Kevin Hale - How to Work Together
Summary
TLDRThe speaker draws parallels between long-term relationships in startups and marriages, emphasizing the importance of effective conflict resolution. They discuss John Gottman's research on marital stability, highlighting four behaviors to avoid during disputes: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. To foster healthy relationships, the speaker recommends early division of responsibilities, understanding personal attachment styles, creating documented processes for disagreements, and practicing nonviolent communication. They stress the importance of addressing small issues before they escalate and maintaining open lines of communication to prevent emotional debt from accumulating.
Takeaways
- 🏗️ Founding a startup is akin to building a long-term relationship, like marriage, which requires planning and understanding of potential conflicts.
- 🔮 John Gottman's research indicates that certain patterns in arguments can predict the longevity of a marriage, which can be analogous to co-founder relationships.
- ⏱️ Gottman found that couples who fight about the same issues (money, kids, etc.) and how they handle arguments are more predictive of relationship success than the frequency of fights.
- 🚫 Four 'horsemen' to avoid in conflicts are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling, as they can be detrimental to relationships.
- 🤝 Early in a startup, dividing responsibilities among co-founders and defining success and failure criteria can prevent defensiveness and promote accountability.
- 💭 Understanding one's attachment style (secure, anxious, avoidant) is crucial for navigating interpersonal dynamics and resolving differences.
- 📋 Creating a documented process for handling disagreements while emotionally sober can prevent emotional escalation and ensure rational decision-making.
- 🗣️ Nonviolent Communication, as outlined by Marshall Rosenberg, provides a structured way to communicate honestly without causing offense or resentment.
- 🔄 Regularly addressing small issues before they become larger ones, or 'paying down emotional debt,' is vital for maintaining healthy relationships in a startup.
- 🤔 Engaging in 'level three' conversations that deal with relational issues and emotions can help co-founders stay aligned and resolve conflicts effectively.
Q & A
What is the main challenge founders face when building a long-term relationship in a startup?
-Founders need to figure out how to optimize for a relationship that lasts for about 10 years, often with someone they might only know for a couple of months or in a work setting.
Who is John Gottman and what is his significant contribution to understanding relationships?
-John Gottman is a researcher who studied marriages in Seattle and has been featured in various media. He discovered that by observing a couple's argument for 15 minutes, he could predict with 85% accuracy whether they would divorce within four years.
What does John Gottman's research suggest about the frequency and nature of fights in successful marriages?
-Gottman's research indicates that successfully married people do fight, just like everyone else, and they fight about the same things: money, kids, sex, time, jealousy, and in-laws.
What are the four major things to avoid when fighting, according to John Gottman's research?
-The four major things to avoid when fighting are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Can you explain the concept of 'criticism' in the context of John Gottman's research?
-Criticism in this context refers to the act of bringing unrelated issues into a discussion instead of focusing on the specific issue at hand during a disagreement.
What is 'defensiveness' and how does it affect a relationship?
-Defensiveness is when a person refuses to admit there is a problem or refuses to take responsibility for their part in the issue. This can prevent resolution and progress in a relationship.
What is 'stonewalling' and why is it considered dangerous in a relationship?
-Stonewalling is when a person avoids engaging in a conversation or discussion, essentially 'walking away' from the issue. It's dangerous because it prevents any resolution or understanding from being reached.
What is the 'divide and conquer' strategy and how can it be applied in a startup?
-The 'divide and conquer' strategy involves assigning specific areas of responsibility to different individuals or roles within a startup. This helps to prevent defensiveness and ensures that there is a clear point of responsibility for different issues.
What is an 'attachment style' and why is it important to understand in a co-founder relationship?
-An attachment style refers to the way individuals approach relationships, with secure, anxious, and avoidant being the main types. Understanding your co-founder's attachment style can help predict and manage how conflicts and issues will be resolved.
Can you describe the 'nonviolent communication' method and how it can help in giving and receiving feedback?
-Nonviolent communication, as described by Marshall Rosenberg, is a method that allows individuals to express themselves honestly without criticizing, insulting, or demeaning others. It involves structuring communication to include observations, feelings, needs, and requests, which can help prevent personal attacks and foster understanding.
