Why Your Startup Will Never Outgrow You w/ Carole Robin

So, Carol, you and I both work with tech companies, right? We work with a lot of tech founders, and I have been in learning and development in some capacity or another for about...

oh gosh, I think it's probably about 25 years.

And I've been specifically working with tech companies for about the last two or three years.

And I have found that they are a unique breed when it comes to the type of learning and development that they need, the type of training and development they need.

I think oftentimes they're like, oh wow, as long as I have like a great product and a great team, like what else is there? And so when you look at the interpersonal aspect skills that you teach them, I know that you call them touchy feely skills.

And I love that.

And so when a founder pushes back and says like, oh, like this is soft skill stuff and I probably don't need this.

Like what's your actual case that this is really a, if you want to call it soft, you can call it soft, but this is really a hard skill that is really going to help sometimes determine the trajectory of the business that you're building.

Yeah.

Well, it might be worth noting that all this work that I do at Leaders in Tech is really based on a course that I taught for two decades at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

And it was the students who nicknamed it touchy-feely because of the emphasis on the role of feelings and emotions in learning how to connect well with other people.

So leadership is ultimately about influence and your ability to influence others.

And influence is almost impossible in the absence of connection.

But most leaders, especially in tech, don't know that.

how to go about creating really deep connections with other people.

Because they're so focused on the technology and on the product and sometimes on some of the other business, the strategy, the finances, the marketing, all are important.

But until you get the people part right, then your success is going to be somewhat limited in my view and in my experience.

Yeah, I can remember one time I heard a quote, and I don't know if it was like referencing like something from a book or if someone was just wise enough to say this.

And they said, your business is never going to outgrow the level at which you develop yourself if you're the person that is leading it, whether you're the CEO and founder or whether you're leading a department.

But your business is going to cap.

at the level of what you as the individual are developed.

And I fought that because in the beginning, I thought to myself like, I don't need personal development.

I don't need to think about this.

I just need you to tell me the tactics that it takes to build my business.

And that's what you said I was gonna do.