Tiger Sisters - Everything I learned at Harvard Business School in 38 Minutes (part 2)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to part two of everything we learned at Harvard Business School. In our last episode, we talked about the hard skills that Gene learned at HBS, which includes strategy, finance, product, and marketing. In today's episode, we're going to go over the soft skills. Some of the skills that HBS is really known for and famous for, like leadership and networking. Harvard Business School is renowned for creating leaders, and a lot of times people say that the true value of the education at HBS is learning your own leadership style and then also all the networking that you do.

Starting point is 00:00:33 I'm Cherie. I'm Gene. And we're the Tiger Sisters. If this is the first time you're meeting us, here's a brief introduction. Gene is my older sister. She graduated from Harvard Business School in 2017 and she's had a kick-ass career well before that as well. So she worked in finance as her first job coming out of undergrad. She was at Goldman Sachs. And then she transitioned her finance career into tech. She was a product manager at the gaming company. Zinga and then she went to business school. After business school, she led product augmented reality monetization at Snapchat and now we're working on our entrepreneurial journey together trying to make

Starting point is 00:01:23 all these institutions and industries that we worked in a little less gate kept so more people can learn more about them. I'm Sheree. I just recently graduated from Stanford's Business School back in June and we're now in this new chapter of our life together. So we hope you enjoy this episode and check out all of our other videos in this season and also in the past seasons of Tiger Sisters. And we're going to get started right after this break. Hey guys, quick break to let you know that we now have merch on SistersMacha.com. We have sweatshirts and t-shirts that we designed yourselves. Go check it out.

Starting point is 00:01:54 And please rate us five stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These ratings are so important for the distribution and survival of Tiger Sisters podcast. Thank you for your support. Okay, now let's get started on leadership. It is one of the biggest pillars at HBS, if not the biggest pillar. We studied all sorts of leadership theory at HBS from the classic command and control style to the more modern servant leadership style. And we're going to dive into the top styles of leadership today, how they affect different

Starting point is 00:02:23 companies, walking through examples of different leaders at different companies, and also kind of talk about how you can apply it in your life too. I am so excited to talk about this because it seems kind of like squishy, you know, but there are four common leadership styles that we're going to outline. And it's actually really important because different leadership styles directly impact the culture of a company that you work for, how people think about performance and how they grow in their career. So this is actually really important to talk about. And performance translates to stop, right?

Starting point is 00:02:55 Enter the to-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-S. Ch-chee! Sound effect. Yeah. So the first style of leadership we're going to talk about is servant leadership. Gene, why don't you kick us off? So the idea of servant leadership is to actually sort of flip the idea of leadership on its head and kind of subverting the hierarchy where when you're the leader, you approach leadership as serving everyone who actually works for you. So what does that mean? One really good example, we used Starbucks in our previous episode. Let's use Starbucks again. So Howard Schultz, who was the CEO, longtime CEO of Starbucks, left. They brought him back. He's kind of a legend. Yeah, iconic. He's iconic. And he's also iconic for sort of being the star of a lot of HBS cases, actually. But Howard Schultz is a pretty famous instance of servant leadership. And he really employed servant leadership not only in the way that he actually led his employees from the day

Starting point is 00:03:50 and day to day, but also in how he structured the policies of his company. So he was one of the very first people to give benefits to even part-time baristas. And that was very much aligned. with the company values and the company culture of creating the idea of a third space. So he wanted to create a third space not only for his customers, but he wanted his employees to feel that as well. And he was like, they can't feel that. And they can't create that sort of comfortable space for customers unless they also have amazing benefits. Yeah. I feel like this is the epitome when people are like leaders eat last. Like this is the actual. Do people say that? It's the name of a very famous book, but also people say, like, people who are talking about servant leadership are, like, leaders should eat last. And a lot of my classmates who came from the military actually have this mindset as well. Like, I think a lot of military folks come out of their training and they're like, okay, this is the type of, there's the leadership where you're like up in the front, like leading people. But then also it's actually more empowering at times when you're like leading from the back to because then you're empowering your employees or your team to drive forward your mission.