What is 'emotional debt' and how does it compare to 'technical debt'?
-Emotional debt refers to the unresolved negative feelings or issues that accumulate in relationships. Unlike technical debt, which is related to software development, emotional debt should be addressed regularly to prevent small issues from growing into larger problems.
What are 'level three conversations' and why are they important in a startup environment?
-Level three conversations are deep, relational discussions that engage with what is happening between two people in the present. They are important in a startup because they allow for honest feedback, addressing of emotional debt, and maintaining a healthy working relationship.
Outlines
🏗️ Co-founder Relationships and Marriage Research
The speaker begins by drawing a parallel between the teamwork involved in dismantling a scaffolding in Kyoto and the dynamics of a startup's co-founder relationship. They emphasize the challenge of establishing a long-term partnership in a short period. The speaker introduces John Gottman's marriage research, highlighting his ability to predict divorce with high accuracy based on how couples argue. Gottman's findings reveal that conflict is inevitable in all relationships, including those in a startup, and the key is in understanding and managing these conflicts. The speaker outlines four 'horsemen' to avoid in arguments: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Understanding these can help co-founders plan for conflict resolution and maintain a healthy, long-lasting partnership.
🤝 Early Relationship Management in Startups
The speaker discusses strategies for early-stage relationship management among co-founders to avoid defensiveness and conflict. They suggest assigning responsibility for different areas of the business upfront, which can help in making decisions and taking responsibility for outcomes. The speaker also talks about setting clear definitions for success and failure, and determining when interference in delegated tasks is appropriate. They stress the importance of having these conversations while everyone is 'emotionally sober' to ensure rational decision-making. The ultimate responsibility often falls on the CEO, with the board, typically consisting of founders in early stages, as the final arbiter.
🧘♂️ Understanding Personal Attachment Styles
The speaker explores the concept of attachment styles, drawing from research conducted in the 1960s. They identify three main styles: secure, anxious, and avoidant, each influencing how individuals approach relationships. Understanding a co-founder's attachment style is crucial for resolving differences and maintaining a healthy partnership. The speaker advises that knowing these styles can help in accommodating the needs of others, such as giving space to an avoidant person or providing validation to an anxious person. Resources such as books, Wikipedia, and YouTube videos are recommended for further understanding of attachment styles.
📋 Documented Processes for Conflict Resolution
The speaker recommends creating a documented process for dealing with disagreements to prevent criticism and emotional escalation. They highlight the importance of establishing this process while emotionally sober to ensure rational and fair outcomes. An example from the company Mater is given, where a spreadsheet is used to document disagreements, decisions, and rationales. The speaker suggests that having a predetermined process can prevent disagreements from escalating and help maintain transparency and clarity in decision-making.
🗣️ Nonviolent Communication Strategies
The speaker delves into the specifics of nonviolent communication as a means to express oneself honestly without criticism or insult. They outline a structured format for giving and receiving feedback, which involves making observations, expressing emotions, identifying unmet needs, and making requests rather than demands. The speaker emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between observations and evaluations, focusing on feelings rather than thoughts, recognizing underlying universal needs, and formulating specific, actionable requests. They also mention the value of understanding evaluative emotions and their underlying impacts.
💼 Addressing Emotional Debt in Relationships
The speaker introduces the concept of emotional debt in relationships, cautioning against letting small issues grow into larger ones. They advocate for addressing minor concerns promptly and respectfully, using the nonviolent communication strategies previously discussed. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of having regular 'level three' conversations, which are deep, relational discussions focused on current issues between individuals. They provide examples of topics suitable for these conversations, such as goals, roles, and performance, and stress the importance of having mechanisms in place for feedback and emotional debt repayment.
