sense that Stanford would have this course and Stanford is inside of Silicon Valley with its history of counterculture and authenticity and radical candor and not wearing ties. It makes total sense because I do believe that at the heart of a lot of the success that Silicon Valley has seen is not just sort of a rapacious pursuit of money, a more holistic approach to life and to creation and to products and to serving customers that is largely absent in environments where you have to put up a facade all
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the time, and that bringing that facade down and being more interconnected and being more connected
allows you to think differently.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. I think that the Valley tends to be much more mission driven. Founders in the Valley, at least many of the ones that I am fortunate enough to work with, and it's more congruent to have an organization that's mission driven that also has a sense that people do business with people. People don't do business with ideas or machines or strategies or product, they do business with people.
James Currier:
There's a big difference in some of these startups between investors who think of these companies as cap tables and investors who see them as building something. You can really feel it at the board level, you can feel it. When the founders are talking to the investors, they can really feel that and there's a big difference, I think. When we talk to people in Europe and on the East coast and elsewhere, they're just so refreshed to talk to investors who aren't looking at it as a cap table but rather as a creative endeavor, as people, as two or three or 80 people involved in a creative endeavor, and your teaching is at the core of that. You've got this new book out now. You were able to scale to 14 classes times 34, but now you're using a technology like a book that scales to even more. So talk to me about the book. How did the book come about?
Carole Robin:
It's very exciting. As I mentioned earlier, we had had thousands of alums go through this highly transformative process. And for years they had been clamoring for a book so that they'd have something to go back and refer to. They'd also been clamoring for a book for, frankly, the people who weren't privileged or lucky enough to get into the graduate school of business to take the course.
James Currier:
That's right. You want to give it to all your employees.
Carole Robin:
Exactly. So it took us a while to figure out how to deliver the lessons of the course, frankly, through a book. We didn't want to write a book unless it was going to do justice to the material. The second chapter of the book is called A World-Class Course One Chapter at a Time. It took us almost four years to write it. I compare writing this book to being pregnant for three and a half years and then in labor for six months. Now I feel like a single mother looking for a village to help me raise it. But it was really important to David and me. I mean, I guess a single mother is not fair to David, but I think that David is the academic and without each other, we would have never written as good a book and we are both so grateful that we got together on this.
Carole Robin:
It was definitely a challenge. What we ended up feeling really proud of is that not only were we able to convey the lessons but the way in which we convey them really provides an experience for a reader. If the reader reads the book the way we invite them to read it, not a book you're going to pick up in New York and read on your way to San Francisco someday when we can do that again and say, "Oh, that was interesting." At the end of every chapter, there is a section called deepen your learning, with
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suggestions for what you can go do because by the way, we learn how to be more interpersonally
effective by interacting with other people, not by thinking about it.
James Currier: In the field.
Carole Robin:
You're right, in the field. And so we wanted to provide a lot of opportunity for the reader to do that and reflect on what they learned in the doing.
James Currier:
So would you recommend that someone read and reflect on this over the course of several months so that they can put this into practice?
Carole Robin:
Yeah. In my ideal world, first of all, people wouldn't read it by themselves. Grab at least a learning partner and read the first two, three chapters until you get to the first big concept is around allowing yourself to be more known, and then go practice some of what is suggested. Then maybe go back and reread that third chapter so that you read it through the eyes of your own experience, and then move on to the fourth chapter. How many days in a row and how many hours a day you want to dedicate, I don't know, but that would be the way I think people will get the most out of it.
Carole Robin:
It's really interesting, I have to tell you this. I've now had several interviews with several magazines and a few podcasters. In each case they've said to me, "Gosh, I have to apologize. I set aside some time to read the book, but I didn't finish it because I got so immersed in all the recommendations for what to do at the end of each chapter that I didn't get to the end." And what I've said in return is, "Well, that's music to my ears. That's how I would hope you would read the book."
James Currier:
Because this sort of interpersonal stuff is a full body experience. It's how you feel in your stomach and your hips and your feet when you're talking with someone, when you're interacting and sharing. And so you can't just make it just an intellectual thing. It goes through your body itself. The main idea, the core idea is just to help people build exceptional relationships, which is deceptively simple. It's a sentence which is just a few words, but there's a lot underneath that.
