Be vulnerable and have faith
The night before I met with @sippey for the first time, I made two lists.
The first was filled with all the things I was good at: intense focus, turning a concrete idea into code, communicating. Being an engineer. The list was short yet empowering.
The second was all the things I was bad at: diligence around routines, abstract design thinking, planning on a month to year horizon, coordinating a group of people. Being a product manager. The list was long and difficult.
As I sat thinking, I was terrified: if I was so bad at doing my job, how could I ever earn the respect of one of the best product people in our industry.
The next day, here’s what I said (verbatim from my notebook).
I have two goals for our time together:
1. Become better at doing my job, running product at Clef
2. Earn your respect in me and my companyIn pursuit of those goals, I want to be honest: I’m really bad at doing product right now. Stare at a wall for hours bad. Waste away weeks bad.
But hiding that won’t help me. I’ll never cover up my weaknesses and if I spend all my time trying to impress you, there will be no room for me to learn.
Instead, I’m going to be completely vulnerable and have faith in myself. Faith that I can get better. Faith that as I improve, I’ll earn your respect because you’ll see how far I’ve come and how far I can go.”
Ten weeks later, I still have a long way to go, but I’ve learned so much.
If you liked this post and want to hear from me more: find me on Twitter, recommend this post, and follow me and The Product on Medium (↓).
