YouSaid · the spoken record

Julie Zhuo

lines on the record: 101
first: 2025-09-21
most recent: 2025-09-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Managing in a downturn or managing in change, difficult change scenarios that will be coming out in two weeks time. The new content will be in the paperback. That's important. And I'll send you a version of this when I get a copy myself, Lenny. But the paperback has a gradient type of cover. The hardback will eventually get the new content, but it just takes a while to phase out from all of the different retailers. So if you buy one, I cannot guarantee that it's going to have the new content. But certainly the Kindle and the paperback will have all of the new content.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would love to work with people who are at companies building really cool things and want better answers to how we build better. And so if you think your company would be interested in working with us at Sundial and figuring out how do we make every single decision maker into their own expert analyst, please reach out. So that's one area. So Sundial at sundial.so. I am on X. So I've been tweeting a lot more, sharing thoughts, you know, going back to that skill of practicing, just share what's on your mind. But for the long form stuff, I have my blog, The Looking Glass. It's on Substack. I share articles and thoughts about AI, product building, leadership, periodically. And then, of course, I have my book, a revised edition with two additional chapters. One is around managing remotely, and the other one is around”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, to me, true freedom is you can pick the things that are hard and you can feel pride in becoming the thing that you want to be. It's not forced upon you. It's not for survival's sake anymore, but you still have to pick. And I want to figure out for my children the fact that it is really important to still find the challenge. Yes, you can use AI to do that, but really don't think about it as a shortcut tool because if that's the case, I don't actually think that they're going to be able to become the kind of people they want to be in the world.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Control our destiny, like control our future. But at the same time, all of that control gets to a point where we have so many shortcuts in our lives and you can shortcut a lot of things or you can shortcut relationships. You can shortcut like hard feelings because now you can just watch TikTok instead of actually dealing with the very difficult emotion or tension that you had with a colleague or with your partner or with your children. And AI makes it even, I think, more attractive because now there's a person who can or there's a thing that could be very, very personalized. And if you're like, oh, I want a distraction. I want to do something. You got that. But how do we actually still learn to sit with what is our true biology? That's not changing. And how do we continue to be the kind of people that want to take on the freedom of doing challenging things? Because I find that if we don't do challenging things, we just suffer. We suffer in a different way.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Emotional regulation is still really, really, really important. That's probably the thing that I think about the most in terms of what I want my kids to learn. I want my kids to be able to introspect, to have a better understanding of where their state of mind is because we're still human. We still have the same hardware that humans have had for thousands of years and that's not changing even as the tools and the environment around us change. And so I feel that you have to really understand yourself and you have to understand what's going on for you and where you are biased and where you are not because AI can make it, and this is my great fear, is that it makes things so much more comfortable. And I have this great fear that this has been the trajectory that we've been on with technology, right? This is, again, going back to like every strength is a weakness. Technology makes things a lot easier. That's why we invent. That's why we create. Like we're always, human race has always been about trying to better our circumstances and in some ways.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like make it happen. Just a reminder that at the end of the day, we can do a lot of, we can have a lot of motion. Maybe this is another one that I really like. I think about this poster used to be a poster at Facebook that says don't mistake motion for progress. So there's this idea of like be the change we want to be in the world, I guess. There's all other ways of saying the same thing, which is like, you know, I can do things. Like we can all do things. We have better and better tools to go out there and make things happen, make it happen.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it did a pretty good job of inferring that, I think it's a person too, but. It was like kind of eye opening for me.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it will out automatically like if there's an app and it will sometimes notify me, or if I check it, or I can also engage with like ask it. But what it does is essentially, it's like granola, but like for your life in terms of capturing everything, summarizing it, and then giving you tips and feedback. And it said things like, hey, there was that time you were talking about the game. You cut your kid off a lot. And maybe next time think about letting them speak fully and listening better.