Wild Courage | Jenny Wood
53:56 Share

Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Kaja, bringing you this episode with author Jenny Wood. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com forward slash Talks at Google.

In her 18 years at Google, Jenny grew from entry-level to executive and ran a large operations team that helped drive billions of revenue per year. She is the founder of Own Your Career, one of the largest career programs in Google's history, with over 50,000 people benefiting in nearly 100 countries. Jenny's work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Inc., and Forbes.

Now, Jenny's back at Google to discuss her book, Wild Courage. Go after what you want and get it. Wild Courage coaches you to smash through your fear of discomfort, failure, and the judgment of others, and to embrace your boldest self. The book is an empowering and energizing guide to embracing your ambition and chasing after what you want. Here is Jenny Wood, Wild Courage.

My entire life changed on a crowded, dirty, sea-line. The New York City subway, right here, coming home from this building in 2011. About 20 feet away from me stands this really good-looking guy. Gorgeous blue eyes, perfectly coiffed wavy brown hair, and I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm so taken by him." And even though I want to talk to him, something holds me back.

What if he's a convicted felon? What if he's married? What if 100 people stare at me while I make a fool of myself on this packed train?

So I sit there and do nothing as the train passes stop after stop after stop, and life passes me by. Now, I later came to realize that underneath those three questions I had about him, what if he's this, what if he's that, were the fears that held so many people back: fear of failure, fear of uncertainty, fear of judgment of others.

Because I'm so taken by him, I make a deal with the universe. I say, if he gets off at my stop, then maybe I'll try to strike up a conversation with him. And if not, then c'est la vie.

So he gets off at the next stop, which is not my stop. And I say, OK, even though I said that I would have this conversation if he got off at my stop, this is not what's happening. The universe is not on my side this day. And at the next stop, he runs off the train, and I chase after him because I feel this wave of wild courage practically push me out of my subway seat.

I finally catch up with him as he's exiting the station right here, and I say, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you. You're wearing gloves, so I can't tell if you're wearing a wedding ring, but in the event that you're not married, you were on my subway, and I thought you were cute. Any chance I could give you my business card?" And then I wait what feels like forever, thinking, "This was a terrible idea." But eventually, he takes the card.

The next day he calls, we go on a date a week later. Three years later, we're getting married and we've now been married happily for 11 years with two small kids, Ari and Noah.

The New York Times wrote about it. They called the article Serendipity One Spreadsheet Zero. Now, why did they call it that? Well, as a dedicated online dater, I kept a spreadsheet of all the upcoming first dates I had. So I'll give you a moment to take that in.

So let's see, what do we have? Name, age, height, date of first contact, summary of our online conversation, you know, for context for the first date. Is the date booked? That was binary, yes or no. My excitement level, one to three. And is he funny? No pressure, gentlemen.

And because I see you squinting trying to, you know, see the nuances here, I'll help you out. Row eight, Logan, his mother's name is Jenny. No can do. Row four, Jason, looks familiar. Have I dated this guy before? And then we've got row 17, ah, good old Clay wants to fly fish the wild rivers of my soul. So that's why they called it Serendipity One Spreadsheet Zero. It was one of the most viral articles this reporter had written in her 30 years reporting for The New York Times.

It turns out people wanted permission to have wild courage. But even though they called it Serendipity 1 Spreadsheet 0, I still maintain that serendipity isn't found, it's made. Now, you might not be a subway chaser, but wherever you're sitting today, there is something that you want. And wild courage is what closes the gap between what you want and what you get.

That was the day that I started using wild courage as a habit. I started setting goals and got my pilot's license. I then started asking for what I wanted here at Google and kept getting promoted.

Ultimately, I grew from entry level to executive, and I ran large operations teams here that helped drive billions in annual revenue. Most incredible teams that I've worked with here. And it's, I have to say, just so wonderful to be back. It is very, very special to be back. This is an incredibly special place, and it is a delight to share this day with you.

All right, so people were impressed with my rise. And so mentees would come to me and they'd say, you know, how'd you do it? How did you grow from entry level to executive? What are your secrets, your tips and tricks? So I thought, hmm, maybe I should broadcast this message more.

So one Tuesday afternoon, I'm walking out of a meeting with engineering, delivering some bugs to them, and I thought, "All right, I guess I could write down maybe a dozen tips on a Google Doc, black and white, 12 bullets, and maybe I'll lead a training, and maybe some people will come and benefit from what I have to say." So I thought 35 people or so would come.

Well, 2,000 people came to that first training. And that became Own Your Career, a no-nonsense approach to getting ahead professionally. In the end, 56,000 people benefited from the Own Your Career program in nearly 100 countries, making it one of the largest career programs at Google. And then I realized something. While I liked running my operations team, I loved coaching people to be better than they think they can be.