🤔 Proactive Strategies for Healthy Co-founder Dynamics
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker summarizes the proactive strategies for maintaining healthy co-founder dynamics. They reiterate the importance of planning for conflict, understanding personal attachment styles, clarifying roles and goals, and establishing a process for communication. The speaker also stresses the value of nonviolent communication for providing honest feedback and the necessity of regularly addressing emotional debt to prevent minor issues from escalating. They encourage the audience to start having difficult conversations to address any existing undisclosed issues within their teams.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Optimize for relationship
💡John Gottman
💡Four horsemen
💡Attachment style
💡Divide and conquer
💡Emotional debt
💡Nonviolent communication
💡Level three conversations
💡Defensiveness
💡Stonewalling
Highlights
Importance of optimizing long-term relationships in startups, likened to a 10-year marriage.
John Gottman's research on marital stability and his ability to predict divorce with high accuracy.
Gottman's findings that all couples fight and the key is in the way they argue, not the frequency.
The four major things to avoid in arguments: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
The concept of 'divide and conquer' to assign responsibilities and prevent defensiveness.
Defining success and failure criteria to know when to interfere or let decisions stand.
Understanding attachment styles to navigate relationship dynamics and conflict resolution.
The prevalence of anxious and avoidant attachment styles and their impact on co-founder relationships.
Creating a documented process for disagreements to avoid emotional reactions.
Mater's spreadsheet for managing disagreements as an example of a documented process.
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg as a method to give honest feedback without criticism.
The structure of Nonviolent Communication: observation, feeling, need, request.
The importance of distinguishing between observations and evaluations in communication.
Identifying underlying universal needs from negative emotions for effective communication.
Making requests instead of demands to foster cooperation and avoid resentment.
The concept of emotional debt and the importance of addressing small issues before they escalate.
Y Combinator's 'level three' conversations for deep relational engagement and resolving issues.
Examples of level three conversation topics: goals, roles, performance, feedback mechanisms.
The necessity of having hard conversations early to prevent the escalation of minor issues.
Transcripts
uh these are some guys i saw in kyoto
and they're tearing down a scaffolding
and i just think they're
amazingly poetic and how they do their
work
so in a startup um
founders basically have to figure out
how to optimize for a relationship that
lasts for like
10 years and that's a crazy thing to do
with someone you might only know for a
couple of months
or have only known in a sort of work
setting and the thing is like the only
models
for understanding that kind of
relationship
actually come probably from our parents
and so i'd like to start off with some
marriage research
so this is john gottman he studied his
marriages in seattle he's been featured
in this american life
and a bunch of different places and
basically he has a cool magic trick he
can watch
a couple fight about something for 15
minutes
and predict with 85 accuracy whether
they'll be divorced or not
uh four years from now if he watches
them for an
hour and have them also share their
hopes and dreams his prediction rating
goes up to 94 percent and so
this is the same videos they would show
to priests
psychologists psychiatrists marriage
counselors
successfully married couples and they
don't predict better than random chance
and so john he's figured something out
there's something about the way we will
have an
argument that determines longevity and
one of the most surprising things that
he discovered was that it's not that
successfully married people who will
last a long time that they never fight
turns out everybody fights and
we all fight about the exact same things
money kids sex time
jealousy and the in-laws
and time is usually what are we gonna do
with our free time
uh and the thing that's interesting is
like
i think all of these map out to the
stuff that we're gonna fight about
in a company and so you
with your co-founders are gonna have
these issues
and the thing is what's nice about
knowing everyone fights
and that you know what you're gonna
fight about is that we can make a plan
for figuring out how to deal with this
one situation
that will determine whether we will work
together
on the thing that we're so passionate
about down the road
the other thing that john gottman
figured out is that there's
four major things we want to avoid
when we're fighting and when we do these
things
they will create sort of leading
indicators
that the relationship is in serious
trouble
i'm gonna go through each one of these
so criticism
uh this is basically like you're talking
with someone
and you're like hey you know what i have
a serious concern about this bug that
we are trying to fix and i'm really
worried about this thing
and i'm not sure that we're going to be
able to deploy on time and someone comes
up and says like
well you know what i don't like is the
