YouSaid · the spoken record

Donna Lichaw

lines on the record: 87
first: 2024-02-25
most recent: 2024-02-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Dyslexia ADHD, and it could be quirks like the one earlier, I'm too quiet. Well, no, she was just a really good listener. She just didn't realize that she had a poker face on when she was listening and no one knew she was listening. So everything, it just look at how it serves you. So Kanye need to avoid the kind of kryptonite that you need to really look at and embrace. And once you embrace it, just like with the superheroes, it becomes ideally something that's useful in small doses like Superman, or it could be something more like Hulk, which is, you know, you could say his kryptonite is his anger, but that's also his superpower. And he can't get rid of it, or if he does, he becomes Mark Ruffalo being really boring. Like in the latest Avenger movies, and he's all meditating. Yeah, I don't know what the point of that is. So, yeah, that's how I see Kryptonite. It's actually a really, really...”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're dyslexic, you're thinking spatially. You're thinking big. You're thinking visually. You're not, you know, so yes, you mix up letters or you're struggling with big blocks of text. That's fine. If you're like founding a company, you know, you're not in documents all day long anyway, probably. So that ability to think big and spatially and visually is probably how you created your company in the first place or how if you work at a large corporation, how you catapult it into executive leadership that way because you're a visionary and you do all these things. So I think Kryptonite, the inner kind of kryptonite, that's how I like to think of it, which is you think it makes you weak, but when you can look at how you it serves you, it's often not the case. So it could be something that is often classified as a disorder.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could say, well, that's kryptonite, you know, having to read things or do things with text. And it can feel like that to a lot of people. Yet when you look at the science of something like dyslexia, it's not so much an impairment. It just means that your brain is operating at a different level in a different way than most people. Same thing with ADHD and you could extend it to autism and ton of other things as well.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Toxic people or people who just don't add anything to your life, you know, there are kinds of just like, all right, done moving on. But then there are the kinds that it's usually on the inner kryptonite side where you can look at, okay, well, how does this serve me? And so sort of wide swath of people example is dyslexia. So I work with a lot of founders, CEOs, and senior executives who are dyslexic. Very, very, very common, especially for CEOs.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're the kinds that you should avoid and can avoid. So, for example, scheduling things is my kryptonite, but I do meetings for a living and I love being in meetings strangely. And so not scheduling is not an option, but there are ways around it. So I automate everything. And some people hire assistants and there are ways to do it. So that's the kind that you're better off avoiding. There's nothing. There's nothing that serves me about the schedule of things or my inability to schedule things properly. How is that serving me? You know what? I don't care. It doesn't matter. So just the kind that you need to avoid. Or, you know, you could say.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How is it serving you? It's what I have a whole chapter on kryptonite in the book, which is it's what I Call kryptonite, and I use superhero metaphors pretty heavily in the book because I'm, I guess, a grown child and I like comics and superhero stories. And so are my clients. So I think because I work in tech, I get to do this. But I liken it to Kryptonite, which is the things that we think harm us actually when we look at how they serve us, they can serve a function like Kryptonite for Superman. It's how people are able to operate on him. They use a little kryptonite so they could get in there and do some surgery and then get out. So it serves a function, but it's, you know, when it's too much, that can be detrimental. So yeah, how does it serve you? This is a question that it's so important and so, so powerful.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, especially in tech, where half of the roles we have are all made up. You're probably the first person ever to have your role anyway, whether you founded the company or you're doing something else at your company. So yeah, it's a great thing. Embrace it.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing all of that. And so on a spectrum of it's actually helpful, give yourself a pad on the back for jumping into imposter zone every time things get hard. The other side of the spectrum, which is okay, but when it's too much, you burn out, you're doing way too much work for other people, you're falling into these unfortunate conventional gender roles at doing extra work you don't need to. So, you want to find a happy medium, but I think the trick is with imposter syndrome to not deny it, to embrace it as much as you can, but not embrace it so much that it ends up holding you back. So yes, functional, even things that we think are bad for us are actually good”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it just meant she was hitting some kind of a growth edge. So when she would jump into action, she would learn something new. She would read 20 books. She would go out, take a class. She would listen to podcasts and on and on. And she would get better at this new thing. It was fun for her. And then she would feel less like an imposter over time. So it was a very functional thing for her. The problem is when she did that too much, and this is the case I work with a lot of women who this is the case for, she often did way too much work. And so she took on emotional labor for other people. She did ten times as much work as she needed to do like actual work as in her role she was playing COO and CFO and C, you know, EO. And it's just like she didn't need to be.