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I just thought of one more as well The limitless pendant. So, disclaimer, I am a small investor in Limitless. But what I love about it is that it's a pendant, you wear it, and it just records everything that's going on. And later it summarizes things and it gives you feedback. And I don't usually wear it out because I find that maybe other people feel awkward that I'm like recording everything. I usually try to get people's permission. But I do wear it at home when I'm with my kids. And one of the best things that the pendant does is it gives me feedback on parenting. What?”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there's anything too new. I love granola. I love Replit. I've used all of the different Coding labs. Cursor is big on me for now. I just got a Matic robot. I think that's been really delightful so far. At least the setup, I haven't used it a long, long term, but it's the setup, the way that it worked, the fact that it had little stickers and you could make it into a dog or a cat was a wonderful experience.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have not watched anything. I have no good answer for you. I think the only thing I watched this year was a rewatch of lava land, which I do truly love.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, third book I love the book Good Inside by Dr. Becky. It's a parenting book and is a very wildly popular parented book, so I really recommend it to all parents. But I also think it's just a wonderful book for thinking about relocationships. And whose parenting is that? It's like a very, very deep and intense relationship and interaction that you have with another human being. And there's so many things that I read in parenting books, including Good Inside by Dr. Becky, that I think could just as well been like a management or a team leadership book.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Consciousness is really the book that really, really so much resonates. And I think, and all of the many of the things I talked about, this idea of win-win, the idea of being a player, not a victim, and how to think about work not just it's a job, but like, how do you really think about aligning it with your own personal values and what you want to do in the world? I think that this book really speaks to that so beautifully. It is also very tactical. It's got a lot of really wonderful examples. I will tell people the cover isn't very attractive, and I think that if you judge a book by its cover, like this seems very corporate-y, the title also seems like kind of like what conscious business and the first chapter is a little bit more technical, but if you just get past it and get into chapter two and you start with examples of the soccer team and what it's just like the best management book.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first is Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I absolutely love that book. It's beautifully written. It's so deep. My whole philosophy around quality is beautifully. It really comes a lot of it comes from that book, the idea and even all the stuff that we talked about change. What does it mean to be at that forefront of change and dynamic quality? I think you just talks about so beautifully and so masterfully in that book. So old classic, but I try to reread it every few years or so. Second is Conscious business is my favorite management book. It's a little bit of a sleeper hit because I actually end up recommending this one far more than my own book. I read this one after I wrote my book, and I always tell people that if I read it before, I'm not sure I would have written my book because I would have been like,”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just want to say thank you, honestly. I'm so inspired by the work that you do. We've known each other for quite a while. And I just think from the very first idea that you had for this newsletter, for the podcast has been incredible. And I think the world gets so much from it. I'm sure you hear that a lot, but I am very grateful”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why it's a practice. But I repeat that to myself because oftentimes if I have a bad experience, I'm feeling a certain way, it helps me to realize that it's often probably in my head. It's because I haven't gained the skills to be able to see the richness and infinity in that. So like I can maybe work on that. feels better than feeling like, oh, I'm a victim of my circumstances. Like this thing happened to me and like that's so awful, but now I'm powerless. I can't do anything about it. To me is a worse feeling than the alternative, which is I just don't have to.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that you can make that actually deeply, deeply interesting because you can use that as an opportunity to go into your own mind and to figure out like how you can make time pass or you can meditate on the existence or meditate on your breath or just be grateful for the purpose of being alive. And like two people, right? One person, you can say sit in front of a wall for an hour and they will, like my kid and they will super complain and be like, this is the worst thing ever. But you can put somebody else like a monk and they'll have a wonderful experience. And so it's not really about the environment or the wall. It's really about how we see it and whether we can find the thing that is deep and rich and infinite in that direction.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've believed that There is infinity in every direction. So that makes me pretty contrary on pretty much everything that anyone says. So if someone says something like on Twitter, I sometimes play this game with myself, which is in what context would that actually not be true? And I think the reality is that the world is so, or at least my reality and my understanding of the reality, is that the world is just infinitely complex. And so, for example, if my kids say something like going outside is boring or taking a walk is boring or doing something is boring. My general response will be, well, it's because you're not seeing the infinity that's in that direction. So even, for example, something really mundane, like staring at a blank wall.