Moment 98 - The One Thing All Successful Leaders Have (And You Can Too!): Whitney Wolf Herd

With everything that has changed in the world, from the internet to the pandemic, what does this mean for the idea of leadership and being the perfect leader? In this moment Whitney Wolfe Herd discusses how for her a leader is the conductor creating harmony among a noisy orchestra. For Whitney, this means ignoring the examples of past leaders that were more like tyrants rather than bosses, and instead to listen to your gut and lead with compassion. It is only by being open and truly vulnerable that we can connect with the people around us and as leaders get the best out of our people. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/SHsmgyVKExb Whitney - https://www.instagram.com/whitney/?hl=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-wolfe-herd-1791a299 Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  What do you like as a leader? Because leadership has evolved, you know, over the last 10, 20 years from like the Steve Jobs days where you've got this kind of tyrant that from what I've heard, so, so hard to deal with that they put him in his own building and only people could, could work in that building if they were really resilient. I heard all these stories. I spoke to Was. Was didn't tell me that, but Was, Was is the closest I've ever got to Steve, to Steve Jobs. But leadership and the, the concept of what a leader looks like and how they behave and how they treat people in a post-internet world where we have the ability to speak up because we can tweet and glass door and all of these things. Leadership, leadership has changed. Our perceptions of it, how they behave in a post pandemic world, leaders are

• 0:47Steven Bartlett?

  much more vulnerable because I think a lot of them had to be really vulnerable during the pandemic to, to guide their teams through. What, if I asked your teams, if I said, you know, what, what's Whitney like as a leader? What would they say to me?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  I feel like I try, I try. And so, you know, I'm sure I could be told otherwise. I try to be empathetic and I try to think about everyone around me, probably to my detriment, honestly. I think it's probably done me more harm than good over the years because I'm trying to solve for every single person in the room that maybe it doesn't solve anything sometimes. But I really, I try to just be the brand we are externally, internally. It's hard, you know, there's so many conflicting needs as a business. You have a marketing and brand team that want to do one thing. You have a technical team that needs to do

• 1:47Speaker 01

  another. You have IPO teams that have to do another. And so you end up being this conductor of a very loud orchestra. And I try to create harmony with people, but I don't know. I, I guess I wouldn't say I follow any, I don't read leadership books. I don't like take leadership courses. Maybe that's something I should do. I don't know. But I just lead with my gut. I just do what feels right. I try to do the right thing. I try to listen and hear what people are saying. And I try to listen to other people too. So if one person calls me and says, X, Y, or Z, I try to call the other person and say, what's your version of this?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Before I jump to a conclusion, I really try to have compassion for where everybody's coming from, but it's tough. And then I also have to put my head down and say, okay, no, sometimes this is just how it's gonna go, right? Because I feel like I can see certain things that maybe aren't present to everyone in the dating space, because I've been in this thing for a decade now, and I feel like I understand the nuances of it very well. So I don't know. I don't know what they would say.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about creating harmony amongst the orchestra, which I feel like is the perfect example of the role of a CEO. But a role of the CEO of a public company becomes even more difficult, because then you have even more conflicting expectations. When you're that person that's trying to create a harmony in all of this orchestra, keep everybody happy, meet all the needs, how do you create harmony within yourself?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  So I personally have beliefs that, you know, there's something bigger than what we're dealing with every day, right? Like, I try to zoom out, zoom out into something that we can't even see, right? There's obviously influences of the universe that none of us know about. You and I cannot sit here and say that we know every corner of why we exist and what's gonna happen tomorrow. And so I try to just trust the process. I try to laugh. Andre was always really good at that. He would just laugh in really stressful situations. And I learned that from him. It's just like, have a laugh, you'll be okay. And also to realize that we are just a blip on the radar. Like, this is going to be, if we're lucky,

• 4:17Speaker 01

  like, Bumble will be like a half-page in a book one day, the hundreds of years from now. Like, it's just not that big of a deal, the daily dramas and the nuances of everything. And so I try to just zoom out. Like, is this really going to still matter? This one moment in interpersonal dynamics, or this one moment in a failed launch, or whatever it might be? Is this really gonna matter in five years? Is this gonna matter in five months? And I really try to do that exercise of like, how big of a deal is this before? I allow it to disrupt my harmony. Does that make sense?

• 4:52Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I don't know if that made any sense.

• 4:54Steven Bartlett?

  It does make sense. It does make sense. Um, I was reading things about your, your sort of sleep work routine and you sounded a lot like me. I am the type of person that has a fairly unhealthy relationship with my phone throughout, throughout, the early hours of the morning, especially, especially when I was running the company, especially when I was at Social Chain still. I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I was prob, I was worried too, too often when we couldn't make payroll and I knew it was payday in a week. I'd be riddled with little sort of slithers of anxiety. When we spoke to, um, I think it's Robbie.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, he's great.

• 5:31Steven Bartlett?

  Robbie in your team. Robbie said, she makes no pretense of being always strong and is openly vulnerable with the team. Where you might walk into the office one day and let them know that you've been struggling with something. Might, you might be anxious or struggling with anxiety that day and encourage your other team members, if they're feeling the same way, to take the time that they need.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Well, that's really nice of him, but yeah, I mean, vulnerability is,

• 5:56Speaker 01

  it has to be authentic. I've watched so many people the last few years ride this vulnerability trend. And I'm like, that's not real vulnerable. Like vulnerability can't be a scapegoat or an exit or a crutch. For me,

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I don't know, I just, I just tell the truth. If I'm having postpartum depression back when, after my first baby, I would just say that to my all hands because that was the truth. And why would I be anything other than truthful? If I want to lead a company that tells the truth and I want to run a business that instills behaviors that are truthful and, and healthy and, and better, like, why would I want to operate in any way that's disingenuous to that? So I just get up and just try to tell the truth.

• 6:43Steven Bartlett?

  Convention would say, well, that's not, leaders are strong and then they don't, they don't have any problems and they, they're always tough and they, you know, they, you know, so what if, and this is honestly what I used to worry about. I used to think, well, if I, if I'm truly honest, that, that things affect me too. My team are going to think I'm weak and then I can't lead them. And that's the kind of narrative that ran out in my head.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, and I get that. But the reality is everyone's, everyone's feeling something. And I'm in a connection business. How can I run a connection company if I can't connect? And the only way you can connect is through vulnerability. It's the only way to connect with anyone. I'm being very vulnerable with you right now because we're sitting here connecting, so I might as well. You know, I could sit here and be like, well, it's some business book I read. You know, there's this theory of like, you know, this many hours a day do this. And like, that's just not my vibe.