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Co founder I worked with a while back. She did this whenever things got too hard, and then she was convinced and founders have this a lot. Who am I to be running this company and what am I doing here? Oh my God, I can't be doing this. But when we looked at how that habit of calling herself an imposter served her, what she realized is that every time it kicked in, she worked harder.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it doesn't feel good, but we default to that because it's serving us in one way, otherwise, it wouldn't become a habit. And I always think of habits as an itch. So if you have an itch, you scratch it, you feel better. So there's a reason why we scratch itches. It feels better if you do it too much. It hurts. And something like that telling detrimental stories have that impact. But when you can intercept them just the right time and say, okay. What if that is true? How does it serve me to constantly say I'm an imposter whenever anything gets hard? Well, there are so, you know, one.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There you go. So it's like you could do that, and it's kind of all very mechanical, and these are ways to sort of prop yourself up What if you took a countertuitive approach and looked at that story, I'm an imposter, and instead asked, okay, that's a good story. How is that serving you? Because when we default to these behaviors, imposter syndrome is something everyone has at one point or another. When we default to these behaviors of, oh God, I'm an imposter. Okay, over and over and over again.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stories we tell ourselves are actually. Functional and do not necessarily need to be rewritten. So imposter syndrome, for an example, if you're going around saying, I feel like I'm an imposter, I can't believe that. Doing this, you can try to fake it till you make it. You can try to. I always think of Stu, I'm totally dating myself here, but Stuart Smalley in Saturday Night Live in the 80s and 90s, you would look in a mirror and do these affirmations and say, you know, I'm smart and I'm whatever. Good enough.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do anyway because she ended up talking more with her team just in communicating with them about her style. And then they started communicating their styles with her and with each other. And this is something that it's not in the book, but you might have heard of this idea of like a personal OS that a lot of us like to have, which is, hey, these are my work styles. This is how I process. This is how I do things. These are great ways to work with me. And here's how I'd love to work with you. And they end up doing a lot of that. And it worked out really well. But it was true. She was not speaking up and it was having a detrimental effect, but the answer was not talking more. It actually was listening more and just having a better relationship with people.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so even though the team said we do want her to participate, what they really needed to know was it didn't have to do with speaking or not speaking, what they really needed from her was to know that she was listening to them and that she actually heard them and was going to do something about it and that she wouldn't, she was quite in these meetings. She was not checked out. And so simple solution for that, you know, she could start trying to yell more and talk over people and be obnoxious, but nobody wants that either. And so she just started communicating with them more about, hey, this is my style. I'm a little slower. I often need, you know, a couple hours to really process things. I'm here and I want you to know that. And the irony of establishing those lines of communication with your team when they're not getting what they need is that you often end up doing the thing that you've been trying to do but failing to.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So quiet that her team thought she was not interested in them. And she would just sit back and meetings, not say anything, and they were like, God, she sucks. Like this is, you know, worst boss ever. I don't even want to be at this meeting. And why is she here? Why am I here? And it really was detrimental to them all working together. And then she was frustrated because she was always wondering, well, was the problem. But We got down to the bottom of what was really going on for her in not speaking up at these meetings is she was just listening her processing style was she had to listen and then maybe a few hours later she'd have thoughts”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, there are times when the stories that we tell ourselves are true. And when we go out and find out What's possible, it is something that we're doing that needs to change or isn't working. And so one example is, and this comes up sometimes as well, one executive who I worked with once kept getting this feedback that she was too quiet. And when we went out and got feedback, it was true people were like, she needs to speak out more. And this is becoming a problem because she...”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how you do it. If you're a leader, you do it by showing up and helping others do what they need to do in a way that feels good for you and that aligns with how you want to be doing things. And so this is one example, but I find using real research and data and actually talking to people is most effective. There are other ways to take best guesses, and I'll use the product metaphor again, which is, you know, you can try things and experiment and then see how it works and not talk to your users, but you should probably talk to your customers. In other words, your colleagues and everyone who works for you and really find out what is the true story and what is possible.