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Record and again, he's not into, I'm not a very good singer, but he's not into or he's not, it doesn't turn him off to hear off.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of this particular video game. And it writes me the lyrics. It's pretty good at doing this. It's like pretty high quality. And then, and again, it does it according to the beats of the music. And then I just sing it and record it. And then I got myself a song. So I'm creating an album of this, which I'm going to give to him. He's not going to hear this podcast, so no one spoil it to him. I think he's going to go publish after his birthday, but I'm very excited about this.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He loves video games, so Minecraft. But what he often listens to on his Alexa are these parody songs. So it'll be like Justin Bieber's hit or like Gunnam style, but they've changed the lyrics so it becomes like a video game parody of some video game that he's playing. And they're horribly sung. They're like off to. It's just like some person who produced it. And I was like, well, if he doesn't seem to mind off King C, I'm going to create him an album of video game parody songs and I'm going to create like an, so I created an app on Replet that what it does is it you just give it a song like this is Justin Bieber's baby and you link to Spotify's song and I give him some context like Locke likes playing Kingdom Rush right now. We have like an inside joke about the gargoyles being free money like whatever it is. I just give it a bunch of content. I'm like write me a song that just kind of personalizes it and it's a pair.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eric is great. You should definitely have him on your. He's such a creative. Character. And one time I saw him with Parrot on his shoulder And I was like, why do you have a pair on your shoulder? He's like, Well, you can talk to my parents, a talking parrot. And then I spoke to the parrot, and the parrot spoke back to me. And what had happened is that he had hooked up a microphone. He like kind of surgically went into the parrot and added like a microphone, a speaker, and connected it to voice mode on ChatGPT so that, and it spoke in think like a pirate voice. I was like, this is the best idea. And like my six-year-old son is really into raccoons. He has like a huge amount of raccoon stuffies. I was like, I want a raccoon that can talk to him. So I made that using the Eric Anton method, but it was great. It was a huge hit. And now my middle son's birthday is coming up, and he is really into.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one of my goals this year was to try and build them something. So give them a present that has me going back to being the IC and making something for them. And AI makes this really fun. And so I just, for my youngest son, who was six years old, this is an idea that I stole from Eric Antoneau. And if you know Eric, have you had him on your podcast?”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Already shared a lot about education and learning, but I'll share maybe a more fun story. So it's my kids' birthdays. One of them just passed and my middle son's birthdays in two weeks and my daughter's birthdays. By the way, the birthday.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can we just is there a quicker way to validate whether people like lemonade? Perhaps we should just test it in one market before we go and open up the lemonade stands across the entire 50 states. And so what happens is we can likely get to the actual specific area and come up with something. And then if I have to now share with my team, we're going to try this hypothesis. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I actually do think like I don't know for sure. And our CO seems to think this is, but we're just going to test it. And we're going to do the test in a way where that's what we want to find out is like, do people really love, like do 18 to 25 year olds love lemonade if we put them on these neighborhood college campuses, right? So it becomes very specific. Everyone's like, well, yeah, I don't know for sure, but like I'm happy to go in and test that and commit to it.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into breaking it down into a set of assumptions that makes it much easier because then you'll likely find something that you do kind of resonate with. And you might be able to then steer things like, okay, that hypothesis doesn't, you can. I believe and disagree and commit. But now we can be very specific. We can isolate the thing that and what we can also often do is like, okay, the reason I didn't like this proposal is because I have this like I believe that this assumption is wrong, right? So for me to come up with like a really stupid example, but you know your suggestion is I know we have a great idea. We're going to go and put a lemonade stand on every block. And my core assumption is people do not like lemonade. That's not the hot beverage right now. And so therefore I think this is a stupid plan. But if I talk to you about it and you're like, no, no, this is the core assumption we disagree on, likely what starts to unfold is like, well, let's just, can we get some data? Can we some information?”