Starting point is 00:05:02 like you don't even have to be at the front and like be, you know, dictating anything. Yeah, it's actually very powerful when employees, especially a lot of employees, see you doing the things and see you also like changing the printer cartridge or like doing simple things that sort of illustrate, hey, I'm in here in the trenches with you guys. Like I'm not above any one task just because I'm your boss. I'm here doing it with you too. It's actually the type of leadership that I enjoy the most. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Like when I was working with my engineering team and my design team. team at LinkedIn. It's not like I was just like telling people what to do. I was doing it with them. So we're like co-creating together. And actually one of my bosses at LinkedIn, Albert, he also employed servant leadership. And as like a gift to me when I got promoted is that he gave me two terracotta soldiers. What? Like you know, like the like from China, like they're at home here somewhere. But like they're like these small miniature soldiers that like one was standing up and one was like kneeling down. like I give these to you. Congratulations on your promotion. Like remember servant leadership is how we serve. What? I know. So this is such good lore. I don't even remember. I don't think you've ever told me this

Starting point is 00:06:14 story. And I had it on my desk for the longest time out at work. So it's, um, this is actually very meaningful for me. So I'm like that's such a W boss. I know. He's such a good boss. He gave you, he gave me two terracotta soldier statues, like literally miniature. And they sat at my desk to remind me of like servant leadership. Oh, that's so beautiful. So I think it's also like a really hot phrase nowadays. So if you're taking anything away from this episode, like you should know like servant leadership is like very buzzy and people are very excited about it.

Starting point is 00:06:44 Yeah, it's a good term to like throw into the conversation actually if you're talking about leadership. Oh, service leadership. But back to the example of Starbucks, not only does servant leadership help foster a better environment for the employees. Where servant leadership also comes in for the bottom line is that once you're you have employees who are more invested in the company, they do a better job at their job. They also go above and beyond at creating a better customer experience, which then in turns

Starting point is 00:07:11 translates to more profit and a better bottom line. So think increased brand loyalty and increase revenue growth. Yeah. So if the experience is better for the employee, like the outcome is like 10 times greater for the customer itself. So this is really a great leadership style to lean into. This is a good example where it translates pretty directly. Starbucks. Tell us why I like this example. Okay. So the second style of leadership is called transformational leadership. Shariq, can you tell us about that? So the classic example for transformational leadership is thinking about a leader who just has like the most insane vision and is like super compelling and you're like, oh, m.g, I definitely want to follow this person. A classic example is Steve Jobs. If you guys have seen any of his, you know, on stage product

Starting point is 00:07:59 announcements. He is just like a visionary that people think obviously he's really great at speaking, really great at presenting, but he's also really gifted at creating a compelling vision that everyone wants to buy into. His vision definitely energizes employees and helps them dream up what they could possibly achieve together. Yeah. And I think in turn it also translates into a cult following of fans, right? Like what other brand has so much cachet and brand power and loyalty, aside from Apple. Yeah. People love their Apple products.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Like nothing else to pairs. Yeah. And also part of it is the idea of like the cult of the leader. That really plays into it too, right? People like back in the day, I don't know if people remember this, but people used to line up for hours, like overnight, waiting for the new iPhone to come out. And it wasn't just because the iPhone was so revolutionary every time. It was because people wanted to be the first to get their hands on whatever Steve Jobs had dream. dreamed up. Yeah. He was really special and amazing and drove not only a lot of that innovation,

Starting point is 00:09:04 but also kind of the concept of the entire company was like really wrapped up in him. Yeah. I mean, it's not even just the customers. I think the employees, like this is like transformational leadership for the employees. I think people like were really afraid of him, but also so enamored by him. Yeah. People would talk about how he was so magnetic and when he like looked you in the eye, he could compel you to do anything. Like just by like looking at you in the eye and you'd be like, Steve, that's not possible. I cannot possibly make that deadline. He would look you in the eye and be like, shri.