Carole Robin:
Well, and of course if it was that easy, we'd all have tons of exceptional relationships and also we'd be able to turn any relationship we want into something that feels exceptional. And how many people feel that way, they're not very many.
James Currier:
Right. And so from the book, let me just quote this. An exceptional relationship is one in which we can be honest with each other and trust each other and can productively resolve differences and
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disagreements. It's a relationship where we're each committed to the other's growth and development
as well as to our own. And so, why do we not think this way all the time, and why is this important?
Carole Robin:
I think we've been socialized not to think about this this way all the time, particularly in business. I think it starts early and then it gets reinforced. We create these mental models, how we're supposed to show up in the world to be "especially successful business people". And we forget some of these basics. If you watch little kids, they are much better at this, much better. And then after a while, they pick up all these bad habits from us as adults. Little kids are very straight with each other. They're very clean.
Carole Robin:
I was talking this morning about an example, and I think this might even be in the book, of my three- year-old daughter and my five-year-old son are playing. This would be long time ago because they're now 31 and 33. But they're playing and I hear my daughter say, "Nick, that's the third time you've picked the game that we're playing. I don't like that. I get to pick the next game." And he said, "Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, let's just finish this." So they finish, he grabs the dominoes and he says, "Okay, now we're going to play dominoes." She said, "No, I said I'd pick the next game." And she said, "And I want to play Candy Land." He said, "I don't want to play Candy Land. I want to play dominoes." She said, "Okay, well, when you're ready to let me pick the game, I'll be in my room. You can come get me."
Carole Robin:
I mean, how simple. And so then of course she goes off to her room. He comes running into the kitchen. "Mommy, Orly won't play with me." I said, "Honey, I'm so sorry, that's not what I heard." So now he trundles down and he says, "Okay, we'll play Candy Land. But then can we play dominoes after that?" She said, "Yes. Then we'll go back and forth." Think about that for just a moment. She didn't know to attribute a motive to him. All you want to do is lord it over me. She didn't know to label him, you're such a bully. She didn't even learned how to do that yet. She just learned to say, "When you do that, this is how it impacts me. And this is the result, period." Exactly. Imagine what the world would be like if more people had the competence and skill to move into problem solving by giving each other clean, direct feedback like that.
James Currier:
Rather than telling stories about what's just happened.
Carole Robin:
Or making up stories about the other person.
James Currier:
Right, making up stories. Do you think that we can have, realistically, exceptional relationships with everyone?
Carole Robin:
No. And in fact I think the book very much states, A, you can't think that's an unrealistic expectation, and B, I don't think that's even something anybody would want. It'd be exhausting. However, you can't get to an exceptional relationship unless you've built the functional one. So the first 10 chapters of the book
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are about how to build a functional relationship with anybody; a strong, robust, functional relationship, which we think you can do with just about anybody. And then we have a metaphor of climbing Mount Washington, which David used to climb. You get to the upper meadow, it's not an insubstantial hike, but you can get there with almost anybody. It's nice up there and it's certainly a lot nicer than it was in the foothills. With some people, you can then decide whether or not you want to go climb the summit.
James Currier:
Is there a framework for figuring out which relationships are worth the work?
Carole Robin:
That's a wonderful question. There are many examples in the book. We follow the five core relationships, then we've got lots of other examples, but we have five core relationships of two colleagues at work, a man and a woman, and a married couple, and two buddies, and two women who've known each other since they were college roommates, and a father and a daughter. The arc of their relationship is what you follow over the course of the book and that's how you learn some of these concepts, by seeing how their relationships unfold and evolve. Some of them get to exceptional and some of them don't, and some of them are okay with where they got even if they didn't get to exceptional.
