suddenly turned and asked, “Sheryl, what do you think?” I was stunnedsilent—my mouth opened but nothing came out. When he saw how shocked I was, Secretary Rubin explained why he had put me on the spot: “Because you’re new and not fully up to speed on how we do things, I thought you might see something we were missing.” Apparently not in my case. But Secretary Rubin sent a powerful message to all of us about the value of soliciting ideas from every corner (literally).
Secretary Rubin was also aware of the dangers of blindly following leaders, or in his case, being blindly followed. Before becoming Treasury secretary, Rubin served as co-chairman of the board of Goldman Sachs. At the end of his first week as co-chairman, he noticed that Goldman was heavily invested in gold. He asked someone why the firm had taken such a big position. The startled employee answered, “That was you, sir.” “Me?” Rubin replied. Apparently, the day before he had been taking his initial tour of the trading floor and commented, “Gold looks interesting.” This got repeated as “Rubin likes gold,” and someone spent millions of dollars to please the new boss.
More than a decade later, I experienced my own “Rubin likes gold” moment. When I joined Facebook, I faced a dilemma: I needed to bolster the business side of the company while respecting its unconventional culture. Most corporations love PowerPoint presentations, so I encouraged people
not
to prepare them for meetings with me, but instead to come with a simple list of topics. I repeated this frequently, but every meeting seemed to include a detailed PowerPoint presentation anyway. After more than two years of frustration, I announced that although I hated making rules, I was making one: no more PowerPoint in my meetings.
A few weeks later, as I was getting ready to speak to our global sales team, Kirsten Nevill-Manning, a skilled human resources leader at Facebook, came to find me. Kirsten thought I should know that everyone in Europe was upset with me.
Really? I angered an entire continent?
She explained that clientmeetings were very difficult without PowerPoint and asked why I would make such a stupid rule. I explained that I had intended the rule to apply only to presentations to
me
. But just as the Goldman team heard “Gold = good,” the Facebook team heard “PowerPoint = bad.” I got onstage in front of our entire sales team and apologized for the misunderstanding. I also let them know that if they hear a bad idea, even one they believe is coming from me or Mark, they should either fight it or ignore it.
As hard as it is to have an honest dialogue about business decisions, it is even harder to give individuals honest feedback. This is true for entry-level employees, senior leaders, and everyone in between. One thing that helps is to remember that feedback, like truth, is not absolute. Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable, which is why all of us would rather offer feedback to those who welcome it. If I make an observation or recommendation and someone reacts badly—or even just visibly tenses up—I quickly learn to save my comments for things that really matter. This is why I so admire Molly Graham’s approach. Molly joined Facebook in 2008 and held a number of jobs throughout the company in communications, human resources, and mobile products. She performed extraordinarily well in all of these very different roles, not just because she is uniquely talented but because she is always learning. One day, she and I hosted a tricky client meeting. She navigated the discussion effectively, and after the clients left, I praised her effort. She paused and said, “Thanks, but you must have ideas for me on what more I could have done.”
“How can I do better?” “What am I doing that I don’t know?” “What am
Secretary Rubin was also aware of the dangers of blindly following leaders, or in his case, being blindly followed. Before becoming Treasury secretary, Rubin served as co-chairman of the board of Goldman Sachs. At the end of his first week as co-chairman, he noticed that Goldman was heavily invested in gold. He asked someone why the firm had taken such a big position. The startled employee answered, “That was you, sir.” “Me?” Rubin replied. Apparently, the day before he had been taking his initial tour of the trading floor and commented, “Gold looks interesting.” This got repeated as “Rubin likes gold,” and someone spent millions of dollars to please the new boss.
More than a decade later, I experienced my own “Rubin likes gold” moment. When I joined Facebook, I faced a dilemma: I needed to bolster the business side of the company while respecting its unconventional culture. Most corporations love PowerPoint presentations, so I encouraged people
not
to prepare them for meetings with me, but instead to come with a simple list of topics. I repeated this frequently, but every meeting seemed to include a detailed PowerPoint presentation anyway. After more than two years of frustration, I announced that although I hated making rules, I was making one: no more PowerPoint in my meetings.
A few weeks later, as I was getting ready to speak to our global sales team, Kirsten Nevill-Manning, a skilled human resources leader at Facebook, came to find me. Kirsten thought I should know that everyone in Europe was upset with me.
Really? I angered an entire continent?
She explained that clientmeetings were very difficult without PowerPoint and asked why I would make such a stupid rule. I explained that I had intended the rule to apply only to presentations to
me
. But just as the Goldman team heard “Gold = good,” the Facebook team heard “PowerPoint = bad.” I got onstage in front of our entire sales team and apologized for the misunderstanding. I also let them know that if they hear a bad idea, even one they believe is coming from me or Mark, they should either fight it or ignore it.
As hard as it is to have an honest dialogue about business decisions, it is even harder to give individuals honest feedback. This is true for entry-level employees, senior leaders, and everyone in between. One thing that helps is to remember that feedback, like truth, is not absolute. Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable, which is why all of us would rather offer feedback to those who welcome it. If I make an observation or recommendation and someone reacts badly—or even just visibly tenses up—I quickly learn to save my comments for things that really matter. This is why I so admire Molly Graham’s approach. Molly joined Facebook in 2008 and held a number of jobs throughout the company in communications, human resources, and mobile products. She performed extraordinarily well in all of these very different roles, not just because she is uniquely talented but because she is always learning. One day, she and I hosted a tricky client meeting. She navigated the discussion effectively, and after the clients left, I praised her effort. She paused and said, “Thanks, but you must have ideas for me on what more I could have done.”
“How can I do better?” “What am I doing that I don’t know?” “What am
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