Starting point is 00:09:37 Yes, you can. I believe in you. Hey, I'm over here. What are you? I was looking into my camera. But then people would make the impossible happen. Yeah. And then a more like modern day example of this, a lot of people say that working for Elon Musk also felt the same at times.

Starting point is 00:09:56 And he's kind of created that sort of. cult following within his own company as well. But there are downsides. Yeah. I mean, there are downsides because, like, for example, with Steve Jobs passing away, I think there's a big question mark of, like, when that happened, who would take over? And would they even have the same effect on the company? Tim Apple doesn't have the same lives. Tim Apple's a little bit different. You don't get that Steve Job Riz. He doesn't hit the same. But I mean, Apple is still a very wildly successful company, but I think as that chapter ended with Steve Jobs, stepping away, stepping down, a part of the company changed as well, and I'm sure for the employees on the inside. So the last takeaway is that transformational leaders spark massive innovation and they can change entire industries, but they must have strong management teams behind them in order to maintain stability.

Starting point is 00:10:47 Okay, so the third style of leadership we're going to talk about is transactional leadership. Gene, can you let us know a little bit more about this? Yes, transactional leadership is kind of the transnational leadership is kind of the. tried and true classic standard of leadership. It's also sometimes called carrot and stick leadership. And I think the most famous original example is Jack Welch at GE in the 80s and the 90s. And what this leadership style is is creating very clear rewards, structures, and penalties. Jack Welch was one of the very first CEOs to implement what he called a rank and yank system where the bottom 10% of performers were let go every single year. And then he also rewarded

Starting point is 00:11:27 outperformers in an outsized way. So if you were the top 10% performers, you got a major bonus way more than anyone else who was not in the top 10%. This worked really, really well. GE was massively successful in the 80s and 90s outperformed a ton. And that's why this kind of became the standard for a lot of different companies. So I worked at Goldman. Sheree mentioned right out of undergrad. And that's what we did at Goldman. The bottom 10% of people were let go every single year. Yeah. And I thought it was normal because it was my first job out of school. I mean, the thing is, I don't know how I feel about the style of leadership because the culture that it creates, it's like extremely cutthroat. It can be a very successful method to incentivize and reward people for doing the best work. But yes, it's incredibly cutthroat and competitive.

Starting point is 00:12:18 Yeah. And I would say like a lot of financial industries like working in investment banking, private equity. sometimes consulting, it is like an up or out system instead of rank or yank, like the new phrasing is up or out. Is up or out. Like you either get promoted or you got to go. You're fired. I think it puts a lot of stress, especially on young people. Like when I was like fresh out of school and my friends were working in investment banking, they were so nervous about their like performance review if they were going to be promoted or not. Didn't that make them work harder? And it made them perform better. Yeah. And they made them, it made them hate their co-workers at the expense of their, mental health. Yes, exactly. The thing is, like, my initial reaction is to label this as toxic. And, like,

Starting point is 00:13:02 that's just like me being like Gen Zeme, like, oh my God, that's such a toxic work environment. But I do think this works for certain industries because even in tech, the sales org within, if you have like a sales team within your tech company, which many of them do, like if you're working in B2B SaaS, like a lot of sales orgs have up or out rank or rank or yank. type of structures to incentivize salespeople. Well, yeah, I mean, it's purely numbers driven. In a sales org, the main saying is you kill what you eat or you eat what you kill. Have you ever heard that?

Starting point is 00:13:39 No. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, you eat what you kill. So basically everything you do is accretive to you. But you don't really get any necessarily like benefit of the doubt otherwise. It's like bring in the money or leave. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:53 like the reason you're here is to hit your quota or exceed your quota. It's just like so numbers driven that at the end of the day, they haven't hit their metrics. Yeah. Or closed a certain number of deals. Yeah. There's just no like allowance for, I guess, extenuating circumstance. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:09 The way that I feel like other organizations within a certain company might have. Yeah. I think also, you know why? It's because in other parts of the org, like in product or engineering or whatnot, they work on much longer term projects. which take longer than a quarter can take longer than two quarters, can even take multiple years to see results. So it's harder to judge them on such discrete metrics versus a lot of times, most of the times, sales orgs are judged within the quarter.