James Currier:
Right. Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost as if bringing this to the forefront of our daily interactions is part of the exercise so that you can navigate skillfully. Who am I striving for that deeper relationship with? Who am I okay and they're okay with us not having that deeper relationship? Now, I often think also about some of these nodes that we have in Silicon Valley of these people who seem to know everyone. They seem to be very skilled at developing what appear to be deeper, more authentic relationships with more people faster. They just seem more skilled at being authentic, and they've maybe branched out their concentric circles to include a lot more people that they would consider to be good friends, that they could be authentic and in relationship with.
Carole Robin:
I think it's more complicated than that, James. I think that when I think about people with whom I feel really connected, I feel really known and seen by them, and I experience them as letting me know them, in ways that there's a practical limit to just how many people like that can I have in my life. Some people have very few, some people have, "I'm an extrovert so it doesn't consume energy for me to do that." And there is a practical limit. So somebody that I have an occasional repartee with on Facebook is not an exceptional relationship.
James Currier:
Even if it's filled with, I love you, man. I love you too.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. Right. That's why we talk a lot in the book about how it's a little deceiving right now that because social media has made it so much easier for us all to "interact" so much more, there is a difference between contact and connection.
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What would be your first prize that people would get out of reading this book? How are they transformed by reading this book?
Carole Robin:
Well, people in general or startup founders in particular?
James Currier:
Let's go with startup founders just to keep it on topic here.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. One of the things that I used to teach at the GSB and I teach at Leaders in Tech is that the question that every leader should ask themselves is, why should somebody follow me? Most of the time people learn about leadership in academic settings and in workshops and through programs by studying what other leaders have done that worked or didn't work. That's a perfectly good way to learn about leadership. I happen to think that an equally if not more powerful way to learn is for each leader to sit in that question, why would somebody follow me? By the way, that is not an easy question to answer if you're really going to be willing to sit in it.
Carole Robin:
And so one of the things I would hope leaders would walk away from with the book is a better understanding of these two antenna that we talk about in the book, one of which is very tuned to what's going on for me inside of me, and the other one which is very attuned to trying to pick up signals from you and having them work together towards something productive. I would argue that leaders who work on fine tuning those antenna and learn to have them talk to each other, no easy feat, become what we call referent figures. People that others want to be more like, people that others admire, people that others are influenced by.
Carole Robin:
And by the way, what would make me a referent figure and why people would follow me might be very different than why people would follow you. But at the core, we have to be real. We have to be willing to allow ourselves to be known. We have to create environments where other people feel safe that they can be more known. We have to learn how to have conflict that's productive. And we have to be invested in each other.
James Currier:
That is a wonderful list and I know a lot of us seek to behave that way in our lives. Can you help me and other startup founders understand why we see so many examples of people who aren't like that who appear to be winning, meaning they would be the diametrically opposite of what you just discussed. We would include Travis Remover. We would include perhaps even Steve Jobs from Apple.
Carole Robin: Absolutely.
James Currier:
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This transcript was exported on Feb 22, 2021 - view latest version here. How do we unpack that?
Carole Robin:
This was one of the big battles I always had when I was still at the GSB, which was that my students would hold up folks like that and say, "Well, but how do you reconcile what you're saying with them?" My answer is twofold, at least twofold. First of all, I think it takes somebody very different to have the right product at the right time in the right place and make a big success out of it than a person that requires a different set of skills and a different kind of person than a person who wants to build something that's sustainable and that will outgrow them. And even more important that won't become dependent on them to survive. So, regrettably, there are a lot of functional but nonetheless narcissistic leaders that have made it big because what is required is a lot of willingness to take risks.
Carole Robin:
Now, I would argue that a person who's willing to take risks interpersonally, along with a person who's willing to think outside the box and really create some of the incredibly wonderful things that are being created in the Valley are the people who are going to ultimately really win. It depends how we define winning. Is it just about making a bunch of money? Well, I didn't set out to write a book or teach a course that was going to help people make a lot of money. I did teach a course and I'm really committed to getting a book out into the world that will help people live more meaningful fulfilled lives. And if that's how you define success, then this is for you.
James Currier:
Got it. It's also true that many of the most successful GSB graduates have come through your course.
Carole Robin:
We'd like to think so.