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think, first, if you feel that way, you got to actually find a way to get it out and engage in dialogue. So I think my manager told me I had to do this. I think it's a terrible idea. You got to talk to your manager about it or you got to talk to the CEO or whoever and feel. Because once you engage in a dialogue, what will often happen is you'll learn more. Like you'll have new information. You'll have new assumptions. And maybe you'll have influenced a project in some manner. But often the more you can learn about, okay, why did some other smart people feel like we should do this? And what parts of it do I believe and what parts am I more skeptical about? Like you can probably decompose it from a blanket. It's good or bad to like, okay, this is a hypothesis. This is a hypothesis. This is a hypothesis. I might kind of believe this one. The reason I don't like the proposal, I don't believe this particular hypothesis, but I believe these other ones, right? And so when you can start to get one level deeper.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're like, I don't really think this is a good idea. There's no case where I can think over the project somehow turn out to be like wildly successful.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have gone through the work of thinking through wait, why are we doing this? Do I believe this strategy doesn't make sense or not? And if it doesn't make sense to go and actually have the conversation with their manager or whoever else just so they understand they can get to alignment on like I really believe in what I'm doing because if you don't really believe in what you're doing and or you're just kind of parroting the thing that got passed through the organization, it's very hard for you to then be able to help other people see what that magic is or to be actually really effective as a person who can hold that vision and that purpose. So I just think you have to really check in with yourself on like, wait, I know we're told to do this and this is what we have to do, but how do we really feel about it? Because if you don't feel good about it, then it's not going to be very likely that the project's going to succeed. I can tell you right now, every single manager I've ever managed.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really important, particularly since a lot of people who are managers, you often start out not as like the founder and the CEO of the company, but you might be like a middle manager. So in some ways, you don't even like create the vision, but you are in some ways expected to execute it or take a piece of it and do it. And I find that sometimes what new managers don't pay attention to enough is what is their true belief? Like they feel like they might have to be like a soldier. So they just get orders and they have to execute it. But it really makes a difference if they themselves”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think being aware of your own energy and conviction is really, really important. So I go back like a lot of these themes, as you can see, go back to like you have to first understand this about yourself and have the right mindset. And when you do, it becomes much easier to be able to be impactful with other people. So this is another one. I think it's very difficult for managers to be able, you know, we talked a lot about the three pillars of what are the major tools of a manager. The first is people. And so we talked a lot about like the importance of dimensionality and feedback and helping reflect and grow people. And the second one is around purpose. Purpose is like, what are we here to do? What's our North Star? And I think it's very hard to actually convey that if you don't have conviction yourself. And so watching your conviction is”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's like a win win way of looking at the situation, not a like, you know, oh, my firing them is just definitely going to be a horrible, you know, I'm not trying to say it's not going to be hard. Obviously, it's hard, but it's in the mentality and the mental model, I think, makes all the difference because it's going to be different in the way that I convey it to them. It's going to be different. And why this actually in the grander scheme of things may be great. And it's going to reduce this adversarial feeling where they're now going to see me as like an enemy or somebody with all this power who's making, you know, choices that impact them and they feel powerless. It has to be a collaboration. And I think if it's not win-win, I could be wrong. I would say I don't think it's right. The person could actually say, no, you're wrong. And that would actually be great information because then maybe we can go back and we can find a way to make it win-win.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes a win-win thing is to just say, look, it's not working, and I know I respect and value you so much that I know you want to do something that you can be proud of and you can grow in. And that's going to be really valued. And right here, what we got, this isn't it.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They shouldn't be a part of this team, was extremely fraught for me. And the main reason was because I'm putting myself in their shoes and I'm imagining that this is truly horrible and I've just done a huge disservice to this person and that's like the most awful thing. But there's another way to look at it, which is, hey, if this person's on the team, they probably want to be successful. Want to do great work, they want to be valued, they want to grow their career. If this is not the place for them because it doesn't align with their true interests and the things that are going to help them be successful is just not the thing that they either want to do or can do at this point. It doesn't do that person any good for me to.