So fast forward a few years, that wild courage habit continued to serve me. I convinced a top literary agent to sign me and set out to help not just employees in tech, but millions of people worldwide. So I wrote a really good book proposal. I got a deal with Penguin Random House. And now I am on a mission to release insane amounts of wild courage into the world. Because when you adopt a mindset of wild courage, your runway for success and leadership is endless.

Wild courage is about how to get what you want, and a big part of that is the traits that one must embrace to get there. By the time I started writing this book, I had trained tens of thousands of people on leadership, influence, and success. And the same theme kept emerging when people felt stuck: their relationship to fear. And it was the same three fears that I felt on the subway that day: fear of uncertainty: what if he's a convicted felon? Fear of failure: what if he's married?

And fear of judgment. What if a hundred people stare at me on this packed train? And this last one, in a corporate environment, can be so challenging because it's sneaky. It affects your belief of how others see you. In fact, it affects how you see yourself. This is the fear that creates a voice in your head that says, "Oh, don't do that. People might think I'm blank. People might label me xyz thing."

Well, today I invite you to reclaim those blanks, reclaim those labels you worry people might call you if you're bold enough to take action. Specifically, there are nine labels or nine what I call traits that create the bars of an invisible cage that keep you small, that keep you quiet, and that keep you following rather than leading. Well, these are the nine traits.

Weird, selfish, shameless, obsessed, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless, and bossy. Who let this lady into the building? These raise eyebrows. Raise your hand if you've ever had a fear that there was a moment where you did something that might have led to someone thinking you were one of these things. Raise your hand if you've ever been fearful of being called one of these things. Yeah, that's 100% of you.

Now raise your hand if you feel like these words are good things leaders should have. Also 100% of you. Well, what if all we're doing is putting just a little bit of heat on these more traditional words? As you embrace your wild courage to be a bolder leader, I invite you to reclaim these nine words because when used in a sane and savvy way,

These traits can supercharge your success. And yes, you can take a picture of this. People love to take a picture of this slide, so feel free to snap pictures of anything you want in here. Today, we are going to focus on three of these: bossy, brutal, and obsessed. And I could not be more excited. Bossy, redefined. The courage to listen and lead, brutal. The courage to protect your time, energy, and priorities,

and obsessed, the courage to set your own standard. The stories I'll share in Bossy and Brutal are doozies, but I've always learned more from other people's mistakes, so despite the fact that they make me cringe, I'm sharing them because I trust they will help you, and that is my goal. Doozy number one. This was my first major project as a senior leader. I was managing managers for the first time, and I was rife with imposter syndrome.

We were shutting down a business unit in one part of the world and building it back up in the other. And I felt like I was completely in over my head. So what did I do to push past the imposter syndrome? I sat down, created a 30-slide deck in preparation for the off-site we were having the next day, and felt like if I could squeeze enough of my anxiety-ridden desire to have everything planned out, I would push past this imposter syndrome. So that's what I did.

I wrote down the North Star mission statement. Check. The pillars of the transition. Check. A leader for each pillar. Check, check, check. I walk into the offsite with these senior leaders, these managers who report to me, excitedly plug in my laptop and start presenting. Well, immediately the energy in the room dissipates. They hated it. The whole presentation had been an affront to the team. They were insulted.

Why would you come in here thinking you have all the answers? Now, we have psychological safety at Google, right? Well, they were feeling very psychologically safe that day because this really was the feedback that I got. We bring a combined 35 years of experience to the table. You've been here, what, three months? Why wouldn't you call on our expertise before deciding on the strategy? We appreciate the effort. However, we know way more about this business than you do. And yes, they did indeed.

So I knew what I had to do next, despite the fact that I was mortified. I said, "Okay, team, my apologies. Let's scrap this plan and start over." And for the rest of the day, we worked together to create a plan that everyone was bought into. When we hear the word "bossy," we think of someone barking orders at others or telling everyone what to do. That's what a scared leader does. I was scared, and that's what I did that day. I came to realize that day that "bossy" is about steering others to success.

It's the courage to lead through listening. It's about building allies and partnerships through collaboration. And there's a lot that I should have known, for example, that people need to weigh in to buy in. And there's a lot of research on this. It's called the IKEA effect. The IKEA effect was popularized by three Duke professors, Norton, Mahon, and Ariely. And what they do is they divide people into two groups.

One gets an IKEA box already put together, and the other one has to assemble it themselves. So they get the Allen wrenches and the instructions and all the different pieces. So they put the box together, then the researchers bring the two groups back, and they give the participants an opportunity to sell the box back to the researchers at a price that they decide, the folks in the two groups. Well, which group do you think sold the box, priced their box higher?

The ones who built it. Correct. By how much? What percent higher do you think they priced it? 50? 100? Okay, right in between the two. 63%. So why is that? They worked on building it together. They had a hand in creating it. Their blood and sweat and tears gave them more ownership over the process and therefore they valued it more. We value things more when we help create them. And in that moment, I should have invited my leadership team to create with me from the start.