James Currier:
They've gone on and made a lot of money as well and are now trying to figure out how to use that money to make the biggest impact and do the best in the world that they can. Think a little more broadly about it. And we see that tradition here in Silicon Valley, whether it's Reed or the Andreessen Horowitz people, people who are committing 50 or 99% of all their wealth to help others afterwards. And once you've made it, that was the fun. And then when you have too much of it, what do you do with it? At least in the last 20 years, this Valley has done pretty well at creating gobs of money that's just huge accretion of wealth like we've never seen in history.
Carole Robin:
I don't know if you know this, but Reed was one of the endorsers of the book.
James Currier:
Yeah. Reed's a great guy. He's-
Carole Robin:
A big supporter.
Carole Robin - Listening Cut (Completed 02/09/21) Transcript by Rev.com
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This transcript was exported on Feb 22, 2021 - view latest version here. James Currier:
... a big supporter, and he's one of these people here in the Valley who has this combination of sort of interpersonal as well as creative as well as drive as well as ambition and positive sides of ego and the whole thing. It's like there's a lot of people here like that. That's one of the things that makes it wonderful. So continuing on just unpacking this for startup founders, look, running a startup, there's lots of hard conversations. You're building something from nothing. You need to have this impossible balance of world-bending confidence with also having humility and vulnerability and authenticity so that you can iterate and grow and change your product as well as your team and on and on. So you need to be a salesperson, a visionary, a listener, a learner.
Carole Robin: Superman or woman.
James Currier:
Superwoman. And of course a lot of these things feel like they're in conflict. If we could just come up with some scenarios that we see founders have, maybe we could just talk through some of them, the frameworks of which are in your book. Letting listeners maybe get the benefit of a little one-on-one session with you, you can be their competitive advantage. You said earlier that startup founders are always spinning themselves always trying to answer we're crushing it. What would you coach a new startup founder to say when someone casually asks, how are things going?
Carole Robin:
I'll role play with you a little bit. Hey, I'm a co founder, ask me how things are going at Leaders in Tech.
James Currier:
That's right. You're running this Leaders in Tech, which we should get into as well. So how are things going at Leaders in Tech?
Carole Robin:
Well, James, I'll tell you. It's been a hell of a year. We've had some big wins and, man, have we had some opportunities for growth. We, like everybody else, have had to pivot. We have had to dig deep to find why we're doing this and recommit to our own sense of mission. And there are things that I'm enormously proud of and there are some things I would do differently. And it's all one big fun ride at times that I want to just get off of.
James Currier:
That is a very good description of many people's situations, isn't it? And that type of balanced approach opens up a more meaningful conversation for me. I have an opportunity now to be more authentic with you.
Carole Robin:
We could even make it much smaller and much less complicated. If you asked me right now, "How are you right now, Carole?" I would say to you, "Right this very moment, James, super excited to be on this call with you. And I'm a little distracted because my first grandson was born last Sunday. And I'm feeling worried that I'm not quite on my game as much as I'd like to be."
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This transcript was exported on Feb 22, 2021 - view latest version here. James Currier:
And by sharing your worries, you can now be more comfortable in your own skin, and then I can decide to make you one of the people I really like spending time with. Obviously that happened a long time ago between you and me, but you're inviting me to put more into the relationship by sharing something like that with me.
Carole Robin:
The closer I hold my cards to my vest, the closer you're going to hold yours to yours. And no relationship's going to get deepened in that.
James Currier:
You might have to pick and choose carefully who to do that with, don't you?
Carole Robin:
Oh yeah. I'm not advocating, by the way, just tell everybody everything. We have a heuristic in the book that I think is particularly useful. We call it the 15% rule, which is think of three concentric circles. The circle in the middle is the zone of safety, which is where you don't think twice about what you're saying. The circle on the outside is called your zone of danger where you can't imagine saying that to somebody, and the zone in the middle is called the zone of learning. And by the way, that's the only way we learn is to step outside our comfort zone. If you've ever skied, you know you don't learn by going to the double black diamond first. You start on the bunny slope. But if you stay on the bunny slope, you never become a better skier either.