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the long run to feel like what I've done is just create a ton of pressure for them and now they're super burnt out and they're quick because that's not good for our team. That's not good for me. That's not good for our long-term relationship. How do we find the solution that can be win-win? And I think if you think like that, a lot of things get easier. So for example, with new managers, I think this is true for me too. The first time I had to tell someone that”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the idea of win-win, I think about that all the time in my mind. And I go back to, because I think that often we have this story in our heads that sometimes things are adversarial. As a manager, I'm trying to get people to be more productive. So I'm trying to get them to do a thing that maybe they don't want to do. I'm going to try and get them to work harder, or I'm going to somehow put more pressure on them. Like if you start thinking like that, that's not a win-win way to be thinking, right? That's like you saying my getting better outcomes has to come at the expense of somebody else losing something. And I think if you start thinking like that, it's very difficult to come up with a strategy or to truly be successful. But if you say, look, actually, my job is to figure out how to create win-wins. So I actually don't want. I don't want somebody.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With you, and I say, Lenny, I'm so nervous right now. Is I want to give you some feedback and I'm really worried that it's going to impact our relationship. And I so value our relationship and I don't want that to happen. But I also feel like it's just going to help you to hear it if you can. That does so much of the work of it's humanizing, right? It's like you're going to be realize that I'm going out on the limb. I'm being really vulnerable. And likely you're going to hear that so much more than if I just find a way to drop it. Like just like lobby it over because it's so difficult. Just actually lean into the fact that it is difficult and expose that because that builds a lot of human connection.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My real rationale for why I want to give you feedback is I want to validate myself. I want to be right. I want to tell you you're wrong. I want to punish you. It's not going to go well. It's just already there. There's no way you can deliver it and somehow unless you're a tremendous actor, it's just not going to go well. So you have to first check your intention. But if you've done that, you're like, no, no, no. I thought about it. I'm calm now. I'm not seeing red. I really think that Lenny is just not aware that when he says this, it makes me and other people feel left out or whatever it is, right? Then I need to be able to give it to you. And so usually then if you're like, okay, now I might be nervous because I don't want to offend you. I really value our relationship. How am I going to tell you, you know, I don't want you to get defensive? Then the third tactic I have is just say that out loud. If I sit down.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So if you get people to opt in, yes, I want us to have a great relationship. I want us to help each other get better. I want feedback. That's 60% of the hard part of delivering difficult feedback later on. So then the second tactic I would say is that when you actually give the feedback, it helps a lot. First, you have to check, am I actually giving this feedback because it's in the spirit of trying to help? One another. And if the answer is yes, then we've like, you know, moved from 60% to 80%, it's going to go well, right? But what can often happen is I'm feeling like something happens, you do something, it triggers me because I don't know. I had like a bad experience about that type of thing before. And I'm kind of feeling mad. And I want to be right. Like if my”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like everyone. It's like people you're dating. It's like, you know, your children. It can be with everyone just establishing what kind of relationship do we want to have. I think most people want to opt into a relationship where you can be close. You can be tight with one another. You can say things to one another and not have to hide behind. Like I think most people will opt into it. And if you opt into it, everything gets easier down the road. So the first thing is get everyone to opt in that like this is the kind of relationship that we want to have”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Best way, the first tip on getting feedback or delivering hard feedback is first go and actually establish that our relationship is one in which we value each other's contribution. We want to help each other grow and therefore we're going to be the kind of people that want to give feedback to each other every week. So when you first start working with someone, don't wait until something bad has happened. Now you have given feedback. That's already a pressurized situation. Start by saying, hey, really excited to work with you. I feel like our best collaboration is I want you to help me get better. I think I'm good at this stuff. I'm not so good at this stuff. What about you? Okay, you think you're good at this stuff? How about we just work together and we just help each other get better at these things and the way we're going to do that is all feedback is open. I want you to tell me everything. Ideally, you're going to then be say, yeah, I want you to tell me everything. And we've already established that.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It'll be a gift of reflecting something back of what you see that I can't see, right? Just like if I have a leaf in the back of my head. And so, if you tell me, hey, Julia belief, oh, wow, thank you. Okay, maybe I can get rid of the leaf or whatnot. But that is what feedback is. It is essentially reflection back. It helps us calibrate to reality. And it allows me to get this information about whether or not I'm moving in the direction of my goals.