fact that you leave a bunch of dirty
dishes in the sink
and criticism is basically this idea
that we don't fight on one
topic we start trying to bring all these
other issues
into play instead of addressing the one
issue at hand
dangerous contempt this is pretty easy
one
it's intention to insult so basically i
say like hey i'm worried about this bug
and we're not going to be able to deploy
on time
and someone says i don't like your face
right
that's contempt and what you want to
avoid is making things
personal right because we're in a
business
this one's um kind of easy to understand
is that someone not owning
responsibility about the problem and so
we can't move
forward because someone won't admit that
there's a problem
out there we defend that we haven't done
anything wrong and therefore there can't
be
resolution between two people the other
person thinks
there's a problem this one is a super
dangerous one
and it's when basically you're like hey
i got a problem
and the person just walks away won't
engage won't talk to you
and so there can be no way to create any
kind of resolution
so just as you wouldn't do this
without uh doing some of this
we want to make a plan and i'm going to
talk about four different things that we
can do
that helps avoid and protect us from
those four horsemen
the first one is divide and conquer
and this feels pretty straightforward
but you want to do this early
in the relationship with your
co-founders and in the in the early
stages of your company
so here's our list again of the types of
things that
we might have problems with and in the
early stages of the start
let's say adora and i are doing a
startup together it's just her and me
then what you want to do is just kind of
say like oh who's responsible
what stuff and what this will do is like
if there's a problem
in that category then that person that
we have assigned ahead of time
to be in charge will be the ones that
will ultimately either make the decision
or ultimately are responsible
this protects us from defensiveness
so notice here on jealousy this is about
competition
usually and so usually in the early
stages of your startup you should not be
worried about competition
competition is not usually what kills
you in the very early stages of your
company
as your company ages it might change and
look something like this
you'll assign things to different sort
of positions and heads
and as a result then when their
problems come up you know basically that
sort of is delegated
now what happens
if uh things go out of hand even up at
those
sort of levels well basically
what you want to do is decide after you
delegate
who has ownership determine what is
success and failure
you want to know also ahead of time hey
we've divided up the task
but we also want to know is like hey
when is there going to be interference
with a person that is supposed to be
leading these decisions what is
considered like its success enough that
we shouldn't be interfering just let
them do what they think is best
and what is considered really bad so
that we have to interfere
and something has to be done about it so
in this case
good examples would be like hey you know
if we've successfully fundraised like we
don't need to talk or like
replace the person that's responsible
for that uh if we're shipping on time
if we're rated top three amongst our
sort of peers or
we've built a referral program that's
working hey we don't need to be
criticizing the person that's working on
the stuff or they're doing a good job
on the corollary we want to define hey
what are the things
that basically are going to trigger
conversations
really hard conversations like hey if we
hit
this sort of area we need to put the
brakes on and we need to discuss what's
going on
and actually try to resolve these
problems a lot of people like to
delegate stuff but they don't have
a way of saying hey when are we going to
have a conversation about this
when there's trouble and these are
really really easy to do
and the reason you want to do these
early while you're
sober emotionally sober is because once
you get angry
and emotions come into play then you
might not be thinking rationally
now ultimately in the end usually it's
the ceo
in the company who has final say now you
as a team can decide differently how you
want to resolve it if you just
if you divvy up the stuff but ultimately
whoever's the ceo usually is the one who
resolves it
and if there's problems with the ceo
then it's the board
in the early stages of startup the board
is usually composed of just the founders
so you have to ultimately work it out
the second defense against the force
horsemen is knowing yourself
this will protect you from stonewalling
and what i mean
is what is your attachment style
so there was all this research that was
done in the 1960s about
how people approach relationships
and basically it was determined that
there's sort of
three major types there's a secure
attachment style and that means
basically it's like hey you know what i
don't have a problem
going up to people uh relying on them
and having them rely on me and sort of
like us creating a relationship i don't
mind being vulnerable and i don't
i don't mind other people being
vulnerable with me that's called a
secure
attachment style there's an anxious
style so there's a type of person
that will be like you know what i kind
of don't get
enough love as not as much as i want i
