378: Brad Feld: 378: Brad Feld - How To Collect Amazing People, Question Your Biases, & Build Community

Aug 9, 2020

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INSIGHT

Honesty And A Learning Mindset

Honesty is the foundation of sustained leadership excellence and requires clear external and internal truth-telling.
Continuous learning framed as hypotheses and experiments beats needing to have the answer upfront.

ADVICE

Ask More, Listen Deeper

Ask many questions and slow down your mind to actually listen to answers instead of planning the next question.
Engage in conversations to learn, not just to get the 'right' answer.

INSIGHT

Question Your Biases

Everyone carries biases and often defends them instead of questioning them, which blocks learning.
Cultivate a genuinely curious mind to surface better understanding and decisions.

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

#378: Brad Feld

Notes:

Excellence:
- Honesty - Clear view of what's going on with self and others
  - Transparency/Authenticity is overused
- Confirmed process of learning - Hypothesis, clarity of though around experimentation
Advice to a new manager:
- Ask a lot of questions
- REALLY LISTEN - Engage in conversations... Don't just try to get the right answer
- We have endless biases
  - "People defend their biases instead of questioning their biases." --> Have a curious mind.
Curiosity:
- His parents gave him positive feedback for being inquisitive... An exploration of new ideas. Brad loves to read and takes a digital sabbath every Saturday.
- Approach new ideas with a Buddhist philosophy --> Let go of assumptions. Approach each topic with a beginner's mind.
A founder who is an explorer -- "Don't get stuck as an investor by constantly asking questions. You need to want to deeply understand someone. It goes both ways. Literal answers aren't enough."
The role of the founder is "to collect people." → Mentor side, peer side, employee side, customer side.
- Engage with people. Create a 'bi-directional' connection. This has shifted over time for Brad. Think #GiveFirst
Life partner - Amy... They are equals. It's important to acknowledge that. They almost split up after 10 years because Brad's words were not matching his actions.
- "YOUR WORDS MUST MATCH YOUR ACTIONS.'
- Prioritize what's important and then follow through. If it's important to you to spend time with your spouse, then do it.
- Brad and Amy had to learn how to fight...
- When their 13 year old dog died, it was devastating. Amy and Brad deal with tragedy differently. It's important to understand that it's OK for your spouse to deal with grief differently than you do.
Key Parts to building community:
- The people in charge must be leaders
- Must have a long term commitment --> 20 years+
- Inclusive of anyone who wants to engage
- Have events that engage people
Complex systems to how communities evolve --Complicated systems has more steps.
Goal setting - They tend to be too rigid. The time component can be a problem.
- Brad prefers raid iteration. Better to have a hypothesis. If the hypothesis fails, learn it.
- Eric Ries - Lean Startup
  - Rapid experimentation - Rapid learning is better
- Vast majority of goals you set are not right in the future
Writing - "When I write, I learn." Force yourself to write it down. Put it in public. Have an open mind to feedback.
- "People get stuck in dogma when they don't write things down. They don't know why they believe in it."
- You can't do this quickly. People don't feel like they have time to think. That's a problem.
The role of selling: Selling is crucial. You are selling all the time. Sales is a noble profession. Acknowledge it. Develop the skills to do it well. Everyone works in sales.