Starting point is 00:14:38 Yes, that's right. It's within the quarter. So you live and die by your numbers. Yeah. At LinkedIn and at a lot of companies that have sales teams, the top like 1% I think of people, of top performers, would have an incentive and it's called club and they would bring like top performers. This is just the lore.

Starting point is 00:14:59 I've obviously never been, but my friends who worked in sales would tell me about it. He weren't in the club. She literally was not in the club. Well, I wasn't on the sales team, number one. So she wasn't in the club. And many people who were on the sales team

Starting point is 00:15:11 were not in the club anyways. Just like you. But they would bring them to like Bali or something or like something crazy. It would go to club. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of similar at Zinga,

Starting point is 00:15:20 the number one performing studio. each quarter would get a massive reward. So the entire studio, it would be like 60 to like 120 people, would all go on a trip together. So that's why I went to Hawaii multiple times with my team as a reward trip. We went to Vegas multiple times as reward trips, went on ski trips together. But that doesn't really happen as much anymore. I feel like people have really clamped down on it. But anyways, the glory days are over.

Starting point is 00:15:49 I have one more kind of lore story. is that at SNAP at the very beginning, we sold ads at SNAP. And at the very beginning, the way that the incentive structure was, was that salespeople would literally get 1% of what they sold. Which is insane. Like if you just run the numbers, some of those sales leaders made out like bandits. Like did so, so well for themselves. But that is very, very much back to what we were saying, carrot and stick, the ultimate carrot. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:20 You get to keep one percent. set of the revenue of your ad sales. Yeah, you literally eat when you kill. It's, it's actually like very powerful. Money, money, money. So yeah, so that is transactional leadership. Now we shake hands. So the last and final form of leadership we're going to talk about is laissez-faire, also known as hands-off leadership. I thought it's pronounced laissez-faire. Lazy-faire? Lazy-faire. Lazy-faire? Les Eferre. Les Eferre.

Starting point is 00:16:55 Anyway, yeah, this is actually a very controversial leadership style. And it's basically the idea that there is no official hierarchy and everyone in the team will self-organize around the most important goals. And those will be self-identified. And that's what people are going to sort of gravitate towards and work on. And so one really famous example of this is this company called Valve. There's definitely HBS cases written about them. I did a case about them. I learned about this at Stanford as well.

Starting point is 00:17:26 With an HBS case. Probably. At Stanford's cases are all HBS cases. Okay. So Valve is the video game developer behind Steam. And the idea behind them doing Lazy Fair leadership is that they think it unleashes a massive amount of creativity. And the idea that people can sort of socialize and put their energy into whatever

Starting point is 00:17:48 projects they deem the most important, that kind of creates this like massive, you know, explosion of creativity and people are doing all these things that never would have been sort of come up with if you had ahead of time done like a major strategy exercise and you know sort of had top down leadership deciding what people focus on yeah so it's pretty controversial I think yeah my two cents nobody asked my two cents what are your two cents sure my two cents on this leadership I'm like when I first learned about this I was like this is dumb I was like why would anyone do this obviously it's worked well, but I think it's just so dependent on the company, the company culture. Obviously, like the style leadership affects the culture. The culture affects the leadership. But like,

Starting point is 00:18:30 it really requires like fast moving people and people who take extreme ownership and want to like, if, you know, if there's no one telling you what to do, you need the type of personalities working at the company who will then take the initiative and take it on. I think coming from a big tech company, my experience is that like it can feel very complacent. And if you don't have people on the team who are like willing to step up, rise up and take responsibility, then it like everyone's kind of like looking around and be like, what do we do? And so like I've worked on teams like that and I'm like, I just don't see this happening on like the teams that I've worked on. However, like in a different circumstance, different people, different industry. It could come together. But my initial reaction was

Starting point is 00:19:15 like, what? Nothing would get done. She said, rise up. Rise up. Rise. Rise up. Rise up. Rise up. Anyway, I think I could take the devil's advocate. Devil's advocate to them a little bit. You love being devil's advocate. I love being a DA.