kind of want to like hold on to people
and i kind of want to have people
constantly confirm with me
that they want to be with me i feel like
it's a little difficult and then there's
another point
the kind of person just like i find it
kind of difficult
creating relationships with people and i
kind of want to run away sometimes
because it's really scary
or i'm worried that i'm going to mess it
up
and the thing that's super important
here especially with your co-founder is
you want to know
your co-founder's attachment style
because that's going to dictate
how you are going to be able to resolve
and understand your differences
now what it turns out oddly enough
is that an anxious attachment person and
an avoidant attachment person these are
the two
most common in the world there's not
that many like
well-developed secure people out there
they tend to want to be with one another
so the person that wants to run away
and the person that wants to cling and
so what you have is someone who needs
space to make a decision and to process
problems and tension
and the someone who needs validation
constantly the process
conflict and issues and so when those
two people are together and they don't
realize what the other person needs they
don't realize that they're going to have
to bend
to sort of make it work there's lots of
good books
on attachment styles there's a wonderful
wikipedia page that covers it
i would recommend watching this youtube
video it's from school of life
and what i would highly recommend is
basically
understanding that like if you're with
someone that is of the opposite type
that you're gonna have to do work either
to reach across the aisle
like if you're an anxious person you're
gonna and you're talking to an avoidant
person you just have to realize like oh
that person needs space but that doesn't
mean they're running away from you
and if you're an avoidant person with an
anxious person
that if someone needs your attention or
if you need your space then you have to
let them know it's like hey i'm going to
be back
i realize that you're going to need an
answer for this i'm going to go away i'm
going to figure stuff out and i promise
a time
that we will deal with this
documented process so this will protect
you from criticism
and so basically when you're emotionally
sober
it's the best time to create a process
for dealing with disagreements and the
reason you want to do this is
because once you're upset and angry and
filled with emotions
you are not going to be thinking
straight and so the odds are you might
say something you regret
you might say something that you don't
mean and the other person might do so
and then
you will have a much different problem
than the bug
not being fixed and deployed on time
so one of my favorite examples of this
comes from the company called mater
and they created a spreadsheet for
dealing with
disagreements basically it's a
disagreement
uh decision framework and basically it
just talks about it's like hey
when we have a disagreement we should
just document it this helps make things
really really transparent
makes us understand both sides very very
clearly
we talk about the different options we
say who made the decision
what the decision was the date was done
and then rationale
and so when we walk through this process
if we've decided this ahead of time
then it means that we are not afraid
when disagreements come up it's like oh
we have a process for dealing with this
and we will figure it out by filling out
excel
[Music]
there's lots of different ways to do
this you don't have to follow their sort
of very specific framework they have
lots of really great justifications in
their article
you just have to agree ahead of time
what you want to
do so therefore when you are upset you
just go okay
great we have a process for this and
process says
oh it says go have a timeout or eat a
bologna sandwich
or like take a nap first and then we'll
figure out what we have to do it could
be a process where it's like hey if
there's a real disagreement and both
sides feel equally strong
we will flip a coin and then that will
be the decision for the test of time we
will let lady luck
decide it doesn't matter you just have
to both agree
this strategy will protect you from
contempt
so the way that you avoid
making things personal is you have to
figure out way of communicating with
another in a way that will not be
threatening
there's an amazing book on this um it's
called nonviolent communication by
marshall rosenberg
and it helps you be honest with other
people
without criticizing without insulting
without putting down other people
and the magic comes in the structure
that feels somewhat fake for people who
are not into being touchy-feely
um basically when you're giving some
kind of criticism
you want to basically have it in this
format so
when some observation i feel an emotion
because i'm needing some universal need
would you be able to request so we're
just going to break down
each one of these different parts and
they're all
every single one of these are tricky and
it's a thing that a lot of people will
try to do and you'll spend your whole
life trying to get really good at
and it gets really difficult so the
first one
is you need to make an observation
versus
having an evaluation so basically what
you want to do is
start your disagreement or criticism
by anchoring it to something that is
concrete
you do not want it to be something that