Carole Robin:
Now, the same thing applies to relationships. I used to tell my students, no risk, no reward. You got to take some risks. But you can't take too big a risk. So then they used to say, "But Carole, the minute I'm outside my safety zone, I'm terrified that I've gone past the learning zone and into the zone of danger." And so then we would say, "Why don't you try 15% outside your comfort zone? Just a little bit. You'll know if you've said something that makes you a little uncomfortable." When I said I'm a little distracted and I'm worried I might not be entirely on my game right now, I felt a little tinge of like, huh, I wonder what your listeners are going to do with that. But it wasn't huge. I didn't freak myself out. By the way, next time I do something like this, I might feel just a little more comfortable saying something like that.
James Currier:
And you felt like you stretched 15% with a comment like that, and that's enough. It's funny for startup founders that we are trying to gather resources, and resources come to a new startup when the resources have confidence, and those resources can be employees, could be capital, could be PR. And so how are people going to have confidence in you, they need to hear that it's safe to go in the water. And when you're in a community, in any tech startup community, whether it's Silicon Valley or other ones, people do talk, they whisper. So you have to kind of control the narrative in order so that you can bring the resources so you can make something out of nothing. And so I think there is network gravity and there is network math that causes us to all say, "Oh, we're crushing it."
Carole Robin:
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Absolutely. Except that after a while, everybody knows nobody's telling the truth. So aren't we better off, and that's why I'm saying the concept of appropriate authenticity might be worth talking about for a moment. If I'm the VP of marketing and that's a third quarter in a row that our market share has dropped drastically, and I have no idea what's going on, I don't stand in front of all the troops and say, "Well, I have no idea what's going on. I'm not sure I should be your VP of marketing." That's authentic and that's vulnerable, but that's not very effective.
Carole Robin:
The flip side, by the way, is everybody knows market share has dropped for the last three months in a row. For me to get up there and say, "Hey, everybody, it's okay, no big deal." That's also not very effective. The option is to say, "Hey, you know what? Third month in a row we've dropped market share, really sucks. There are a lot of potential reasons. I don't have it all figured out, but I'm pretty sure that together we will figure it out." That doesn't sound weak.
James Currier:
It sounds right on the boundary of authenticity both ways and offering path forward, offering real leadership. It sounds interesting; if you can be authentic, it almost triggers yourself to be a better leader, to come up with better solutions.
Carole Robin:
Absolutely. And by the way, flip side of it, which is I've got this covered or I don't admit any mistakes, all that does, it goes back to some of the leaders that we've seen that we were talking about earlier. It creates a bigger and bigger power differential between you and others in the organization. And the minute the power differential gets bigger and bigger, people stop telling you the truth. I can think of very few things that are more important for a leader to do than to build an environment where people tell each other the truth.
James Currier:
Particularly for startups because nobody really knows what to do, you're just making it up.
Carole Robin:
Absolutely. And if I'm afraid that if I tell you the truth you're going to fire me as opposed to say, well, let's figure out what we can learn from that, then I'm not going to tell you the truth.
James Currier:
Yeah, that's interesting that they tell you less the truth, the more your power differential becomes. There's a real mathematical structure there, isn't there?
Carole Robin:
And that ties into disclosure too because the more I disclose, the more vulnerable I make myself, the lower the power differential and the harder it is for you to make up stories about me. My name is Carole, I have this list of Carolian principles. And one of my Carolian principles is in the absence of data, people make stuff up. And since I don't know your listeners, I use stuff, but usually I use a stronger word. But if you don't want people to make up stuff, then you better tell them what you want them to know. And that's not just about the business, it's also about you.
Carole Robin - Listening Cut (Completed 02/09/21) Page 15 of 22 Transcript by Rev.com
This transcript was exported on Feb 22, 2021 - view latest version here. James Currier:
Right. You use the word weak. A leader might not want to appear weak. I think a lot of people wonder if they're good enough. They wonder if they're going to make it, make the grade, whether they'll be allowed to stay with the pack or to be part of the pack, and they don't want to show weakness because they feel that that would disqualify them. Is that true? Is that why we're so obsessed with not looking weak?