Starting point is 00:19:29 In smaller teams, it can work really, really well. Smaller teams where you have a lot of trust and there isn't any hierarchy. And what I'll say is maybe in our company, in a lot of ways, we are laissez-faire leadership. Yeah, a company of two people. I agree. Yeah. But it's not like I am in control of what you do. and you're in control of what I do.

Starting point is 00:19:50 So if you expand that, even beyond us, like, let's say there were six more people in our company that were sort of equivalent to you and me, where we have the same level of trust in their competence. And we can say, like, hey, this is your area of ownership and go ahead and run at it. You could see how this could eventually expand. This takes extreme, extreme ownership and extreme trust. Yeah. And extreme delegation. And I think it is extremely fragile.

Starting point is 00:20:18 There's no delegation. The point is that there's zero delegation. You just delegate to yourself. Sorry. Then I take back delegation. I guess extreme delegation is what I mean. But I see your point where I'm just like, I'm not going to handle this. You handle it.

Starting point is 00:20:33 And then they go running with it. But I wouldn't even be telling someone to handle it. It's not delegation. It's ownership. Yeah. It's extreme self-ownership. This makes me want to throw up. She's so big techified.

Starting point is 00:20:44 I know. She's so all she knows is structure. And she just wants to be told. like, how do I excel? And she wants everyone to just play their role. Well, actually, I don't think that's quite it. I think it's more that I'm just cynical. I think I've just seen a lot of people rest and vest. And so if I were working on a smaller team where everyone's in it and everyone's collaborating and has as much to win and to lose, I would feel much more safe. I've worked with people who are just like, who made her feel unsafe. Who are complacent. And I'm like, who are not

Starting point is 00:21:19 hungry. I'm, I'm, I'm freaking hungry to, like, win and to get it. And if you're not hungry, then I'm like, then this is not going to work. She hates complacent people. Complacent people, show yourselves. I mean, this is just who I am. And if you want to work with Tiger Sisters, a.k.a. You want to work with Tiger Sisters, A.k.a. Sisters, A.k.a.a. Sisters Mata. You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding. Anyways, we're going, we're going up. Okay. No, one thing I will say is that the way that this is presented is it's very black. black or white, which is also not the case in the real world, right? Sure.

Starting point is 00:21:52 I will say a lot of companies will have elements of laissez-faire leadership within the company. And I actually think when I worked at Zinga, there were a lot of elements of laissez-faire leadership. And I've said before that the company motto at Zinga would be your own CEO. And the way that the company was structured is that there were a lot of different gaming studios. So each game had its own GM. So basically each game had its own president. under the CEO.

Starting point is 00:22:20 And so all of these different studios were run completely separately. They had their own GMs. They had their own CTOs. They had their own head of product, chief product officer within the studio. Yeah. And so that in some ways is sort of laissez-faire applied in a different way. Yeah. I can see that.

Starting point is 00:22:41 I think just laissez-faire, it unleashes a lot of creativity. Yes. Gives a lot of ownership to the individual team. but it also requires a lot of self-discipline and a lot of self-management. Okay, so the main takeaway of all of this is that there are many different styles of leadership, and it's not like a one-size-fits-all. As you can see, Jean and I, as we're talking through each style, we're like, oh, we've seen some of this, we've seen some of that.

Starting point is 00:23:04 Like, sometimes it's a combination of all these different styles put together. Different styles call for different approaches, and sometimes the best leaders are able to weave all these different styles together to create a culture and approach of their own. Yeah, and I think the point of actually learning about this framework of all these different styles is so that you can draw from each of them and pull in which elements make sense to you, which one works for your company culture that you're trying to create. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that it's not one size fits all for even the company, right? So depending on what stage your company is in, let's say you're a really early startup like Shari and I,