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, that story, no one listens to me, it was the wrong story to be telling, what the actual story was, is that people wanted him out of their business and wanted to feel empowered doing their seed level and senior executive level work. But we don't want them to be absent because when he does that, it doesn't work and it's very frustrating when he just disappears for two weeks. So we need him involved but want him to give us problems to solve give us a vision, give us problems to solve, and let us do it for you. And so they were able to write a better ending of that story together. You know, it was exactly like user research of any kind or customer discovery, which is you find out what could be possible from your customers. And then you can, ideally, you co-create a better ending together if you're building products or services.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One story he told himself was like, People don't take me seriously, they don't listen to me. What's going on? I need to command respect. And they need to just do what I say. And I hear this all the time. So I'm using this one example, but this could be anyone that I've worked with. What we heard from people instead was. It's not that they Listening to him, but when you're hiring super senior whip smart executives to work for you, Don't want to be told what to do. They want to have a grand vision that they're excited about. They want maybe some goals to latch onto and help possibly with a strategy to get there, although probably they got the strategy all on their own and they want to then show you how they can help you in the business meet your goals and align towards that vision so that you can build the company that you want to build.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So heartfelt and so caring. And that's a really cool thing. I mean, how rare is that for, you know, to hear about a CEO, especially a founder, oftentimes you hear the opposite, which is not really true usually when founders are not nice people. They're insecurities at play. But in this case, yeah, people were like, you know, we love him. He's wonderful. That's why he recruited us. So great. All right. Validated and a little debunked. Really nice, but not too nice. That was not a problem for anyone. So then we hear things like, okay”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perfect. So in this case, and this is like everyone I work with, and this is absolutely something that everyone listening and everyone in the audience can absolutely do is. Data driven approach to the stories that you tell yourself. So for example, the story I'm too nice, you know, it could be true could not be true. How did we get down to the bottom of that? In this case, what we did is I went out there and talked to his team. And this is something you can do for yourself as well if you're extremely busy. You can have someone else do it for you. I found out how people actually experienced him and his leadership. And I didn't hear he's too nice. I heard he is...”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're never going to make it, or they're never going to listen to me, or I'll never learn to be a real CEO. And the problem with stories like that is they end up taking over your identity. They shadow and cloud your everyday and actions you take and interactions you have with people. And when you focus on them so much, they very well will become true. So that's one example I could tell you a little more about that, what we did about it.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can think of CEO I worked with a few years ago who on the outside was so put together. He was the CEO of a billion dollar company successful. Raised money like no one's business was able to get people excited about what he was building, join him. And when we started working together, he had recently hired an executive team. He was so excited to work with them as well. But on the inside, the story he kept telling himself was he's too nice. Nobody listens to him was another story. People don't take me seriously was another story. And then there were what I call horror stories. This is not a scientific term by any means, but horror stories that he told himself were things like”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you figure that out and you come from the inside out, it's much, much more powerful because it's not selfish like I would have thought years ago, but it's purposeful. You as human, we all are driven by a mission, by purpose, by a reason for what we do, and when we're able to have that power us, it then empowers us to connect with others so that we can bring it to life. And especially in a business context, but this is the case in anything, communities and family, but especially in business. So it has to start with you. You got to, you need fuel from somewhere. And if it comes from without, it's like an eggshell that's just ready to crack. It's not sustainable if it comes from outside.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Centered approach where it's not about you, it's about who you're bringing with you and the impact you want to make. But what I learned is that It's actually, it doesn't work that way, and you need to flip that, which is when you start with you first at the center of the equation, and then I'm going to do, you know, everything for me is a diagram. So I'm thinking of concentric circles. You start with you. And this isn't also, Ken Blanchard has a great model for this where you start with you. It's the inner circle. you are able to lead yourself. Then you can lead others. It extends to one-on-one relationships. Then once you've got that, you're able to lead groups, teams, and then outward towards the business.