Brutal. This is doozy number two. And this one is much worse. This is the courage to protect your time, energy, and priorities. Think of brutal as drawing lines between what's okay and what's not, between what you will and will not do. Think ruthless prioritization. At least that's what should happen anyway. In the story you're about to hear, it didn't.

A few years ago, a Google work trip had me flying from Boulder to New York, and my in-laws, Audrey and Steve, live on Long Island, so I bring my daughter, Noah, who's five at the time, along with me for her first solo trip with Mimi and Pa.

After handing her off to them at LaGuardia, I take a cab into the city for a couple days of consecutive face-to-face meetings with my direct reports, my extended team, my manager who sits here, and all the folks in my org. So I'm having breakfast with my direct report, and I've just taken a bite of egg and cheese sandwich when I see a text pop up from my mother-in-law. "Please call me." "Noah is okay," she says when she picks up, "but there was an accident."

During a cookie baking session that morning, Noah's hair had gotten caught in the mixer, tearing some free from her scalp. FaceTime reveals there's definitely some missing hair. Thankfully, she isn't bleeding, and a video inspection with cousin Bob, the pediatrician, deems the injury minor. The hair will grow back. But her emotional pain is immense. She can barely speak through the tears.

"Mommy, please come. I can't go back to school. Everyone's going to make fun of my missing hair. Please, Mommy, come. Please." Naturally, a huge part of me wants to drop everything and go to her. But when Audrey asks me how soon they can start the drive into Manhattan, I hesitate. I look at my calendar.

The only free slots are 12:30 to 1:00, and then a quick break in the afternoon. So then I start rationalizing. Noah will probably calm down soon, then bored to tears for two hours in the car, she'll be driving Mimi and Pa crazy. My poor in-laws, already stressed to near hysteria, don't need a schlep to Manhattan with a bored five-year-old.

But I also worry that Noah would refuse to return home to their house, and I'd have to figure out how to reschedule two full days of meetings. So decision made, I say, "Noah will be fine. There's no need to bring her all the way into the city. I'll see her in a couple of days." I end the FaceTime and I return to my cooling egg and cheese sandwich, even though my direct report says, "Go be with your daughter. Everything can be rescheduled." No, too important.

Likewise, I couldn't bail on the meetings with my teammates from India. They'd taken a 16-hour flight. And of course, I didn't want to skip the one-on-one with my manager who sits here in New York. It was rare to get that kind of in-person time with her. So I continued to rationalize, and then I check in with my in-laws, and they say she's actually doing great. She's happy in her new pink sequin hat. She's making up dances with her little cousins, playing babysitter. And as expected, she's fine. But two days later,

I see Noah in person. She nervously removes her hat. This is what her hair looked like. It was so much worse than I let myself believe. What had I been thinking? I regretted everything. All I had to do was say no to my work agenda and say yes to my daughter. And instead, I went to meetings? What was I doing? All I had to do was ruthlessly prioritize and be brutal about my calendar.

Now, this is not meant to be my commentary on work and home. They both matter. But I tell you this because, honestly, I took the easy way out. This was a moment of truth, and I blew it. I failed to muster the wild courage to enforce my boundaries. It took two years for Noah's hair to grow back. But it did. And now she's rocking a full head of hair again. In fact, she gained a lot of hair and lost a lot of teeth.

But for those two years, I felt a pang when I noticed that slowly growing patch of hair. And that still crushes me. Obviously, that was an incredibly hard call, and hopefully not one you have to make. But in your own life, think about how do you vote with your calendar at any given hour, on any given week, in any given month? Sometimes, it takes wild courage to say a word as simple as "no."

And that's what brutal is. It's the courage to protect your time and energy. It's the power to say yes to the big and no to the small. Whatever that big is for you, right here, right now, in this moment, and whatever that small is to you, right here, right now, in this moment. The last trait we'll cover is obsessed.

Annabelle was a top-performing all-star on my team. She had an incredible rise up the ranks at Google. Why? Because she was obsessed. Average was not in her vocabulary. This version of obsessed is where you push, perform, and persist. Because you're so enthusiastic about something, it fuels your effort. And that enthusiasm can carry you so far.

So these are four things Annabelle did exceptionally well that fueled her performance and her career. And at the end of this section, I will ask you which of these you want to try out. So please think about that as we go through. The Monday manifesto.

And this is really about the tactical, practical tools that you can use right here, right now, and bring back to your work. So the Monday manifesto is not a productivity report. It's your chance to showcase your value and tastefully promote what you're proud of. So in this email, you're going to want to outline in no more than 15 minutes a week two things that you're proud of from last week and two things you're excited about this coming week. So here's what this might look like.