Starting point is 00:23:44 it actually makes sense to be laissez-faire, right? Like we don't need to create some crazy structure between the two of us because when's my bonus coming? You kill because it's just the two of us. Yeah. But once we start growing and we have more people, then maybe we do want to transition to transactional because then there's actually a rubric and people understand what they have to do in order to be perceived as or to be measured as successful. Right. And then maybe from there, that's what sets up the base where you can actually have transformational leadership. come in, right? That's when you say when people really understand what their roles are and what they're

Starting point is 00:24:21 supposed to do, then you could say, this is what we're aiming for. Like we are sort of aiming for the stars. This is we're trying to do something that's never been done before. And we need you guys to actually go above and beyond what is stated in your roles in order for us to all do that together. So, yeah, depending on the stage of your company, depending on the industry of your company, depending on your own personal style, the idea is to take all this, what you've learned, and then use it for yourself. Okay, now moving on to our next section, which is networking. Networking is often considered the biggest intangible benefit of an MBA, especially at Harvard. The idea is that at HBS or at GSP or wherever you are, you're surrounded by peers,

Starting point is 00:25:04 who are all investors, future leaders, operational kind of experts, and you're just building these organic relationships with them and the idea is that you kind of start building together in the future. I mean, a lot of people go to get their MBA because of the network. And this is like, I'm going to give you kind of one example of how that might play out and how it has played out with our startup, Tiger Sisters Podcast and Sisters Worldwide, which is what we're building together. When you're going to get your MBA, there are like three things you should think about, especially you are starting a company of your own. First, is the network of your classmates. The second is the network of the faculty and professors you're

Starting point is 00:25:47 surrounded by. And third is the network of alums and potential investors. So for the first category of like network is like your classmates. These are like Jean mentioned like brilliant people who have been like so highly vetted and have done amazing things in their career before coming to business school. Like for example, since I started this podcast, the idea of podcasting when I was in business school, I was able to ask my classmates to be on my first ever podcast, which was Sherey's Corner before we had Tiger Sisters. And because of that, like, I was able to figure out the kinks of podcasting. I was able to reach out to my community of classmates as my first, like, beta testers for my podcast before, you know, we hit the big leagues. They were so helpful,

Starting point is 00:26:33 so kind. And each time I iterated with them, I was able to learn something new so that Gene and I are able to now work on this full-time relatively seamlessly. Mm-hmm. The second network that is super helpful and useful, actually invaluable at business school, is faculty support and also professors. So in my last few quarters of business school, there's like two examples that come to mine. Like one, I was able to ask these incredible lecturers and professors, Joel Peterson,

Starting point is 00:27:03 Glenn Kraman, who are iconic professors of mine who I've had. the privilege to learn from, but they were on my podcast, which was so amazing. And also, the second example is that I worked with another professor, lecturer at Stanford, Alison Kluger, whose specialty is in media and entertainment. And so she and I were able to work really closely over my last few quarters as I pitched her the idea of, you know, working with my sister in entertainment after graduating. And so they were their advice, their experiences, like I don't know how else I would have been connected to such amazing industry professionals outside of Stanford's business school program. And the third type of networking that people usually do at business school is with

Starting point is 00:27:48 alums and investors. Many times the alums are the investors. Yeah, another example that happened just last week is that recently some companies have reached out to Shri and I with different business opportunities of ways they want us to collaborate and work with them together. And they were in industries that candidly we know nothing about. As you guys know, we have sisters matcha, but that's all been totally new to us. Neither of us have ever worked in CBG or made anything remotely that you can hold in your hand. So last week, I actually was like, who do I know that's in this industry? And I realized one of my really, really good friends is, I want to say one of the foremost experts in this kind of new-ish industry. And I literally just texted her. And I was like, hey, can I show you this

Starting point is 00:28:37 contract that they sent us and get your thoughts on this? And like, this is what they offer. This is what they had in mind. This is what seems weird to me based off of my business intuition. This is what I think I'm surprised by. This is what. And I just, we just basically texted. She looked it over. She even made a tiny little spreadsheet for me in like five seconds and sent it over. And she was like, hey, this is how I think the math would work out. And I was like, wait. So you did. Like, they didn't include this in the profit aspect. Anyway, I'm not telling the story well. But the whole point is that I was able to text her and she came back to me and she was like

Starting point is 00:29:12 the most valuable advisor I could have possibly had in the world. Like, it's just so cool. And I was like, oh, my God, thank you so much. This is so, so helpful. And she's like, yeah, no problem. Like, I'm sure I'll ask you for help sometime in the future too. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure you will. I mean, I think it's also not only just having access to this network too.