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a little antithetical in a way because it sort of, it goes against what a lot of us believe, especially if we have, I'll say product backgrounds or just business backgrounds or tech backgrounds or anything where we've built things for people. For years we've had this idea that we build companies in a user-centered way where, all right, build for the customer first and all else will follow. And there's some truth to that on the one hand. And I used to think leadership was the same, which is, well, it's not about you as a leader. It's about who are you bringing along on your journey and how do they need to be heroes? So how do you enable everyone you work with and everyone you want to follow you to join you and feel amazing with it? That's the kind of user.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever the stories are, these are all stories, and they may or may not be true. They're usually not true, but our brain doesn't know the difference. the most powerful ability our brain has is to understand and see stories everywhere. And so once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to be that hero in your life. And even as I say it out loud, it sounds so cheesy, but it's true. This is neuroscience and psychology. Like we just want to be the heroes. And that's what our focus is.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't do it alone, so it's rare that a story just has a single individual. It happens, but that's not most of life. And there are other elements that I ended up uncovering when I look deeper into what makes the most effective leaders effective. And the biggest thing is stories that we tell people, it's like the tip of the iceberg. And if anything, it even doesn't matter. I've worked with a lot of folks who their teams say, stop it with the storytelling, stop talking at us. They don't want any of that. But the most effective stories are the ones that we experience as we live life and that we tell ourselves as well because we have the ability by saying things like, oh, I'll never succeed or, oh, she'll never go for it or he's such a jerk.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all as humans want to be the hero of our own story. It's how we live our lives. It's how we make choices. It's how we understand the world around us. And it's how we communicate back to the world. With leadership, it's much the same, which is. We have a mission that we want to accomplish, no matter how big or small, it's something we're driven to do something. If you're a leader, you want to be a leader, you have to be taking yourself and you have to be taking people somewhere. We also have obstacles, so that's a part of any great story. There are challenges. It shouldn't be easy. It shouldn't be so hard. that you fail that's a tragedy but there are challenges and it makes life more exciting”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not knowing what to do about it, except telling. Part of something, but not what they needed. Telling stories was not the answer. And so I ended up spending what now is the next decade figuring out, all right, how do you become an effective leader? And of course, because I can't do anything lightly once I went down that path, I ended up switching up my entire business. And now that's all I do is help people be better, more effective, confident leaders who really make the impact that they want to make.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Off site, and they were just like honestly, storytelling's not going to fix our problems. This is silly. And what they were able to tell me is that. Their leaders wanted them to be more effective by having greater influence. And, you know, these are terms that we throw around all the time, be more influential and be a better leader, whatever that means. And what was happening on the ground with these executives was that they were all fighting. So, you know, I'd hear, oh, the head of engineering is such a jerk, or this person won't listen to me, or my team is demotivated and I get it, but they need to step up and work more. And there's just a lot of conflict going on here and there that storytelling wouldn't fix. Like when that happens, and I talk about this in the book, no one wants to hear your stories. You have to actually be able to connect with people and to work with people and feel good as a leader in order to really step up and lead. I didn't have an answer for this team at the time and I left this off-site just honestly feeling terrible.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At a leadership retreat, and we were supposed to at the time, I was facilitating a program on effective product leadership, how to be a great product leader, product executive. And the biggest thing that companies wanted at the time and teams wanted was their teams to be better storytellers. And it's still something we hear today, which is, you know, to be a great product leader or leader in general in any industry is got to be a great storyteller. And so at the time I was teaching, I'm facilitating storytelling workshops and exploring that with teams. And it was a few people on this team specifically who I so appreciate their honesty and candor here, which is what this giant tech company is known for, very blunt people working there. And they pulled Me aside halfway through the”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, it's funny, like all origin stories, there were actually multiple episodes, multiple moments that led me to an epiphany. But the biggest aha moment was when I was working several years ago, almost a decade ago at this point with an executive team. Silicon Valley and”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most effective stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. They may or may not be true. Our brain doesn't know the difference. Once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to be that hero.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your superpowers out of your stories from your past, your present, and then eventually figure out how to apply them and transpose them to your future.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mass and it's uncomfortable and even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers. It's hard to know what you're really great at.”
2024-02-25 · Lenny's Podcast · How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source