As simple as this. And this is even if you have a regular one-on-one with your manager because when you do this, you create an artifact that they can forward, they can share with their manager. And the people who do this always stand out as top performers. I saw maybe 10% of people on my team doing this and they were always the ones that showed me that they were truly producing, that they had so much that they were proud of, which is a great skill in and of itself, and they were obsessed about the work in the best possible way.

And Annabelle, because she was a leader, she actually wrote her Monday manifesto to her team, and then she just CC'd me. So it was a double benefit of her team always being informed of what her priorities were that helped them know what their priorities should be.

The other thing Annabelle did was she doubled her numbers. Look how many of these bullets have a number. And these are not fancy numbers like improved CSAT 37% over 24 hours, right? Or grew revenue by $37 million. No, she's simply putting numbers here like improved a sign-up process from three steps to two.

or 70% completion rate, or met with six stakeholders. That's different than just saying met with stakeholders, right? So think about where you can double your numbers so that you can have the most powerful Monday manifesto possible. Now, what I loved that Annabelle did was in that first bullet of those four, she used the words, I'm proud. So I would love to know,

What is one thing you're proud of this week? And when I ask this question to audiences, it runs the gamut. So people have said anything from, I'm proud of my sobriety, to I'm proud I got over my jet lag faster than I thought last week and got more work done, to I'm really proud of this presentation for a client because I'm not usually the presenter, but I asked to present and I felt like I did a better job than I expected. So a little bit of audience participation. What is something that you're proud of? You can raise your hand and you can just shout it out.

Yes, go ahead. What kind? What's your name? Mae made ube cookies and that is so cool! Round of applause for Mae. I love it. All right, great example. What else is someone proud of? It can be anything. Yes, right here. Oh my gosh! I'm proud of booking vacation for myself but also for my parents. I'm taking them to the Galapagos. Round of applause. All right, and let's get one more.

All right, we'll do two more. Okay, go ahead, right here. Ooh, I am proud that I asked for help when preparing for an interview. That is awesome. Round of applause. And then was there anyone over here? Okay, we'll do the final one right over there. I saw it in the back. Someone had a hand up. Oh, I did my expectations in less than an hour. That is definitely something to be proud of. Okay, fantastic.

So think about how that makes you feel and think about how it can be really helpful to share that with your manager, right? I'd be thrilled if a direct report came to me and said, "I didn't spend 17 hours on this. I did it in an hour and I think they're really good." So that is a little bit about the Monday manifesto. Pull it and bullet. This is another thing that Annabelle did exceptionally well because part of being obsessed is having tight communication. And this is how you have really succinct communication over email.

So, if your emails to important stakeholders and your boss's boss look like the left side here with a bunch of text and paragraphs, 50% of the text and write in bullets instead. Pull it and bullet. Because it's so much easier for your audience, for your stakeholder, for your client, for your customer, for your partner to understand what you're trying to say and for you to have influence over them when you use this method.

So when Annabelle first wrote to me asking if she could talk to me about joining my team,

Look at this gorgeous example of bullet and bullet. She's got three bullets. She's got these awesome strengths, what I call power assets, in the three bullets. The first few words of each bullet are highlighted, drawing my attention to exactly what she's trying to communicate. And check this part out. No single bullet goes over one line, which clearly was intentional and sends such a strong signal to me about how she'd be when she's influencing clients or communicating with partners.

Annabelle got this chat with me, and she got the job. Now, let's contrast this with this dumpster fire of an email I'm about to show you, and don't worry, it's mine. So, same idea. I was trying to influence someone to take a meeting with me. But look at this mess. Now, don't feel like you have to read it. I'm sure the recipient didn't either.

But there's so much going on here, right? It's really hard to identify what it is that I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to ask them for, what my goal is. And it's sending them a sign that if I were to get this role, this is how I would communicate to other people as well, which just wastes people's time.

So that's Pull It and Bullet, another obsessed tool that helps you have the highest possible impact and influence anybody of importance. Now, if you're just sending a note to your bestie at work, it's probably not worth the time that you need to invest to Pull It and Bullet because it does take time. But when the email is important, when it matters for the business or for your career, it is worth the time to Pull It and Bullet.

Okay, tame the octopus. So if Pullet and Bullet is about succinct communication over email and written communication, tame the octopus is about succinct communication verbally.

And I share this one with a little bit of a different twist about Annabelle because this was not Annabelle's strength. And I have her permission to say that. Annabelle has an incredible growth mindset. But I share this because one of the questions I get asked about wild courage or about some of these topics or themes or tools is, what if that's just not my strength? What if I wasn't born that way?

Every single one of these tools can be learned. Every single one of these traits can be embodied, no matter whether you're an introvert, an extrovert, you were born in Japan or Argentina or LA or here in New York. Every single one of these can be learned bit by bit. And this was one that was incredibly difficult for Annabelle and she did not have a strength of initially and over time got better incrementally. Okay, so...