Starting point is 00:29:30 it's really how you kind of make use of it. And not only like you receiving help, but also providing help to the network as well. And so it's like awesome to hear that you and your friend have kept in touch and are able to lift each other up in different ways. Yeah, totally. And I think it's not just access. It's very casual access, right? Like this person that I texted, she's my good friend. And I didn't really think twice about texting her.

Starting point is 00:29:58 I wasn't like, oh, like should I reach out? should I not reach out. I was like, hey, dude, look, what do you think? You know? And it's actually fun to help each other with areas of your own expertise. Like if somebody texted me something and I was the exact perfect person to help them with their problem, I would be really excited to lend my expertise to them. Yeah. It's actually like really fun to help your friends out and fun to help them succeed and vice versa. So it kind of goes back to remember when we interviewed Imran Khan and he said you're not really my friend unless I can just text you unless I have your phone number and I can text you anytime and you respond to me pretty much

Starting point is 00:30:40 right away. Yeah. That's kind of the case here. I think that's also why it's powerful. It's like not just having these people in your like second, third degree network. It's having all these people that are really impressive and amazing and just being able to reach out very easily and casually and knowing that it's reciprocal. Absolutely. Okay. So Shari, can we? Can we? get a little bit tactical here. So how do you actually go through the process of, I guess, like networking? Even if you've met these people, how do you be more intentional, intentional about maintain your relationships? Yeah, I think networking is all about intentionality. It's like so easy to kind of sit back and just like wait for it to happen, but you have to like be very mindful of how

Starting point is 00:31:21 you go about it. And it's honestly one of the things I really enjoy, which is kind of like sick me, but like I really like it. So like, whenever this is her personality, it's kind of my personality. Like whenever I have, like I'm reading an article and I was like, oh my God, this would be perfect for Glenn Cremont. Like my one of my lecturers who I'm like super close with, he was the former editor of the New York Times for like 36, 37 years. Yeah, dude, I love Glenn Cremont. He's so badass. He's like truly so cool. I've only met him once, but I love him.

Starting point is 00:31:51 He's like legendary in so many ways. But like if I like read an article, I'm like, oh, this is interesting. Glenn would love this. Like I'll send him that article. And in that vein, like when I'm sending him that article, it's like a correspondence where I could be like updating him on some of the stuff that my sister and I are working on. I mean, I do that all the time for the professors that I stay in contact with just because like they're my friends. And like I'm constantly like reminded of ways that I'm like, oh, he would find this interesting or she would find this interesting. But like it takes that like little extra step of intentionality, not only having the thought, but whenever you have the thought, just like go and do it and send an email.

Starting point is 00:32:24 And it doesn't have to be like a 20 minute exercise where you're like reading your email. over like 15 times be like oh my god should I have written this no just be like hi like dear so and so like was reading this article and I thought of you thought you might like it for this reason then just you know wrap up the email and send it yeah this is shri is very very good at this I think like naturally it also I think it's a skill that can be built and it's a muscle that can be built up over time so if you do it a few times then you kind of get into the habit of doing it and it doesn't feel like scary each time. Yeah, I think it's more natural to you than me because for me, I'm probably a lot of people out there. It's more, I think, I feel like I have to think more

Starting point is 00:33:09 about the email and like make sure it's like written the right way. So then I create this barrier for myself to even send it. What I could do is maybe just have a more casual mindset about it. I mean, unless you're emailing like the prime minister of normal. Norway. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm like, hey. Kind of how actually, kind of how you're texting your friend. Yes. Is the mindset which you should approach these like intentional networking discussions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's actually a great way to look at it. And I'm, I'm trying to do that more. It's to just treat more people like they are your friends because I think generally people want to be friends with you. And if you just treat people as your friend,

Starting point is 00:33:55 then they'll treat you as their friend. I love it. Okay, so last question on this topic is that how could you replicate this without having an Ivy League degree or without actually going to business school? Yeah. I think the most important principle is to make sure that you're offering help first before like receiving help. That is like one of the most important things about networking.