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something than they actually are. You ask people, Hey, are you better than average driver? And it's like 70 or 80% of people like, yes, I'm better than average. How could that possibly be? We have biases. And imposter syndrome is a bias on the other side. It's like me feeling, oh, I suck. I don't actually belong here. Whereas that also is a bias. Like it may not actually be true. In fact, I might very well be here and other people value my contribution. So we are just wildly out of sync a lot of times in our perceptions of ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, what's going on. And the way that we're going to understand and truly get better is we need other people to reflect back what is actually their truth. And the way I think about it is like, I'm going to ask you for feedback after this podcast episode. And you're going to tell me something and what you're going to do is you're going to give me a gift.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better. And so what is the best tool for us to get better? It is feedback. And what I think about in feedback is it's very similar to what we said earlier about data metrics. It's essentially trying to put your hypotheses and test them against reality. So as an example, maybe I have this perception right now that I am a positive and engaging speaker. So I have this sense that like I'm smiling and I'm very engaging and I'm telling great stories. But is that really true? I don't know like the reality is that I'm often biased and we all have, you know, we know these like psychological effects, right? We're like sometimes the Dunning-Kruger effect like people think they're way more expert.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feedback is one of the other topics that I am super duper passionate about. And my general impression for both myself, everyone I've worked with is that we don't value feedback enough or we don't kind of think about enough. Again, companies have these performance cycles. And so we're like, yes, every six months, we're going to go and do these reviews. That's when I'll get feedback. But feedback really, in my mind, ideally should be like a daily practice because The thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Almost like adversarial, like I'm trying to get you to give me a promotion and you're trying to get me to work harder. Like it's, yeah, like that is not a very good vibe.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Consider success to be, and what is your greatest hopes and dreams? And then you might be able to help your own career and yourself because you know that context. And conversely, if you say, hey, manager, these are my hopes and dreams. This is what I think I'm good at. I really want to get better at this skill. I really want to get that VP promotion, but I don't know what it entails. Can you tell me what does it take? That's a really wonderful conversation as well because then you'll get all of that context. And then you can actually decide whether you want to do it or not. And if you want to, then ask your manager for help. Okay, if you see opportunities that are going to help me become a better presenter or increase my communication, please tell me. Even better if you have feedback for me about communication, I want to hear it because that's what's going to help me grow in this particular skill. And so it becomes this collaborative relationship much more so than this.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. I think it's so important to be like we often also have this mental model of like, oh, our managers are a judge and they're going to judge me on whether or not I got it. I did well, I should get a promotion. I should be fired. So there's this sometimes fear that people have. But I think in the very best relationships, the manager is like a guide. It's like, look, the manager has a job. And if you understand your manager's job, which is how to get outcomes better outcomes from the team and also you understand what exactly would your manager consider success for the team, it also makes it easier for you to then be like, oh, well, if I do this project, then that clearly seems like it's very, you know, direct path to creating value for the team. And that also is a kind of project that suits my skills. It's something I'm excited about. Like you should suggest that to your manager. But the other is true, right? So you would know that if you actually ask your manager, what is your job and what do you...”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I love that you knew that about yourself because I think it's so easy for a young person to go into careers and everyone is telling them maybe their whole family has been telling them like you need to get a level up. You need to get paid more. You need to get that manager title. You need to get a VP. And at a certain point, I think sometimes people opt into this without knowing what they're actually signing up for. Like what are the trade-offs? And is that really what you want to do? Does that really align with your passions? And of course, you know, sometimes we have to, again, it's like, it's a compromise for us, right? But we get to design. Like we get to design what our goals and what's the right pathway. And I go back to usually when people are unhappy. It's because these things are a little bit out of sync. Like they want this big thing, but they don't actually, they're not actually excited about what it takes to do that thing. And therefore, it's just going to be a mismatch.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My deep egg omelette skills. You can be egg omelet. You just have to maybe not do this thing. Or if you want this thing, you may actually need to be better at just egg omelets. Like perhaps you need to expand your repertoire of cuisines and go and build a Meshlin Star restaurant or something.”
2025-09-21 · Lenny's Podcast · From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source