If you see an octopus like this, you see all these tentacles going all over the place, right? Like, hard to keep them all together. The octopus probably is not swimming from point A to point B very efficiently.

So when you're verbally communicating, you want to get your point across more efficiently. So I'd love a volunteer to pretend that we're in a team meeting and you are my manager, and I'd love for you to ask me one simple question, which I'll show on the next slide. We're going to do this two ways. First, I'm going to have you ask me the question, and I'm going to answer in a very untamed octopus kind of way. And then I'm going to have you ask me the same question, and I'm going to answer in a more tamed octopus kind of way. Cool?

All right, so can I get a volunteer to pretend you're my team manager? And is that you? Okay, fantastic. So what's your name? Hi, Melike is my manager now, and we are in a meeting with, by the way, this works, in an interview, in a one-on-one with a mentor or a sponsor, your boss's boss, and a team meeting like we're going to do here. Okay, so can you please ask me this question? Jenny, what are your team's biggest key ones?

Okay, wow, my team's biggest Q1 challenge is we're a new team, so there's so much going on. And it's really hard to kind of separate the important from the unimportant because our priorities are all over the place. And I, you know, the other day was thinking how we've got all these goals, but we're not really sure which are the right goals. And a lot of our goals involve making tools and creating APIs. We're doing some stuff internally and some stuff, you know, online.

through APIs and some stuff externally. We've got spreadsheets, and it's really complicated because we sit across so many regions in Asia and also in the Chicago office and also in Paris. And so you get the idea, right? So how hard was that to follow, right?

Well, let's try it again. And I'm going to be sitting down in our team meeting now and have you ask me the same question again. Now I'm going to answer it in a more tamed octopus kind of way. Sounds great. Jenny, what are your team's biggest Q1 challenges? Let me take a moment to think about that. My team's biggest Q1 challenges are priorities, tools, and global alignment.

Priorities, because we're a new team and it's hard to separate the important from the unimportant. Tools, because we're doing some things internally and some things externally, and we should probably button that up. And global alignment, because we work across three different regions: Americas, Europe, and Asia, and we want to be working in concert with each other, not against each other. So, to summarize, my biggest challenges are priorities, tools, and global alignment.

Wonderful. And I just got promoted. If only it were that easy. So, I mean, how much easier was that to understand? So what did I do? I took a pause. And we think that when we pause, we're going to sound less confident or less buttoned up or less poised, but we actually sound more confident and more buttoned up and more poised. And then after I paused, which, by the way, if you're in a team meeting, you can certainly do before you even come off of mute, right?

But even if you're in an interview or an important one-on-one with your boss's boss, you can just say, "Let me think about that for a moment." It gives them a sec to catch up on a ping or to take a look at their notes on something. Or if it's an interview, let them enter their notes in the system, right? It's a gift to them when you pause. And it actually honors the question more. So rather than thinking, "Oh, it's going to be so awkward if I take a moment to think," and then you speak to think and you ramble something out that you're trying to figure out as you go, take that moment, take that pause,

write down, I wrote down maybe seven or eight things that I had rambled through in my first answer. Then I circled my three favorites that seemed like the best options, and there are no wrong options, right? And then I started saying those, I said just the first words, then I went into a little bit on each word, and then I wrapped it up saying those words again.

So that is what I call tame the octopus. And if you don't feel like this is a strength, you absolutely can practice and can grow and can get better. And if there is one single skill that will make you a better leader, a stronger leader, and help others believe in you more, it is this, tame the octopus. I think it's one of the most critical skills you can learn, especially at Google. And this last one is kind of fun. So this is woo with you. This is

This is also an obsessed way to communicate, and it's about honoring the other person. It's about understanding what their needs are, and this could almost bleed into the manipulative trait, which is the courage to build influence through empathy and craft lasting relationships. And it's all about the fact that whether you're selling a product or an idea or yourself, your ability to win friends and allies and partners

about mutual benefit. So go find out what someone wants and give it to them, which means shifting the focus from you to them. So I do a lot of keynotes like this in my post Google Life, which I very much enjoy. And I was doing one for a team, and I

I also had a situation where I was learning from Annabelle because I had written this draft where I had followed up with someone about their keynote and I was asking if I could come back and do another one. And I remembered this email that Annabelle had sent that she brought me a draft of and she was like, "Hey, this is how I shift the language to start fewer sentences with 'I' and more sentences with 'you.'"

So I thought back to this example I'm going to show you from Annabelle, and it helped me recraft the one that I sent to this person who was leading this, or this partner who I just gave a keynote with. So this is an example of a time that Annabelle had presented to a team when she was doing some product training. And this is what her email looked like first draft. Count for me, please, how many sentences start with the word "I"? Four? OK. Eight? Wait, did I hear another number?