is connected to opinion it should be
something
that you actually saw or heard because
therefore you can't
disagree with something that actually
happened versus something i heard a
i heard be a rumor or something that has
to do something that seems emotional or
something that seems like an opinion
so i'll give you an example um
an observation would be like you said
that you'd send that document last week
and i haven't received it
all right so that is a great observation
an evaluation that someone might say
instead in the heat of the moon
is that you're lazy
[Music]
right that kind of feels like
an observation but it's not it's
evaluating the person give you another
example
your work is sloppy that is not
objective instead hey three of the
numbers in this report
were inaccurate that's where you want to
start
you're always late you want to be really
careful because that's a generalization
it's an evaluation observation hey you
arrived 10 minutes late
to the meeting this morning evaluation
you ignored me observation i sent you
two
emails and i haven't received the
response
notice when we start with observation we
start with a fact that can't be refuted
and so we're not going to end up arguing
about something else
notice all those other evaluations they
immediately
will trigger an emotion in you and so
that's why you want to be really careful
that when you start this criticism that
you don't start with one of those
the next is we have to talk about our
emotions right so i saw
this irrefutable observation and it made
me
feel something and what we have to be
really careful of
is not saying thoughts but instead
talking about
feelings which is kind of odd but
it's connected to the next point out in
the
in the structure so an emotion will be i
feel frustrated right
now a thought would be and it could be
put in the same structure as like i
feel that you aren't taking this
seriously
and the way you can tell if something is
a thought or a feeling
is you substitute the phrase i think
with i feel
and it still works so i think
frustrated doesn't work so that's a
feeling
i think that you aren't taking this
seriously oh that's a thought
there's a couple of emotions that we
have to be particularly careful of
one is anger because anger is usually
tied to a bunch of hosts of other things
so when someone says that i feel angry
you
or you realizing that you feel angry you
want to be really really specific about
what's causing the anger what's
triggering it
the other tricky emotions are evaluative
emotions and usually what you need to
figure out is what
underlines that evaluation so
i'll give you an example so i
feel blamed right someone else is
evaluating me i feel blamed the impact
actually is i feel scared someone is
blaming me
and so i feel scared so it takes a lot
of work to understand that when someone
is giving me some
if i'm feeling like some kind of judging
feeling what is that the core root of it
other examples are
i feel judged the actual impact is
i feel resentful
i feel misunderstood the impactful
statement is actually
i feel frustrated i feel rejected
the real impact is i feel hurt
it's super hard it's super super hard uh
i'm gonna have a link inside of this
presentation to a pdf it's three pages
of evaluative emotions
impacted feelings you probably actually
are feeling and then connects us to
a universal need that you need to
overcome it which leads us to
our next thing every negative emotion
lies an unmet universal need
and so what that means is that like
when you're feeling one of these
frustrated or blamed or scared
or hurt feelings there's something
that's missing that you're going to need
and the thing that's really tricky about
universal needs is you have to be
careful of realizing
is it a strategy or is it a need and
is it truly universal so i'll give an
example
right you might be able to say i need a
sandwich
that is not a universal need so you have
to be really careful
right and then you might say like i need
a sandwich
to give me nourishment that's more like
a strategy
a much better way might be uh
let me see here you might say something
like i need
you to copy me on every single email
but the thing is that's not a universal
need that becomes very very specific a
universal need would be
i need some transparency about this
process
you have to be careful of not making
needs about something that's very
specific to yourself
or just that situation because once it's
a universal need
then it's something that everyone can
agree that everyone should sort of have
so other universal needs are like i need
support
and the way you turn it not into
universal need is by saying something
like
i need support from you because not
everyone needs support from henry
right but everyone does need support
and it says you include from you
it stops being universal so you want to
be really careful of this
okay requests versus
demand so at the very end so basically
we said like hey i've
noticed something that can't be refuted
i've
told you about a feeling and how it
impacts me and i told you that basically
it results in
some universal need that we all can
agree that we need
to have and now we get to saying
what we'd like to have changed as a
result and what you want to make is a
request
not a demand the difference is that a
request is an invitation
to the other person to meet our
universal needs
it's much easier to be able to do than
to say like i order you to do something