Carole Robin:
Well, I think we've got a few different concepts kind of smeagled, highly technical term, in our brain. We tend to think that vulnerability, authenticity and weakness are all somehow tied together. I would argue that if you're willing to be vulnerable, you're probably pretty strong. That'd be the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is paying attention to the language we use is important. You said this earlier, language creates reality. And so if I think telling you I don't know is going to result in you seeing me as weak, then I'm not going to tell you I don't know, and who's going to win? But if I see myself as saying, "I don't have the answers but my job is to make sure we find the best answers." I don't know, I think I probably look a lot stronger.
James Currier:
As long as the person who's making that judgment has the maturity to realize that someone's vulnerability indicates strength, not exhaustion.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. I mean, we're back to obviously appropriate authenticity, right? I'm also thinking about what you said earlier about, I want to go back to the what happens when you have power differentials that are too big. That's why so many founders in the Valley are so exhausted because they're carrying everything. And somehow they've got this idea that unless they come to somebody and say, "Hey, I could use some help here," they're going to appear weak. That's just broken.
James Currier:
Right. We have this mental model that the CEO or the founders need to carry everything. They need to control the information of the board, control the information of the employees, control the information of the customers, and they're the only ones who can know the weaknesses.
Carole Robin:
Have all the answers, always be on top of it, always be optimistic. And you know what they do. They don't only exhaust themselves, they disempower their people. If you don't ever ask somebody to help you, then after a while they don't think they've got much to bring to the party.
James Currier:
Do you think the sort of founders tend to over-identify their personality and worth with the success of their startup?
Carole Robin:
That's a great question. And I'll tell you if there's one thing I've really, really just gotten even clearer about since starting Leaders in Tech is how almost unidentifiable from each other their own sense of
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worth, their identity and their companies are. They are all one and the same. There are ways in which
that serves them and there are ways in which that is costly.
James Currier:
Do you think that pressure makes diamonds, meaning it is costly but without that pressure cooker, they can't do the extraordinary things they need to do to take something from zero to something big?
Carole Robin:
My very first boss used to say that, which is fire doesn't kill, it hardens. I think that's actually better than the diamond analogy because you are taking the chance that you're going to kill it. And I'm not sure it's the only way. So I do think sometimes it needs that. I think that precisely because my experience with founders, and certainly I think one of the reasons Leaders in Tech has become something that's been so helpful to the founders that have been in our program is that it's one place where they can actually just breathe. Talk about what's really going on for them and feel emotionally met. They don't feel that way by their boards. They don't feel that way by the people that work for them. They don't have anybody in their life who they can really be real with. Even when you set everything else aside is exhausting. So imagine adding that to the exhaustion of everything they're carrying.
James Currier:
And have you found ways to help these founders change their mental models or techniques so they can stop carrying the entire weight? I mean, Leaders in Tech obviously is a great way to do it. Having this sorority fraternity of people who are in the midst of this startup journey here in the Valley.
Carole Robin:
Well, I think Leaders in Tech is one way. I think reading the book with a few other people is another way, maybe read it with your executive team, for example. I think that there are so many opportunities. We get so stuck in our beliefs and assumptions that are outdated. I have to be this way because, by the way, maybe it did serve you and then it stopped serving you. I know we're starting to run short on time, but I want to share an anecdote with you about when I was in my very first job and I was the first woman hired. 10 years later I was running this 13 Western state region and I had all my guys at an offsite. I had not yet hired a woman, but I did shortly after this.
Carole Robin:
But anyway, I'm there with my seven guys at two day offsite. I get all worked up; because I'm really excited about something, I'm getting crickets. I finally just start to almost lose it. One of my guys looks at me and he says to me, "Carole, is that like water in the corner of your eye? Are you going to cry?" And then he said, "Are you human after all?" And then I burst out crying and I said, "You don't think I'm a f- ing human. I don't think there's anything more important for us to talk about than that."