Eight, okay. I've got four and I've got eight. All right, so a lot. I guess it depends how you count it, right? Now, every sentence has been flipped to start with "you." "Woo with you." So in this case, how many sentences start with "you"? All of them, I heard. And how many start with "I"?

None of them. Yeah, that's exactly right. So this is Woo With You. Annabelle was incredible at teaching me this, and it's something that I have used when I follow up with people who I do keynotes with, and it's so effective. All right, now you get to decide. Choose your own adventure. Monday Mini Festo, the four-bullet email, no more than 15 minutes on a Monday. Our friend who only spent 60 minutes on expectations would be good at having that brutal, brutal time allocation of only 15 minutes.

Pull it and bullet. Pulling 50% of your text and writing in bullets instead of prose when you're writing to an important stakeholder. Tame the octopus.

Taking a moment, pausing, writing down some answers, and then starting to say just those words, going into some detail, and wrapping up with just those words. And then woo with you, flipping your sentences to have more start with you and fewer start with I. All ways that you can be obsessed in how you show up every day that fuels the business and fuels your career. So which one do you want to try? Raise your hand if you, in the next week, commit to Monday Manifesto.

All right, I see a couple of hands there. Pull it and bullet. Okay, a popular one. Tame the octopus. Even more popular. And woo with you. Okay, we just made a bell curve. So Monday Manifesto and woo with you were a little bit lighter on the commitment. Pull it and bullet in the middle. So yeah, these are clearly things that are very helpful in the written and verbal communication.

All right, so I'm going to close with one final story. I'm going to close with a story about Grandma Lila. Now, Grandma Lila was not your ordinary grandma. Not only did she agree to be a bridesmaid in my wedding at the age of 88, she was also the CEO of her own financial services company until the age of 92. And Grandma, here she is in my wedding here, which is just adorable. So Grandma was known for saying things like, "No, it's just an opening offer."

All right, so one day, John, my husband and I, were staying with her when we had just gotten married. We were sleeping on her pull-out couch in Manhattan while we were apartment hunting. And we sit down to dinner one night, and John shares some unfortunate news. And he says, "I've just gone through a major company restructure, and I've been laid off." Well, I'm crushed as a newlywed, but I look across the table at Grandma, and she's got that gleam in her eye. And she says, "No, it's just an opening offer."

Well, John and I look at each other, trying to silently communicate what we're thinking, and John says, "I don't think it works that way. A layoff is like a one-sided thing. They say, 'You don't work here anymore,' and I say, 'Okay.'" And that's when Grandma Lila sighs, and she says, "Well, sure, it would be more comfortable to take no for an answer, but that discomfort will pass. Get your ego out of the way and find a compromise." "You both want something," she went on.

They want to get stuff done even though they can't afford to pay you. And you want a job because it's easier to get a job when you have a job. So finally, John relents. And the next day he goes to his VP and offers to stay on for 10% time and pay while he job hunts. Surprisingly, they accept. Now, I'm not sharing this as some influence tactic per se. The point is Grandma Lila's lesson. Don't let fear shape your decisions. How often do you do that?

How often do you not ask a partner for what you need or a customer for what would be helpful or that cute person on the subway if you can give them your business card? Chances are when you don't take action, it's because of fear. Fear of failure, fear of uncertainty, fear of judgment of others. Fear that someone might call you selfish, shameless, bossy, obsessed, brutal. But when fear is at the root,

That is actually such great news because fear you can work with. You have agency, fear you can do something about. So when you muster the wild courage to chase what you want in life, you will discover a vital truth. No matter whether you succeed or fail in any one given thing, you will never feel as purposeful, powerful, and alive as when you're pushing past that fear

to joy and success on the other side. Everything you've ever wanted is right there waiting for you on the other side of fear. Reach for it. Thank you. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. That is, you had me emotional, you had me inspired. Super excited. We're going to transition to the Dory, but for those in the room, please also raise your hands. We have two mics on each side. Oh, we have a hand already. Come on up. Use the mic right here.

We'll take it away. - Jenny, first of all, thank you so much for the presentation. I've been following your newsletter while at Google, while you were still here, and also externally. I have two questions.

One question is related to the personal stuff. How did you manage essentially escalating, growing your career while you also had two small kids? So how do you manage that work-life balance and essentially dividing and blocking your time to make sure that you are there and there at the same time? And the second question, you don't have to answer it now, but also in today's time,

I feel like with the uncertainty of job security, do you still recommend continue to push for that career growth? And if so, how do you also manage that with the job uncertainty in the current environment? Yeah. Okay. So how did I manage like ambition and pressure at Google, what I'm doing now and kids is the first one, poorly.

As you saw, right? I mean, it was a terrible moment when that happened. And it was... But, like, there are so many moments like that still. It's not like, oh, that terrible thing happened, and the next day I knew how to make better decisions about being a working mom all day long. Like, no, the other day I was... I told Ari, my son, like, we've got to get in the car for your haircut, and then...

