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Lie: Work/Life Balance Matters Most Truth: Live-in-work matters most We think the authors really hit their stride when they focus on the meta-work subjects and how to think about pulling those out of your team. "Burnout isn't the absence of balance, but the absence of love."Work is hard, the only way to do it sustainably is to have areas of work that you love. The number doesn't have to be that high - only around 20% and it's not a cure-all, because work is hard. BUT, if you love a good chunk of your work, you are most likely to be able to do it successfully and sustainably over time AND you avoid much of the downside like burnout and all of the healh-related issues that come along with it. This chapter really spoke to me. I feel like I am most balanced in my life when I am professionally exhausted. I don't even need 40 hours a week to do that, but I need something interesting and challenging and difficult to work on with a sufficient degree of autonomy. If I don't have that in my professional life, I've found that my personal life suffers - even if I don't have that much on my plate. "This person didn’t find this work—she didn’t happen upon it, fully-formed and waiting for her. Instead, she made it. She took a generic job, with a generic job description, and then, within that job, she took her loves seriously, and gradually, little by little and a lot over time, she turned the best of her job into most of her job.""She tweaked and tweaked the role until, in all the most important ways, it came to resemble her—it became an expression of her. You can do the same. "This is very much tied to strengths, this idea of leaning in on those, expressing them, growing them. This is the key that unlocks professional love. Autonomy/Mastery/Purpose - Dan Pink and Cal Newport talk a lot about this. They would argue following your passions is silly. The probability that you have a passion that you are born with, that is something you are good at, will love for your entire life, and is actually useful are slim. They argue you build passion over time by building strength. Story about Miles the anesthesiologist and what he loves about work, other similar doctors loved a different aspect, but they all had roughly the same job. "The world won’t do your weaving for you—it doesn’t care about your red threads. The only person who can stop and be attentive enough to identify these threads, and weave them intelligently into the fabric of your work, is you."Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.
Lie: People have potential Truth: People have momentum Potential is an intangible subjective opinion about someone that is rooted in almost a character trait instead of a tangible behavior or skill. You can't assess the potential of someone because we're all unique, our brains develop differently, we have different interests, we're all at different stages in our lives, etc. so. to bucket a person into one of two PERMANENT buckets, high-potential or low-potential might be well meaning but is ultimately an unsophisticated way to assess current capabilities and future performance. Worse of all, these labels stick with you for your entire tenure at the organization you are at and it's virtually impossible to change. Idea here is to reframe the discussion around momentum, which has an analogy back to physics. Momentum is a product of mass and velocity. Two measurable traits, that when you multiply them together, you have a meaningful term that is a vector - so magnitude and direction. Momentum is a term that we all have experienced and is easier to wrap our head around and does not require us to tell the future. "Potential is a one-sided evaluation. Momentum is an ongoing conversation"In the idea of performance momentum mass refers to inherent and enduring traits. These things don't really change or if they do, not by much, or not very frequently. behavioral tendencies core values extroversion/introversion How they prefer to work Favorite parts of their job Things they get excited about Then you have velocity. These are demonstrated skills, performance record, credentials. These describe what your responsibilities are, and how well you've done them. They can be used as an indicator of direction, but they can also change - people change the focus of their careers over time. Record of performance Demonstrated behaviors Feedback from peers Measurable and coachable areas that that be improved and adjusted over time These concepts are rooted in something real, that you can take and help shape/coach/assess for the future. We have taken an unusable subjective assessment that is unsophisticated and, with a little bit of effort and data we already have, morph the discussion into something practical and gives us an opportunity to multiply our team's contributions within the organization in a sustainable way - and that are in our direct's control. Understanding these two areas requires two desecrate lines of questioning and the ability to synthesize them - the point here is there is an ongoing conversation here with your team. In your 1:1s ask probing questions over time to understand those behavioral tendencies, core values, and general personal and professional preferences. At the same time, over time, through your 1:1s, feedback, coaching, and delegation, build a solid understanding of the existing skills and strengths of your team and overlay with the first part And most near term, stop thinking about potential, stop talking about potential. Have a more modern, nuanced, sophisticated, and effective discussion around momentum as defined by a person's professional mass and velocity. Never in my life have I wanted a high mass. Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.