Carole Robin:
And that's when we turned ourselves and I tore up our agenda and we spent the next two days talking about who we really were. That's when we became a team, and to this day, that was a long time ago because I'm an old woman now, but to this day, I believe those men would follow me anywhere. Now, could I have busted out in tears the first year that I was on the job? No. But had I now over-indexed on
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being a certain way and not tested whether my mental model of how to be most effective was still
serving me? No.
James Currier:
Got it. You knew that you had to show them that you were going to put food on the table.
Carole Robin: Yes.
James Currier:
And once you had done that, then you can pull back on the throttle.
Carole Robin:
Exactly. And by the way, at different points in time, people will follow you for different reasons. And by the way, different people will follow you for different reasons. One size doesn't fit all. That's what makes it both fascinating and sometimes extremely challenging.
James Currier:
Yeah. Have you seen founders fighting with each other? Are there some examples that you can think of, because it happens a lot. It's hard and it hurts and it's scary. How do you help some of them work through that?
Carole Robin:
There's a fair amount about this in the book too, which is how do you address what we call pinches before they become crunches. If you're doing something that's mildly annoying to me and I don't say anything to you, you'll keep doing it. And the more you do it, the more annoyed I'm going to get. And then the harder it's going to be to talk to you about it. So rule number one is establish some norms to address pinches when they're smaller. Instead, the tendency is to say, it's not a big deal, not a big deal, not a big deal until it becomes a big deal. The second thing I'd say is that task conflict, which is, should we roll out that new product line this year or next year? That's a very different kind of conflict than I don't ever feel heard from you. I don't feel acknowledged by you. I don't feel valued by you. Those kinds of conflicts are much more destructive to relationships.
James Currier:
Interesting. And they're more destructive because...
Carole Robin:
Because they create more and more distance, and the more distanced I feel from you, the less I want to invest in problem solving with you.
James Currier:
Yeah. There are certain personality types that make this type of communication more difficult. When someone fundamentally doesn't feel good enough because of their childhood, or I don't know why they feel that way, then they get pretty defensive. So you might have a vice president or somebody on your
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executive team where their performance is good in some areas but in other places it's not. And to try to tease out where it's not or where they need to improve becomes like a war because they feel as if what you're saying is they're not good enough when all you're trying to say is there's these three or four things that aren't good enough.
Carole Robin:
Remember I mentioned the two antenna earlier, that's where it's really important to get curious. When I say something to somebody... I'll give you another quick example. I walk into the kitchen years ago. This is when Andy and I first traded places and he had not yet learned to be as fabulous a cook as he's become. I would come in the kitchen and I'd see him struggling and I'd say, "Can I help you with that?" And his response would be a cut, "Don't tell me what to do." Then I would say, "What? I wasn't even trying to suggest it. I just wanted..." And it wasn't until I got curious until we unpacked that. I said, "Honey, what did you hear me say?" "I heard you tell me I didn't know what I was doing." I said, "Gosh, I'm really sorry that's what you heard. I thought all I said was, can I help you?" He said, "When I hear can I help you, I hear you don't think I know what I'm doing." Well, that was a pretty important thing for us to untangle.
James Currier:
Sure. So that was a story that he had made up on top of what just happened.
Carole Robin:
Exactly. And it goes back to what you said earlier. He had an older brother who lorded it over him. He was nine years older. And boy, Andy grew up to be somebody who can't stand to have anybody, for one second, imply that he doesn't know what he's doing. And it helps me to know that because I'm more sensitive to what I say and how I say it.
James Currier:
And hopefully when he unpacks it, he can now see that it's not fight or flight. It's just, there was a little pinch and he should do his best to get over the pinch because it's not clear that it was implied that he didn't know what he was doing.
Carole Robin:
And if he doesn't... Go back to the purpose of these conversations when we're having a conflict is to move into a problem solving conversation, which first has to start with getting curious about what's going on for each other, being committed to getting on the other side of it, not getting stuck with who's right and who's wrong. There's a lot in the book about that.
James Currier:
Yeah. It's great stuff. And I guess you've been working now with the leaders in training program and you've coached all of these GSB students who've gone on to start these great companies. Are there tough conversations that you see coming up more frequently for startups?