He went out and got on his scooter and then I was still working because launching a book is not for the faint-hearted and I've never worked harder in my entire life and it's just like nothing you could ever imagine. And so then he ends up scooting, we're late, and I yell at him in the car and I'm like, "Why did it take you so long to get in the car?" And he's like, "Well, Mom, I didn't believe that you were really going to leave your desk when you said it was time to go because all you do is work."

So that's not an answer, but it's more just like it's really, really hard. And so what I do is, you know, I really try to set expectations with the kids about like this is an incredibly hard time in my life right now. Not hard, it's exciting, but it's a lot of time away from them. And then we sat down, we looked at the calendar and we blocked out like how much time

mom is traveling and when she'll be back and when the book launch finishes. And then kind of we reset, we reevaluate. So I think it's about expectation setting. But it is also just being brutal and saying no to what I shouldn't be focused on and saying yes to them. And it's very hard with something that's as high pressure as a book launch. The second question was, with uncertainty of careers, how...

How do you decide whether you're still pushing or what the right balance is? If I had one regret at Google, it was not, it was like just being too wound up in it all. Caring too much about grad, caring too much about my manager performance score, right? I always had decent manager performance scores and then one day there was one

that same quarter when that thing happened at the offsite where I did not make any friends in my first quarter managing these managers, I just had like an abysmal manager score and I felt like I was walking around the Google halls with this number floating over my head that everybody could see.

Or same thing when I got a grad score or a perf score that I wasn't proud of. And there were times. And so it would take me like six months to get over that. And I wish I could just look back and be like, I forget if the system's even called like grad or grad something else, right? Like I don't even remember. And so I wish I had just cared less, despite the fact that I'm all about people pushing and advancing and being ambitious. So I think it's just like balancing the, you

you know, when it's worth it and when you just need to, when you're getting caught in a trait trap. Trait traps are when you take these traits too far. So obsessed is, you know, push, perform, persist. It's not about grinding yourself into a pulp with an unhealthy, you know, workaholism strategy.

Hi. Hi. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Thanks for this talk. It was really inspiring. When I heard you say the word bossy, immediately in my mind, I think about the intersection of gender and your leadership recommendations and traits. I'm curious what the reception has been like when it comes to my understanding that bossy tends to be labeled on women more so than men in a negative context.

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's not just, it is bossy and manipulative, shameless, selfish, right? I wrote this book in a way that was gender agnostic, but the chapter titles are,

are naturally more kind of like things that women are afraid to be called or typically called than men. So I don't know. We were very intentional to not have pink on the cover. I was very intentional to have mixed examples in the book of men and women. I agree that there is something that is very powerful and extra. I think women can identify with these traits.

at least some of them, but what I don't know is what will, like I don't know who will find this, where this book will find its home because the tools and the strategies and the stories themselves are in no way gendered, but I do think that these labels can plague women more than men and it'll be really interesting to see what the result is. I don't know, it's a big uncertain question for me.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Do you want to do a Dory? Yeah, let's do a Dory. Great. You talk about how to get what you want, but I think many of us also struggle to find out or clearly articulate what it is we want in the first place. Do you have tips on how to develop a personal vision, discover potential next career steps, et cetera? Yeah. Eva Bacon. Okay, Eva, thank you. So I have a framework, because I love frameworks, called ROCK.

Chalk, talk, and walk. Because the base question-- and I cover this in the intro called Gather Your Courage-- the base question is like, what the heck is it that I want out of life? And sometimes we don't know. Or sometimes we reach a point where we're confused, or we've got lots of options and they're all good options. Or we don't get a job, we don't get a promotion, we don't get something that we're excited about.

And so you do some soul searching and then you start writing some things down. So rock is like, okay, given this particular point in time, given whatever my changed circumstances are, the rock is the big thing I want to achieve. So maybe for a silly example, I want to be a Grammy award-winning musician touring with an album.

Not just like, I want to learn guitar. Set a huge ambition, right? I just told you this ridiculously huge ambition to sell 10,000 hardcover copies of my book this week. It is absurd. 99.9% of books don't sell more than 1,000 copies, okay? And I'm trying to do this in week one.

So it's like I set this big rock and then, so let's use that example instead of the musician. I then chalk, I write it down, I have it pasted on my monitor, sell 10,000 US hardcover copies by week one, right? I talk about it out loud. It is

not easy to shamelessly say to all of you, I would be so honored if you supported me and we were in this together as a community of women and everyone watching to be in this together and to help me achieve this goal. But by talking about it out loud, you can bring that goal into fruition.

not in like a woo-woo manifest-y kind of way, in a right here, right now sense, because when people know your goals, they have ideas, they make connections, they want to support you, people want to help you. It's like we feel shameless when we say, oh, to your boss, I want this, or this is what I can, you know, this is one of my strengths, or this is what I want to do with my career. It's like, it feels like we're asking too much. No, your boss is there to help you. Like they want

to know what interests you. They want to know how they can help you. Their job is to help you, to basically coach you to be a better version of yourself than you even think you can be. So it's really good to talk your goal. And then walk is walk the walk. What's one small thing I can do today to achieve that goal? And in my case, I put the link on the bottom of every slide to make it very easy for you. So let's take one in the room.