so what we want to do is
make it very specific our requests
so i request for you to be more
respectful
is not that great because who defines
what's respectful my
version of respectful might be different
from someone else's your request should
be something like
i request that you arrive to meetings on
time
say what you want don't say what you
don't want so what a lot of people will
say is that i request
that you don't dismiss other people's
ideas straight away
the thing is it doesn't indicate the
behavior that you do want
and so it becomes really difficult to
act on a better one would be i request
that when a team member shares an idea
you ask two or three probing questions
before sharing a conclusion
and then stay curious and so sometimes
you might make a request and someone
might say no
and what you need to do is not just
freak out that the whole process
isn't working the idea is actually to be
like hmm
maybe i haven't put this request in a
way that can meet
more needs than just myself could i do
this in a way so that they can
understand and be on board
for everyone to be sort of involved
if you want to learn more there's a
really great article
on delivering constructive feedback in
different citizens by dave bailey this
is on medium i'll have a link to it
he goes into far more detail and is a
very very good
starting point for giving out this
really hard feedback
we all know what technical debt is right
so when we're
building out software really really
quickly and sometimes you're like
well that's not going to scale real
really well and it's going to be dirty
and quick but i'm going to get it out
the door and
i'm just going to put that in the back
of my mind it's something i have to fix
later
well in our relationships one another
you will incur emotional debt and unlike
technical debt
you really don't want that to go for
very long
you want to pay this down every day
so it turns out also in john gottman's
research that it wasn't that
people who were really good at being in
a marriage
um only thought about really big things
it turns out they would immediately
breed bring up stuff even when it's
really tiny or small
they would never let a small thing grow
to be a medium thing
and then eventually a big thing they
immediately will talk about it's like oh
man
uh can you close your mouth while you're
chewing um real quick it's just like
kind of bothering me
right now and then do it in a way that's
sort of respectful and so
like when you're with your co-founders
and
you're in this really sensitive
relationship and you're finding stuff
that's being really troubling like
you can communicate those needs really
quickly and you will prevent
those small things from becoming big
things
the best way to start doing this is the
practice so
at yc we call these level three
conversations so level one
is that informal conversation we have
other people where it's just like
data exchange passing information back
and forth
level two conversations have some
emotions talk about some things that are
personal
level three conversations
they're relational they're engaged with
something that's happening right now
between two people that is super super
important
it is a deep dive into
what it might be really troubling or
what might be really mattering
to two people and in a startup there's a
lot of things that's going to matter
to all of the people working on the
company
so let's go through some examples of
things that you guys can do
after this talk
so goals some good ones are
what are our short-term goals for the
company
you'd be surprised at how often people
are not on the same page
about this are we using the right
metrics
we've got lectures on those the answer
is i hope so by now
and then are we uh
that's supposed to be hitting our goals
not hiring our goals are we hitting our
goals
roles who's responsible for what's super
sensitive right
so is it clear who is responsible for
what
like just have that conversation do we
agree
that the current division makes the most
sense
and this might be super simple answers
but if there is any kind of disagreement
we want to hash that out
and performance okay so
is our workload distributed in an
optimal manner today
do we all feel a high level of
dedication
and a motivation right now great thing
to just check on
every day and then what mechanisms are
in place for providing feedback to one
another
have we carved out time for paying down
emotional debt
do we feel like we can have these
level three conversations at any time do
we have a process in place for thinking
through this stuff
so that we can be honest about where we
are
in our company going to sum things up
how to work together everyone fights so
you want to make a plan
you need to figure out what's your
attachment style what's your roles
what's your goals and a process before
emotions get involved do it while you're
sober
use non-violent communication to share
honest feedback
without criticism
[Music]
and then pay down emotional debt on a
regular
basis this is the most healthy way that
you will make sure that things will not
turn
into a giant blow up
you can start having hard conversations
right now
there's no doubt in my mind that there's
probably some issue
that the two of you or three of you or
four of you or god forbid
seven of you are not talking about okay
thank you very much i'll let you guys
[Applause]
mingle
you
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