✌ Quothy ✌

“understanding and cultivating culture is a key part of your job as a leader.”

“look for self-regulating processes. If you find yourself playing the role of taskmaster — criticizing people who break the rules or don’t follow the process — see if the process itself can be changed to be easier to follow.”

“If you join or create a company with very different values than your own, you’ll feel a great deal of friction that will make your life harder. At the highest levels, all of this cultural alignment comes to play in everything you do, because you spend so much of your time in the land of negotiation, collaboration, and cross-functional teamwork. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful in a company that holds some different values from your own. In fact, it’s pretty rare that you agree perfectly with every value of every person on the senior team of a company. You probably don’t even agree with every value of every person in your family, or among your friends! Still, the amount of overlap between the traits you value most and the traits your company values most largely determines how easy the fit will be for you.”

“The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you have to be able to manage yourself if you want to be good at managing others.”

“Be a shock absorber for the team, allowing them to focus on their day-to-day work and building trust for streamlined workflow.”

“Language is how you give intention to your intuition and how you share your vision with others. Language is how you create a culture.”

“A leader's responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths may be.”

“if you take care of your managers and give them what they need to be successful, you put them in a better position to take care of their teams.”

“Being in leadership is one of the toughest jobs out there. As a leader, I never let anyone off easy. I held us all accountable, myself included. I was never afraid of being unpopular. Being a captain was often lonely as hell, and I felt constant pressure to be strong, to not make mistakes. I wish I had realized earlier that vulnerability doesn't undercut your authority as a leader, but enhances it. Making mistakes is unavoidable. But being honest and open about those mistakes makes you a better leader. Acting with empathy first, always, makes you a better leader and a better person.”