Starting point is 00:34:18 I think networking gets such a bad reputation because in my mind like a lot of people are like take, take, take, take, take, take, take. And, like, that is not what networking is at all. Networking is so much more about giving than it is about receiving. You have to be willing and open to give help and open up your own network, open up your own resources before you even receive help at all. It's kind of how I think about mentorship as well. A lot of people, I think, go into mentorship being like, dear so-and-so, you're amazing,

Starting point is 00:34:50 please mentor me. but mentorship is very much a two-way street. And before you ask someone for help, you also have to give help. Someone who's watching this might be thinking, like, well, I'm just little-o-mey, like, what do I have to offer? Like, how can I actually help this person that is, you know, five steps ahead of me in their career? And one example I would give is, like, even for you, sending an email, you know, of like, hey, I read this article.

Starting point is 00:35:15 I think you would really enjoy it for XYZ reasons. That's already kind of an overture. That's like offering help to someone. in a way that anyone can do, right? Like, Glenn Kremont doesn't actually need you to, like, for anything. No, but actually this really worked out because I read an article. Yeah, wait, this is such a good story. So, Glenn Kremont, one of my writing professors at Stanford,

Starting point is 00:35:38 he has a class on, like, LinkedIn and, like, how to make your LinkedIn, how to spruce it up, how to have the right LinkedIn introduction, all this stuff. And there was, like, an article that was written about, like, LinkedIn, specifically the topic. that he like talks about in his lecture. And so I read the article and I sent it to him and he responded within like 15 minutes. He's like, thank you so much. I'm going to include this in my next lecture. Like, you know, it was just that was.

Starting point is 00:36:03 Co-professor. It was such an easy way to offer up help. Yeah. And offer up that, hey, I'm thinking about you. And it made a tangible difference in how he runs his life. Yeah. I mean, that's such a good example because like you could be like, oh, what could, you know, Cherie or his former student possibly offer?

Starting point is 00:36:21 this like world renowned lecturer who was also like world renowned Times editor New York Times editor yeah and like literally you helped him with his lesson plan exactly exactly so and it wasn't like I like moved mountains or like I like completely like changed turned his world upside down it was just like a little thing and it helped and that's I think just it builds goodwill I wasn't even trying to build goodwill I was like hey I thought of you this is helpful yeah I love that example it's such a good example yeah nice love you Glenn Okay guys, that's pretty much everything I learned at Harvard Business School about leadership and networking in 30 minutes. What a good overview and the fact that you paid over $250,000, but you guys get it for free.

Starting point is 00:37:05 And in 30 minutes is great. And if you guys haven't seen, we have another episode. It's part one where we talk about more of the hard skills that Jean learned at Harvard Business School. And we go over that in that episode. Please check it out. Yeah. And also we did say this is everything I learned in 30 minutes. It's not literally everything. It's a good summary. It's a good summary. But we could also probably create like 25 more of these. And they would all be accretive. And you guys would learn a lot from it. So tell us your questions. Like let us know what areas you want us to dive into more and what specific questions you have, what you want to learn about. And maybe we can answer them. Yes. And please remember to like, comment and subscribe and share this episode with someone who,

Starting point is 00:37:50 would find it helpful. We read all the comments. Let us know what questions you have. And we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye. Hey, everyone. Quick break to share something special, Sisters Macha. We've launched limited batches of ceremonial grade, single estate, single cultivar, macha, straight from the family farm Shari worked on in Japan. It's pure, authentic, and crafted with intention. Head to SistersMacha.com to grab yours before it sells out. Make matcha your daily ritual for lasting energy and focus.

Tiger Sisters - Everything I learned at Harvard Business School in 38 Minutes (part 2)

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