Carole Robin:
Yeah. Between co-founders in particular.
Carole Robin - Listening Cut (Completed 02/09/21) Page 19 of 22 Transcript by Rev.com
This transcript was exported on Feb 22, 2021 - view latest version here. James Currier:
Not even just like with startups, like where do you spend most of your time? Where are the repetitive conversations that you have with people?
Carole Robin:
Well, I'll tell you one of the really big ones is how to create environments where people tell each other the truth and what gets in their way, and especially how to give. There's a big section in the book about giving and receiving feedback well. Everybody's like, "Ah, I've had feedback training." Well, most feedback training is just really basic and pretty marginal. It's an art and it requires curiosity, it requires not making up stories about what's going on for the other person so you don't make them defensive. It requires staying the course that the purpose is to move into problem solving. It requires making sure both of you know what your intent is.
Carole Robin:
Some real basic stuff that when I say everybody's going to be like, "Oh yeah, of course." But how many people actually do that when they're in an argument? Not very many, right? But I think a lot of people in startups are moving fast and hard and sometimes I think it's very hard for them to think, wow, I can pay a little bit now or I can pay a lot more later. They're like, "I just can't afford to pay right now."
James Currier:
Right. Yeah. It's almost as if you have to take time regularly to lay that foundation so that when things do get pinchy or worse, you can have enough space and breadth to actually navigate skillfully.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. Instead they're very kind of circumspect or they're passive aggressive or they think, I don't have time to give this person feedback. Well, you know what, there's nothing more efficient than the truth. And by the way, if you establish a culture where people tell each other the truth, I said this before, you're going to have a far more sustainable, successful organization. Not to mention the fact you're actually going to grow and develop more. I think that's the other thing that happens, James, which is that in a startup, it's hard for managers to feel they've got the luxury to invest in other people, invest in their development. And yet that is one of the most important roles of a leader. People don't show up at your door fully developed. Otherwise, you've got to pay them more than you can afford.
James Currier:
Right. So you've got to take people, all of us are works in progress, but people who are earlier on in their learning curve and create an environment where they can see that they are moving down the learning curve.
Carole Robin:
Exactly. Where you've shown them how to learn and how to mind their situations for learning, and that's, it's hard. That's why a lot of people end up hiring coaches.
James Currier:
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And then, well, they should. Yeah, I've often thought that soccer coaches should make it clear, "I'm not teaching you soccer. I mean, we'll be playing soccer, but I'm really teaching you leadership and I'm teaching you tenacity and I'm teaching you practice."
Carole Robin: Discipline.
James Currier:
Discipline. I'm teaching you all these things. This is really what you're here for, not actually for soccer.
Carole Robin: Exactly.
James Currier:
And work is a little bit that way as well. Well, Carole, it is just a delight to talk to you. I'm so glad that you guys, after four years, have put this book together, Connect, that you and David Bradford have put this together. I can't wait to read more of it and to implement it. It does take a while to read because there's so much going on here. And it's the most important stuff.
Carole Robin:
Yeah. And you know what, I'd like to say one last thing, which is, I honestly believe with every fiber of my being that if there was a critical mass of people who had these skills and competencies, we would have different families, different communities, different organizations, maybe even a different government. One of the most troubling things to me right now in the world, and especially in this country, is that people have lost their ability to connect across differences. And I can't think of anything more important right now than to arm people with what they need in order to not only connect so they can have more meaningful, fulfilling lives, but so that we can start having more robust, stronger systems.
James Currier:
I agree. And it's the coming out as our network effect, MadOps become BMFs and become almost like quasi government sent to themselves. The leadership and the management of those companies, it's incumbent on them, I think, to also go through this work.
Carole Robin:
Totally agree. So hopefully they'll all read the book, buy books, read them together. Eventually we'll have probably some kind of a two day program that goes with the book, but for now, buy the book.
James Currier:
Great. Carole Robin, thank you so much.
Carole Robin:
Thank you, James. Just a delight to talk to you again. Take care.
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