My question is, so when you put up the list of all these words, I have to say, this is all about ourself and internal, but I was actually, those words reminded me of someone in my life. And I also have tried to look at it in a positive way. Okay, maybe they just have really good influence and they're strong and they know what they want. But sometimes living or working with this person on a daily, how do I...

It's hard to feel not negatively about some actions. How do you recommend dealing with that? Well, I also embrace those traits without butting head a little bit. Yeah, sure. How do you coexist when someone is classically manipulative or traditionally selfish? Right, so it sounds like this person is

getting regularly caught in trait traps when these traits are taken too far. And now most people need help dialing these traits up, not dialing them back. And so I wrote this book to level the playing field for anybody who's rife with imposter syndrome or who struggles with confidence, which is, by the way, 75% of people at work, according to a study out of the University of Leeds in the UK. But when you're bumping up against somebody who is caught in these trait traps, taking these things too far,

you only have control over yourself, it's good to recognize that you can still maintain your own, what I call, warm the room or ability to warm the room. These are two tools out of manipulative. So warm the room and be a net positive energy investor.

only in control of your ability to do that. And if you walk into a meeting, it sounds like this isn't a colleague, but if it is, you walk into a meeting and they're grumpy and they're struggling to have this pleasant affect,

If you've just gotten into that meeting, it's not you that has made them that way, right? You just got there. You just showed up. So you have to just release yourself of having any, like, of buying into their inability to show up in the right way and take control over yourself. Let's take one more Dory. Sure. And we'll wrap up. Okay, great.

How has having a sponsor helped you with your career? Getting, i.e., getting promoted, getting opportunities. Do you have any tips on how to find the right sponsor and how to maintain that relationship? So for those of you who are not familiar with mentorship versus sponsorship, mentors are

speak to you, sponsors speak about you. Mentors, you might have many sponsors. You typically have maybe one or two. Mentors can be any peer or anybody and sponsors are typically people who are in positions of power who can move you forward in your career, who will say behind closed doors, "Oh, they're ready for a big project," or "How can we align this person with this really cool opportunity to help them get promoted?"

So I was really intentional about it. Again, this is out of the manipulative chapter, the courage to build influence through empathy and build lasting relationships. So when I was feeling like I was ready to be promoted to director, I took a look at my manager's leadership team at her peers, and I said, all right, well, let's get to know a couple of these folks. Not...

all seven out of seven, right? It's overkill and you don't want it to seem like, first of all, you have to be mindful of your time. But I picked a couple, two, three, who had the intersectionality of one, I knew they had influence. It's not everybody. Like you clearly tell, I keep it real. It's not everyone that's going to have the same level of influence on that leadership team. That was criterion one. And the criterion two was, who do I like? Who do I get along with? Who do I think?

I'll have fun chatting with on a monthly basis. And I just wrote an email. I directly pitched them on mentoring me because a mentor kind of then turns into a sponsor. So I say, I first ask them to mentor me, but then they naturally, you want to...

show up for them enough, right? Add enough value to them, which is not hard to do, even though you think there's nothing for you to offer them. Share an article. Add value by sharing that you acted on their feedback. When they say, go meet with this person, go meet with that person, then send an email saying, I met with that person. You'd be shocked how much advice I give to people that they don't take. But then when I give people

people advice and they take it and they text me or email me and say, hey Jenny, I just did this thing. I'm like, you are a superhero in my eyes. Like that in and of itself is a gift to me. So then by a number of those deposits of trust and showing that I valued their advice and that I took the advice,

it slowly over time turns into a sponsorship. I never sent them an e-vite that said, can you be my sponsor now? Though I did initially ask them to mentor me. And that was tremendously helpful. I mean, I would go talk about my superpowers with them and say-- in the book I call power assets that make up your power portfolio.

And I would get their feedback and understand how do I have the conversation around getting promoted, et cetera. And there's a lot on that in the book as well. Yeah, I think we hear this question often. We always hear something natural. It has to come naturally. But I think of one under...

estimated component is who do you naturally like, who do you gravitate to? I think it's so important. I saw you light up when I said that. Yeah, it's so true. Who are you going to have fun with? Yeah. Well, that wraps up the event. Thank you so much, Jenny. You are an absolute lighthouse and pillar for this Google community. We could not be more proud of you. Happy Pub Day. Thank you. And thank you for spending time with us. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com forward slash talks at Google. Talk soon.